Throwback to two weeks ago when I was in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History Department of Mammology delving through cabinet after cabinet and shelf after shelf of animals bones diggings for ancient DNA treasures! Bone, tissue and hide from these animals will be used in the historic portion of my research which will be comparing modern lions to lions that existed prior to extensive management and translocation efforts of the last 100 years. Dr. Derr and I had our hands on lions as old as 1886 (and possibly older because some of them didn't have documented dates).
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This Throwback Third Thursday (#tbtt) is a bit different in that it is a throwback to a icon in honor of a couple trips I am making for my research in the next few weeks; first to Fort Worth for some training then to New York City for sample collection. The photo to the left is of taxidermist, sculptor, biologist, conservationist, inventor, and nature photographer Carl Akeley. He is with one of the lionesses he shot while on an excursion to Africa in 1909 with Teddy Roosevelt which is now housed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City where I will be in just a few weeks collecting historic lion samples. Next week I will be visiting the Institute of Applied Genetics at the University of North Texas Health Science Center to learn DNA collection and extraction techniques from forensics experts. I will be bringing bones from various species with me to "play around with" to become an expert before I start the real work with the few valuable pieces of material I am able to procure from the museum. I am SO excited for what's coming up the next few months. It's going to be VERY busy but VERY exciting. I forgot to mention I also have my preliminary examinations scheduled for the beginning of September as well. Yeah... this summer is jam packed (and slightly stressful). But it's all going to be awesome!
Because PhD students don't do anything halfway, when the new Avengers movie came out (April 30, 2015 #tbtt), we not only saw the Double Feature to allow for a direct comparison of the two blockbusters, we dressed the part! We are what you might call true Marvel fans!
This month's Throwback Third Thursday (#tbtt) is a day late (so I guess its actually a Flashback Friday) and only looks back one day but for good reason: I didn't have time! The past few days I have been busy with the Genetics Graduate Student Association (GGSA) Spring Symposium featuring keynote speakers Dr. Bruce Budowle and Dr. Jeffrey Bennetzen. As Vice-President of GGSA, I was in charge of planning the event and it went GREAT! Our only criticism was there wasn't enough time for poster judging (but that was more of a venue availability problem than anything else). And what I am most grateful for, there was a good number of people who were incredibly helpful with set up and clean up. Amazing!
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