Trinity College Dublin, Ecology and Evolution
After rereading Sive’s excellent blog post on what is a zoologist or at least what is it like to study it, I remember having a slightly similar difficulty in explaining my background in palaeontology. Reactions range from: “Oh… Palaeontology? That’s like the origins of humans and stuff?” or “So you go on excavations and find ancient …
We’re back with the last instalment of our two-part series showcasing the wonderful world of science podcasts. If the below list isn’t enough for you, don’t forget to check out Part 1 if you missed it! General Science This one is pretty self-explanatory! If you want to widen your knowledge of science to new topics, …
Continue reading “Fancy a listen? The podcasts our researchers are listening to: Part 2”
Last month the Botany and Zoology departments at Trinity held their annual Postgraduate Symposium. Research students from both departments present a talk on recent and upcoming projects for their thesis, and the whole event is run by the students themselves. This is a big event for Botany/Zoology postgraduates not just because they get to show …
Continue reading “Interview with the Speakers of the 2021 Botany/Zoology Postgrad Symposium”
Final-year undergraduate students summarise their undergrad thesis projects in TCD Zoology and Botany.
In a previous post I showed what I think being a palaeontologist is all about, especially the point that palaeontologists are different from oryctologists. The first ones study changes of biodiversity through time, the second ones extract fossils (but again, both are far from exclusive). Here is a short summary of experience working at Upper Cretaceous excavation sites in the …
The career of Stephen Jay Gould eludes easy definition because of his prolific output in so many areas. Michael Shermer characterises him as a historian of science and scientific historian, popular scientist and scientific populariser. The popular science writings of Stephen Jay Gould (20 of his 22 books and hundreds of articles) are responsible for making me want …
Adam raised the point of science communication in his last blog post of how science should be communicated to a mainly interested and receptive public. The main question when thinking about science communication is “how should we do it?” However a second question, arising from this one would be “who should do it?” I believe …
Continue reading “3D dinosaurs are bringing down the Ivory Tower”
One of the projects I’ve been working on recently has concerned diversity in the fossil record. In broad terms I’m looking at how diversity has changed over the last 540 million years, a period known as the Phanerozoic which starts at the Cambrian explosion and continues to this day. I want to try and understand …
Imagine you’re stuck in the desert, your plane has crashed and you’re trying hard to fix it. Then a child pops up out of the blue and asks you straight out “If you please – draw me a dino…”. Now let’s say you do as Antoine de St-Exupéry and take up the challenge without asking …
“I wish to register a complaint…” the first six months of my PhD have passed by far too quickly. As the date of departure for my first major data collection trip looms, I’m navigating the exciting but unnerving transition from the planning to action stages of my project. Fortunately the members of NERD club were on hand …
Continue reading “Morphological convergence and disparity in Malagasy tenrecs”