Cool New Paleo Project

Darren Tanke, a technician at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, is probably one of the most knowledgeable people around when it comes to the history of paleontology in Alberta. I've known Darren for a number of years (and have co-authored several papers with him, including this one), and his enthusiasm for paleo lore is quite infectious. Stick around him for an hour or two, and you'll learn about the clues contained within quarry trash. . .discarded newspapers, plaster bits, sardine tins, and bottles are invaluable for identifying the original excavators of otherwise anonymous quarries. Many early paleontologists only kept the most minimal documentation, but thanks to Darren and his colleagues we now know the exact stratigraphic position for many important specimens from Dinosaur Provincial Park. This unglamorous service, a meld of archaeology, history, and paleontology, has done wonders for clarifying our understanding of Cretaceous ecosystems.

In the old days, vehicle access to places like Dinosaur Provincial Park was pretty darned difficult. In fact, many of the first expeditions were by boat, floating down the Red Deer River. Life is much easier for fossil collectors now. . .but in honor of these early expeditions, Darren is going to collect by boat once again! The Tyrrell's master carpenter, Perry Schopff, is presently working to recreate one of the AMNH's original scows. And come next summer, Darren and his crew of paleontologists will float in the footsteps of legends such as Barnum Brown - exactly 100 years after the first floating expedition.

In the spirit of open science, Darren and friends have put together a blog and Facebook group (search for "Dinosaur Hunting by Boat in Alberta, Canada") with all of the latest photos and updates. Here's to open science, and a successful field season in 2010!

Review of the Eee PC 901

A few months ago, I decided that I needed a computer to take into the field. My primary laptop, a two-year old Dell Latitude DE1505 (which I love!) is steadily losing battery charge capacity. . .I'm lucky to get more than an hour out of it when unplugged. Because my primary field camp is relatively remote and without electricity, I needed something with a little more juice to it. Buying a new battery seemed a little expensive, especially for a laptop of that age (and I wouldn't gain that much in battery life anyhow). So, I started looking around for options.

I very quickly found the Asus Eee PC line as an interesting option. They're tiny, energy efficient, cheap, and run Linux easily. Who could ask for a better combination? So, I plunked down about $300 for the Asus Eee PC 901. . .I am writing the bulk of this blog post from my tent in a remote corner of Utah, if that is an indication of a worthwhile purchase! In this post, I'll discuss my experience using this little machine under paleontological conditions.

First, the physical characteristics of the Eee PC 901. It's really a netbook, which means small, small, small, measuring 8.8 inches in maximum width! This is great when you want something that's easily transportable, but the tiny keys on the keyboard take some getting used to. Additionally, many keys such as PageUp and PageDown are accessible only through a key combination (for instance, “Function” plus the “Up” arrow for PageUp) rather than as their own keys. After a little bit of practice, I got the hang of it. The track pad is small but adequate – for serious use, I'd probably plug in a regular mouse and keyboard, but it's more than enough for field use.

The screen is also small, but very legible. I find that when I'm typing in a word processor, particularly when reclining in my tent, it's helpful to zoom in a bit to get a good look at the text. Not unexpected for a netbook, again. The screen brightness is pretty good, although as with nearly any laptop it is tough to read in direct or bright indirect sun.

Now on to the nuts and bolts. Because I bought a Linux model, it came with a 20 gigabyte solid state drive (essentially, a USB stick for a hard drive). The solid state drive allows the computer to eke out every bit of battery life, because it doesn't have to keep a hard disk spun up all of the time. That said, 20 gigs isn't that much space these days, so I bought an 8 gig SD card for extra file capacity. The Eee PC has an SD card slot on the side, which is a major bonus!

The default operating system for the Eee PC is either Windows Vista (blech) or a custom build of Linux based on the Mandriva distribution. Open source paleontologist that I am, I went with the latter option. The factory Linux OS is adequate and intuitive, but I was frustrated by the difficulty in installing custom software or even updated packages of some key systems. I want OpenOffice.org 3.1, not 2.7! So, I installed a distribution called “Easy Peasy.” Despite (or perhaps because of) its cheesy name, “Easy Peasy” runs pretty much flawlessly on my machine. The desktop environment differs from Ubuntu in having nice large buttons on the desktop rather than a drop-down menu—a simplification, but a good one for something with a screen of this size. It's easy to install or upgrade applications (same method as with Ubuntu), and the default applications are comprehensive and up to date.

