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.

Palm-like cycads have been around since the last dinosaurs munched on them 65.5 million years ago, but those that we see today are really only a few million years old, according to a new study by an international team of scientists.

“Cycads are poster-child living fossils, yet the living species are really young,” reports UCMP Director and Professor of Integrative Biology Charles Marshall, co-author of the study appearing online October 20 (in advance of publication) in Science. “So, while the group as a whole are living fossils, the species themselves are not.”

Cycads are endangered cone-bearing plants that have survived in tropical and subtropical pockets to the present. The UC Botanical Garden hosts a nationally recognized collection of cycads, many of which were rescued from plant smugglers.

Molecular evidence was used to show that the surviving cycad species are actually not relics of the dinosaur era, but the result of an evolutionary explosion among cycads that began about 12 million years ago.

“All the cycad species we examined diverged from their nearest relatives in a really narrow window of geologic time, well after the dinosaurs became extinct” said co-author Charles Marshall, director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology and a UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology. “This was a global event, and then the diversification essentially stopped in the last couple of million years. There is no other group of plants that has this remarkable pattern of diversification.”

“We can now say that living cycad species are not ancient or leftovers from dinosaur times,” said Nathalie Nagalingum, a research scientist at the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney, Australia, who led the study while a post-doctoral fellow in Marshall’s laboratory at Harvard University and subsequently UC Berkeley. “They evolved independently of dinosaurs only 12 million years ago. The recent radiation of cycads radically changes our view of these emblematic living fossils.”

Nagalingum, Marshall and colleagues studied all 11 groups of cycad and two-thirds of the world’s 300 species, developing a molecular clock that told them how recently living cycads diverged from one another. If they had truly dated from the dinosaur era, the times of divergence between the living species would have dated back to their heyday in the Jurassic, which began 200 million years ago. Instead, they found the living species originated within the last 12 million years or so.

“It was amazing that all the cycad groups across the globe in Australia, Africa, Southeast Asia and Central America began to diversify at the same time,” Nagalingum said. “This indicated that a global trigger may have been responsible. It seems that the trigger was a change in the climate, that is, when global cooling began and when the world started having more distinct seasons. Cycads are very slow-growing plants so it’s hard to predict whether cycads can survive, now that climate change is occurring at a much faster rate,” she said.

Nagalingum and Marshall's coauthors include Tiago Quental, a former UC Berkeley post-doc now at the Universidade Estadual de São Paulo, Brazil; Hardeep Rai of Utah State University; Damon Little of the New York Botanical Garden; and Sarah Mathews of Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum.

See the abstract of the study, Recent Synchronous Radiaton of a Living Fossil on the Science website.

UCMP and The Paleontology Portal are proud to observe this year's Earth Science Week (October 9-15) and second annual National Fossil Day (October 12) by (1) launching an interactive map of National Park Service (NPS) areas that preserve fossils; (2) presenting an East Bay Science Café talk; and (3) sharing Bay Area fossils with the public in the upcoming Bay Area Science Festival.

1. Launching a new interactive map
The mission of National Fossil Day, hosted by the NPS and the American Geological Institute, is to — as the NPS website states so nicely — "… promote public awareness and stewardship of fossils, as well as to foster a greater appreciation of their scientific and educational values."

In support of this goal, The Paleontology Portal is launching a new interactive map of North America, featuring all the NPS areas (230 or so) that either preserve fossils or have the potential of preserving fossils, based on fossils found nearby. The information for each park includes the geologic age or ages of the fossil-bearing rocks, the kinds of fossils found in those rocks, and a link to the park's NPS website.

The NPS Fossil Parks page lists all 232 NPS areas that preserve fossils and provides links to NPS pages that relate to those fossils.

2. A science café on fossils
UCMP's Dave Lindberg will be the featured speaker at the November 2 East Bay Science Café at La Peña in Berkeley. He will be talking about the history and ecology of kelp forest ecosystems. The East Bay Science Café, hosted by the Berkeley Natural History Museums and Science@Cal, is held the first Wednesday of every month, 7-9 pm at Café Valparaiso, La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA.

3. Who lived here before the Giants?
AT&T Park may now be home to the San Francisco Giants, but let's go back in time — waaay back. UCMP graduate students Jenna Judge and Rosemary Romero will share fossil evidence of some of the much earlier inhabitants of the Bay Area — just one of many activities of the 2011 Bay Area Science Festival and National Fossil Day! To be held on November 6, 2011 at AT&T Park, San Francisco.

The Berkeley Initiative in Global Change Biology (BiGCB) was recently awarded a $2.5 million dollar grant by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.  The grant funds seven major projects and involves the participation of faculty members in eight departments and four of the Berkeley Natural History Museums on Berkeley's campus, including UCMP and IB faculty Cindy Looy, Tony Barnosky, and Charles Marshall.  Projects focus on using novel methods to understand the past, present, and future of the biosphere, ranging from obtaining a high resolution record of climate change using lake cores to applying theory-based metrics to analyze biological change.

