The importance of outreach in palaeontology

Over the years, many great scientists could be accused (often fairly) of being very snobbish when it comes to engaging with the public. There are many scientists who often say it isn't their job to, but I'm here to suggest it should be (with a specific focus on palaeo matters).

Why?
This actually breaks down into two main sections and I will address them in turn:

General education - This one I feel like is probably the most important, particularly in this day and age with the increase in rise of fundamentalism and decreased scientific literacy in the general public. Specifically for palaeontology is the rise of creationism (or its pseudoscientific equivalent, intelligent design - ID). If anyone reading my blog isn't aware of this I would be surprised, but there are increasingly large numbers of people who have literal interpretations of the Bible (they aren't the only religion but the one that is most pervasive and actively trying to undermine evolution in many countries). Effectively the belief is that the Earth was formed in 4004BC based on work by the Archbishop James Ussher in 1650 who counted the ages of everyone in the Bible (start with Adam and Eve and figure out who begat whom etc.). This would make the Earth 6019 years old, although some have a "loose" interpretation of this and allow up to 10000 years to be safe. Whilst many people who have a level of scientific literacy say why should we care about the tiny religious group, the are not a tiny group any more...

In the USA there is the Creation Museum (there was an interesting debate between Bill Nye and the head of Answers in Genesis), the Discovery Institute (am organisation devoted to publishing peer reviewed papers about the "science" supporting the Biblical account), and the countless public school boards that are trying to ban evolution or at least force the teaching of creationism or ID alongside as viable options. Thankfully for science the USA has the separation of church and state laws, and several famous trials have quashed the teaching of first creationism and then ID. This separation of church and state does not exist in the UK (mainly because the Church of England is intricately linked to the state), and there is no regulation of what gets taught in private schools. There are ever increasing numbers of creationists out there, and a surprising example is my alma mater in Bristol there is even a professor (in engineering) who is a creationist. This was brought up in one of our first biology lectures, and is particularly surprising for a university that hosts one of the largest palaeontology departments in the world. It's not just individuals though, just outside of Bristol is the creationist zoo called Noah's Ark Zoo Farm. I am reliably informed (I refused to go on principle) that the signs there talk about the days animals are created in Genesis, and it is overtly as well as covertly teaching creation stories (although the website suggests there is a more complex story, please go have a read if you are interested). What I want to be explicitly clear about here though, isn't that teaching creationism or ID should not be allowed, but it should be clear that they are religious studies with no scientific backing and therefore kept out of the science classrooms.

The other major controversy sweeping the countries of the world that has as much to do about a distrust of scientists as much as a failure to properly educate people is man-made (anthropomorphic) global warming/climate change. The scientific community is more or less unanimous in the cause, humans burning fossil fuels, and the effects (although the magnitudes of the changes in the future are less certain and associated with unknowns in our climate models). The data is pretty clear as the recordings from Hawaii show CO₂ increasing every year. The means that we have experienced a crazy number of years of warm temperatures over the long term averages, with 2014 the hottest on record, and 2001-2010 the warmest decade on record. According to reports (which I have not independently verified), February 1985 was the last month that had equal or below average temperatures - before I was even born! The Earth has never been below the long term averages in my life time, and equally an entire generation of people.

Global surface temperatures for the land and ocean. NB the last combine Land and Ocean at average is 1985 (land only is in the 90s)

Whilst there are variations in temperatures found throughout geological time (not just the ice ages - we are still technically in one as we have ice on the poles), associated with Milankovitch Cycles (tip of the planet on its axis, distance from the sun, and variation in rotational axis) and major climactic events (volcanism, large impacts, catastrophic degassing of deep ocean reservoirs etc.) the current trend is far beyond anything ever seen and far beyond anything that can be explained by those alone. There was a talk at UCL about ongoing research suggesting that humans have been messing with the climate long before fossil fuel burning due to us changing land use, particularly cutting down forests and planting crops giving reason to suggest we are in a new age for the Earth, the Anthropocene. Whether this is prehistoric as the UCL talk suggested, in 1610 or 1964 (as the Nature paper link suggests) will be debated, but undoubtedly humans are leaving a clear mark on the planet that will be recorded in the rock record. The data is clear, but there is still much debate within countries with politicians showing a lack of enthusiasm to address the problem due to a distrust in the data, and the costs of fixing OUR (humankind's) problem. A good example was the "Climategate" scandal where some researchers had their computers hacked and there were communications about how to manipulate the data for display purposes. 8 separate investigations were carried out and cleared the researchers of any wrongdoing, but called on them to do more to regain public. Another is where politicians (the USA Republicans are particularly good at it), hold up their hands and say that they aren't scientists so how should they know whether global warming is real (whilst ignoring the research from their scientists/governmental research e.g. NASA).

