Late Tertiary Continental Fossils from the Pipe Creek Sinkhole, Grant County, Indiana

PI将协调在Pipe Creek Sinkhole的实地工作，这是最近在印第安纳州格兰特县发现的一个地点，它保存着含有多种晚第三纪动植物组合的未固结沉积物。这项研究将由印第安纳-普渡大学、韦恩堡和印第安纳州立博物馆（标本库）共同完成。现场工作将包括现场湿筛和沉积物的浓缩（一些沉积物样本将被袋装，稍后在实验室进行筛分）。然后筛精矿将被挑选出来用于实验室的小化石。PI将创建一个数据库，其中每个可识别的标本将与样本和来自沉积物的大小部分的记录相关联。这将最终用于分析该遗址的古生态。此外，项目将设立一个实验室，从组合中制备下部脊椎动物骨骼薄片，用于重建Pipe Creek天坑地区晚第三纪古气候相关的骨组织学/骨骼年代学分析。

The PI will coordinate field work at the Pipe Creek Sinkhole, a recently discovered site in Grant County, Indiana, which preserves unconsolidated sediments containing a diverse late Tertiary assemblage of animals and plants. The study will be a collaborative effort between Indiana-Purdue University, Fort Wayne and the Indiana State Museum (the repository for specimens). Field work will comprise on-site wet-sieving and concentration of sediments (some sediment samples will be bagged for later sieving in the lab). Sieve concentrate will then be picked for small fossils in the lab. The PI will create a database in which each identifiable specimen will be associated with records about the sample and size fraction of sediment from which it came. This will eventually be used to analyze the paleoecology of the site. In addition, the PI will set up a lab for preparing thin sections of lower vertebrate bones from the assemblage for osteohistological/skeletochronological analysis relevant to reconstructing the late Tertiary paleoclimate in the region of the Pipe Creek Sinkhole.