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How do you pair ppls’ love of collecting fossils, esp. collecting in new-to-them locales w/ museum collection & curation? With @projectFOSSIL, we wanted to do just that w/ a PaleoBlitz (like a BioBlitz, except everything’s been dead for millions of yrs!) #paleontology Thread: 1/6
In 2015, we recruited 13 amateur paleontologists from fossil clubs throughout the US using a survey to determine baseline content knowledge and practices. These participants came to @FloridaMuseum for two days to collect and catalog specimens #paleontology 2/6
Participants collected in #GNV creeks, visited Gordon Hubbell’s collection, toured the FLMNH collections, and cataloged their specimens and specimens that had been previously collected from the Belgrade Quarry on myFOSSIL. #paleontology 3/6
What’d we find? Participants came away w/ increased confidence about curation, interest in using best practices on their own collections, & expanded their personal paleontology network (as assessed through # of friendships over time on @projectFOSSIL’s website) #paleontology 4/6
Why does this matter? We took the concept of a BioBlitz and amped it up: scientific knowledge was important BUT so was the education of participants, so they could replicate the process with their own collections and spread techniques to their club members. #paleontology 5/6
Want to read more? Here's the link to the paper, which was just published in @PalaeoE, headed by Victor Perez w/ R. Leder, me, S. Ellis, B. Dunckel, & @kentcrippen: https://bit.ly/2RB6kjh #CitSci #paleontology 6/6
