European Geosciences Union

I’m in Berlin. I’ve just managed to find a chicken donner kebab, and am pausing research briefly to write this. I’m currently on leave from London, with a ridiculously hectic couple of months ahead: I’ve just been to Munich to see a dwarf crocodile specimen, Alligatorellus beaumonti (from Bavaria), which conveniently happened to coincide with Oktoberfest, and am now here to visit another specimen, Theriosuchus ibericus, from Spain. Preliminary glances at the material in Berlin makes me think the Spanish material may be a new genus altogether (whatever that actually means), and another broken up specimen of Alligatorellus might be a new species, based on what I can tell from it’s body armour (yeah, these crocs were awesome!)

Alligatorellus beaumonti, holotype specimen. Copyright: Bavarian State Collection, Munich

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This was originally posted at: http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/earthbound/geology_beyond_science

So people who read this blog (*one person cheers off in the distance*) may have noticed that my partner-in-crime, Jane Robb, recently abandoned me to the fusty claws of Nature. *sniff* Fear not though! Jane is pursuing awesome things now with the European Geosciences Union, the other organisation I also happen to write for. She also maintains a personal blog, which is well worth following.

So last week, I wrote about how we can use different plots to help craft stories within geoscience. I want to stay along the theme of ‘science communication’ for a while, and write about an excellent paper Jane had published recently, calling for an increase in public engagement within geology higher education. Expect tonnes more along this in the future, as Jane develops her role at the EGU, but for now, I figured it would be cool to highlight some of the key points in Jane’s paper, as a sort of weird, blog-eulogy to her passing.

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European Geosciences Union

Green tea and Velociraptors turns into beer and dwarf crocodiles

Geology beyond science