Archive for the ‘UCMP news’ Category.
The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has awarded Judy Scotchmoor a Friend of Darwin award for her tireless commitment to evolution education. NCSE explains that the Friend of Darwin award "is presented annually to a select few whose efforts to support NCSE and advance its goal of defending the teaching of evolution in the public schools have been truly outstanding."
Read more about Judy, the award, and other Friends of Darwin.
This morning I was saddened to learn that long-time Friend of UCMP, Nestor John Sander (AKA Sandy) passed away. He was nearly 98. Sandy graduated from Cal with a B.A. in paleontology in 1936 and completed his Masters in 1938. He then joined Standard Oil Company of California and was sent to Saudi Arabia the same year. There he was assigned to map the subsurface contours of a major anticlinal fold that is now the largest oil field in the world, Ghawar. This more than qualified him for an interview as part of an ABC television special: Crude- the incredible journey of oil.
Sandy was a great story teller and while most World War II history buffs encouraged conversations about his dealings with King Saud, Sandy just wanted to talk paleo. His last visit to UCMP was some time ago as travelling became increasingly difficult for him, but his computer kept him connected, and his research never ended. On his YouTube channel you will find a series of lectures – self-published in his home in Modesto – and covering topics of stratigraphy, foraminifera and other microfossils. He had recently been in contact with Dave Lindberg, as he wanted to complete a series on molluscs. He was also a published author in a more traditional sense, completing a book about the first King of Saudi Arabia whom he met in 1939 – Ibn Saud: King by Conquest.
A visit to his home always began with a glass of champagne, strawberries, and petit fours – a combo he often shared with his wife of many of years and of whom he spoke with much tenderness. On our last visit, he entrusted me with a beautifully bound biography that he had written along with a photo album reflecting his life and his work. These I delivered to the Bancroft Library in the hopes that they will be of interest to others. He lived at a time of great world changes and he lived life to the fullest. You can find out more about who Sandy really was by reading his mini-autobiography on the web – entitled Peregrinations of a Positivist. I will really miss him.
Writer and illustrator Hannah Bonner paid a visit to Berkeley on January 11 to discuss the scientific and creative processes behind her series of paleontology books for children.
Born in and based out of Mallorca, Spain, Bonner received a degree in art and has since worked primarily as a freelance artist and illustrator. Her credits include creating artwork for Scholastic, WGBH, and the Smithsonian Institute. At the latter she met her UCMP host, Cindy Looy, who, along with Ivo Duijnstee, subsequently served as advisers for Bonner's reconstructions illustrating the biotic recovery following end-Permian extinction.
Bonner's interest in combining paleontology and art began when a friend asked her to draw a reconstruction of a fossil dwarfed goat from Mediterranean islands. She then partnered with National Geographic Children's Books to create a series of books focused on making the lesser known facets of ancient life -- giant insects, coal swamps, the transition to land of both plants and animals, and more -- accessible to children and adults alike.
Bonner's colorfully illustrated and intricately detailed books depict characters in all forms of terrestrial and marine life, spanning five geologic periods, including two mass extinctions. Her latest book, "When Dinos Dawned, Mammals Got Munched, and Pterosaurs Took Flight," to be released April 2012, tells the history of life starting with the recovery from the end-Permian mass extinction and concludes with the end-Triassic mass extinction.
Bonner's talk featured personal anecdotes from the creative and editing work that went into the final product, the struggles involved with accurately communicating the science and depicting paleoenvironments, and behind-the-scenes looks into the illustration process. Primarily an illustrator, Bonner comments that making the leap to writing for her books was easy with this subject matter because, as she states, "the plot is already written in stone."
To find out more about her books, click here.
Scans of artwork provided by Hannah Bonner.
The work that resulted in the Nature paper "Has the Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived?" came in at #3 on a list of the year's top news and discoveries from NSF-supported research, as measured by NSF web visitor statistics. The paper's UCMP co-authors include Tony Barnosky, Susumu Tomiya, Brian Swartz, Charles Marshall, Emily Lindsey, Kaitlin Maguire, and Elizabeth A. Ferrer.
Becoming emeritus usually means an opportunity to slow things down a bit, but that has certainly not been the case for UCMP curators Jim Valentine, Bill Clemens, or Carole Hickman by any means. But starting a new job? Well, welcome to "retirement" defined by Jere Lipps! Jere has just accepted the position of Director of Orange County's John D. Cooper Center for Archaeological and Paleontological Curation and Research.
The Cooper Center is a partnership between O.C. Parks and California State University Fullerton and is "dedicated to preserving the natural and cultural history of Orange County." Its sizable paleo collection represents plants and animals from every major time period since the Jurassic, but only a small fraction of the collection has been inventoried. In Jere's words: "The whales, walruses, and other marine animals and Eocene vertebrate fossils in the collection are tremendous additions to knowledge and heritage of Orange County and the Pacific Rim and will help fill in critical gaps in current knowledge. Some of the fossils are as old as the oldest rocks (Jurassic) that make up Orange County."
Though this will be a return to Southern California for Jere, having been born in Los Angeles and receiving his PhD at UCLA, we trust that the Berkeley connections will continue. To read more about the Cooper Center and Jere's new appointment, read the Cal State announcement. And for more about activities at the Cooper Center, watch this video on the Archaeo-Paleo Project.
Congratulations to Leslea Hlusko, UCMP curator and Professor of Integrative Biology, on her selection as a 2011 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Leslea received this recognition for her distinguished contributions to the study of primate evolutionary biology, especially in relation to the integration of genetics and the fossil record.
The list of fellows, released Tuesday, Dec. 6, by the AAAS, will appear in the Dec. 23 issue of Science.
For more on Leslea and her lab research, click here.
To read a UCMP research profile on her work, click here.
For more on the Berkeley Fellows, click here.
Grad student Kaitlin Maguire has researched and written a new feature on the Proboscidea — elephants and their relatives — for the UCMP website. This endeavor grew out of her recent work as a consultant on a 2011 exhibit at the San Jose Children's Discovery Museum. The exhibit focused on Lupé, the mammoth whose bones were discovered along the Guadalupe River in 2005. UCMP staff and students excavated the bones soon after the discovery.
Kaitlin's primary research interest is in "… understanding the relationship between climate, biogeographic distributions, and mammal evolution during the Cenozoic," but now she's become something of a mammoth maven!
Read about Kaitlin's work with the Children's Discovery Museum in these August 2009 and January 2010 blog entries. Learn more about Lupé's discovery, and see many photos chronicling the excavation and preparation of her bones, beginning here.
At left, Kaitlin in the field (southern Oregon) this past summer. Photo by Win McLaughlin.
UCMP joined the other Berkeley Natural History Museums, the Space Science Lab, Departments of Physics and Chemistry, SynBERG, nanotechnology experts, and a host of other science units as part of the campus-wide participation in the first annual Bay Area Science Festival – a 10 day celebration of science extending from San Jose to Santa Rosa!
Dave Lindberg gave a great talk on The History of Kelp Forests: Global and Local Surprises at the November East Bay Science Café and Rosemary Romero and Jenna Judge intrigued the huge crowds at the "fossil booth" at the culminating festival event at AT&T Park last Sunday! At last, it was revealed who lived there before the San Francisco Giants!
Under the umbrella of Science@Cal these were just two of numerous activities to engage the public of all ages and to share the value of science research at Cal. Read more on the Science@Cal site.
Science@Cal efforts were also a little outside of the box including science at local farmers' markets and in local art studios – see Art in Science.
And for more on the festival, visit Bay Area Science!
The 71st Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology took place November 2-5 in the Paris Las Vegas Hotel on the dazzling Vegas strip, and UCMP's usual presence was as strong as ever. At least 18 Berkeley faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduates presented talks or contributed to posters highlighting the range of work UCMP and affiliates accomplish, from bird development to biogeography, ecosystem conservation to dinosaur histology. In case you missed out on all the fun, check out the talk/poster titles and abstracts below.