It is very much in the scientific community's best interest to engage the general public, whether in schools or helping teachers and politicians understand the work in an open and transparent way. This is particularly vital for people with their own work, and that is where I next focus.

Explaining your research - It is incredibly important for researchers to be able to explain the value of their own research to not just the general public, but also people from different scientific backgrounds. From my limited publication record, my family (of various backgrounds) are happy if they can understand 1 word in every 4 or 5 of my papers. As such they do not understand most of what I do. Obviously explaining your work to friends and family isn't the main reason for doing it, but underlines the issues that people outside our specific fields face. Probably the most important reason is being able to distil your research down into something that everyone can understand so that the funding bodies, which are made up of people from all scientific areas, can interpret your work and decide if you deserve more money! But being able to explain you research is also vital for press releases and for general communications to make sure that your research is correctly presented.

How?

Schools programs - When it comes to palaeo it is incredibly easy to get young kids enthused and thinking about it. Pretty much all young children love dinosaurs (it's how I got into palaeontology aged 4 or 5), so utilising that love is easy. University of Bristol was incredibly good at doing outreach into schools as part of the Bristol Dinosaur Project. In the duration of the funding of the project (which was almost 3 years), the project reached 10000+ kids in schools around Bristol. These weren't large groups, these were standard classroom sizes (20-25 kids at most), which were taught by 2 people from the university. The standard exercise involved seeing what dinosaurs they could name, which countries they thought dinosaurs were found in and showing maps of dinosaur finds including Antarctica and thinking about how climates changed, how big dinosaurs got, what do they reckon dinosaurs closest living relatives were, how fossils form, and how we can tell what dinosaurs ate. From there the talk then focussed on the Bristol Dinosaur (a prosauropod from Bristol cave deposits), and we had a lifesize jigsaw puzzle for them to put together, and to look at its proportions (long tail, small head) and what that might mean for its lifestyle, then let them try to match replica bones to the skeleton, then we put a photo of a tooth up and asked what they thought it might have eaten. After all of this talking we got out a bunch of fossils that were borrowed/donated from the uni and city museum collections and let the kids touch and think what these fossils might be. Some were more obvious (ammonites), whilst bits like the ball (from the ball and socket joint) of a mastodon femur let them think. Then we showed them pictures of the reconstructions of what the animals looked like before letting them asking any questions they may have had.

Talking about the fossils the kids had on their desk. Specifically horsetails

Obviously this is not the only method, and every year at SVP there are increasingly more demonstrations of outreach in schools and how various universities are approaching the issue.

Science festivals/fairs - Again I base a lot of what I say here based on my experience with the Bristol Dinosaur Project. Every year there is a large science festival in Bristol known as the Festival of Nature. There are 2 days of only school children visits (Thursday and Friday) then Saturday and Sunday were open to the general public. Our activities varied from year to year, but always involved a couple of sandboxes filled with dinosaur bones that had magnets in them. The children then tried to match the bones to a magnetic skeleton outline on a board.

Helping the kids dig up dinosaur bones at the Bristol Festival of Nature

In addition we had a selection of the fossils from the school sessions, sometimes they got a chance to make plaster or paris casts of trilobites or claws to take home, and sometimes we had some of the microfossils from the dinosaur locales for people to look at under miscroscopes. With these sessions you may or may not actually get to teach as much as you might in school sessions, but the goal was still to get the kids (and parents) thinking about fossils and things that they look like that are alive today. The Festival of Nature had up to 30,000 visitors across the days so gives a chance to get to people from a much larger spectrum. I was involved in other festivals in Bristol and Bath, but there are other large ones in the UK such as Cheltenham. One of the most interesting moments we had was when a creationist woman brought her child who came and spent ages with us and we talked dinosaurs and science to him, whilst she refused to enter the tent we were based in. The plus side of festival is they do draw so many people, young and old, and there are often lots of good exhibits that you can link up with to help bring big picture ideas together, like dating archaeological things, fossils and the age of the universe and how they all relate.

