On Saturday, 3/26/22, a handful of members of the Evolutionary Studies Initiative took a field trip to Coon Creek Science Center (CCSC) to dig for fossils. It was a beautiful day where many trainees that have never studied paleontology got to get out and do some field work.
Michael Gibson, a faculty at the University of Tennessee, Martin, runs the CCSC. He provided expert guidance as the group took a trip back in time to the Late Cretaceous epoch. ESI reseearchers present included Simon Darroch (EES), Rachel Racicot (BSCI), and Larisa DeSantis (BSCI). The trainees consisted of undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers. While several trainees in attendance are in the Earth and Environmental Studies program (Paleontology) at Vanderbilt, others joined from a variety of non-paleontology labs, including those that study fungal pathogens, neurobiology, and mathematical models of disease.
