#paleogene wildlife

[dougdimmadodo]

September's Fossil of the Month: Hyracotherium (Hyracotherium spp.)

Family: Horse family (Equidae) or Paleothere family (Palaeotheriidae)

Time Period: Early Paleogene (55-45 Million Years Ago)

Living across much of what is now Europe and North America, the members of the genus Hyracotherium were early members of the order Perissodactyla (the group of mammals to which horses, tapirs and rhinoceroses belong,) and are believed by some authorities to be among the earliest known members of the horse family, although some palaeontologists instead regard them as belonging to a separate but related extinct family of small, horse-like Perrisodactyls known as paleotheres (which would make them relatives or possibly ancestors of modern horses, but not technically true horses themselves.) Though notably horse-like in terms of their overall anatomy, members of this genus were small animals (growing to be 30-60cm/11.8-23.6 inches tall and weighing around 9kg/20lbs,) and, in contrast to the feet of modern horses (which consist of a single toe enclosed in a hardened hoof of keratin, forming a sort of built-in shoe well suited to running on flat surfaces,) had separate hoof-tipped toes on each foot (4 on the front feet and 3 on the back feet) which may have aided them in walking on the uneven, muddy ground of the dense forests that would have covered much of their range at the time. Further distinguishing Hyracotherium species from modern horses is their teeth, which (in contrast to modern horses which have long incisors for grasping and tearing grasses and tall crowns on their molars to protect them from being worn down when chewing tough plants,) consisted of relatively small incisors and short-tipped crowns, suggesting that, as forest dwellers, members of this genus fed on fruits, shoots and low-growing leaves much like many modern forest antelopes. Throughout the Paleogene period, temperatures gradually became cooler and drier compared to the period's warm, humid beginning, and this change in climate led the then abundant rainforests that Hyracotherium species inhabited to be gradually replaced with open grasslands and temperate woodlands. This drastic change led to the extinction of many forest-dwelling specialists towards the end of the Paleogene, but also provided a new selective pressure that would eventually result in the surviving descendants of many forest specialists adapting to life on open plains - by 37 million years ago the members of the genus Mesohippus (which are unanimously excepted as early true horses) had lost the 4th toes on their forefeet and developed longer legs and larger bodies as they adapted to life in open habitats, and roughly 22 million years later the members of the genus Merychippus were larger still, bore their weight on only one toe per foot (though two tiny, presumably vestigial toes still remained,) and had tall crowns that would have allowed them to graze on the abundant tough grasses that surrounded them. Today, the anatomical changes that can be seen in the transition between paleotheres like Hyracotherium and the modern horses of the genus Equus are commonly used as a textbook example of how lineages of organisms have changed and adapted in response to environmental changes over time.

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(Note - Depending on who you ask, the fossil pictured above may belong to the species Hyracotherium angustidens or to a separate but related animal, Eohippus angustidens. Some authorities consider Eohippus to be the only species in its own distinct genus, while others consider it to simply be a species in the genus Hyracotherium. For the sake of this post, and because the image above is VERY pretty, I've assumed here that the latter is true.)

Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HyracotheriumVasacciensisLikeHorse.JPG

[artmakerproductions]

“Billy & Sarah”: The Terrible Triffids 

Which of the three designs do you like most? Do tell.

...

Lurking deep in the humid and swampy wilderness of the tropics, lay an ancient plant sprouted from the days after the dinosaurs rule ended and the early paleogene: The Triffids. Triffids are sought after their oils that they naturally secrete. Used for medical reasons. Because of their rarity and such, they are placed under protection by laws. Only the wealthy are able to purchase them. Regular thorn in the duo’s sides, Dianne Darlin, makes a purchase of a few of these magnificent exotic (and dangerous) plants for her private garden. One night during a meteor shower, being watched by a large majority of the Oak River residents, are rendered temporarily blind by the light show for the following several days. Things get worse when Diane’s plants are soon on the move for food. They quickly reproduce and spread all over town. Sightless people making the perfect easy meal for them. Billy and Sarah, and other select few, do their best to make sure that none of the people don’t become a plant’s snack... After the incident a few manage to escape into the Oak River wilderness of the area making them another weird addition to the local wildlife. Their population kept under control now by the more sturdy of the herbivores, the BoGr'ong: (https://www.deviantart.com/artmakerproductions/art/BaS-218-New-Arrivals-4-4-877460363).

Original post: https://www.deviantart.com/artmakerproductions/art/BaS-397-The-Terrible-Triffids-918306488, and the rest of the series can be looked at here: https://www.deviantart.com/artmakerproductions/gallery/65750244/billy-n-sarah

"Billy & Sarah" belongs to me, (ArtMakerProductions). 

[ifuckinglovedinosaurssomuchjesus]

Table of Contents

Paleontology Tags

Precambrian

Cambrian

Ordovician

Silurian

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Paleogene

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History

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[entheognosis]

Humanity’s fingerprint can be seen across the planet today, from the towering skyscrapers that define our modern metropolises to the pyramids and other ancient monuments of our past. Human activity also marks our sprawling open fields of agriculture and the roads that link everything together. But what would the world look like if humans had never existed?

Some scientists paint a picture of a pristine wilderness and an abundance of species, from the familiar to the not so familiar. “I think it would be a much more vegetated place with a wealth of animals, of large size spread across all continents except Antarctica,” Trevor Worthy, a paleontologist and associate professor at Flinders University in Australia, told Live Science.

The extinction rate on Earth today is more than 100 times what it would be without humans by the most conservative estimates and hasn’t been higher since the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event that wiped out about 80% of animal species, including the nonavian dinosaurs, 66 million years ago, Live Science previously reported. In other words, humans hit this planet like an asteroid, and the dust is still settling as wildlife continues to decline.

[neo-jurassica]

Rose Patina Oreodont
🌹 💀 🌹💀🌹
This beautiful Oreodont skull is from the USA 🇺🇸 and dates back to the Oligocene epoch of the Paleogene Period. 🕰
Oreodonts are extinct mammals the size of dogs that lived in burrows. 🦊
.
Follow @neojurassica to see more #prehistoric wonders! 🦕
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#oreodont #extinct #extinction #skull #fossil #dog #wolf #mammal #fossils #fossilhunting #teeth #dead #skeleton #nature #natural #naturalhistory #history #archeology #paleontology #palaeontology #geology #science #stem #jurassicpark #neojurassica #unusual #animals #prehistoricanimals #wildlife
https://www.instagram.com/p/CPiZb7IN2_H/?utm_medium=tumblr

[kathleenseiber]

Shells reveal mercury, warming when dinosaurs died out

Massive volcanic eruptions in what’s now India—the Deccan Traps eruptions—may have contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs, say researchers.

Scientists acknowledge the impact of an asteroid or comet as the principal cause of the mass extinction that killed off most dinosaurs and about three-quarters of the planet’s plant and animal species 66 million years ago.

But there’s been long-standing debate over the significance of the Deccan Traps eruptions, which began before the impact and lasted, on and off, for nearly a million years, punctuated by the impact event.

Now, geochemical analysis of fossil marine mollusk shells from around the globe provides new insights into both the climate response and environmental mercury contamination at the time of the Deccan Traps volcanism.

From the same shell specimens, the researchers found what appears to be a global signal of both abrupt ocean warming and distinctly elevated mercury concentrations. Volcanoes are the largest natural source of mercury entering the atmosphere.

The dual chemical fingerprints begin before the impact event and align with the onset of the Deccan Traps eruptions.

When the researchers compared the mercury levels from the ancient shells to concentrations in freshwater clam shells collected at a present-day site of industrial mercury pollution in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, the levels were roughly equivalent.

The preservation of Cretaceous mollusk fossils from Seymour Island is excellent, with shells preserving original mother-of-pearl material as in these two specimens of Eselaevitrigonia regina. (Credit: Sierra V. Petersen)

Evidence from the study, which will appear in Nature Communications, supports the idea that Deccan Traps volcanism had climatic and ecological impacts that were profound, long-lasting, and global, the researchers conclude.

“For the first time, we can provide insights into the distinct climatic and environmental impacts of Deccan Traps volcanism by analyzing a single material,” says lead author Kyle Meyer.

“It was incredibly surprising to see that the exact same samples where marine temperatures showed an abrupt warming signal also exhibited the highest mercury concentrations, and that these concentrations were of similar magnitude to a site of significant modern industrial mercury contamination.”

Meyer conducted the study as part of his doctoral dissertation in the University of Michigan’s department of earth and environmental sciences. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at Portland State University in Oregon.

Mercury is a toxic trace metal that poses a health threat to humans, fish, and wildlife. Human-generated sources of mercury include coal-fired power plants and artisanal gold mines. At Virginia’s South River industrially contaminated site, where the researchers collected freshwater clam shells, signs warn residents not to eat fish from the river.

“The modern site has a fishing ban for humans because of high mercury levels. So, imagine the environmental impact of having this level of mercury contamination globally for tens to hundreds of thousands of years,” says geochemist and study coauthor Sierra Petersen, who was Meyer’s co-adviser.

The researchers hypothesized that the fossilized shells of mollusks, principally bivalves such as oysters and clams, could simultaneously record both coastal marine temperature responses and varying mercury signals associated with the release of massive amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and mercury from the Deccan Traps.

The long-lived Deccan Traps eruptions formed much of western India and were centered on the time of the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction, 66 million years ago.

The study used fossil shells from Antarctica, the United States (Alabama, Alaska, California, and Washington), Argentina, India, Egypt, Libya, and Sweden. The researchers analyzed the isotopic composition of the shell carbonate to determine marine temperatures, using a recently developed technique called carbonate clumped isotope paleothermometry.

They also measured the amount of mercury in the remarkably well-preserved fossil shells and assembled the first-ever deep-time record of mercury preserved in fossilized biomineral remains.

In previous studies, records of environmental mercury have been reconstructed from marine sediments, providing insights into the timing and scale of the Deccan Traps event. But those records lacked such a direct linkage to the climate response. In the new study, both signals are present in the same specimens—an important first, according to the authors.

“Mercury anomalies had been documented in sediments but never before in shells. Having the ability to reconstruct both climate and a volcanism indicator in the exact same materials helps us circumvent lots of problems related to relative dating,” says Petersen, an assistant professor in the department of earth and environmental sciences. “So, one of the big firsts in this study is the technical proof of concept.”

The new technique is expected to have broad applications for the study of mass extinctions and climate perturbations in the geological record, according to the researchers.

Funding came from the National Science Foundation and the University of Michigan Scott Turner Award. The authors and their collaborators collected some of the shell specimens in the study; others were on loan from the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology and the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley.

Source: University of Michigan

The post Shells reveal mercury, warming when dinosaurs died out appeared first on Futurity.

Shells reveal mercury, warming when dinosaurs died out published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

[biofunmy]

Colorado Fossils Show How Mammals Raced to Fill Dinosaurs’ Void

Some 66 million years ago, mammals caught their lucky break. An asteroid crashed into what is now Chicxulub, Mexico, and set off a catastrophic chain of events that led to the annihilation of the non-avian dinosaurs. That day began their furry ascension to the top of a brave new world, the one from which our species would one day emerge. But little is known about the time period directly after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, or K-Pg event, because the fossil record is lacking.

Now, a team of paleontologists has uncovered a trove of thousands of fossils in Colorado that provides an in-depth look at the first million years following the K-Pg mass extinction event. The finding provides insight into the interactions between animals, plants and climate that occurred in the earliest days of the age of mammals, and that allowed them to grow from the size of large rodents into diverse wildlife we might begin to recognize today.

“We provide the most vivid picture of recovery of an ecosystem on land after any mass extinction,” said Tyler Lyson, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. His team’s paper was published on Thursday in Science.

Dr. Lyson has hunted fossils since he was 10. Although he has found many dinosaurs, uncovering fossils of species that emerged in the immediate aftermath of the dinosaur extinction had proven rather elusive in his field of study.

“You can only find so many triceratops skeletons and partial T. rex skeletons and things like that until you want a larger challenge,” said Dr. Lyson. “Finding fossils just after the K-Pg extinction is a huge, huge challenge.”

In spring 2016 he and some colleagues explored a fossil site near Colorado Springs called Corral Bluffs. He knew that years earlier, Sharon Milito, an amateur fossil hunter, had found a mammal skull that was confirmed to be from the K-Pg boundary there. He set out looking for mammal bones sticking out of the ground. But his search proved fruitless.

As he wandered around the bluff, he thought back to his time as a graduate student working in South Africa. There, he had learned to spot certain rocks called concretions that held fossils captive, like pearls in oysters. He shifted his focus from bones to rocks.

