The End

     During my time at the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS) I interned in Paleontology and gained many new skills. My work there involved collecting and search for fossils in the field, preparing them back at the lab, studying their imperfections like bite marks and fracture, and making a cast of one giant fossilized Diplodocus hip. 

     Through this experience I hoped to gain a better understanding of both paleontology and geology, and discover if this was something I wanted to do with my life. I have decided that geology is a path I want to pursue further, but I am not yet sure if I want to take the paleontology route or one of many others that I could pursue.  

     During this experience I worked with David Temple; associate curator of paleontology at the HMNS, Dr. Bob Bakker; curator of paleontology at the HMNS and a world renowned paleontologist in his own right, and also the volunteer of the HMNS. The other volunteers of the museum were the ones I was not thinking so much about when I started this experience, but, being that most of them are retired, they always had a lot of interesting carrier fields to talk about that come from all over the spectrum.

     I thoroughly enjoyed starting a hopefully long-lasting program between our school and the HMNS, and teaching others from the museum, visiting the museum, and from my school about what I learned. During this time I did not just get to present about my fieldwork to the community, but also to plan and teach a trip for other students in my high school to attend. There were lots of meeting times between David Temple, Dr. Ott; my science teacher, and I to plan the trips, and also many kinks to work out. I learned more than I could have ever expected to from this experience, and with these trips and my lab work I was able to achieve six of the learning outcomes of CAS for the IB program.

Final A-Term in Seymour, TX

     This was my third and final A-Term, during which I spent 60 hours working on paleontology in Seymour, and I can honestly say I am going to miss it. My internship has solidified that I will most likely major in geology in college. I feel as though my time spent in Seymour has been particularly important, because it has allowed me to be the first to work on certain Permian bones and also to observe the sediment in which they are preserved.
     During this trip I was able to see bits and pieces from different Permian animals that I had not seen before, which allowed me to broaden my understanding of the Permian ecosystem. I have appreciated this part of our research a lot since it has allowed me to not just work on Dimetrodons but also understand what they ate and where they both lived and did not live. We spent a more balanced amount of time at the Whiteside Museum's site on the George Ranch and the Houston Museum of Natural Science's sites on the Craddock Ranch this year. These two sites contain vastly different ecosystem, one which is run by Edaphosaur and Eryops and one containing many Dimetrodons and Xenacanthus sharks as well as gill breathing amphibians. One of my favorite parts of this year's trip was looking at the different sediments in these two ecosystems, their oxidation, and how oxygen, or a lack of it, affected the environment.
     I hope to return to Seymour at least one more time this summer before I head off to college.