While some students flipped hamburgers or baby-sat during the summer, others had a more adventurous experience.
Each year, Penn professors in the Earth and Environmental Science and Anthropology departments take groups of students on geological excursions and archaeological digs. This year, the trip locations ranged from the Central Delaware Marshes to the Gobi Desert in China.
"We had so much fun as a group and learned so much," says Michael McLaughlin, a second-year doctoral student in Anthropology who participated in a dig led by Anthropology professor Harold Dibble.
Dibble, also the curator-in-charge of European archaeology at the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, took a group of both undergraduate and graduate students to an excavation site in Roc de Marsal in France. There, his team analyzed and excavated the site, finding many artifacts that included stone tools, animal bones, hearths and fireplaces, which were later analyzed in a University lab. The site survives from the Stone Age.
"We're talking about a different species of human," Dibble says.
Another group of Penn graduate students spent five weeks on a summer dig led by Veterinary Anatomy and Environmental Science professor Peter Dodson, which took place in the Gobi Desert in China's Gansu province. Dodson and his team looked for animal remains hidden in rocks that dated back to the Cretaceous period, approximately 100 million years ago. Dinosaur bones and bones hypothesized to belong to birds were found there.
"It was a fond dream of all of ours," Dodson says of his group's experience.
In addition to archaeological digs, a number of professor-led geological excursions took place this summer.
College senior Emmanuelle Humblet joined two graduate students in a research experience program run by the University of Puerto Rico, in which the students assessed the hydrology of tropical streams and rainforests in Puerto Rico. Activities included hiking up streams to measure the size, shape and velocity of bedrock sediment, and making maps and measuring topography.
A bit closer to home, Environmental Science professor Robert Giegengack co-taught a summer session of "Rocky Mountain Field Geology and Ecology" with Yvette Bordeaux, associate director for undergraduate programs in Environmental Studies and Geology.
This year, 11 Penn students took the course, which involved an online instruction component prefacing a two-week trip to the Rocky Mountains.
"It was eye-opening seeing a different part of the country," says Stephanie Potts, a second-year graduate student in Environmental Studies.
The course taught geologic mapping and lake ecology, and included a trip to Yellowstone National Park.
Giegengack instructed his students, "Walk around until we find a huge hole that God has dug."
Even more locally, Environmental Science professor Hermann Pfefferkorn went with Penn undergraduates and two foreign colleagues on a trip to the Delaware Marshes to study fossil formation.
The group analyzed mud deposits as a model for the fossil formation that occurred 300 million years ago.
"We found that it is utterly amazing how a landscape can change like that," Pfefferkorn says.