ATTERHOLT, J. 2011. Phylogenetic mapping of the avian altricial-precocial spectrum and its implications for inferring early avialan life history. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 31(3, suppl.):64-65A. Abstract
CARRASCO, M. 2011. Comparing extant mammalian species diversity to paleospecies richness: Problems and solutions. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 31(3, suppl.):85A. Abstract / download the Powerpoint presentation
Carroll, N., A. POUST, and D. Varricchio. 2011. A third azhdarchid pterosaur from the Two Medicine Formation (Campanian) of Montana. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 31(3, suppl.). Abstract
FERRER, E.A., and N.J. MATZKE. 2011. Are raw taxic counts really reflecting shifts in diversity dynamics? A case study in canids. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 31(3, suppl.). Abstract
GOODWIN, M., K. Stanton, J.R. Horner, and S.J. Carlson. 2011. Oxygen isotopic variability and preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex, modern ratites and crocodylians: Revisiting the thermophysiology of T. rex using Δ18O. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 31(3, suppl.):117-118A. Abstract / Select slides from the presentation
HUYNH, T., S. Cam, A. Kwong, H. Mehrabani, K. Tse and D. Evangelista. 2011. Aerodynamic characteristics of feathered dinosaur shapes measured using physical models: a comparative study of maneuvering. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 31(3, suppl.). Abstract
LINDSEY, E.L. 2011. A sloth-dominated late-Quaternary asphalt seep from Santa Elena, Ecuador. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 31(3, suppl.). Abstract
LIPPS, J.H. 2011. PaleoParks: Preservation and conservation of fossil sites worldwide. Abstract
Matzke, N., and K. MAGUIRE. 2011. Inclusion of fossil species range data in dispersal-extinction-cladogenesis (DEC) analyses aorrects low estimates of extinction rate and improves estimates of historical biogeography. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 31(3, suppl.):154A. Abstract
Morris, Z., and E.A. FERRER. 2011. Ontogenetic variation in epiplastral shape among Eocene testudinoid turtles (Echmatemys) of western North America. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 31(3, suppl.). Abstract
PADIAN, K. 2011. Phylogenetic distribution of ecological traits in the origin of bats. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 31(3, suppl.):170A. Abstract / Nature news blog
STEGNER, A., and M. HOLMES. 2011. Using paleontological databases to assess spatial and temporal conservation of mammalian community structure as an aid to conservation planning. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 31(3, suppl.):199A. Abstract
The Coalition for the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) is a grassroots network that connects individuals who are passionate about advancing the public understanding of science. In existence since 2006 and responsible for the highly successful Year of Science 2009, COPUS is now focusing on expanding its community for science by promoting dialogue, building connections, and sharing ideas and resources.
The Coalition leadership team (the COPUS Core) is holding a science communication and networking "un-conference" in spring of 2012. At this event, we will bring together an eclectic group of passionate people, who have identified novel and innovative ways to bring science to the public. The conference will follow a participant and engagement driven meeting format. Rather than having a top down organization, the event will be built on a flexible framework and designed from the bottom up. This gives everyone a personal role in the event and invests attendees in a way that will enhance and focus their contributions to the meeting as a whole. Approximately two-thirds of the conference schedule, including the conference themes, session types, and topics to be covered, will be developed by the participants prior to the event. By using web tools like wikis, attendees will sculpt a program that will cater to their needs and interests. The remaining one third of the time will be left as open space within the event program – to be filled by the spontaneous interests, topics, and ideas that emerge.
Though this is primarily an invitational event, there will be an open application process that will enable additional people to attend the meeting. Applications will be available in early 2012. The COPUS Invitational will take place March 16-18, 2012, at the BioSphere II facilities in Arizona.
UCMP is one of the founders of COPUS and Judy Scotchmoor serves as one of the project managers, along with Sheri Potter of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. We are extremely grateful to The Whitman Institute for their support of this conference.
