Apparently it has been 2 months since I last wrote a post, so I figured I should give a bit of an update on what's going on with me. In short: a lot. I have been so busy in the last month and will continue to be until I head back to Canada in June. So, what is keeping me busy you ask?
1. I'm still in the process of trying to get my first publication. I've heard that the first publication is always the hardest (although I'm not sure any of them are "easy"), but I just want this thing done! I have just spent the weekend re-formatting it to submit to a different journal than we originally aimed for, and adding some things to make it better, and we should be submitting it sometime soon. I really want to get this thing out! Stay tuned!
2. With some help and encouragement from Matt Wedel, I've decided to try to do some Air-Space Proportion work on the pterosaur bones that I have scans for. On the plus side, I already have all the information that I need, and I just need to convert the numbers. I've now done this for all the bones I've already analysed, and I need to do it on a few more partial bones that I have scans from (thanks to my supervisor Colin Palmer) but not analysed. The preliminary work is showing some pretty interesting stuff with some things coming out as completely different from what you might expect. I'm also hoping to take a look at some pigeon CT scans to compare them to. My goal is to work on this as much as possible and present it at SVPCA in Edinburgh in August. Exciting stuff!
3. I'm also still working on a paper from my undergrad thesis on Centrosaurus, which I'm hoping will be getting there soon. I spent about a month working on a matrix on mainly centrosaurines, and have been waiting to hear back from my undergrad supervisor about it. I heard a few weeks ago that he was doing some unrelated analyses using my matrix, to see if it worked, which is exciting. In the meantime, I'm planning on presenting this work in a poster at the Progressive Palaeontology conference in Leeds next month. Finally something to show from this project!
4. And finally (project wise), the project that has been taking up most of my time is the one that I can say the least about. I'm currently doing some really interesting work on some tiny fissure fossils from Wales. It's pretty neat, but I can't really talk about it much yet. If we get enough done, I just might present this at PalAss in Zurich in December!
5. I'm also preparing for a PhD interview at Southampton which will take place next month. I'm extremely nervous about it, and I'm not sure what to do for preparation. Eek!
All-in-all, lots going on for me! I'm hoping that I'll be able to get a few papers out of these various projects, which will be really interesting and exciting!
