Meetings

Gaetano Palazzo is a graduate student for the Math Science Nucleus, a non-profit focused on K-12 education. His research involves the functional morphology of both invertebrates and vertebrates. his work at the Children's Natural History Museum involves exhibit design and planning for a new fossil museum highlighting the Bay Area's paleontological history.

Previous Morphological investigations of ammonoids have mostly focused on coiling habit, but external ornamentation has largely been ignored in methods using 3D geometric morphometrics. Over 350 ammonites from the Aptian-Santonian ages were scanned and plotted in morphospace to evaluate trends in ornament across the Cretaceous oceanic anoxic events.

Cullen is a scientific artist who works in collaboration with museums and scientists to create artwork that will be used to communicate scientific information. He uses a wide range of mediums and methods, including scientific illustrations, sculptures, fabrications, and 3D models.

Cullen has always been interested in scientific topics, and found that from an early age, art was his way of expressing that interest thru visual art. He studied illustration in college and worked as a prop maker for a while before meeting people from the NHM, who utilized his extensive talents to create murals for museum exhibits, and illustrate books and scientific papers written by scientists.

Intraspecific variation, or differences between individuals in a species as a result of factors like sex, age, and response to environmental stimuli, can lead to differences in natural or sexual selection on individuals within and between populations. I will discuss this variation in a uniquely high fidelity sample of the dicynodont stem-mammal Diictodon feliceps, a single species with a range from the Middle to Late Permian (262-252 Ma) in South Africa and crosses through the Capitanian Mass Extinction.

James Pinto is a PhD student in Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California, studying the effects of variability within species, including the origins and mechanisms of sex-dependent characteristics like display traits such as horns and sails. He has done research in this area on stem-mammals, archosaurs, dinosaurs, lizards, and mammals, ranging from the Permian to the present. James did his undergrad in integrative biology and geology at UC Berkeley.

Harleena Franklin is a paleoecologist who focuses on rapid change over the last 20,000 years. She got her undergrad degree in Life Sciences at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, UK, her Master's in Library and Information Science from Syracuse University, and another Master's in Bioarchaeology from the University of Aberdeen, and Geology from the University of Buffalo.

Harleena will be talking about tracking water cycle changes using biomarkers as a proxy for climate. Specifically, measuring hydrogen isotopes from leaf waxes and tracking vegetation change with pollen and ancient DNA.