Rock Hound
As a child I was a collector of many things, including rocks, minerals, and fossils - recovering, for example, brachiopod fossils from a shale bank atop a ridge near my eastern Kentucky home town. I have prospected in the Yukon (see Gold Prospector) and elsewhere, and maintain a cabinet of minerals (including purchased specimens) in my lab. (I have used, for example, Spanish cinnabar to make vermilion, regarding research on the Shroud of Turin - see Sindonologist.)
