Connie Soja     Life at Colgate continues to be challenging and fun! Students keep me busy in my courses on Evolution, History of Life, and Invertebrate Paleontology as well as on the O.C. when we investigate Ordovician rocks at Ingham Mills (no recent dam failings) and Trenton Falls (field quiz still very popular). In the fall of 98, I taught a new first-year seminar on "The Sixth Extinction," in which students researched and discussed evidence about past mass extinction episodes as a springboard for understanding modern threats to the Earth's biodiversity. We also experimented with preservational processes by burying (in my backyard) and later exhuming various once-living objects (clams, crab legs, pork chops, flowers, mushrooms, etc.) "collected" at the Grand Union--this exercise made it possible to hypothesize about the kinds of organisms that have the best chances for becoming fossilized as part of the geologic record. Needless to say, we discovered that Hamilton has an ample and active supply of predators-scavengers, varmints who managed to scarf up a high percentage of our experimental "corpses," thus illuminating the importance of "taphonomic" processes in paleontology and the rarity of fossilization! I continue to serve as Past-President of the Board of Trustees of the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) in Ithaca. We hope to fulfill PRI's mission of increasing and disseminating knowledge about the history of life by building a major natural history museum in Ithaca over the next few years. Bob Linsley and I have been working with others at PRI on the design of exhibits that would eventually be on display in the museum, a daunting but exciting endeavor. Once built, the museum will be a wonderful resource to have so close to Colgate. Summer research takes me back to Alaska annually, most recently to Glacier Bay National Park where with Colgate students (Allison Gleason, '98; Brian Flynn, '98; Stacey Joyce, '00; and Lisa Mayhew, '00) and a Russian colleague we discovered a Silurian stromatolite reef complex and interesting assemblages of mollusks beautifully exposed in an ice-free area in the central part of the bay. Despite the rain, field work was enhanced by the exciting geology, mountainous scenery, tidewater glaciers, lack of telephones and computer hook-ups, and abundant wildlife, including the occasional bear, wolves (tracks and pre-coprolite material along the beach), whales, seals, otters, eagles, giant starfish, etc. During the summer of 1998, Dave Sunderlin and Steve Close buried alligator, emu, ostrich, and chicken eggs in the lab and at two field sites out west (Colorado and Nebraska) to replicate conditions that may have been associated with the preservation of Colgate's Oviraptor dinosaur egg. Their research showed that during three months of burial, eggs experience significant pre-fossilization changes, including stress fractures, partial sand casting, and "predation" by mammalian scavengers. See our web page for related story and more information about their project. And a special note of thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Walter Fullam for their generous support of this research. I was able to visit Russia in 1998 for field work in the Ural Mountains to compare Silurian reefs there with those I've been studying with Colgate students for many years in southeastern Alaska. My Russian colleague, Anna Antoshkina, has discovered highly similar stromatolite-sponge buildups that we investigated in a remote part of the Urals. The mosquitoes in Russia are even bigger and more persistent than those in Alaska (and their buzzzzzz is loud and annoying...). But the Russians know how to do field work right--travel by Russian-built army trucks (scary), a hot "banyu" (sauna) and jump in a cold river at day's end, "hired" cooks preparing simple food, and lots and lots of vodka. As they say in Russia, za vasha zdorovye (to your health...)!!