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  • Sean Moran posted an update in the group Group logo of GABI-RET 2018 Cohort 6-The North American ConnectionGABI-RET 2018 Cohort 6-The North American Connection 6 years, 2 months ago

    6 years, 2 months ago
    6 years, 2 months ago

    Hi all!

    Sorry I’m a little late to the party. Now that I’ve been called out I guess I can’t hide anymore.

    I’m going to go a little off script from @jeanette-pirlo‘sĀ original questions, but here it goes:

    I grew up in the south Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia (E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!!!…sorry I’m a Philly fan, these opportunities don’t come around very often) and fell in love with fossils and paleontology in middle school. Early in high school I began volunteering at our local natural history museum in Philly and was lucky enough to start traveling to Montana to dig up dinosaurs a couple summers later. I graduated with a B.S. in geology for the College of William and Mary in 2011 and did research on the formation of 120 and 66 million year old fossil sites with high concentrations of vertebrate fossils called microsites.

    From 2011-2014 I worked on my masters in geology with Bruce looking at the diet and paleoclimate of 18 million horses using the chemical composition of their tooth enamel. I was a little confused about what I wanted to do upon finishing my masters before a couple opportunities to work with high school teachers in Ohio and California popped up through Bruce’s connections. So from 2014-2016 I visited many classrooms of all grade levels, worked on developing curricula, and dabbled in education research. After that two year hiatus I began working on my PhD in Zoology (and a likely minor in science ed!) at UF and am just starting to nail down what my research will be.

    I’m really interested in a period of time ~34 million years ago known as the Eocene-Oligocene Transition, or the EOT. One of the many things that is really fascinating about the EOT is that it’s largest mass extinction since the extinction of the dinosaurs, although the terrestrial animals living in North America don’t seem to be as affected as marine animals or land animals in other parts of the globe. We’re pretty sure this devastation was caused by a sudden drop in global temperatures, as evidenced by the formation of ice caps in Antarctica at that time, but we’re not really sure what caused the plummet in temperature. My PhD research will look at fossils from Nebraska to try to identify some of the changes that occurred in the mammals during that time and take a closer look at how much of the temperature shift was actually felt by the animals on land.

    It’s really fun, interesting stuff and I’m planning to spend over a month after our New Mexico adventure digging up fossils in Nebraska! I can’t wait for July!

    In terms of the GABI…it has to go down as one of the most interesting evolutionary experiments to ever occur in the history of our planet. And, unlike some other similar hypothesized events, we actually have the mountains of fossils and data needed to tell the story with some amount of accuracy, but it’s far from complete! It would be amazing if we could add our little piece to the story with the field work we’ll be doing over the next 6 months.