Alton Dooley

Alton Dooley

May 09, 2016

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Budget changes

You may have noticed a reduction in our fundraising goal. Over the last month we've been hard at work planning the logistics for our trip, and this has resulted in some substantial savings. Here's what's happened:

1) A few of the museums we had planned to visit have checked their collections more closely and it turns out that the specimens in their collections are not suitable for our study (either the teeth in their collections don't have complete crowns, or the specimens don't have locality data). 2) Since launching our project, several other mastodon workers have offered to provide us data they've collected that are relevant to our work. This includes four of the museums we had planned to visit. 3) A friend in Indiana has offered free housing while in the area. His house is located close to several museums we planned to visit, saving us 3 days of lodging. Because of the reduced number of visits in 1) and 2), we will be able to shorten our trip from an estimated 21 days to just 14 days, with essentially no loss in data. With the additional savings from the free housing in Indiana, that reduces our lodging budget from $3150 to $1800 (there's no change in the fuel budget).

All these changes mean we can reduce the length and cost of our trip, with no loss of data! Our new target amount is just $2750. Moreover, the Western Science Center has received $400 in direct cash donations to support the project, so we're just over $1000 from our goal!

My offer to match new donations or donation increases still stands.

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About This Project

American mastodons lived all across North America during the Ice Age. Paleontologists long suspected that western mastodons differed in subtle ways from eastern ones, and our initial data suggest they may have been distinctive in size and tooth proportions. We plan to examine various museum collections to build a robust database of mastodon measurements, allowing us to document regional population differences and helping us understand ecosystem variation and animal dispersal during the Ice Age.

Blast off!

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