Hands in the mud

We're almost going back to sea and only now do I get to rummage around in the cores we took last year to look for something to date. Better late than never! After getting the cores, getting sidetracked by teaching, making core logs, X-raying the interesting sections, combining the X-rays with the logs, and looking for interesting-looking shadows that could be shells, finally the time has come. And the first core immediately yielded stuff! So a year in, and the project is finally yielding what it should. Science is rarely a straightforward thing!

This is what you hope to see; an articulated shell! At the surface of the core there was NOTHING to see here...

Rummaging in the core with the X-ray on the screen

 And there it is: the articulated shell!

Some less flashy but still worthy shell unearthed