What am I a “pro” at? – Isotopic Analysis of Bioapatites

National Blog Posting Month – December 2012 – Work

Prompt – What do you consider yourself a “pro” at?

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It seems strange to ever consider myself a “pro” at anything. I’m ‘good’ at a lot of things, and feel like I’m pretty well-rounded as a person and a scientist, to say “pro” makes me hesitate.

However, there is one topic (work-related, of course) that about which it appears that I am considered a world expert. I get sufficient requests from entities globally each year to corroborate that conclusion. On that one thing, I will – still reluctantly – call myself a “pro.” That topic is the analysis of light stable isotopes from bioapatites.

In English, this is basically the geochemical analysis of tooth enamel. I work mostly with the teeth of fossil mammals. The data collected from such analyses can be used to interpret ancient environments and habits and dietary preferences of extinct animals. From that, we can study things like climate changes that occurred millions of years ago. That’s my schtick.

There are lots of scientists actually that work with such data. By lots, I mean maybe a few hundred, so still a small number but greater than zero. What makes me unique is that I’m one of the very, very few who actually knows how to operate the instrumentation to do the analyses. It’s one thing to understand how to interpret the data. It’s quite another to know how to get the data. Not only can I run the analyses, I can replicate my results, which is actually much harder than it sounds.

I always giggle a bit when I get an e-mail that says something to the effect of “I’ve heard you’re the best at this, so here’s some samples, can you run them?” My first thought is, Clearly these people haven’t met me. But I get these requests from all over the world, with projects pending and running from Australia, Brazil, Uruguay, and Siberia, not to mention the stuff happening in the United States, so there must be something to it.

So that’s what I’m a “pro” at, I guess. Isotopic analysis of bioapatites. I’ll put that on my resume.

For 12-3-12