Museums - Museums are already large outreach centres as well as repositories for collections and research. Most in the UK are actively involved in projects not just within their normal daytime hours. Bristol City Museum hosted a few late nights where they opened the doors for talks and displays from the university to showcase their collaborations. The Natural History and Science Museums both do massive late night showcases where they have drinks and talks as well. Due to their large numbers of guests already they are ideal locations to showcase work, or even help design information panels for the displays - I am collaborating with Anjali Goswami on a piece on how we know what dinosaurs looked like that's going in the UCL Grant Museum for part of their Strange Creatures Exhibit. Just last week (7th May) I was involved in a Show'n'tell session at the Grant Museum discussing my PhD research on dinosaurs to members of the general public.

3D printed skull of Ornithomimus used to show my PhD work.

Public speaking events - These are often the best way to display your research to the public as you can focus what you are trying to say for your specific audience. Whether this is for a specific group (e.g. meetings for local geological societies), or a general open day thing to showcase some work in coordination with other activities. There are also other less traditional ways from radio podcasts (see palaeocast.com for a good listen), to comedy nights (like the Infinite Monkey Cage do with comedians and Brian Cox for physics) which all allow different ways to engage your audience with information.

Media - Whether newspapers, television or radio the media will probably always be the biggest outlet for research to the public. Whether this is people actively involved in documentaries, being interviewed, or providing the press releases, all of these have a large impact on how people view research. The media are often incredibly important for young researchers to get their work noticed, normally in the form of press releases and follow up interviews. Within palaeontology we often like to think we have made it (I have yet to), when the Daily Mail publish some highly erroneous article on the newest fossil creature discovered that we have been involved in. Whether it was the fish that supposedly was the ancestor of whales, or the anomalocarid that was. To give them a bit of credit I have gone back through their science articles and the articles are far tidier and less ridiculous than on first press release, but the http link continues to say the original writing. The comments sections are normally even funnier/scarier depending on your point of view. To that end it is imperative that we as scientists clearly explain our work to everyone so that their can be no mistakes or misquoting/misrepresenting of the science.

Social Media - Much like blogs they allow interaction readily with the public. Twitter and Facebook are probably the most common, and quick searches of some of the famous scientists in any scientific field and you will see how they interact with short "wordbites" of information and science. Normally its them teaching the world or sharing information, but occasionally you will see personal interaction on a one to one level over certain things. Neil Degrasse Tyson would be a good port of call for people searching. However, much like the mass media some of this needs to be approached with caution. Even IFLS (I ****ing Love Science) which does a world of good for publishing science to the wider public is known to have issues with it's reporting, so much like with the media it is important to make sure there cannot be any misrepresentation, accidental or otherwise.

Blogs - I started my blog as an outreach to discuss my work and experiences particularly for friends and family who haven't got a damn clue what I do as all they hear is nerdy things from me and effectively jibberish in my papers as they aren't scientists. But it also has a secondary effect of giving me practice distilling down my work to make sure I fully understand the concepts I am talking about. Einstein is reported to have explained his theory of gravity being deformations in space time to a child by explaining it as a blind ant walking over a curved branch and never being able to see what he could. He also enjoyed the concept of racing light waves and looking at a clock if you raced away at the speed of light and how it would appear stationary to the observer moving away, but not to any other people (theory of relativity). Blogs are a great way to involve the general public in your work on your grounds, and combined with other social media, allow people a chance to engage directly wit you.


Undoubtedly there will be many more ways people can and do regularly engage the public in science. There are also probably limits to how far we should go to engage the public (see this interesting article from John Hutchinson) particularly when it comes to incomplete or ongoing research. We must as scientists endeavour to make our work not just some unattainable work in a journal, but something that the wider public can understand.

Virtual methods in palaeontology

So this post is a much delayed one (I'd like to blame work, but it's been more slacking on my behalf). I taught a couple of geology MSc students a few weeks back about some of the virtual/digital methods used in palaeontology, which focussed on the ones I have some experience with. Inevitably this means I will have missed some and for that I will have to return in later blogs! Any program names used here are only because I have experience, and is not to say they are the only, let alone best for the methods. I would encourage people to try out as many as they can to find out what is best for them and for pretty much every product that involves a license, there are free equivalents.

