This week’s photo brings us back to the world of geochemistry. I don’t have much information on this photo beyond that it was taken in Italy. However, if I may speculate a little it looks like these crystals may possibly be volcanic in origin and the fact that it was taken in Italy, which is famous for its volcanic sulphur deposits. I say this because such crystals are often found nea ...[Read More]
Hi readers of “Green tea and Velociraptors”, my name is Sabine Lengger, I am a scientist, and I am an avid reader of Jon’s blog too. I started out my scientific career as a chemist / biochemist, and became more and more fascinated by the fields of environmental chemistry and molecular palaeontology. Since Jon spends all day [apparently] writing his thesis these days and asked for a guest writer, I ...[Read More]
Our 3rd Annual Conference, with the theme Fighting Global Poverty – Geology and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) takes place on Friday 30th October, hosted by the Geological Society of London. Here we will be introducing some of the speakers, starting with Session 1 (DFID, Science and the SDGs)… Professor Tim Wheeler (Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser, Department for Internationa ...[Read More]
When you think about fossils, lizards might be not be one of the first groups that springs to mind. However, they do have a pretty neat fossil record, stretching back over 150 million years. One group of lizards, iguanians, are still around today and comprises about 1700 different species! One sub-group of these iguanians, acrodonts, are thought to have originated in east Gondwana – part of ...[Read More]
“The Ph.D. is an emotional roller coaster, and how well students react to these emotional pressures is crucial to their success, ” says Inger Mewburn, of The Thesis Whisperer fame and Director of research training at the Australian National University. With the emotional and personal strain a PhD can cause, I couldn’t agree with Inger more. During my PhD journey, this was an aspect that I fe ...[Read More]
Since August 2013, Elspeth and Charly, editors of Between a Rock and a Hard Place, have contributed a range of interesting and thought-provoking posts to the EGU network blogs: from a broad volcanology and petrology theme, through to sharing valuable insights they picked up during their journey towards completing their PhDs. However, the PhD theses are now submitted and defended, and Elspeth and C ...[Read More]
This year, the 63rd Symposium for Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy is taking place alongside the 24th Symposium of Palaeontological Preparation and Conservation with the Geological Curators’ Group (what a mouth-full..), at the National Oceanographic Centre in Southampton. I don’t have much to say about this conference, as I’m heading to it’s international co ...[Read More]
OK, bear with me on this one. It’s a bit of a thought dump, but it would be interesting to see what people think. You can’t go anywhere in academia these days without hearing about impact factors. An impact factor is a metric assigned to a journal that measures the average number of citations per article over the preceding two year interval. It was originally designed to help libraries ...[Read More]
It’s conference season! Wooooo!! The annual meeting for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology is looming, and is taking place in Dallas this year. Damn I love Texas! This meeting represents the bringing together of the finest minds around the world in vertebrate palaeontology, and covers the whole spectrum of this vast field. The abstract book is now online and freely available in pdf form ...[Read More]
At the beginning of the year, the small village of Rutland, in the heart of the UK, was hit by a 3.8 Magnitude earthquake. The quake didn’t cause any significant damage or injuries, but hit the headlines as seismic activity is a bit of a novelty in the UK! In the wake of the quake, the UK press and media picked up the story and sought the opinions of experts to take part in interviews and give the ...[Read More]