From the Smithsonian Museums
Caitlin Keating-Bitonti is a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow in the Paleobiology Department at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Her research explores how patterns of size and shape in marine micro-organisms (benthic foraminifera) in the modern ocean are linked to oceanographic conditions, applying these identified links to better understand how patterns in the fossil record relate to past environmental change.
Scientists apply different methods to the geologic record with the goal of better understanding and quantifying ancient Earth's temperatures.