Brittney's Project Page

Who:  I am from Utah and Colorado. I’ve spent most of my childhood in Colorado before moving to Utah in the sixth grade. I enjoy the arts, reading, writing, and music.

My scientific/engineering interests:  I have loved paleontology and ancient creatures since the second grade. I thoroughly enjoy the history of life and the history of the planet Earth.

Academic goals:  I am a geology and geophysics major. I hope to continue on in my ACCESS lab and contribute to that research.

Career goals:  One day, I hope to become a paleontologist and work on preserving and researching the fascinating creatures of Earth’s ancient past.

Long ago, ancient shelled cephalopods called Ammonites dominated Earth’s oceans. These now-extinct creatures lived and died abundantly, leaving a fossil record of only their shells. One way we can try to interpret life mode is by assessing how their fossil morphology, their shells, may have impacted their ability to swim. In this research we achieve this by examining drag, which is the force resisting the shell being pushed through the water. Thus, this research focuses on the drag of Ammonite shells using Westermann morphospaces and Computation Fluid Dynamics, which simulates water flow. Using this, drag has a seen a direct correlation with the inflation or thickness of the shell which supports the expectations of drag on these Ammonite shells. However, there was considerable variable in the other aspects of shell morphology that does not agree with long standing assumptions that the thinner, oxyconic shell shapes consistently result in less drag. Thus, a new study specifically on the discrepancies regarding the drag and shell shape.  This will be done by running a new set of shell data that only deals with oxyonic and sphereoconic shapes along the furthermost edge of the morphspace of the first study where the discrepancies appear to be the greatest. By doing so we can determine why the drag is inconsistent to past assumptions and better understand how Ammonites moved and survived.

Effects of Drag on Ammonite Shells in Water Download Effects of Drag on Ammonite Shells in Water