Summer means field season (marine station edition...)

Much of the fieldwork by the Historical Geobiology Lab is done in Yukon and Northwest Territories, but this summer the lab took a break from big hills and Backpacker's Pantry to primarily work at west coast marine stations. The goal for this work was to conduct respirometry measurements on invertebrate groups represented in the fossils record (brachiopods, crinoids, bivalves, gastropods, sea urchins, etc.). The ultimate goal will be to incorporate these data into the Metabolic Index framework and understand how marine life has responded to changing oxygen/temperature conditions over geologic time. To do this, the lab spread out over three marine stations--Friday Harbor Labs in the San Juan Islands, WA, the Bamfield Marine Science Center on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and the Hakai Institute's Quadra Island laboratory. Thanks to the Palaeontological Association and National Science Foundation for funding this marine station work. Meanwhile, Samantha Ritzer spent the summer working in Jochen Brocks' lab at ANU, linking organic and inorganic geochemical data, and Malcolm Hodgskiss held up our northern wing during geological fieldwork on Paleoproterozoic successions in the Belcher Islands and East Arm of Great Slave Lake, Canada.