Student Summer Internships at the Yale Peabody Museum

Research Project: Invertebrate Paleontology

Mentor: Susan Butts
Collections Manager, Division of Invertebrate Paleontology, Yale Peabody Museum
susan.butts@yale.edu
Division of Invertebrate Paleontology Website

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My research focus is on the fossilization of organisms through replacement of the original calcareous shell material with silica (silicification), understanding the process and controls on silicification, and determining the influence of sedimentological and biological factors on selective silicification of organisms.

Silicification studies are both field and laboratory based. Field work would entail sample collection in Carboniferous rocks of Idaho and Montana, detailed study of the occurrence of silicification based on rock type and depositional environment, and subsequent rock analysis and the digestion of large blocks of limestone in hydrochloric acid back at the lab. Experimental silicification will allow us to look at the conditions necessary for the concurrent dissolution of calcite and precipitation of silica using organisms with varying shell mineralogy, shell structure, and amount of organic material incorporated into the shell.

To Apply

Interested? Send a one- to two-page project description, along with a letter of support from the mentor of this research project, to the internship program coordinator:

Eric Lazo-Wasem
Senior Collections Manager
Division of Invertebrate Zoology
Peabody Museum of Natural History
Yale University
P.O. Box 208118
New Haven, CT 06520-8118 USA

203.432.3784
Fax 203.432.9816
eric.lazo-wasem@yale.edu


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