When within wi-fi range, the wireless card in my EeePC works flawlessly. In fact, I usually get better signal pick-up and connection reliability than the Windows or Mac users working alongside me (this is a hallmark of most Linux laptops I've worked with). Unfortunately, it does not seem to be particularly easy to turn off the wi-fi card with the default settings in Easy Peasy. So, I installed eee-control, a little utility that I highly, highly recommend for anyone using an EeePC. This fixed the problem quite elegantly! Unfortunately, I didn't find this piece of software until after I got back from the field.

I haven't completely run my battery down out in the field, but the battery life estimator indicates around 4.5 to 5 hours on a full charge. I suspect I could get longer life by turning off wi-fi (and I'll have to see how eee-control helps out in this regard), but this is still pretty darned good! I purchased a power inverter in order to charge the netbook as needed from our field truck's cigarette lighter. This setup has been working well.

In the field, I've been using my EeePC to keep track of the specimen field catalog as well as working on various writing projects (including this blog post) after hours in my tent. All told, the machine is more than adequate for these tasks. I'm not running my computer during the heat of the day, so I can't speak for its behavior at 100 degrees, and I am careful to store it away from any major sources of dust or grit. As mentioned above, it is tough to read anything on the screen under bright lighting conditions.

In the end, I would rate my Eee PC 901 a solid A-. The very portable size and long battery life for a good computing experience. The only things preventing me from issuing a completely glowing recommendation is the rather limited default Linux operating system (an easily rectified problem) and the initial problems with turning off the wi-fi card in Easy Peasy. I wouldn't recommend this as someone's primary computer (the tiny keyboard would probably give you hand cramps after awhile, and the processing speed and hard drive space are minimal for any real multimedia tasks or storage), but the affordable price makes the EeePC 901 a quite attractive option for a travel or field computer.

Book Review: The Life of a Fossil Hunter

Fieldwork is one of the real pleasures for many paleontologists, as well as the source of endless headaches. The weather is nearly always hot, the fossils beneath concrete-hard sediment, and vehicles have a way of breaking down at inopportune times and places. But when you find that prize specimen. . .wow! A paleontologist's lifestyle is tough to explain - and I've found few books that really do the field justice.

The single best book on field paleontology, bar none, is a little gem by Charles H. Sternberg. The Life of a Fossil Hunter, published in 1909, is one of the few popular paleontology books that I've read cover-to-cover, multiple times. What is it that makes this such a pleasure to read and re-read?

In short, Sternberg's love of fossils comes through in every page. During his long and productive career, he collected everything from fossil leaves to synapsids to dinosaurs. Yet, it isn't just this interest in the past that fascinates me as a reader. Most revealing is the honest, unvarnished look at the field. One particularly gripping chapter discusses the ups-and-downs of an expedition to the Permian beds of Texas. Initial successes were followed by weeks of barren outcrop. Then, when all hope seemed to be lost, a spectacularly productive horizon was found, with specimen after specimen of Diplocaulus and other critters. Anyone who has worked in the field knows the sinking feeling caused by an unproductive horizon - and the joy upon finally finding something!

A major highlight of the book is its insight into the early days of fossil collecting in the American West. Edward Drinker Cope is prominent, and is humanized (and idolized) in Sternberg's telling. You learn of a man with a great sense of humor, bravery, and support for his collectors. You also see some incredibly risky (and stupid) tasks in the field. . .striking off across the badlands in the middle of a moonless night, for instance. Although some of the descriptions of interactions with Native Americans are rather racist by modern standards, the tales also convey an accurate depiction of the mood of the day among travelers and pioneers in those days. Fieldwork in the western US is rugged, but nowhere near the level that it was in the 1870s!

The book also excels in bringing the long-dead back to life. Although some of the prose (here and throughout the book) is rather old-fashioned, it still conveys the vivid imagination of the author. "Watch that ripple! It is caused by a shoal of mackerel scurrying in toward shallow water, in a mighty column five feet deep. They are flying for their lives, for they have seen behind them their most terrible enemy, a monster fish with a muzzle like a bulldog's. . ." [p. 59, describing Xiphactinus audax, a fish from the Western Interior Seaway] My only disappointment is that such reconstructions are scattered sparingly throughout the book, and largely in its opening half.

Finally, Sternberg's oddly modest pride in his accomplishments permeates the entire text. "I shall perish, but my fossils will last as long as the museums that have secured them." (p. 248) This was not a man who demanded first authorship on every paper (or even authorship), or naming rights, or any of the other privileges common in academic paleontology today. All he asked for was simple acknowledgment of his role in the collection, preparation, and preservation of the fossils. Most popular accounts of paleontology are written by the "big shots" - stories by the anonymous field collectors and preparators are usually lost in the shuffle. As a window into a vanished age of paleontology, a conversation with a famed paleontologist, and an unparalleled look at the joys and travails of fieldwork, The Life of a Fossil Hunter is certainly on my list for a third (and fourth!) read-through.

Read on-line or get a free PDF of The Life of a Fossil Hunter from Google Books.

Off to the Field (and a Poll)!

As of tomorrow, I'm off to the field again for another two weeks or so. For your entertainment in my absence, I've opened up a poll until my return. My cynical side wanted to ask, "Which of these is the most overrated tool in paleontology?" But, I'm [usually] nicer than that (but I won't stop you from electing overrated technologies in the comments!).

See you in a few weeks.

GPS Essentials

And we continue on with fieldwork-related posts. . .This one will probably be old hat for some of the more experienced readers out there, but I figure it doesn't hurt to lay it out for those who are curious, or those who are perhaps new to the fold. I'm talking about taking GPS coordinates!

In my last post, I discussed the importance of taking the right kinds of field photographs for documentation. A second important facet of good field documentation is GPS coordinates. Just like with photos, not all GPS coordinates are created equal.

When taking coordinates, whether they're for your own records or in order to pass them on to a colleague, context is everything. When I take a GPS coordinate in the field, I note several things:

-Coordinate system. What system are you using? Lat/long? WGS coordinates? It's self-explanatory, but at least be aware of the coordinate notation.

-Time. I always write down the time of the GPS reading. I suspect that time doesn't matter horribly in most cases, but I like to have it in the field notes "just in case."

-Accuracy. GPS units will often give you a readout of the estimated accuracy of your current reading (usually between 3 and 5 m, on the best of days, for my little Garmin). I always write this down; it's especially important to know if your coordinates might be drastically off (due to weather, topography, trees, etc.).

-Machinery. What GPS machine are using to take the readings? This is useful for real GPS geeks, who may want to know the type of firmware, software, conversion algorithms, etc.

-Datum. This is really, really critical, and a piece of information that is often neglected. NAD27? WGS84? It's all cryptic letters and numbers, but noting the datum is crucial for a person to be able to relocate your site or map it properly. Each of these datums are based on a different ellipsoid model for the surface of the earth. There isn't space to talk about the logic and meaning behind the different systems (see a decent review here), but suffice it to say that the difference between coordinates in two different datums may be tens of meters. Believe me, it's frustrating to get a set of coordinates without knowing the datum - it can be nearly as bad as not having any coordinates at all!

Taking Good Locality Photographs

I'm back from the field for just a week, and all of that fieldwork has put me in the mood for. . .a post about fieldwork!

For those of you field paleontologists, you know what I'm talking about. Someone out hiking or prospecting saw some really cool bones sticking out of the rock. They didn't have a GPS. . .but they did have a digital camera. So, they shoot a photo of their groundbreaking discovery and proudly email it to you with a scan of a marked-up topo map. You open the email with trembling fingers, and this is what you see:

It's a pretty good photograph. . .there are pens for scale, clearly indicating the fossils that were found. Lighting is good, and resolution is excellent. But for purposes of relocating the site? Useless!

What's missing? Context, context, context! A closeup of the rock or the eroding bones is interesting, but it doesn't tell you a thing about what side of the ravine the bones were found on, how high up, or anything else. A friend and I once were sent out to relocate some dinosaur bones found by an amateur paleontologist. He had emailed a GPS point and a close-up photo of the bones similar to what I've pictured above (all good things to do!). But. . .we spent a good solid two hours trying to relocate the fossils - and never succeeded. The GPS point (assuming we were even given the right datum, or hadn't miscopied the coordinates - that's a topic for another post!) was in the base of a wash, and the photo (even though uselessly close-up) indicated the specimen was on one side or the other of the wash. The photo showed a nice hadrosaur rib, but no larger context.

Here's an example of a better field photograph. Note the fact that the photo shows the overall context of the site - crucial for relocating the correct horizon later, or when compensating for a bad GPS coordinate. If you could read the field notebook of the character who is providing the scale in this picture, you'd see that he is writing down: 1) date and time of the photograph; 2) general direction that the camera is pointing; 3) location of the fossils relative to a landmark in the photo such as a backpack or mound of rock; 4) file number of the digital photo on the camera; and all sorts of other useful informational bits. I've learned from bitter experience that these data (and then some) are what makes the difference between a useful piece of the scientific record and a pretty snapshot. The close-ups are still necessary as field documentation, but they're often secondary in importance to the broader pictures.