Laser Scanning/Photogrammetry

Laser scanning - As the name suggests the laser scanner uses a laser to scan the surface of an object. It works by shining a laser that reflects off of the surface and is picked up by a receiver. In the case of most palaeotological applications the scanners are based on triangulation - the receiver has a central location where reflected light hits for a known distance. Deviations from this location are caused by the object being scanned being closer or further away. For each scan a point is produced that get coalesced into a cloud that define the object. Some modern scanners also incorporate cameras that take photos of the object being scanned and overlay the photographs onto the cloud to create the entire surface/texture. Scanners are used particularly for objects where they cannot be CT scanned due to size, and only the external shape is required (as the scanner captures no internal structure) and where high detail (on the micron scale) is required. However, laser scanning can be quite time consuming and as it is based on line of site, often struggles around many complex structures e.g. the struts in skulls, which result in gaps in the model emerging unless additional scans are carried out for these areas.

Laser scanning a sauropod vertebra
http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/2/3105916/3d-printing-dinosaur-fossils-drexel-lacovara

Photogrammetry - Much like laser scanning, this method works by creating a surface of the object. However, unlike laser scanning, requires no exceptional equipment and is based only on photographs. Indeed these photographs don't even have to be digital for this method to work. A series of photographs is taken of the object, roughly equally spaced (in terms of degrees if imaging the entirety of an object) all the way around the object. This is then repeated at different angles (normally higher or lower angled than the first photo series) as many times as wanted. These photographs are put into a computer program which identifies perspective and relative landmarks (sometimes automatically, sometimes requiring user input depending on the program) and using this creates a point cloud as in laser scanning. This point cloud can have the textures of the photos overlain to create the object digitally. A good example is the Stegosaurus specimen at the NHM in London which was reconstructed digitally for some of the research using photogrammetry. A major proponent of this method is Peter Falkingham (with whom I had the privilege to share an office for almost a year) as it allows for quick and easy reconstructions of trackways and give detail far beyond what traditional ichnotaxonomists do with standard line drawings. I would recommend anyone wanting to know more about the method to read his 2012 paper about it which also provides access to some of the free software. You can even try out 123D Catch (one of the programs I have used on my computer) on your iPhone! As with laser scanning there is problems with line of site, but this can be rectified by just taking some more photos from different angles. The number of photos taken, the regularity and evenness of spacing, and the number of separate planes/angles will improve quality of the final reconstruction. I've had models work with 20-50 photos, whilst others have failed at over 100. It depends on the complexity of the structure and what you are trying to do. Experimentation is free though and is reliant only on computer power! This method has become one of the preferred ways for digitising specimens in museum due to its low cost.

Photogrammetry of an Asian elephant from Falkingham, 2012.
http://palaeo-electronica.org/content/issue1-2012technical-articles/97-264/118-264-figures#f6

Scanning and image segmentation

Scanning - Fossil scanning has been used for a long time originally as just x-ray imaging, but increasingly CT and synchotron scanning. CT and synchotron scanning involves usually radial scanning of a specimen producing (post-processing) a series of 3D x-ray scans. The biggest difference between the two methods is the energy and size of the machines. CT scanners vary from desktop size to large walk in units, but even the biggest do not compare to synchotrons. Synchotrons are particle accelerators, that specifically spin electrons around a ring at near light speed. In doing so the electrons give off x-rays, which are focussed down beam lines. Specific beam lines are set up for studying fossils (and to my knowledge 3 synchotrons in Europe currently are used study fossils - Swiss Light Source, European Synchotron Radiation Facility and Diamond Light Source).

Swiss Light Source synchotron - the giant ring at the front, but all the other buildings are associated

The choice of method is determined by size of the specimen (synchotrons don't work well with specimens beyond a few cm, unless you take many scans and merge them all together), the resolution required (a medical CT scanner will provide a lower scan quality than a microCT, which in turn is lower resolution than a synchotron), the cost and availability (synchotron time is often free and funded by research but is highly competitive, whilst access to CT scanners can run into the £100s/hr but is often easier to get time on). Beyond this there are other factors that need to be considered including length of time required to make sure good CTs are taken with no artefacts or beam hardening effects (often associated with a lack of x-rays penetrating the specimen due to the x-rays having too low energy or not enough time to allow sufficient numbers to get through). When it comes to fossils there is often a bit of trial and error involved in this process and linked to what is seen post processing and during segmentation

Piece of pliosaur jaw in Southampton CT scanner. Went on to be published in Foffa et al. 2014 (x2) with which I was involved.

Segmentation - After the resulting CT scans a process called segmentation is carried out. This is where the object of interest is isolated from the CT scans. I've endured both Avizo and Mimics with various degrees of swearing and relearning techniques as I flip between the two. They both have advantages and disadvantages depending on what you are trying to do, but I won't discuss further here (feel free to get in touch/leave a comment). The complexity of this varies from simple and often can be carried out in an automated way for single bones, to a highly intensive process that often involves many hours of someone (I have been this person many times) manually isolating the required item from the scan, be it a bone, endocast or internal anatomy.

CT scan demonstrating the god awfulness of fossils in matrix. Blue is toothy bits (mostly), although there is lots of noise in the image, whilst the red area is my deselecting pixels.

The complexity of the process is often determined by the preparation of the fossil (more matrix makes segmentation more tricky), the x-ray density of the fossil compared to the matrix (e.g. where bone is more x-ray opaque than the matrix there is clearer delineation between the two), the type of matrix (iron or pyrite rich matrix, for example, tends to make it tricky for good CTs to be made), how well scanned the item was/number of artefacts.

Using these digital preparations is becoming more common to guide the actual preparation of fossils in large museums where CT scanner access is now easy. Another thing the virtual reconstructions allow is retrodeformation (basically the undoing of damage suffered whilst the specimen is fossilised). Stephan Lautenschlager has been incredibly good at it, and I have a paper in review at the minute discussing my experience so stay tuned!

The resulting reconstructions can then be used for publication, or exported in various formats (commonly .stl or .ply) to create 3D pdfs, create 3D printouts or use in functional analyses. There are some good .stl repositories for fossils e.g. Phenome10k.org that allow of exchange and sharing of models.

Printing/3D PDFs

3D printing - 3D printing has been on the rise with the printer costs becoming far cheaper. These printers work by melting a layer of plastic or resin (SLA and ABS are the most common) and extruding this onto the print surface (not dissimilarly to standard printing). What varies however is the fact that these layers of plastic are then built up on top of each other layer by layer until the final structure is built. Nowadays a decent 3D printer with a 20x10x10 print area costs around £1000, with the cost falling year on year, and the print material is about £50 for a roll of about 1kg. However, with this decrease in cost, has come an increase in print size areas, speed, accuracy, and nowadays you can print in multiple materials at the same time (e.g. a dissolving print material to create supports that when the printout is immersed in water dissolves, leaving only the wanted 3D structure, or even some rigid and some flexible components). With 3D printing special consideration has to be given into the design of the structure as often supports need to be added (most printer programs do this automatically) to ensure that overhanging bits are printed correctly. These can be easily broken off at the end but can affect the surface quality where they attached. This is all well and good, but I hear you asking what's the point beside creating lots of pretty printouts? Well the printouts are awesome, but there are both research and outreach components to it. In terms of research, 3D printing allows for a quick and easy way of enlarging otherwise microscopic fossils into a size that can be handled and manipulated easily. In addition you can quickly send files to collaborators in other parts of the world and they can print out their own copy of the specimen in question rather than risking damaging or destroying it in transport (particularly if it is fragile). They may also be useful for recreating original specimens if it is lost, but scans exist  and when no other method (traditional casting and moulding) will work. In terms of outreach, they are incredibly useful to take these replicas to show people what you work on in terms of fossils or research that again otherwise runs the risk of being damaged whilst on show.

Let's be honest this is cool, and you kind of want one.
http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/changing-landscape-geoscientists-embrace-3-d-printing

3D pdfs - This is much like 3D printouts, except in its digital format that opens with most Adobe Readers. 3D pdfs allow for users to gain access to reconstructions, and in the highest quality ones can allow users to interact by removing components (often things like soft tissues from around skulls). Again these have the ability to be rapidly sent to collaborators worldwide, but they also allow for more detailed figures within publications to allow for better understanding of features that are being described. If you are unsure of what I mean, please do go check out the Witmer Lab's work as they are one of the main users for both scientific and outreach purposes.

Functional analyses

Beam theory - This method works on the principle of bending beams. If you assume a beam is held at one end (a cantilever beam) and a force is applied to the other it will produce tension on one side and compression on the other. Due to this, there must be a region somewhere that undergoes neither compression or tension, the neutral axis. How the material is distributed away from this determines how resistant to bending an object will be:

Shamelessly taken from my own paper on spinosaurs:  (A) When a load is applied to a beam with one fixed end (a cantilever beam), the effect of the beam is a deflection in the direction of the force. This results in the most extreme tension on one side of the beam, and the most extreme tension on the opposite side. In the middle, there is a point where there is no tension or compression, called the neutral axis. B) Two circular cross sections of equal cortical area (black). Beam theory states the solid tube (hollow circle) will have higher resistance to bending and torsion than the solid circle due to the material being distributed further from any neutral axis. DOI10.1371/journal.pone.0065295.g004

For this method to work best cross sections are needed, and these are best acquired from CT scans, although other methods work. There are many papers out there on the method (it was my first paper), but this method is falling out of favour with more complex models like FEA. It does however maintain use as a predictor of relative resistance to bending and torsion of objects and allows for gross comparisons across taxa.

FEA - See the earlier blog post I did for lots of details.

Musculoskeletal modelling - This method is one that is increasingly popular for understanding the influences on muscles and bones, and how they interact in posture and locomotion. I am still a newbie at this and am learning the method now. However, it is already extensively used within palaeontology to answer questions such as how fast could T. rex run? Effectively the structure in study (let's work with limbs here because that's easiest), is modelled. The limb then has muscles attached as informed by either muscle scarring locations or by using extant phylogenetic bracketing (finding the closest relatives and using them to help inform us of extinct life). The model can then be tweaked with muscle parameters - mass/force production/relative contribution of tendons etc etc. (again inferred from modern relatives), and then the computer can work out ideal postures, how fast the limb (and animal) can move, how big muscles need to be to move at certain speeds, what order muscles are likely to activate in to allow biologically reasonable movements.

T. rex model with all of the muscles attached to the limb and pelvis, from Hutchinson et al., 2005

Convex hulls/Body mass estimates - I will not attempt to explain this method in much detail, beyond saying that the method takes the original skeleton (or limb or whatever biological structure) and attempts to wrap surfaces over it which may infer the extent of the soft-tissues overlaying the structure. I direct all interested parties to Pete's blog which has links to papers describing the method, and walks you through how to do it yourself.

Stegosaurus convex hulls. From Brassey et al., 2015

So that wraps (pun definitely intended) up some of the methods we use and why we use them when it comes to palaeontology on computers. Most of these methods are less than 20 years old. Just imagine where we will be in the next 20!

Field work

So my roughly every 2 weeks for a blog post is running a bit behind, but I get to use my beloved fieldwork as the excuse. Indeed, this is the topic on which I am focussing this week.

For many palaeontologists around the world summer is the time of year when labs empty and the usually empty, great open rocky places become filled with sounds of digging and hammering. Except of course in the UK, or at least with regards to most vertebrate remains. The UK plays host to a great many talented palaeontologists, and through the years many amazing fossils have been found, but despite most of the country being great open spaces, the climate means that nearly all of the country (at least down south) is covered in vegetation. It's what makes England so beautiful, but sadly means that fossiliferous exposures are tough to come by.

Typical English countryside, sadly no rocks...

Because of this, there is little field work in the UK for most vertebrate palaeontologists for most of the year (barring any major and unexpected finds which sometimes involve small crews from a single university), which I believe to be a great shame for our palaeontological community. Do not get me wrong in saying that it is vital for palaeontologists to all do fieldwork. I am not, especially as it isn't for everyone, and I believe that this lack of fieldwork has allowed the UK to develop and flourish when it comes to developing a great suite of techniques for studying the many fossils that others around the world do find. What I am saying, is that fieldwork is a key component of palaeontology. At the end of the day all the techniques for studying fossils will eventually run dry if we do not keep supplying new material (be it new species, or new specimens of previously described species). It is also a shame for many of the budding palaeontologists here who, at least at Bristol, don't do any geological/palaeo fieldwork beyond the summer after the first year of undergraduate unless they originally pursue a geology degree. It narrows the scope of future work, and I believe it is to the palaeontological communities detriment if researchers don't understand the context from which their material came. I know there are other factors that need considering when it comes to fieldwork and organising it, whether at a course level, or a proper field season level and cost is perhaps the most prohibitive to any of it but should it not be thought of as an investment?

Anyway, enough of my ranting, and onto my experiences. I am one of the lucky ones in that I have had the pleasure of doing field work a few times and can't get enough of it (my experience is dwarfed by pretty much all students in the USA/Canada, and it would be cool to hear their experiences). If you are keen and willing there are a lot of opportunities out there that don't cost you money (beyond normally getting yourself to the location/crew). My first two adventures into the field arose from my volunteering in the Bristol prep lab. For the most part that was just acid prep work on the Bristol dinosaur but I worked hard and the preparator kindly spoke to some colleagues around the world for me about joining their crews. It was one of the great things about going through Bristol was that there are many many connections to other universities and Bristol palaeontologists seem to be everywhere. Anyway, the first trip was off to Montana to join the Museum of the Rockies crew (Jack Horner's bunch for those who don't know) in the Hell Creek Formation. I was only going for 2 weeks at the end of their season so knew I wouldn't be there making any crazy discoveries. Plus being a big guy I knew I would be the one getting to carry heavy things. I flew out to Montana where I was met at the airport by one of the crew, we picked up supplies and then drove out to join the crew. As far as field camps go (I'm told) it was fairly cushy with everyone tenting in a field, but a big kitchen tent, an outhouse, and a camper van which sometimes had wifi, and a small wooden house (to which people ran when tents were flattened in some of the thunderstorms).

MOR camp site in Montana, Hell Creek. circa July 2010

The crew was also quite large with about 10 of us (still convinced that a palaeo field season would make a fun reality show). My first field day I was taken to a site which had a triceratops face exploding out of the hill named Yoshi's trike after the finder. The nose horn (I believe) had been found down the hill and excavations had started exposing a few bones. Being a complete amateur with no experience I was stuck on the edge of the area and told to dig around an area. Over the next few days through no measure of skill but blind luck I found a few bits more bone, as did others around the small quarry and so the decision was taken to expand quarry.

Triceratops dig site. Large brow horn at bottom right

It was around then I believe I was told about how different bone sounds when you whack it with a pick axe. Of course I'd go on and find out in person when excavating I hit a chunk of the parietal with it. I believe there was no lasting damage ... Stupid frill being slightly higher than the rest of the skull. So the rest of the trip passed relatively quickly with various explorations around some other exposures, and with joyous weekend trips into town to shower and have a bed. Wasn't until the last day I found my first dinosaur tooth, a T.rex tooth next to the Triceratops skeleton. In fact the skeleton had turned out to be so big that we had to rebury part of it, and they spent the whole next field season digging up the rest. However, the whole experience was truly amazing, in no small part due to the people as much as the fossils. I was hooked and on the look for my next dino dig fix.

Me looking far too happy hammering in a shade guy line, before falling down the slope.

The next year I was to join Phil Currie and his University of Alberta crew out in Dinosaur Provincial Park and was one of the "core" people who was there for the entire 3 weeks in the park (they do digs in several places across the entire summer). The camp facilities were much the same as in Montana with individual tents for sleeping, then a big communal tent for cooking (although the meat was cooked on a fire), and one for all the fossils. The site is by a river next to an old farm house known as Happy Jacks. Picturesque most of the year, although the river was so close to overtopping the banks for the first few days, so it was a little unnerving to start.

View to the East, Happy Jack Camp, June 2011.

But most of the season was spent digging up a relatively complete Daspletasaurus found the year before. The skull, most of the thorax, pelvis and left leg were all there.

Daspletosaurus skeleton. Skull to left, ribs and vertebrae top left, pelvis right. Photo from Phil Currie.

However, the rains were prevalent occurring pretty much every other day. As such getting to the main site was difficult (it was 5km away) over some rough terrain that wasn't doable in the trucks in the wet. This gave us quite a bit of time to go explore and prospect in pairs. Found some bones, a claw, and a bunch of tyrannosaur teeth.

Caenagnathus claw I found, just missing the tip. Now on the Dinosaur 101 course at University of Alberta

The trip also gave me a chance to spend some time with people working on other things. I trekked all over the badlands with an ichnologist trying to find trace fossils, but I found a tyrannosaur phalange instead (was pretty chuffed). I also got super fit, one day I walked the equivalent of half a marathon (horizontal distance, no idea the vertical), and another I had to carry a sack of plaster to the dig site from base camp. One memory that will always stick with me is walking back to camp one day in the pouring rain with lightning crashing all around (ok, that bit was scary), and I was smiling because I was so happy to be out there despite being dripping wet. I also had my 23rd birthday out there and it still is the best birthday to date. Again my favourite find was that of the last day. Camp all packed up, Phil, Eva and I went to a site where they a fairly complete turtle carapace had been discovered.

Turtle carapace, with leaf (near the scale bar although an awl went through it)

As we were getting ready to go, I walked behind a hill to, well lets say survey the scenery, and looking down the slope where I was going to go, the ribs of a dinosaur were sticking out. Informing Phil, he confirmed it, gps-ed it and we went back to carrying the turtle out. Not sure they ever have been back. Probably wasn't good enough but it was first skeleton (or at least associated material) I found. On the walk back Eva decided to one up me though with the skull of a ceratopsian that was showing the occipital condyle that we all had walked over to get to the turtle site (NEVER STOP LOOKING DOWN!).

