This is a cross section of my fingernail. I chose this item because I wanted to see weird, alternative views of my body. We see our fingernails everyday; clipping them is sort of a chore. I wanted to explore what kind of physical record the fingernails produce (thinking about how rings can be viewed as a long-term record within trees). They’re made of keratin, and, according to Donna Beer Stolz, these structures will form differently between nails, horns, etc. from different organisms. It was amazing to see these layers and the cavernous layers in my fingernail clipping. What kind of differences could there be between human nails? Donna and I discussed possible differences across different people’s nails, especially how the surface of the nail might change.