14 Quotes by Penelope Boston

The best thing about these places is that large -- as in macroscopic -- buried fossilized material is usually weathering out of the outcrops. One can see them laying about and follow the fragments to the source. For microscopic fossils, of course, no clear obvious clues are usually present. The exception is large scale microbial mats like those that made stromatolites and algal travertiles and tufa.

The instruments to study the surface would be different that if you were aiming at a lava tube. They have to be big enough to carry the kind of fuel cell that can power their systems, but not be too small that they get wedged into everything.

I'm particularly excited about the sulfate results...because so much of the material we are looking at is in sulfur rich caves where gypsum and other sulfate minerals play a huge role in the biology and the subsequent preservation of traces of that biology.

The individual units are very cute and very adorable. But the function of them as an ensemble is where the real strategy lies.

The course will go beyond the gee-whiz, magazine analysis.