Unfortunately the next couple of summers got taken up by museum visits to China/Mongolia and then PhD writeup, and then the start of my postdoc limited my chance to do much more field work. Luckily one of my supervisors, Anjali Goswami, was talking about going to India for more digging so I nagged quite a lot until she said I could go. As such 27th December 2014 I was on a plane with her and Thomas Halliday to go digging in India. We spent most of our time based in Ariyalur, a town in Tamil Nadu. Instead of camping we were in a hotel! Now that's posh fieldwork.

Hotel Rolex (you know its posh with that name), Ariyalur. January 2015

The area is home to the largest Cretaceous basin in India, with some of the best exposed outcrop anywhere. During our 10 days in the field we covered everything from 100Ma marine sediments to 66Ma terrestrial sandstones. In this fleeting visit we spent a lot of time in the terrestrial beds which cover 10s of square kilometres (not much in terms of some of the North American locales people work on), but a massive area when you consider it's not protected and rapidly being encroached on by the surrounding fields full of crops. The areas can be littered with huge exploded chunks of sauropod bones and bits of fossil trees, but other areas can be completely barren. Luckily I managed to find one exploded femur that was in decent (by Indian standards) condition and most of the proximal end was in good enough shape to collect it (by literally picking up the pieces).

Exploded sauropod femur. Doesn't look like much but articular surface is the rounded bit mid/left

Not far from there is a microsite where mammal, dinosaur and croc teeth have been found, and by the time I got there there were already a bunch in a bag. A few days later we returned to it, and where we put our bags down, I looked down and found one for myself. Otherwise we wandered through marine sediments in one locale finding loads of shells, echinoids and a couple of nice ammonites, and in most of the others lots of sharks teeth, a nice ichthyosaur tooth and a vertebrae of some as yet unidentified reptile (prob croc). The highlight for me wasn't carrying mountains of bags of sediment (final tally was 400kg that we shipped up to Delhi, and most of that had been previously screen washed), but in one location where we normally find lots of turtle shells, I found something we believe to be a tooth plate of a fish, and what may be my first new species! We'll wait and see before I get too excited though. All in all another fun trip that made for lots of ridiculous and juvenile moments. I just wish there wasn't always curry for breakfast (I only lasted 4 days before having to jump back to bread and jam).

I realise this had been a lot of writing, so the TL;DR version is field work is awesome, I wish I could do more of it and I am excited for whenever the next chance may be!

Things I have learnt:

Water is your friend - showering or drinking (vital to avoid heatstroke).

Water is your enemy - rain really messes up field work and water is heavy to carry.

Check under toilet seats - spider bites down there would be awful.

Mind your step/always look down - don't want to be the person who steps on a valuable fossil. Equally don't want to be the person who steps on a snake!

Field work is the best diet ever - sod the rubbish paleo diet fad of unprocessed food etc. Do fieldwork. I always lose 10lbs in the field even eating loads.

Big guys get given lots to carry - be it plaster, water, dinosaur bones, or sediment.

(maybe they shouldn't) I am not as strong as I think - a female triathlete in Canada put me to shame a few days in the field.

Air mattresses are the best - who wants to sleep on a mat for weeks?

Fieldwork gives you a break from civilisation - clear the mind of other work (not always possible/true)

The people make field work - it takes a special sort of person to want to be out there, and they are all awesome.

Never say no at a chance to go looking - bed or rest day? No! Odd thing at top of the hill, go for it! Nothing would be worse than missing that once in a lifetime fossil because you were lazy.

Things are less scary if fossils might be nearby - There were some crazy places I've looked for fossils, e.g. beside sinkholes/up steep hills.

Phil Currie makes great pancakes - the birthday ones were the best ever.

You don't have to be an expert - just be damn enthusiastic and willing to learn!

Beer always tastes amazing in the field - It just does. No dry camps... that sucks.

Somehow field work places always have great sunsets - they just do.

Best anatomy revision/learning is in the field - What better way to learn than looking at a bone upside down in the mud, or with just a tiny bit sticking out?

Don't be afraid to ask around to do some - what's the worst that happens?

Don't pay for field work (besides getting there and maybe getting some drinks/food for the crew) - There is plenty out there for free!