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2007 news archive


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		Patek receives 2008 George A. Bartholomew Award December 13, 2007 UCMP's Sheila Patek has received the Bartholomew Award from the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. Read more about it here.

		Pyramids, forams, and Red Sea reefs: Field notes from Lorraine Casazza, part 1 November 30, 2007 Grad student Lorraine Casazza files a report from Egypt, where she tracked down giant foraminifera in the Nile Valley and used modern and fossil forams to assess reef health in the Red Sea.

		Paleontologist Joseph Gregory has died at 93 November 30, 2007 Professor emeritus of paleontology and former UCMP director Joseph Gregory died on November 18. Read more about Dr. Gregory at the UC Berkeley NewsCenter.

		Pyenson publishes on the feeding mechanics of fin whales November 27, 2007 University of British Columbia biomechanists, along with UCMP grad student Nick Pyenson, quantify the feeding mechanics of fin whales in a recent paper published in Marine Ecology Progress Series. Read more about it at the UC Berkeley NewsCenter and The New York Times.

		Padian named as fellow of AAAS October 30, 2007 UCMP curator and Professor of Integrative Biology Kevin Padian has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The announcement was made in the October 26 edition of Science. Read more about it at the UC Berkeley NewsCenter.

		Fellows of the California Academy of Sciences honor Clemens October 22, 2007 Last week at the Annual Meeting of the Fellows of the California Academy of Sciences Bill Clemens received the Fellows' Medal. This is the highest honor awarded by the Fellows.

		Pyenson and Haasl describe Miocene whale-fall in Biology Letters September 14, 2007 Graduate student Nick Pyenson and museum scientist David Haasl describe and discuss a fossil whale-fall from the Miocene of California in the latest Biology Letters. The fossil, found on Año Nuevo Island, is a small baleen whale (only 11 feet long) with mollusks attached to its skeleton. The find demonstrates that extremely large body size is not necessary for whale-fall communities, and suggests that the evolution of these communities did not rely on whale size. Read more about it at the UC Berkeley NewsCenter and see the paper in Biology Letters.

		Lindberg and Pyenson propose that whales evolved sonar to locate cephalopods September 6, 2007 The journal Lethaia has published new work from curator/professor David Lindberg and graduate student Nick Pyenson regarding the evolution of sonar in toothed whales. They propose that whales at first used sonar to track nautiloids in shallow water, and over time evolved to track softer-bodied cephalopods at greater depth. Read more about it at the UC Berkeley NewsCenter.

		Barnosky receives Fulbright Senior Specialists Award July 31, 2007 Tony Barnosky, UCMP Curator and Professor of Integrative Biology, has been selected for a Fulbright Senior Specialists Award to conduct work in Santiago, Chile, at the Departamento de Ecología, Pontificia Universidad Católica, during Fall 2007. Tony will be working with Chilean faculty and students to study the ecological effects of global warming and is one of over 400 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad this year through the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program.

		Irmis and Padian explore dinosaur origins and make the cover of Science July 19, 2007 UCMP's Randy Irmis and Kevin Padian describe the Late Triassic coexistence of dinosaurs and dinosaur precursors in a cover story for the July 20 issue of Science. Fossils found in New Mexico, by Randy and others, show that dinosaurs did not quickly replace their predecessors, but rather that they may have shared the landscape for 20 million years or more. To find out more, go to the UC Berkeley press release, a fact sheet about the paper, Science magazine and Randy's recent field notes from Hayden Quarry in New Mexico. Also, watch some local television news coverage of the discovery, featuring UCMP alum Matt Wedel. KTVU and ABC7 both had the story.

		Caldwell on The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer July 18, 2007 UCMP director Roy Caldwell appeared on the PBS program The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer in a discussion about Claire Nouvian's new book The Deep. A transcript, audio and streaming video are available at the PBS website.

		UCMP awards student prizes May 30, 2007 In order to further support the research of its graduate students, UCMP is pleased to announce that Nick Pyenson is the 2007 recipient of the Remington Kellogg Award, and Lorraine Casazza and Maya DeVries will jointly share the Palmer Award. In addition, UCMP awarded four additional graduate student research awards this year. These went to Katie Brakora, Jenny McGuire, Becky Williams, and Randy Irmis. Congratulations to all.

		Kraatz receives Lincoln Ellsworth Fellowship April 9, 2007 UCMP grad Brian Kraatz received the two-year Lincoln Ellsworth Fellowship from the American Museum of Natural History. Brian will be with Dr. Meng Jin studying early rodent and rabbit evolution. The project will be incorporated into a larger NSF Tree of Life project studying all of mammals.

		Award and fellowship for Pyenson April 9, 2007 UCMP grad Nick Pyenson received the 2007 Louderback Award to a student in paleontology. Annually the Louderback Fund makes awards to recognize both the academic accomplishments and contributions to museum and departmental activities of students in paleontology and the earth and planetary sciences. Nick also recently received a NSF East Asian Summer Institutes fellowship to study the earliest baleen-bearing mysticetes in New Zealand with Ewan Fordyce, University of Otago, this summer.

		Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor teaching awards for UCMP grads April 9, 2007 UCMP grads Stephanie Bush (not pictured), Jennifer McGuire (left), and Jann Vendetti (right) all received Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor teaching awards from the Department of Integrative Biology.

		Flat Stanley visits UCMP March 26, 2007 UCMP recently received a two-dimensional visitor in the mail: Flat Stanley, sent to us by a first-grader named Cole. While here Flat Stanley visited labs, toured the collections, inspected dinosaur fossils, and even had a close encounter with an octopus. Read more about it and see photos of Flat Stanley's adventures at UCMP.

		Lipps at the AAAS Europa symposium March 5, 2007 UCMP faculty curator Jere Lipps participated in a symposium at the annual meeting of The American Association for the Advancement of Science about the search for life on Jupiter's icy moon Europa. The linked press release (at SpaceRef.com) includes Lipps's discussion of life in the polar regions of Earth, and how it applies to the possibility of life on Europa.

		UCMP at AAAS February 20, 2007 The annual meeting of The American Association for the Advancement of Science took place in San Francisco from February 15-19. UCMP faculty curator Jere Lipps co-organized and co-chaired two symposia: "Enigmatic Europa: Understanding Jupiter's Icy Moon" and "Achieving and Sustaining a Diverse Science Work Force." Lipps also gave a talk entitled "Is There Life on Jupiter's Icy Moon Europa?" concerning the evidence and future search for life on this watery moon.

		Williams quoted in Science News and San Francisco Chronicle February 20, 2007 Recently published work on the sequestering of toad toxins by snakes cited the research of UCMP graduate student Becky Williams. In turn, the popular press has gone to Williams for comment. Williams has been quoted in Science News and San Francisco Chronicle.

		Lipps profiled in ScienceMatters@Berkeley February 20, 2007 The February 2007 edition of Berkeley's College of Letters and Science publication ScienceMatters@Berkeley profiles UCMP faculty curator Jere Lipps. This engaging article follows Lipps's research from Richmond to Jupiter's moon Europa.

		Investigating a fossil whalefall locality on Año Nuevo Island February 8, 2007 UCMP museum scientist David Haasl and UCMP grad student Nick Pyenson recently undertook a unique field expedition off the central coast of California to investigate the original locality of a fossil baleen whale that represents the first documented fossil whalefall in California. Click through for the full story and photos.

		The genes that lie beneath: The work of Leslea Hlusko February 8, 2007 Over at Understanding Evolution we take a look at Leslea Hlusko's research, which takes her from the deserts of Ethiopia, where she hunts for hominid and primate fossils, to a baboon colony in San Antonio where she takes thousands of measurements of the primates' imposing canines. This research profile describes how the two projects are linked by a hunt for genetic variation, a key component of natural selection.

		Williams receives the Best Student Paper award at Molluscs 2006 January 2, 2007 UCMP grad student Becky Williams received the Best Student Paper award at the Malacological Society of Australasia's Molluscs 2006 conference in December. The paper, entitled "Chemical defense in hatchlings of the Blue-ringed Octopus Hapalochlaena lunulata", was co-authored with former UCMP grad student Crissy Huffard, and UCMP Director Roy Caldwell.