Category Archives: Paleontology

“B” is for Baiotomeus

“B” is for Baiotomeus

Baiotomeus is a member of the Order Mulituberculata, which were an abundant group of mammals thought to occupy similar niches as modern rodents. Multituberculates were unique to identify by their blade-like lower fourth premolar and teeth with multiple cusps. They were rather Lego-like in appearance.

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Running TNT for Phylogenetic Analysis (on a Mac)

This blog post is meant to be informational. You can stop reading now if you don’t know what a cladistic analysis is and don’t care to ever know how to do one.

If you’re still reading, this post is written to provide what I’ve learned about getting TNT, a free phylogenetic analysis program, to work properly on a Mac. Bear in mind that I do not currently own a Mac. What I’m sharing with you is what we figured out as a class when I had my students use this program as part of a cladistics exercise.Continue reading “Running TNT for Phylogenetic Analysis (on a Mac)”

Random Science Poems Written on the Spot

Tonight, I was at a loss for what to blog about. The prompts I have available are not as inspiring as usual. So I asked the hive mind for suggestions:

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What Can A Clam Teach Us About Climate Change?

One of the many projects I work on involves the study of climate change in the fossil record. I’ve put a bit of it on-line here. What I’ve published thus far deals mostly with interpreting general climatic and environmental factors using bulk geochemistry (all isotopes) from rocks and the fossil contained therein. That is to say, I take a big rock or fossil and grind it (or part of it) down into a single sample. I analyze that and call that a ‘average’ for that entire rock layer.

It turns out that clams (and mollusks in general) do a good job of recording environmental signals not just in bulk, but on a fine scale, such that we can see yearly, monthly, even daily records of weather.Continue reading “What Can A Clam Teach Us About Climate Change?”

Blogging from A to Z

Blogging from A to Z is an April challenge in which bloggers use the letters of the alphabet as the driving theme for 26 of the 30 days of the month. Some may just write daily on any old thing, just so long as it begins with the proper letter. Others choose a theme and use that for determining what the daily topics will be.Continue reading “Blogging from A to Z”