Hello all,

My name is Ethan Weed, and I will be participating in an Invertebrate Paleontology internship this Summer. I am beyond excited to work with my partner Jasmine alongside Dr. Susan Butts in the Invertebrate Paleontology labs at Yale. Dr. Butts got her Ph.D. from the University of Idaho, and now works as the Senior Collections Manager at the Yale Peabody Museum.  Dr. Butts has a focus in Carboniferous brachiopods and brachiopod paleocommunities, and has conducted research with them to collect data about marine environments and climate change throughout geologic history. Not only that, but she has conducted research with Professor Derek Briggs to find what biological and sedimentological factors effect silica replacement (silification) in fossils that contain shells.

After reading a scientific article published By Dr. Butts, I learned more about what silification is, what it tells us about what the world was once like, and why the silica replacement process is so inconsistent. Silification is a process of fossilization that replaces skeletal material with silica. I also found out that taphonomic biases are a feature in the fossil record that have been inconsistent. That is why Dr. Butts wanted to conduct research, so that she could find what factors effected this inconsistency.

I have already done my first session of training for my internship, and will complete a second session later today. Once I have completed my training, I will be able to start working in the lab. I look forward to finding out what research I will be conducting, and I know I will learn a lot this both in and out of the lab.

Ethan Weed