On Saturday, four Webb students attended CalPaleo, a regional scientific conference hosted this year by UC-Riverside. About 100 area researchers were in attendance, from many of the universities and museums in California. Our students gave poster presentations on their research projects resulting from the honors advanced museum research class. We also got to see some of the latest research in the field, integrating disparate investigations in chemistry, biology, geology, engineering, and paleontology to better understand everything from dinosaur flight to sponge reefs.

Austin Plyley ’12 presented on his research identifying fossil snails from the Barstow & Temblor Formations of California, and Megan Kilmer ’12 and Sam Woodward ’12 (co-authoring with Lichi Dong ’12) presented on fossils from a microvertebrate fossil locality in Utah. Priyanka Patel ’12 presented on a very rare fossil bird from the Kaiparowits Formation of Utah - and received an award for being one of the top student posters at the conference! All of our students represented Webb well - both in presenting their work as well as answering questions from some of the world experts in paleontology. These projects are the result of two years of research in the field and at the museum (great science takes time!), and are genuine, new contributions to scientific knowledge.

Other museum news:

Priyanka Patel’s paper has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in a major paleontological journal.

Coming out this week is a paper authored by Don L. Lofgren, Abby Hess ’12, Drew Silver ’12, and Peter Liskanich ’11 – “A review of proboscideans from the middle Miocene Barstow Formation of California.”

And in final revision for a peer-reviewed paleontology journal – "First record of Kimbetohia campi (Mammalia, Multituberculata) from the Paleocene part of the North Horn Formation, Utah" authored by Don Lofgren, Brianna Gaytan ’12, Michelle Pastrano ’07, Jessica Rice ’12, and Rachel Zheng ’12.