Discovering Curiosity: Saving the White Abalone with Kristin Aquilino
About 375 million years ago, the state of Iowa lay submerged beneath an ocean. Marine creatures—like giant sea scorpions, snails and primitive fish—skittered, crawled and swam through these waters. Today, scientists and researchers have a close-up view of these prehistoric animals thanks to sites like the Devonian Fossil Gorge, which is located in Iowa City and was unveiled by a flood in 1993.
Kristin Aquilino, an assistant project scientist at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, remembers that flood. She was a child when it occurred, and her father took her to a nearby spillway to watch hurtling waters cascade into the earth.
Though today Iowa is thousands of miles from both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, the fossilized seafloor is a reminder of our constantly shifting Earth. And in a way, it was a sign of Aquilino’s future career as an ocean scientist.