So the lesson here? Take good field photographs with lots of visual context - and record the important data that will be necessary for complete recall later (never trust your memory).

Fieldwork!

I'm off to the field this evening, and will return in a little over two weeks. Not that any readers of this blog aren't used to the occasional unexplained hiatus. . .

Cool Tools for Google Earth

Google Earth by itself can be a useful tool for the field paleontologist, as outlined in my previous post. Yet, some aspects of paleontological field mapping aren't supported "out of the box" within this software. For instance, many field localities are in the "Township and Range" format of the Public Land Survey System. That's the "NW1/4 of the SW 1/4, Sec. 21, T14N, R21E" style of plotting things - pretty much anyone who's done paleontology in the United States knows what I'm talking about (and how miserable it can be as a method of mapping and relocating things, versus a high-precision GPS coordinate!). Unfortunately, the default settings in Google Earth can't do anything to help on this. One or two handy plug-ins can save the day, though!

Township and Range Coverage
The Earth Point website has a KML file that provides township and range data for most of the western United States, and a handful of more easterly states. To access this, click here. For the field areas I've frequented, I've found the data to be quite accurate and easy to use. As you progressively zoom in, you can get right down to the section (and then click to get the full legal description). This is an extremely handy tool, and I strongly recommend it for any paleontologist utilizing Google Earth! Another must-have is the Township and Range Decoder. Enter a legal land description, and get it converted into Lat-Long format - or the reverse! So, so, so much easier than trying to fudge something on a topo map.

Topographic Map Coverage
I haven't used this feature as much, but did uncover two potentially handy tools. Map Finder allows you to quickly and easily find 24K topo maps within the U.S.A. - and download them for free as a TIFF file. The whole setup seemed to work pretty well for me. The Google Earth Blog details another cool plug-in, which is supposed to put the map right into Google Earth. I haven't tried it yet, but certainly will at the soonest opportunity (after I get back from the field!).

Conclusions
Even if it ain't open source, Google Earth has become a standard tool in my digital paleontology arsenal. It has saved me oodles of time and money, both in the field and back at the lab. If you're a field paleontologist - check it out!

Digital Prospecting With Google Earth

For those who do paleontological prospecting in new field areas, I probably don't have to spend too much time singing the virtues of good satellite imagery. Perhaps the single best thing about it is that it can allow you to quickly evaluate where the worthwhile exposures are, and where the low-relief, grassy pastures are covering up perfectly good fossiliferous rocks. Used in concert with a geological map, this "digital prospecting" can save a lot of time and annoyance out in the field.

There are two ways to go about this. . .one is by old fashioned aerial photographs and a geology map. The other is by using Geographical Information System (GIS) software. Because I've barely touched GIS since I took a course as an undergraduate (and I am lucky enough to have a skilled friend who volunteers for the occasional map-making project; one of these days I'll get around to learning GRASS), in this post I'll focus on the "lazy researcher's GIS" -- Google Earth.

Now in version 4.3, this digital globe runs smartly in Windows, Linux, and presumably the Mac OS (although I've never tried the latter). Find a prospective field area, and do a virtual fly-over to locate promising outcrop. Mark prospective points, and transfer the coordinates to your GPS unit. It's that simple!

So what are the upsides of using Google Earth?
- It's free!
- Pretty much global coverage.
- The user interface is intuitive, without a lot of annoying extras.
- High resolution (in many areas)

And the downsides?
- An internet connection is pretty much required, if you want to go someplace that isn't already in the cache. So, don't plan on being able to use it that well in the field.
- The DEMs (digital elevation models) are pretty crude in most areas, and don't necessarily show detailed topography all that well, if you want to pan around an actual landscape.
- It's tough to import GIS data, if you want to add geological data or something (although it can be done - to be addressed in the next post). Furthermore, basic GIS functions, such as intersections of layers, just can't be done easily within the program itself (as far as I know).
- Resolution varies across the maps. Sometimes the remotest areas have crisp, true-color resolution - and the field area just around the corner is a fuzzy, false color mess.
- Township and range aren't supported by default (but see an upcoming post for a solution!).

Is Google Earth useful for paleontologists?
If you're in the early stages of a field project, or are trying to evaluate outcrop potential in a far-away locale, Google Earth is perfect. But, be aware that this program is not a complete substitute for a good GIS package (and a person to run it!) for many tasks, and satellite coverage limitations may cause problems in some regions. For the most part, though, Google Earth is a quick, cheap tool for planning out a field season (and one that I use quite frequently!).

Coming up. . .Handy tips and tricks to make the paleontologist's use of Google Earth easier.