Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist
Combining Science and Joyful Creativity
#365papers for February 4, 2017
What’s it about?
This paper discusses the use of geochemistry (specifically stable isotopes) of fossil snail shells to understand past environments. It looks especially on comparing results from whole shell analysis (grinding the whole shell up and putting it into the mass spectrometer) against serial or intra-shell analyses, where multiple samples are collected from a single shell.Continue reading “Snail Shells, Climate, and Weather – #365papers – 2017 – 35”
#365 papers for February 3, 2017
What’s it about?
This paper seeks to show that what we’ve been saying we can do with the geochemistry of snail shells (especially oxygen isotopes) can actually be done. This paper shows that there is a relationship between oxygen isotopes in rainfall and those of snail body fluids. The relationship between isotopic signatures of body fluids and shells is then shown.Continue reading “More Tales from Land Snails – #365papers – 2017 – 34”
#365papers for February 2, 2017
What’s it about?
By measuring isotopes of carbon and oxygen from fossil snails, the authors were able to determine what the past climate in Sudan was like.Continue reading “Snails Tell Tales of Past Climate – #365papers – 2017 – 33”
#365papers for February 1, 2017
What’s it about?
That title. What does it even mean?
As animals grow from a single fertilized egg to a newborn, they pass through a stage where they are a hollow ball of cells with one opening. Deuterostomes are animals for which this opening later becomes the anus. In everything else (called proterostomes), this opening becomes the mouth.
All animals with bones (including us) are deuterostomes, as are all members of the Phylum Echinodermata – Sea stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, sea lilies, sea cucumbers, and a bunch of fossil groups. So our closest non-bony relatives are starfish. Think about that…Continue reading “Early Early Early Relatives of Both Humans and Sea Stars – #365papers – 2017 – 32”
I’ve now been teaching science at the college level for over ten years, and actually practicing science for… longer.
One of the challenges that budding young scientists face, as well as those students that take science classes to meet graduation requirements for non-science majors, is that it’s a huge leap from science textbooks, blog posts, and Wikipedia to reading the original scientific literature. Continue reading “#365papers – How to Read Technical Papers… Quickly”
#365papers for January 31, 2017
What’s it about?
This paper discusses how curiosity about science (general interest and the desire to learn more) in people counteracts the natural tendency for people to emphasize or ignore information that supports or refutes their political standing.
Furthermore, this paper comes up with a way to actually measure “Science curiosity” in people, a property that previous efforts thought was not real nor measurable.Continue reading “#Science Curiosity and Political Reasoning – #365papers – 2017 – 31”
#365papers for January 30, 2017
What’s it about?
Rare earth elements (REEs) are heavy elements that are uncommon in bones and teeth (composed of bioapatite mineral) in the living animal, but that are often concentrated in the mineral matrix during fossilization. In the past, REEs in conodont bioapatite were thought to be a good record of the REE content of the ocean waters in which they swam.Continue reading “Rare Earth Elements in Conodont Apatite – #365papers – 2017 – 30”
#365papers for January 29, 2017
Song and Gong, 2017, Late Devonian global ostracod paleobiogeography: Lethaia, v. 50, p. 7-25.
What’s it about?
This paper summarizes what is known about the distribution of ostracods (small shelled crustaceans) during two stages of the Late Devonian, the Frasnian and the Famennian. The ostracods were used to define biogeographic units (regions) between which there was little communication.Continue reading “The Paleobiogeography of Tiny Devonian Crustaceans – #365papers – 2017 – 29”
#365papers for January 28, 2017
What’s it about?
This paper applies the method described in yesterday’s #365papers, along with other methods to explore the uplift history of the central Andes.Continue reading “Growing Up Andes – #365papers – 2017 – 28”
#365papers for January 27, 2017
What’s it about?
This paper discussed in detail the protocol necessary to get reliable hydrogen isotopic data from volcanic glass. The authors check many variations and possible ways to isolate and clean the glass to determine which is the best way to do it.Continue reading “From Volcanic Glass We Can Estimate Ancient Elevation – #365papers – 2017 – 27”
Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist