The purpose of our trip to Minneapolis was for our team to follow up on the core samples that were collected a couple weeks ago. We split our cores and archived one half, then retrieved core samples from the working half. We collected smear slides to observe the initial core descriptions of our cores and observed the phytolith processing prep lab to continue our phytolith analysis next week.  We also kept in mind that the work we did this week will contribute a lot to our methods section of our research papers.

Now that we have collected our phytoliths samples we are able to return to the lab in Fond du Lac to continue our research. I look forward to next week as we get to look more in depth at our smear slides, and phytoliths.

Jesse, Mah’Ko’Quah, Ricky, and Emilia use sieves to screen out diatoms and spicule fractions from samples at phytolith lab at UofM campus.