Meet the scientists!

I am a PhD student at the University of Bristol, in my second year. My current research concerns the origin of the animal skeleton by examining the ‘small shelly fossils’.  They are fossil remains of tiny armour-plated slugs, worms with grasping teeth and what may be the first jawless fish. The fossils date from one of the most crucial periods of animal evolution – the ‘Cambrian explosion’.  At 540 million years old (over 300 million years before the first dinosaurs) they pre-date the more famous Burgess Shale and mark the sudden origin of complex animals after more than 2 billion years of little more than prehistoric pond scum. I am using pioneering x-ray techniques (at a particle accelerator near Zurich, Switzerland) to look inside these tiny fossils (they’re about the size of a full stop) and work out how they grew.

Not many of my days are the same!  I spend much of my time building and analysing 3d models of the fossils I work with.  But to get to that point I have to dissolve some rocks in acid, sieve out all the tiny fragments and pick out the fossils with a fine paintbrush.  Then I can look at them in detail with a microscope and chose the best ones.  Then I get to fly to Switzerland and x-ray the fossils in a particle accelerator, called the Swiss Light Source, to get the images to build the 3d models.  I also have to do a lot of reading to find out all the work that other people have done before me on these fossils.

I am involved in a number of school outreach programmes to encourage enthusiasm for Earth Sciences in schools.  The best way to do this is with hands on activities with real rock and fossil samples.  I would use the money to build up a range of sample sets for different activities and abilities of students.