Boundary

A trilogy of novels co-written by Ryk E. Spoor and Eric Flint: Boundary, Threshold, and Portal (upcoming). Discovery of alien archaeological artifacts drives a mission to Mars.

Tropes used in Boundary include:

Canis Latinicus: Finding a mysterious fossil of a never-before-seen organism, one of the protagonists names it Bemmius secordi. The secordi is for the Secord family, on whose land it was found. Only a few people catch on that the Bemmius is her covert reference to "Bug Eyed Monster", as she's convinced it's the fossil of an alien but which isn't something she dares state publicly.
Christmas Cake: Helen, the paeleontologist, is forty at the beginning of the first book.
Cool Starship: The Nebula Storm.
Designated Victim: Boundary incorporates the Baen Books house joke of killing off Joe Buckley. In this book, it's subverted -- despite teasing his impending doom from the very first sentence, and on multiple occasions since, he survives. By the end of Threshold, he's even married to a sexy secret agent, and although it seems like they've both been killed, they turn up alive in the first chapter of Portal.
Did Do the Research
Everything Sensor: The Fairy Dust is a relatively realistic version.
He Is Not My Boyfriend: A.J. and Jackie are two scientists who work together and are friends; they also bicker a lot. As such, Jackie always gets ribbed by the other people in their team about her "boyfriend" A.J. She vehemently denies these accusations to the knowing reaction of the others. Ultimately subverted, as A.J. ends up with somebody else, and Jackie smugly declares to everyone within hearing distance, "I told you he wasn't my boyfriend."
Load-Bearing Hero: A cave-in in an ancient ice tunnel. Luckily, Our Hero's spacesuit could become rigid on command, so the problem was merely replacing her with other bracing.
Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs
Shout-Out: to Fullmetal Alchemist and Saint Seiya.