Week 4

   So this is the end of week 4. Or, technically last week was, so this is a little on the old side. You might even say it's a little...dated. (Paleontology humor). This week started much as the others: taking microfossil pictures, photoshopping, rehousing, general collection clean-ups. A good deal of us interns at this point have gotten towards the end of a project or two, meaning we're at the stage of sweeping out the bottoms of collection boxes to sort out wayward fossils. This usually looks a lot like this:

I guess you could call this a little...microjostled. 

   Within the specimens rehoused and imaged, there are many that fit your average idea of forams or ostracods:

A little microdocile in terms of appearance, if you ask me. 

But this week, like every week, turns out many particularly interesting specimens, including some spectacular dyed holotypes, and even some with apparent hitchhikers:

   But besides these cool critters, the week had other perks, including another lecture by our visiting scholar, Ellen, and a fascinating tour of Exhibitions. We even got to see a model of an upcoming exhibit! Yet again, it was really special and very enlightening to see another inside of a museum department. This one showed us just how much time goes into every step of the exhibit process (the planning and inital designing of the model they showed us took 6 months by itself), and the tours before that helped show just how many resources are hiding behind the museum walls. We're just scratching the surface right now, but hopefully this next week will let us dig even further.

 -Autumn