I had the amazing opportunity of being a Stanford Young Investigator this summer. I worked with Dr. Mark Nikolc in the Payne Paleobiology Lab, and conducted research on trilobites from the House Range in Utah. 

My research looked at Elrathia Kingii trilobite fossils from the Wheeler formation, Utah. This area of Utah is famous for being plentiful in E. Kingii trilobite fossils. As a group, our 17 interns found about a thousand fossils, 511 of which were E Kingii fossils.  

With all this data, my sub-team looked at allometry in trilobites. Allometry is the study of how different parts of a body like the tail, thorax and head change in relation to the whole trilobite as the trilobite grows. We found that the E. Kingii trilobites grow allometrically (a portion of each body part changes as it grows) and the rate of change in allometry shifts as it goes from juvenile to adult. We also found that there was a fossilization bias towards preserving whole small trilobites vs parts of larger trilobites. 

In order to ensure our measurement and data collection were accurate we imaged all the fossils using a digital microscope and then used Claude Code to build a measurement tool to help us precisely classify and measure the fossils.

It was a fantastic experience learning about ancient biology and applying AI to help us better understand trilobites. My fellow students were awesome and I made a lot of great friends. I’m really thankful for my mentor Dr. Mark Nickolic for being so helpful and inspiring. And I’m excited to present our findings at the American Geophysical Union conference in December.