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Many thanks to our volunteers!

Danny Anduza
Danny Anduza
 
The UCMP owes many thanks to this summer's volunteers, Danny Anduza and Matt Perry. Danny, a high school student at Contra Costa Christian High School in Walnut Creek, spent nearly every day of his summer vacation at the UCMP. He did curatorial work in the collections, numbering turtle specimens and labeling fossils. He also dusted the T. rex in the atrium of the Valley Life Sciences Building and replaced the T. rex's missing claw. This summer, Danny also started an independent research project on deinonychosaurs. He has been examining and measuring the teeth of these small, meat-eating dinosaurs, to determine which genus these dinosaurs belonged to.

Matt Perry was a science teacher for many years at the Berkwood Hedge School in Berkeley; he frequently brought his students to the UCMP on field trips. He now teaches English as a Second Language at the Berkeley Adult School. This summer, he and Danny perused the collections and took photographs of many of the specimens. Matt was really drawn to the local fossils: the mammoths, mastodons and ground sloths unearthed during excavations for BART train tunnels and Bay Bridge pylons. "Local fossils are interesting because most people don't think of the Bay Area in terms of exotic fossils," Matt says. "I hope they dig some more tunnels and find some more cave bears and ground sloths!"

Many of Matt and Danny's photos will be featured on the UCMP website in the coming months — be sure to check out the UCMP blog! Also, look for their photos on flickr — our flickr member name is UCMP.
 

Danny Anduza photo by Jennifer Skene