The Inquirer will post entries about the experience in a new blog, "Live Science," at www.philly.com/livescience.
Daeschler's trip will be over in a few weeks, but "Live Science" will continue as the host site for scientists in the region to blog from the field about their research.
Academy senior fellow Robert Peck is also blogging from his current trip to Mongolia, accompanying scientists in their search for evidence of climate change, at www.philly.com/treks.
On Daeschler's trip to the Arctic, he is being joined by his University of Chicago colleague Neil Shubin. Together, they have been trekking to the Canadian territory of Nunavut since 1999.
Here, the terrain contains rock from the Devonian period, when fish were thought to have evolved into creatures with limbs.
Millions of years ago, this land mass was literally swampy waters near the equator.
In 2004, when they were on Ellesmere Island, they discovered three nearly complete skeletons of a species they later named Tiktaalik roseae.
When Daeschler and Shubin announced the discovery in the journal Nature in 2006, it was called one of the clearest illustrations yet of a signature moment in the story of life: the transition from water to land, Inquirer reporter Tom Avril wrote at the time.
This summer's expedition is putting Daeschler, Shubin, and two colleagues in an unexplored region of Devon Island, where they will search for additional Late Devonian fossil finds.
The team is being dropped into the remote area by helicopter along with camping equipment, tools, 300 pounds of food, a radio, and the satellite phone.
From two base camps the team will carefully explore for fossils in rock outcrops in an area of about 70 square miles. All of the work is done on foot in weather that is much like Philadelphia in March, though without any darkness during July at this high latitude.
Contact staff writer Sandy Bauers at 215-854-5147 or sbauers@phillynews.com. Visit her blog at http://go.philly.com/greenspace.
