Shirley Smalley, Volunteer Team Member

"I love field work!"

Shirley Smalley is a retired geologist who has been volunteering at the Houston Museum of Natural Science for six years.

At the Museum, Shirley gives tours of the permanent exhibit halls to students, takes artifacts into the classroom as a docent-to-go, and volunteers with the HMNS dig team, as she is doing this week.

"I like digging for all fossils - no favorites here.Though I am most proud of the Araeoscelis I found here last time. That was a fun find."

In her career, she specialized in analysis of carbonate resevoirs (used by energy companies to find oil-producing locations) and environmental geology, which is used to evaluate the condition of sites that have been exposed to a contaminant.