“I found this ugly white-looking rock that looked like it had a little mammal jaw coming out of it,” Dr. Lyson said. He cracked it open and found inside part of a fossilized crocodile. “That was the moment when the light bulb went off. If there’s one concretion with fossils inside, there’s got to be more.”

He and his colleagues returned to Corral Bluffs that September and searched for more of the ugly rocks.

“When I cracked open the very first concretion I found a mammal skull,” Dr. Lyson said.

It was the most complete mammal from the K-Pg interval that he had ever seen. Within an hour they found four or five more. So far, they have uncovered more than 1,000 vertebrate fossils and 16 different mammal species.

“With this discovery, we’re starting to see the entire skull of many of these mammals that we previously only knew from teeth,” said Stephen Chester, a mammalian paleontologist at Brooklyn College and an author on the paper.

The skulls tell a story of mammalian resilience. Whereas rat-size mammals survived the extinction event, raccoon-size ones perished. About 100,000 years after the K-Pg event, mammals bounced back, with raccoon-size mammals reappearing.

Some 300,000 years after the asteroid struck, more mammals appeared, such as Loxolophus and the small pig-size Carsioptychus appeared. Within 700,000 years, the capybara-size Taeniolabis and the wolf-size Eoconodons began to thrive.

“You’re going from a very small dog that you’d see on the streets on New York City to a very large wolf within those hundreds of thousands of years,” Dr. Chester said.

The team also collected more than 6,000 fossilized leaves and analyzed more than 37,000 pollen grains. Together the items describe the re-emergence of plant life, which may have been a crucial factor in the evolution of mammals.

First came the ferns. With their feather-like leaves, they proliferated across the wasteland for many hundreds of years to a couple thousand years, paving the way for forests to rebound.

Next, the palms paraded in, dominating the green scene for hundreds of thousands of years.

Then around 300,000 years after the catastrophe, a diverse array of walnuts appeared. That coincided with the jump in diversity and body size of herbivorous mammals, which suggests they were an important food source.

“We call that world the ‘Pecan Pie World,’” said Ian Miller a paleobotanist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. He added that this epoch also coincided with a warming period in the fossil record, which could indicate that a shifting climate played a role in the development of plants and animals following the extinction event.

One of their most important botanical finds — a fossil bean pod — was made one summer by a high school student while the team was working with NOVA for a documentary that will be broadcast Wed., Oct. 30 on PBS.

“There she is holding the world’s earliest fossil legume,” Dr. Miller said. “She just had this ear-to-ear smile, totally beaming.”

They dated the legume to around 700,000 years after the mass extinction event. That period was tied to another short warming pulse, as well as to the appearance of the wolf-size mammals. Perhaps the legumes were fueling furry animals, the team suggested.

“We liken them to the protein bars of the ancient world,” Dr. Miller said. One remaining question, he added, is whether climate drove the changes in the plants and mammals.

Courtney Sprain, a geoscientist at the University of Florida, said she was impressed by their animal, plant and climate records. “That’s one of the really spectacular things about this paper, just how amazing the preservation is and how good the record is for a variety of different changes following a mass extinction.”

Other paleontologists agreed.

“I looked at this and went ‘Wow, that’s a lot of skulls!’” said Jaelyn Eberle, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who was not involved in the paper. She said a next step should be to perform micro CT scans on the skulls, to determine the brain sizes and compartments, which would provide insight into the animals’ sensory abilities.

The find also helps elucidate how species are able to respond to catastrophic events in a relatively rapid time frame.

“It has obvious ramifications for the current biodiversity and climate crisis, as we start to approach similar levels of devastation,” said Anjali Goswami, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. The current crisis, she added, is “ unfortunately caused by our own shortsighted avarice, rather than a chance encounter with an extraterrestrial body.”

Sahred From Source link Science

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[kareemfarid]

One Easy Tip About How Climate Change Will Affect the Wildlife Unveiled

One Easy Tip About How Climate Change Will Affect the Wildlife Unveiled

The Fundamentals of How Climate Change Will Affect the Wildlife Revealed

At the close of the era, climate change may have played an important function in the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Tr) mass extinction. Climate Change for Better or Worse is an internet site that was launched to assist you understand what climate change is and the way you are able to take action to combat it. While dramatic…

[swordwhale]

…is what we have here…

(OK somebody please buy me this Sideshow Collectible…)

  also here:

me holding Thermal the Wonder Hawk, educational bird for a wildlife rehabber)

  here too…

me approaching osprey island on Lake Marburg PA

  Years ago I did this…

…for Nixon Park’s Dinosaur Weekend (Jacobus PA).  https://www.swordwhale.com/environmental-education.html

She’s “Raptor Red” based on Robert Bakker’s book about a year in the life of a Utahraptor. For reference, I had some nice dino illustrations, a nice Safari model, and one Jurassic Park raptor. The one paleontologist at the event liked Red … good, because I normally paint more current wildlife. He and the other guest scientist also fielded a question about birds being descended from dinosaurs. The other guy was quite old and old school. He was still of the large slow lizard viewpoint. The younger guy was already on the “yep, they’re birds’ ancestors” train. This wasn’t THAT long ago, now it’s generally accepted (except by people who don’t believe in science) that birds are what Blue’s relatives turned into…

The evolution of birds began in the Jurassic Period, with the earliest birds derived from a clade of theropodadinosaurs named Paraves.[1] Birds are categorized as a biological class, Aves. For more than a century, the small theropod dinosaur Archaeopteryx lithographica from the Late Jurassic period was considered to have been the earliest bird. Modern phylogenies place birds in the dinosaur clade Theropoda. According to the current consensus, Aves and a sister group, the orderCrocodilia, together are the sole living members of an unranked “reptile” clade, the Archosauria. Four distinct lineages of bird survived the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event 66 million years ago, giving rise to ostriches and relatives (Paleognathae), ducks and relatives (Anseriformes), ground-living fowl (Galliformes), and “modern birds” (Neoaves).

Thanks wiki..

About those Synapsida and Sauropsida …

The mammals represent the only living Synapsida, which together with the Sauropsida form the Amniota clade. The early synapsid mammalian ancestors were sphenacodont pelycosaurs, a group that produced the non-mammalian Dimetrodon. At the end of the Carboniferous period, this group diverged from the sauropsid line that led to today’s reptiles and birds. The line following the stem group Sphenacodontia split-off several diverse groups of non-mammalian synapsids—sometimes referred to as mammal-like reptiles—before giving rise to the proto-mammals (Therapsida) in the early Mesozoic era. The modern mammalian orders arose in the Paleogene and Neogene periods of the Cenozoic era, after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, and have been among the dominant terrestrial animal groups from 66 million years ago to the present.

basically, Synapsida is represented today by mammals, and Sauropsida is represented by birds and reptiles…

  my raven art

GHO at Codorus Blast

great horned owl

parrot rescue

parrot rescue

    They said nothing about amphibians and horseshoe crabs and bugs and stuff…

I think that’s a whole ‘nother story.

  So I looked it up.. here’s a neat bit on amphibians; 

 https://allyouneedisbiology.wordpress.com/2015/05/07/evolution-amphibians/

There were four main groups of primitive amphibians, each characterized by: a group that includes the first animals that were able to get out of water, a second group which contains the ancestors of the amniotes (reptiles, birds and mammals) and two more groups, both candidates to be the ancestors of modern amphibians.

And a cool book I read on horseshoe crabs, written by a local guy: 

The earliest horseshoe crab fossils are found in strata from the late Ordovician period, roughly 450 million years ago.

Which means they survived four or five mass extinctions (the Ordovician-Silurian event was 450 to 440 MYA, about when horseshoe crabs arose).

 Horseshoe crabs normally swim upside down, inclined at about 30° to the horizontal and moving at about 10-15 cm/s.

Which makes them rather boatlike. If you find them upside down ashore tho,

just flip’em.

Synapsida and Sauropsida ...is what we have here... also here: here too... Years ago I did this... ...for Nixon Park's Dinosaur Weekend (Jacobus PA). 

[plantsrocklab]

Throwback Thursday: Fieldwork in India!

India. Land of the monkeys and mangoes and mopeds. We went for paleosols. We came back with an appreciation for hot chai breaks during fieldwork.

In March 2017 Nathan Sheldon, Rebecca Dzombak, and Kelly Matsunaga flew to central India (via Mumbai) for a whirlwind trip of paleosol sampling. Selena, Nathan, and Kelly are working with our Indian collaborators Bandana Samant and Dhananjay Mohabey, among others, to study paleoenvironments and fossil plant diversity in the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg; ~67–64 million years old) Deccan Intertrappean Beds of India. These “intertrappean beds” are sedimentary layers that formed during long pauses in volcanic activity, and include fossil-bearing cherts derived from pond and lake sediments, as well as paleosols. The paleosols, or fossil soils, formed when basalt surfaces were exposed for prolonged periods of time and weathered into soils. Because paleosols formed at the Earth’s surface and interacted with the atmosphere and biosphere, they can be used to interpret past climates and environments. Although there are many paleobotanical sites in this region that have been studied extensively, to date very little geochemical work has been done on the paleosols (termed “boles” -- “red boles” or “green boles”, depending on color). Our goal was to sample well-preserved paleosols for bulk geochemical analysis, in order to get a picture of the climate right at the edge of the Deccan Main Plateau before, during, and after the K-Pg. The climate of this region during this time period is still not well-known, so studying paleosols in association with plant fossils will  hopefully provide some new insights!

After two days of flying (including an eight-hour, midnight-to-morning layover in the wonderful Mumbai airport), we arrived in Nagpur, where Bandana and Dhananjay are based. After a brief nap at our hotel, we met our collaborators at Nagpur University to plan our fieldwork and, of course, look at cool fossils.

View from our flight from the Netherlands to Mumbai

Nagpur is the city of oranges.

We headed out to the field the next morning, visiting three sites in the general vicinity of Nagpur. We got a few paleosol samples, as well as some fossil plant material for isotopic work.

Kelly checking out some plant bits.

Our second day was spent looking at the Lameta Fm., which is a relatively extensive & laterally continuous formation throughout central India. It is perhaps most famous for dinosaur fossils, ranging from dinosaur bones to eggs and nesting sites. We saw one such nesting site in a tiger preserve (though we didn’t get to see any tigers).

Kelly and Becca at a sauropod nesting site on a tiger preserve.

Day three was spent at two sites around the famous Mohgaon Kalan site, which has been studied for decades- the “well section” and the “fossil forest” section. The latter has produced abundant plant macrofossils, including conifer cones, angiosperm fruits and flowers, seed-free plants, and wood.

The Mohgaonkalan well section.

The group at the Mohgaonkalan main locality. Left to right: Anup Dhobale, Becca Dzombak, Nathan Sheldon, Kelly Matsunaga, Dhananjay Mohabey, Bandana Samant.

By this point, we were used to frequent chai stops. Despite the heat, hot chai was remarkably refreshing, and a good chance to rest and chat. Certainly a pleasant way to conduct fieldwork!

One of the many chai stops along the road.

Delicious chai! These are small, concentrated, espresso-sized servings. Very different than what you get in the United States.

Becca and Bandana, with graduate students Anup and Deepesh in the background.

We sampled around Chhindwara on day four...

Becca learning to rock hammer. Good thing for safety sunglasses -- after this swing a small chip of chert shot at me at ballistic speeds and put a nice ding in my Oakley lenses! Go Becca!

Becca investigating a green bole at a locality affectionately known (to us) as Potato Mine, for all the rotting potatoes everywhere.

Kelly investigating a shiny rock. 

Planning fieldwork around Chhindwara with Dhananjay and Bandana.

Our fifth and final day of fieldwork was perhaps the most exciting, since we were visiting the Jhilimili section, which is right after the K-Pg. Here, we found purple and red paleosols, and we spent a few hours sampling what was likely a floodplain environment.

The Jhilimili locality.

Fieldwork selfie at Jhilimili.

Throughout our trip, we saw some great wildlife, too - lots of monkeys (though we only managed to get one picture because we always saw them in trees while we were driving by), several big eagle owls, and even one decked-out camel back in the city. 

Proof that we did see monkeys.

After many successful days of sampling we finally packed up to head home, filling Kelly’s entire suitcase with specimens. 

The suitcase that later prompted airport security to ask Nathan why we were transporting lots of metal.

 The trip was a great, unique experience, and a success scientifically. Both Kelly and Becca presented results from this trip at the GSA conference in Seattle this past October. Selena and Kelly are now planning another trip this spring -- stay tuned!

-Kelly and Becca