Palges Meeting October 2010 in Munich

The 80 th Annual Meeting of the German Paleontological Society took place from the 6th through the 8th October 2010 within the halls of the Bavarian State Collection for Geology and Paleontology in Munich.

Of particular interest for me was the session on Early Mesozoic vertebrates chaired by the Rauhut couple and Richard Butler as it united many interesting characters, such as Silvio Renesto, Martin Ezcurra, Rainer Schoch, and Daniela Schwarz-Wings and covered a variety of Triassic vertebrates including archosaurs, temnospondyls, and bony fish.

With 5 talks and 6 posters our small Freibergian working group had quite a number of contributions this year (my prof Jörg Schneider was talking about Paleozoic cockroaches from China, Olaf Elicki about Cambrian trace fossils from Africa and the Middle East, Frederik Spindler about the evolution of haptodonts and other early synapsids, Jan Fischer about oxygen isotope signals in Permian and Triassic freshwater shark teeth and I had a talk on osteoderm histology and the Chroniosuchia). My colleagues Ilja Kogan and Jan Fischer won the 1st poster prize with their poster entitled "The Madygen lake deposits: A unique multi-taxa kindergarten for Triassic fisches" - which is quite an achievement as normally the winner comes from the host institute of the Palges Meeting.

The image on the right shows me in front of a poster entitled "Paleontology in the German Wikipedia" [pdf].

Even though there are many private collectors and paleontology enthusisasts in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland you won't find much about "regional paleontology" in the German Wikipedia which was the reason for my colleagues and me to introduce some aspects of Wikipedian (Pop-)Sciencewriting.

The poster praised the advantages Wikipedia can have if it is reasonably incorporated in public outreach campaigns and we commented critically on the dinosaur focus which increases the already biased public image of what paleontology is about.

Questionnaire for Geobloggers(incl. Paleobloggers)

http://geoblogs.stratigraphy.net/survey/

The organisator is my former study colleage Lutz Geißler (now M.Sc. in geology), who is at the German forefront of publicising geoscience - with his web portals geoberg.de, geonetzwerk.org, and with his postcard/ poster/ online campaign "Wir sind überall." ("We are everythere!" - referring to the role geoscience plays in daily life/ for the satisfaction of basic needs).

World's Largest Mineral Collection

The opening week of Terra Mineralia is over, setting the signal for the new permament exhibition whithin the walls of the recently restored city castle of Freiberg, Saxony (the most beloved place of my studies besides Madygen).

The exhibition features spectacular pieces from the private collection which Erika Pohl donated to the TU Bergakademie Freiberg. Together with the quite large mineral stock of the Bergakademie's Mineralogical Institute the new gains make the Freibergian collection the largest in the world (...not bad for a town of 40-odd-thousand inhabitants).

The opening celebrations were also the chance for us geoscience students and scientists to communicate what we are doing to the general public and to people from other university departments - so we organized the

GeoDays 2008. Within the premises of Terra Mineralia we had a geo-photo competition, a poster exhibition, and a small program of lectures and presentations on 3D modelling, sand, soil, moon rocks, saxonian vertebrate fossils etc.

Among other GeoDays volunteers I was also involved in the children's program: For some hours between Thursday and Saturday I was responsible for the "raw material" station in a point-collecting game:

The children had to connect objects of daily use with the minerals which served as raw materials - an idea realized by Alexandra Käßner, another PhD student of the geological institute (nice one, Alex!)

.... though it is not easy to keep countenance when you have two kindergarten groups - ten kids each - standing around you, keen on solving the quest in order to get a point. (The price? - I think some small colourful polished piece of mineral).

Go here for some GeoTage impressions (including me in the first pic).