A night at the museum might be fun for natural history buffs, but two California State University, Bakersfield geology students found that a summer at the Smithsonian is even better.
Through June and July, Joshua Barnes and Tyler Garza interned at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History researching foraminifera, a microscopic, single-celled organism that lives at the bottom of the ocean. The two worked with Dr. Brian Huber, the museum’s curator of foraminifera.
“I wanted to do this internship because it is a once in a lifetime opportunity to work at THE Smithsonian in our nation’s capital,” Barnes said. “I think the experience from this internship really solidified my plan of getting into paleontology from geology.”
Foraminifera, or forams, live in most marine environments, from as deep as the seabed to free-floating in the water. After these organisms die, their calcium carbonate shells are buried and fossilize. Their sensitivity to environmental changes means they can provide insight into past climates when dug up in sediment cores from the seafloor.
“These forams can store the oxygen and carbon levels of their time in their shells,” Barnes explained. “In a well-preserved specimen, you can tell exactly what the ratio of the oxygen isotopes were at the time. With those ratios, you can tell the amount of ice there would have been at that time, which lets you know the average temperature of that time as well.”
Both Barnes and Garza had experience working with foraminifera, having previously participated in a marine research voyage with CSUB professor Dr. Anthony Rathburn and scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. There, they obtained and processed seafloor samples and studied them back on campus.
“Luckily as far as my academic career goes, I was already interested in foraminifera and oceanography,” Garza said. “This just confirmed it.”
With funding from the National Science Foundation Geopaths internship program at CSUB, Dr. Rathburn was able to find a perfect opportunity for the two student scientists with Dr. Huber. He knew being immersed in a paleontological research environment under the mentorship of one of the world’s leading researchers would be “a unique and potentially life-changing experience.”
“In addition to their research activities, Josh and Tyler were exposed to behind-the-scenes, world-class collections of fossils from large dinosaurs to tiny microfossils, and they were able to engage with an array of eminent research scientists that study the natural history of the planet,” Dr. Rathburn said. “This internship will not only provide skills and transformative experiences that they will benefit from academically but will also provide memories of a paleontological wonderland that will last a lifetime.”
Barnes and Garza learned a lot during their summer, and not just when they were busy working in the lab. They regularly passed Capital landmarks on the National Mall on their way back to their rooms after work and they took advantage of being in the Smithsonian when tourists were not.
“My favorite part has been being able to go into the museum early and before work walk in areas of the museum without any other people inside,” Garza said. “D.C. was very enjoyable, almost every weekend we got out to the city to museums or to somewhere with historical significance.”
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