Trouble in Paradise

Home for the summer is the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. I’m living in Paradise, which is a small cabin built in 1935 and not much-renovated since then. It is a beautiful place to be, but sometimes it can be difficult to sleep. The reason: porcupines. Last night this one found its way into the shed…

Traveling back in time to the dinosaurs

Time travel is hard, which makes learning about the earth’s past climate difficult. For example, what happened to the earth’s temperature at the end of the Cretaceous, when dinosaurs went extinct? To find out, we have to use proxies – ancient objects whose form or composition indicate the climate at the time they were made….