My Summer Work at HMNS

Since I enjoyed my Paleontology Internship so much during the school year, I decided to continue volunteering at HMNS during my summer vacation while I was in Houston. I volunteered about 8 hours, and got a couple new fossils to work on. I am very excited to see the new lab once it gets set up sometime this fall. 

I was planning to go to my internship a couple days a week for the first three weeks of June, since that was the only large block of time I was in town this summer. The first and third week went super smoothly, and I went to the museum from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday. The second week, I was going to go from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday, but both days I ran into some technical difficulties, and was unable to get the air compressor machine to work properly. It got fixed the third week and everything ran smoothly. To make up a couple hours that I had missed during the second week, I went to the museum for two hours on Monday, August 7. 

I worked on a lot of different fossils during my time spent at the museum, and even finished a couple pieces! A lot of them look like little pieces of fin spines, but a few of them were pieces of vertebrae. They are all very small though. Mr. Temple also gave me another little piece to work on, but I don’t know what it is yet. 

I have had a great time interning at HMNS this summer, and I plan to continue in the fall. 

A few Months Later at HMNS

          I have now been working at my internship at HMNS for several months, and I am still really enjoying it. I have improved a lot on my fossil prepping, and feel like I am doing important work. One of the things that really helped me improve was the Paleontology A-Term trip. I learned how to tell the difference between rock and bone, and how to be much more gentle when I am chipping the rock off of the bones. I also can actually identify what type of bone I am working on now, which is very exciting. I have finished working on several bones now. The dimetrodon teeth are my favorite to work on because they are much harder to break or scratch, and they look really pretty and shiny when they are finished.
          Overall, I am having a really great time interning at the museum, and I look forward to continuing this summer and next semester.

My First few Weeks at HMNS

          In the fall semester, I started an internship in the Paleo department at the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS) with my friends Morgann and Rene. We went a couple Fridays to get oriented, and do various little things that Mr. David Temple needed us to do. This semester, Morgann and I started going on Thursday afternoons, and we both got set up with projects. I learned how to use an air scribe, and I was given several scrap fossils to start working on. I had some issues getting the airscribes to work correctly at first, but I soon figured it out, and finished my first fossil. I realized after I was done, that I had done really bad job and poked several small holes into the fossil. So on the next one, I worked very hard to not make the same mistakes, and so far, it is looking much better. I am really enjoying my work at the museum, and I look forward to continuing this internship throughout the spring semester, and hopefully in following years as well.