I do spend most of my time in the office… just not at the moment

I seem to be attracting short-notice field trips at the moment. I’m off on a teaching trip to Barberton for a couple of weeks today – a fact that I wasn’t actually aware of until this weekend. It’s not that I mind, but getting a bit more warning would have allowed me to schedule something to appear here whilst I’m out of town. As it is, other than Philosophia Naturalis # 11, which is uploaded and due to go live tomorrow, you’re just going to have to talk amongst yourselves for a bit.

Categories: Uncategorized

Am I missing something?

I’m naturally as pleased as the next geologist (or biologist, or philosopher) to see a strong anti-ID statement from the UK government. But didn’t we sort out this nonsense last year?
Any updates from UK readers would be appreciated.

Categories: antiscience, public science

A paradigm nudge in paleontology

John has brought this rather entertainingly-titled abstract to my attention:

Fassett, J.E. 2007. The documentation of in-place dinosaur fossils in the Paleocene Ojo Alamo Sandstone and Animas Formation in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico and Colorado mandates a paradigm shift: dinosaurs can no longer be thought of as absolute index fossils for end-Cretaceous strata in the Western Interior of North America. New Mexico Geology 29(2):56.

If you follow the link, this is actually found under the abstracts for the New Mexico Geological Society Spring Meeting (pdf), and the first paragraph reads thus:

Extensive geochronologic studies of the rocks adjacent to the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) interface in the San Juan Basin have now provided compelling data attesting to the Paleocene age of the dinosaur-bearing Ojo Alamo Sandstone in New Mexico and the Animas Formation in Colorado. These data consist of radiometric age determinations for Cretaceous strata underlying the K-T interface and palynologic, paleomagnetic, and geochemical evidence attesting to the Paleocene age of the strata above the K-T interface. The identification of the paleomagnetic normal interval – C29n – in the dinosaur-bearing lower part of the Ojo Alamo Sandstone in the southern San Juan Basin at multiple localities allows for the precise dating of the last occurrence of Paleocene dinosaurs at the top of chron C29n at 64.432 Ma.

Head over to Evolving Thoughts for a discussion of the second paragraph, which fulfils the promise of the title with liberal use of the terms “conventional wisdom”, “entrenched dogma”, and “paradigm”. The tone is interesting given that, assuming the data are good, the interpretation is straightforward. Here’s the sequence of magnetic reversals over the KT boundary (black is normal polarity, white is reversed – a link for the confused):

KTmagstrat.png

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Categories: fossils, geology, palaeomagic

June Carnival of the Post-docs now available

Sciencewoman is hosting the latest edition of What’s Up Postdoc?, arranged around the theme of ‘Uniqueness’. It seems that yesterday’s musings from yours truly made it in just under the wire, a feat which gives them a certain meta-topicality given my general bad timing in all things. For example, I wish that Dr Shellie had given us the benefit of her conference networking tips a couple of years ago…

Categories: academic life, links

Inspiration

If there’s one thing that a scientist can’t be without, it’s ideas. A good working knowledge of your field, and its outstanding research questions, is not enough; you also need to have the imagination to exploit it. But it’s a very specific sort of imagination: it’s reading a paper on a particular field area and thinking, ‘this is the ideal place to collect data on x’. It’s looking at a weird data point and realising ‘if this isn’t an error, then theory a can’t be right, but theory b might be…and if so, then we should also see y’. It’s reading a report on a new experimental method and thinking ‘hmmm, I wonder if I can use it to measure z more accurately?’
I’ve always worried that, in this key area, I’m somewhat lacking. When I asked my PhD supervisor about how often he came up with research ideas he answered, “all the time – I have more ideas than I can possibly follow up on.” I saw nothing in the five-and-a-half years that I worked in his lab to suggest that he was exaggerating; in contrast, whilst I have the knowledge, I’ve always struggled to frame the questions I’m interested in researching in terms of specific research proposals.

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Categories: academic life