Lamar University students James Burnes, a geology and history double major from Beaumont, and Jordan Mika, a geology major from Dayton, earned awards at the Sigma Xi International Research Conference in the Woodlands recently.
Burnes and Mika earned a first place award in geological sciences. Burnes received a superior presentation medallion. Their research is titled “The stratigraphic position of the first Uinta C micro-mammal community from the Uinta Formation, Uintah County, Utah.”
Burnes, a former resident of Fred, served as a paleontology field assistant three summers on a project conducted by Jim Westgate, professor of earth and space sciences at the university in the Uinta Basin of northeast Utah studying 42 million year old vertebrate fossil remains.
Mika was part of the Utah field research team for two summers and worked a semester preparing the bulk samples to allow microscope analysis for micro-mammal teeth in the LU Paleontology Lab.
Funding for the research has been provided by LU Research Enhancement grants.
Sigma Xi is an international, multidisciplinary research society whose programs and activities promote the health of the scientific enterprise and honor scientific achievement. There are nearly 60,000 Sigma Xi members in more than 100 countries around the world. Sigma Xi chapters, more than 500 in all, can be found at colleges and universities, industrial research centers and government laboratories. The Society endeavors to encourage support of original work across the spectrum of science and technology and to promote an appreciation within society at large for the role research has played in human progress.
