Dr. Sally E. Walker Click on image for full size (184 Kb) Courtesy of Sally E. Walker

Sally E. Walker is a Professor of Paleontology at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, USA.

Dr. Walker studies how animals become fossils. She is excited to go to Antarctica for the first time with Dr. Molly Miller (Vanderbilt University, Tennessee) and Dr. Sam Bowser (Wadsworth Center, New York) for NSF’s Polar Programs.

Together, they are studying how extremes in climate and environmental conditions may affect the dissolution of animal skeletons and how rapidly these skeletons degrade to become part of the carbon cycle. Do animal skeletons dissolve faster in polar regions than in warmer, tropical climates? If true, their findings may explain some scientific mysteries surrounding the fossil record of the continent of Antarctica.

Take a look at Solving Polar Fossil Mysteries, Sally Walker's Postcards from the Field, to learn more about this Antarctic research project.