The other scientific task that is consuming my time is sample preparation. I ordered samples from nearly a dozen deep sea drilling sites. The four samples on the left, for example, are of Paleocene age (~60 million years old) from a core drilled in the early 1970s in the Eastern Indian Ocean. I will break this samples down through a many-step process that includes treatment by hydrochloric acid (my geology know all about this!) and hydrogen peroxide. The result will hopefully be isolated fossils that I can view in the light and electron microscopes. I will show pictures of these fossils later, but it will be a while.