About
I was born in Hanford, California, in the center of the agricultural, very flat Central Valley of California. My consisted of three phases. First was the early formative years of working on the ranch and farm. Second was the drywall years which provided me a source of income up until my current job. And third was my career as a paleobiologist.
My dad inherited about 30 acres of land, including pasture, a meandering slough, and a dairy of about 25 Holstein cattle. He sold the dairy and purchased 25 whiteface cattle, which required sturdy fences. After several years, my father sold the whiteface cattle and started growing crops. The crops were cotton, corn (maize), alfalfa for hay, and barley. In those days, dad did not have the John Deere tractors with the cotton spindle attachments, and so the cotton was picked by hand. We were paid piecework, by the pound, and I distinctly recall pulling the cotton sack and learning to be adept at rapidly pulling the white, fluffy cotton from the bolls and avoiding the dirty cotton from the ground.
The most enjoyable activity was laying on the cotton sack at the end of the row, when no one was looking, and witnessing the local insect fauna on the cotton plants. Most memorable were the interactions between the translucent green aphids that were piercing the cotton stems and the much larger, red-and-black ladybird larvae that would attack and consume them as they were held in mid-air. At the time, I also noted in the distance the Coast Ranges to the west and the majestic Sierra Nevada to the east, wondering what types of fossils and geologic mysteries those mountain ranges had in store. It was at that point that I decided that I wanted to become a paleobiologist who could enjoy the joys of fossil plants and insects and at least attempt to understand how all of what I was seeing, such as the microcosmic biota of the cotton plant, came about.
Joined
June 2016
