Kaitlyn Gauvey
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cherthappens.bsky.social
Kaitlyn Gauvey
@cherthappens.bsky.social
210 followers 110 following 7 posts
I study billion-year-old silicified microfossiliferous rocks. Geologist. Carbonate/chert petrographer. Dabbling in spectroscopy. Karst science. Rock doc (PhD at UTK). FHSU alumna (M.Sc.)

Aroid and Hoya enthusiast.
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cherthappens.bsky.social
One of my recent articles published in Frontiers in Earth Science. Here is the link if you would like to read our study: www.frontiersin.org/article/1598...
Frontiers | Unravelling neomorphism: recrystallization pathways in Proterozoic microfossiliferous chert
www.frontiersin.org
June 5, 2025 at 5:10 PM
Reposted by Kaitlyn Gauvey
weratedogs.com
"Good morning class today we're going to learn what makes a good boy so good" 13/10
a photo taken from a few rows back in a college lecture hall. there’s a golden retriever standing on their hind legs with their paws resting on the long table at the front of the room. the whiteboards behind them are blank for now, because they’re going to need a lot of room to explain.
April 2, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Reposted by Kaitlyn Gauvey
xkcd.com
Stromatolites xkcd.com/3046
February 4, 2025 at 2:47 AM
Reposted by Kaitlyn Gauvey
chuckwendig.bsky.social
My writing process is usually:

a) I got this
b) well, fuck
c) wait that part was real good
d) wait no that part sucks
e) I am a god of this place
f) the fuck is this shit, who do I think I am, why am I here
g) oh man I just figured it all out
h) mistakes were made
I) existential dread
December 4, 2024 at 10:29 PM
cherthappens.bsky.social
Acquiring gigapans of my Mesoproterozoic chert samples from Arctic Canada. This microbial mat has been severely disrupted over the eons. #Leica
December 4, 2024 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Kaitlyn Gauvey
archeanandrea.bsky.social
For today's #FossilFriday, I'm sharing a story about how I look for fossilized microorganisms in 2.5-billion-year-old black chert. It's a medium post, but no membership is needed to read it!

medium.com/fossils-et-a...
Studying Life Before the Cambrian Explosion
The elements of Precambrian paleontology
medium.com
November 1, 2024 at 2:37 PM
Reposted by Kaitlyn Gauvey
archeanandrea.bsky.social
This #FossilFriday is a close-up view of some morphologically complex microbialites that occur in the 2.5 billion year old Gamohaan Formation (South Africa).

These microbial structures are primarily preserved in calcite and don't generally include microfossils.

A LOT more info in the ALT text.
Image: A fist-sized gray and white rock. About a third of the rock consists of a layer of dark gray features that appear as curved lines draping off of a narrow central support. The curved lines are separated by white concave up lenses of coarsely crystalline rock that are relatively resistant to erosion. Additional Info: The dark gray features are rich with fossilized organic matter. They are microbial structures that preserve the morphology of microbial communities that lived at the upper limit of the undisturbed zone of a Neoarchean carbonate shelf about 100 million years before oxygen started to accumulate in the atmosphere. The white lenses of rock are composed of bladed calcite that filled voids within microbial structures after the biological features had already begun to lithify. This image has 11 panels, A through K. A is a scan of a thin section that was prepared from a rock that was collected from the same facies as the rock in the first image. It features black microbial structures preserved in a matrix of white calcite. Panels B-K are photomicrographs of features indicated in panel A. They show morphological details of the black microbial structures in the thin section, including filmy layers held up by support structures composed of fluffy masses as well as contorted layered features. This is a figure from my dissertation, which can be accessed here: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1721145153623216 This is a four-paneled figure that shows morphologically-complex microbial structures called cones and pinnacles that occur in some perennially ice covered lakes in Antarctica. The microbial structures, especially the pinnacles, have been studied as possible modern analogs to the fossilized microbial structures featured in the previous two images. The image is Figure 1 from Greco et al. (2024), Genome-resolved metagenomics reveals diverse taxa and metabolic complexity in Antarctic lake microbial structures, which can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1111/1462-2920.16663. It's open source! The caption of the figure reads, "The microbial structures of Lake Untersee (A) Pinnacle and Cone microbial structures forming adjacently (B) Pinnacle microbial structures (C) Cross-section of a cone structure showing individual sedimentary layers with an upper layer consisting of a few highly purple pigmented lamina and lower unpigmented laminae of beige colour and rich in sedimentary clay (D) Cross-section of a pinnacle structure. Photography by Dale T Andersen." The layers visible in the pinnacle cross section have some morphological resemblance to the draping layers of the microbialites in the previous image.
November 8, 2024 at 8:09 PM
cherthappens.bsky.social
Casually measuring chalcedony spherules when my wallpaper changes and makes me giggle. That’s my dog Daisy and she is a lovely assistant. #chert #petrography
November 27, 2024 at 1:33 PM