Florida Museum Fossils Go to Space

UF researcher Rob Ferl carried 56-million-year-old primate and horse jawbones, plus a Pleistocene moon snail shell from the Florida Museum of Natural History, on a suborbital flight aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.

The recent launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket marked several historic milestones. It was the first time a NASA-funded researcher left Earth on a commercially owned rocket. Thanks to that same researcher, it was also the first time that a fossilized snail, horse and early ancestor of modern primates have been to space.

Rob Ferl is a geneticist who studies the effects of acceleration and zero gravity on plants, work that could one day help to establish an outpost on Mars. He’s been a professor at the University of Florida since 1980 and is currently serving as the inaugural director of the UF Astraeus Space Institute.

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