Muse with me
This blog is an archive of Penny’s previous posts on her original site, paleopix.com. PaleoPix is now her business site and while she still blogs there regularly, the old posts did not migrate over.
Most links here are broken. A few posts have been copied and moved over to the new blog on the new PaleoPix website.
As the inner core turns #365papers
Yang, Y. and Song, X. 2023. Multidecadal variation of the Earth’s inner-core rotation: Nature Geoscience, v.16. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-01112-z What’s it about? The Earth’s core is composed of two parts, the liquid (molten) outer core and the solid inner core. The inner core spins while floating in the outer core in the same direction, but not necessarily…
Photojournal – October 14, 2020 – Mendon Ponds Park, NY
Always have a camera. Today was a quick trip to Mendon Ponds Park, south of Rochester, NY to capture some images of the early fall colors. And do a little scoping out of potential places for a family photoshoot.
Photojournal – October 9, 2020 – Genesee Valley Park, Rochester, NY
Always have a camera. This evening, I had 15 minutes to spend while waiting for a friend. I visited the “Tree of Life,” and found hidden treasure. Fall is here, but the colors haven’t peaked yet.
Sampling Tooth Enamel for Isotopic Analysis
In the previous post, I explained how teeth grow. Now I’m going to get into the details of how we collect tooth enamel samples for isotopic analysis. What we need is powdered enamel. The best way to get this is by drilling. With a dental drill. One of the greatest challenges we have is that…
Collecting Samples – Powdered Enamel
Here’s something that not too many ‘traditional’ chemists have to do, but geochemists have to do all the time. You can’t very easily just stick a rock into a mass spectrometer and take a geochemical measurement. Usually, the rock or mineral (enamel, in this case) has to be powdered first. For my own research, I’m…
I have this jaw I’d like to give you…
Below is a “lab note” from the Jaws of Life Project on experiment.com. Access the note and support the project here. Part of this project is gathering the funds needed to perform the necessary chemical analyses. The other part is gathering jaw bones from far and wide (only legally, of course), so that we have…
What chemistry?
Below is a “lab note” from the Jaws of Life Project on experiment.com. Access the note and support the project here. As we describe this project, we refer to the “chemistry” of tooth enamel. Chemistry can mean a lot of things, so what does it mean in this context? Let’s start with tooth enamel. Tooth…
Let’s talk teeth – is this the third molar?
Below is a “lab note” from the Jaws of Life Project on experiment.com. Access the note and support the project here. How do we know what teeth we have when we find a jaw or an isolated tooth? Let’s start with a simple, yet common case: The lower jaw of a deer or sheep. For…
Some early data and how this works
Below is a “lab note” from the Jaws of Life Project on experiment.com. Access the note and support the project here. This project was born from the practical need to be able to maximize our ability to learn about past environments using the geochemistry of fossil teeth. There have been a few studies, some published…
The Jaw Prawject
I’m working on a project that was just launched on experiment.com. I refer to it as the Jaw Prawject or the Jaws of Life Project. It’s a project to better understand how stable isotopes are affected by tooth position in mammal jaws. The goal is to determine if the dogma of only using the third…
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Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist 