Redmond native Ema Blumhagen was recently awarded a $3,750 grant from the Jurassic Foundation to study fossil birds in Beijing, China.

The field work is linked to Aves 3D, a new online database of bones in the skeletons of living, recently extinct and fossil birds.

Made possible through a $497,735 grant from the National Science Foundation in August 2008, the Aves 3D site was launched by Dr. Leon Claessens, assistant professor of biology at the College of Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., where Blumhagen is currently a senior biology major.

Blumhagen attended Evergreen Junior High in Redmond until ninth grade, before moving to Massachusetts.

She spent last summer in Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, doing field work with Claessens, to research “the group of dinosaurs of the lineage that leads into birds,” she said in a phone interview with the Redmond Reporter.

Blumhagen will embark on the two-week trip to Beijing Feb. 27.

She explained that the Jurassic Foundation was started in 1998 with proceeds from the movie “Jurassic Park.” In fact, the fossils she’ll be studying may have similar traits to such Theropod dinosaurs as the T.rex and raptors seen in that 1993 box-office blockbuster.

During last summer’s field work in the American Southwest, “I was fascinated by the whole process … not always as technological as you might think … how they exacavate (fossils), package them, move them,” said Blumhagen. “Digging away, getting to find the fossils, is the coolest thing.”

Some of these fossils are 100 million years old.

The Aves 3D database will allow visitors to interact with approximately 200 three-dimensional digital models of bones and skeletons of 98 different bird species, ranging from common birds like the American robin to more fragile species such as the extinct dodo.

The database not only allows greater access to such information, but will help to reduce physical handling of delicate and often one-of-a-kind bones for analytical purposes.

Aves 3D is available, free of charge, to any scientists, educators, students or the general public.

After graduation from the College of the Holy Cross, Blumhagen hopes to do graduate study in biology, possibly leading to a doctorate in paleontology.