Former resident featured in PBS series

Former Thermopolis resident, Laura Vietti, is joining other University of Wyoming faculty, students and alumni in a three-part natural history series, “Prehistoric Road Trip”, to be shown on PBS.

The three episodes will take viewers through different time periods, focusing on geology, ecology and the environment, covering paleontology and fossil hunting throughout North America.

In her segment, Vietti is covering fossilized teeth and how the minerals they are made of can provide insight into the climate at the time as well as the animal’s diet and much more.

“Teeth are like a paleontological gold mine,” she said. “Most fossil teeth in the early Cenozoic era are quite small, like the size of a pin head, so we have a specialized digitization station capable of imaging small fossil teeth at very high magnification.”

Vietti is the University of Wyoming Geological Museum and collections manager and will appear in episode three of the series.

To catch the episodes, tune into PBS stations on Wednesdays, June 17, 24 and July 1 at 8 p.m. or stream it online at http://www.wttw.com/prehistoricroadtrip.