Lab Work

Bin full of samples to-be-entered.

What, you may ask, have I been doing with all the time we've been spending in lab lately? The most time consuming task has been database entry. Everything that we collect for STRI, whether form the canal, from Pina, or from our field trip to Azuero, eventually needs to be cataloged and put into STRI's online database. It's incredibly straightforward work, but time-consuming nonetheless because there are so many different fields of information that need to be provided. What keeps me from losing my mind while entering in our hundreds and hundreds of samples is the section that requires me to list the taxonomic and morphological information of each fossil. When we're out in the field, we write general notes on the collection bags to indicate what kind of bone or tooth or whatever we've found and also what animal it came from. In the database I have to be more formal and specific, which has led me to learn a lot about the scientific names for various organisms (i.e. Turtles are from the order Testudines) as well as learn a bit about skeletal morphology (this is much more limited because Jorge usually takes care of it). It's been pretty fun and rewarding to actually get a bit of a handle on all the Latin words that I've heard thrown around since I got here.

My other main project in the labs has been general prep work. I finally finished cleaning up the fish vertebra that's been sitting on my desk for months, I've pieced together a few broken turtle bones, and cleaned up some inverts. Most of the bigger and more interesting projects get handed over to Nicole, who has more patience and care in one finger than I have in my entire person. I'm fine with it -- anything too big/important and I'll stress myself out about it to no end.