Monday, Aug. 25, four new interns began their hands-on pre-Panama training.  This training, orchestrated by Aaron Wood, was started in January (detailed here).  Before their departure to Panama on Sept. 7, they will have spent 8 days in the Florida Museum of Natural History learning about the identification and curation of fossils, and one day in the field in the Gainesville-area Haile Quarry, excavating fossil crabs, moldic invertebrates and a few vertebrate fossils.  The heat of the Florida summer will be a preview of what they will encounter in Panama.  Interspersed between these activities will be short, informal paper discussion sessions and presentations by some of the PCP PIRE regulars, such as Bruce MacFadden, Doug Jones, Catalina Pimiento, Austin Hendy, Aldo Rincon, and Claudia Grant.

Here are a few photos from their second day on the job: