Tidbits

UCMP salutes
Danny Anduza: Danny is a student attending Contra Costa Christian High School in Walnut Creek with a burning interest in the evolution of dinosaurs. This summer Danny volunteered for 30 hours/week (!), helping out in the collections with every possible kind of task: inventorying loan returns, numbering turtle bones, picking matrix from the Late Cretaceous Judith River Formation of Montana, unpacking Triceratops, and keeping Tyrannosaurus rex free of dust bunnies. Danny also helps out at public events such as Cal Day and the UCMP Short Course. Thanks for being part of the UCMP family, Danny!

Ken Finger: UCMP recognizes and extends a hearty thank you to Museum Scientist Ken Finger, who graciously served as Editor of PaleoBios the past four years and handled his responsibilities with enthusiasm and dedication. Ken oversaw the production of 12 issues of PaleoBios and the Cal Paleontology Conference (Cal Paleo) 2008 abstract volume. We thank him for his commitment and effort above and beyond the normal two-year term. As Editor, Ken was joined by Associate Editor Randy Irmis, who recently started his Assistant Professor and Curator of Paleontology positions at the University of Utah and Utah Museum of Natural History. With the completion and mailing of Volume 28, Number 3 (January 2009), Ken passes the editorial torch to Assistant Director Mark Goodwin. Lorraine Casazza will serve as the new Associate Editor.

Dave Smith: Dave is an integral part of the UCMP community. A highly talented graphic artist, Dave contributes his expertise to the UCMP web presence, serves as the webmaster to The Paleontology Portal, and is responsible for the layout and design of PaleoBios. Dave also designs the UCMP t-shirts and all UCMP print materials including posters, postcards, and the UCMP News. Dave serves as the coordinator of all UCMP Cal Day activities, cajoling us all into finding new ways to share our science with a broader audience. Most summers, Dave revitalizes his own passion for paleo by participating in field work in a variety of locations. We salute Dave, not only for all that he contributes to UCMP, but for completing 30 years of employment at Cal!

Click on any photo to see an enlargement. Left: Danny Anduza uses a long-handled duster to clean the T. rex. Middle: Ken Finger talks with visitors at last year's Cal Day open house. Bottom: Dave Smith cuts into a cake presented in recognition of his 30 years at Cal.

Congratulations!
To David Lindberg and Leslea Hlusko as presenters at the East Bay Science Café. Kicking off the Year of Science 2009, Dave spoke on "From limpets to echo location in whales: Serendipity in science" in January, and Leslea on "Milkshakes and melanin: Evolutionary adaptations out of place in a modern world?" in February.

To Jenny McGuire, who will receive the George D. Louderback Award. This award recognizes academic achievement and contributions to the museum's and departmental programs.

To Jann Vendetti who received Honorable Mention for Best Oral Presentation in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the annual meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology in Boston in January. Her talk was entitled "The fossil neogastropod genus Bruclarkia in the Eastern Pacific: Investigations of its endemism and speciation."

To the Human Evolution Research Center (HERC) and UCMP for the new, VLSB exhibit on human evolution that includes skeletons, a video presentation, and a recreation of a famous Ethiopian field site. The display was created by Tim White and a team of graduate students and post-docs, and is dedicated to the memory of F. Clark Howell. Read more about the exhibit online.

Collection donation
UCMP is pleased to acknowledge the donation of more than 800 fossil coral specimens to UCMP by Dr. Calvin H. Stevens, recently retired from the Geology Department at San Jose State University. This fine research collection of slides and cut blocks, including 200 type specimens, was accumulated over a ~45 year period. The majority of the specimens are colonial from Permian rocks in the western USA, but there are also specimens from around the world from strata ranging in age from Ordovician to Triassic. Cal maintained excellent field notes, locality records, and stratigraphic data on this collection, and with these, he is also donating reprints on the collection. Highlights include Early Permian rocks from eastern Nevada and western Utah and separate collections from Warm Spring Canyon, Conglomerate Mesa, and Oregon.
 

Danny Anduza photo by Susumu Tomiya; Ken Finger photo by Pat Holroyd; Dave Smith photo by Jann Vendetti. All photos © UCMP.