SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — A group of San Diego State University students are embarking on a week-long research expedition to the Channel Islands off the Santa Barbara coast, with the ambitious goal of potentially rewriting human history through underwater archaeological discoveries.
This Thanksgiving, Tyler Lodge will be one of 14 undergraduate and graduate students from SDSU trading their holiday at home for a week at sea off the coast of the Channel Islands.
"It's a really eye opening experience and I'm just excited to take part of it," Lodge said.
The mission is to go back in time and see what the ocean floor reveals about the earliest record of humans on Earth. SDSU geology professor Dr. Jillian Maloney will be leading the project and says what they find could potentially rewrite history.
"Those places would be underwater now and so if we can identify landscapes where people would have been living it means there might be cultural resources preserved there," Maloney said.
The lab is where Maloney along with her students time travels, so to speak, to see what rocks reveal about human genealogy. The students will board the Sally Ride research vessel for their expedition.
Jimmy Futty, a PhD student, will serve as the chief scientist overseeing operations on the boat.
"I'm feeling excited, anxious, nervous. There's been a lot of work, time, effort that's been put into this whole process," Futty said.
This job is usually one for experienced oceanographers, making this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these SDSU students to actually get on a research vessel and potentially make some historical discoveries off the California coast.
If their research pays off, the past may not stay buried for long. The group will be partnering with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles to preserve any artifacts they find on the trip.