Established in November 2009, BiGCB is an initiative bringing together over 100 Berkeley faculty and researchers to collaborate in the field of global change biology.  The Initiative is focused on integrating multiple disciplines to better predict how the biosphere will be affected by global changes through careful understanding of these changes in the past and present.

San Francisco Bay. Image courtesy of USGS.

San Francisco Bay has had a dynamic and complex history over the past million years as sea level rose and fell at least four times with alternating warming periods and glaciations. About 13,000 years ago, the first group of humans arriving in the area would have walked through a valley with a river flowing nearly 48 km out toward the ocean.  The current bay formed only about 6,000 years ago.

In a recent paper published by Quaternary Research, Amy Lesen, former PhD student in UCMP and currently Chair of Biology at Dillard University in New Orleans, and Professor of the Graduate School Jere Lipps, compare the foraminifera present in the San Francisco Bay today with what was present 125,000 years ago. According to their results, not much has changed in the species that are present. However, the human introduction of a Japanese invasive species, Trochamminia hadai, in 1983 dominated the native foram species and produced more change in the microfaunal assemblage within the last 30 years than within the time it has taken to form the bay. This work sponsored by the UCMP serves as an example of how human actions can have a more severe impact within a small amount of time than the natural changes that take over several millennia.

SEM images of foraminifera a. Ammonia beccarii and b. Buliminella elegantissima. Images courtesy of Quaternary Research.

Similar resemblance in the hyphae of living fungus Rhyzoctonia solani (left) and ancient fungus Reduviasporonites (right). (Rhizoctonia image courtesy of Lane Tredway, The American Phytopathological Society)

At the end-Permian extinction event 250 million years ago, 70% of land organisms and 95% of marine organisms went extinct.  Forests of conifer relatives were also wiped out … and their demise may have been helped by pathogenic soil fungi suggest UCMP's Cindy Looy and colleagues Henk Visscher, Utrecht University, Netherlands, and Mark Sephton, Imperial College, London.

Most researchers accept that extensive volcanism at the end of the period, resulting in major changes in global climate, was the root cause of the Permian mass extinction. Under stress from these climate changes, the conifer forests may have become more susceptible to attack from the soil-borne pathogenic fungi, speeding widespread tree mortality. If so, could our own changing climate trigger attacks by living pathogenic fungi on today's stressed forests?

Learn more about Looy et al.'s studies of fossil and living pathogenic fungi:

• Read about this research at UC Berkeley's News Center.
• Read the abstract of the paper Geology.

UCMP's Katherine Brakora and UCMP alums Edward Davis (now at University of Oregon) and Andrew Lee (now at Midwestern University) reviewed the evolution of mammal headgear in the latest edition of Proceedings of the Royal Society B. They examined phylogeny, development and fossil histology to establish a clearer picture of the evolution of these cranial appendages. This work has biomedical implications as well — understanding fast-growing antler bone may help with treating burns, bone cancer, osteoporosis and more.

Additional links:

• Read the press release at the University of Oregon.
• Read the full paper at Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
• Read a news story at Live Science.

Elk photo by Gerald and Buff Corsi © California Academy of Sciences

This post's text is also available in Spanish.

Emily Lindsey fossil hunting at her site in Ecuador.

Congratulations to graduate student Emily Lindsey, this year's recipient of the George D. Louderback Award! Emily has been hard at work the past few years investigating the timing, dynamics, and key players behind the late Pleistocene extinction of megafauna in South America.

Like the famous La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California, Emily's excavation site on the Santa Elena Peninsula in Ecuador is an asphalt seep preserving the remains of a wide array of organisms. However, unlike the Tar Pits in California, the Ecuador site doesn't appear to be a tableau depicting the tragic demise of animals stuck in tar. Instead, it is likely the final resting place of remains transported by running water and then covered by nearby asphalt.

A. Setting up camp at Emily's site on the Santa Elena Peninsula. B. Close up of one of the excavated walls. C. Panoramic view of the entire site during the fossil dig.

So what mysterious late Pleistocene megafauna did she uncover in the seep? Mainly giant ground sloths (Eremotherium laurillardi) ranging from juveniles to adults, along with gomphotheres (elephant-like relatives of mastodons), giant armadillos and prehistoric horse. In general, Emily’s site had rather reduced biodiversity compared to other notable tar seeps. In fact only herbivores were found, unlike La Brea, which included the infamous and carnivorous sabertoothed cat and dire wolf.

All photos demonstrate the excavation process in the field by Emily's many international collaborators. B. Close up of bones being exposed.

Emily couldn’t do all this work without some help. For the excavation, she brought together a slew of collaborators from across continents to uncover (zing!) and understand the mysteries surrounding the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions. The Universidad Estatal Peninsula de Santa Elena (UPSE) sponsored the excavation and kept the fossil finds at the Museo Paleontologico Megaterio (MPM). Members of the Page Museum in California also flew down to Ecuador, bringing their expertise on the La Brea Tar Pits and asphalt seeps. And, several U.C. Berkeley students and alumni have volunteered their time on the dig. Several international articles were written about Emily’s exciting work, including one from the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles and the Universidad Nacional de Piura (UNP).

A. An area of deposited bones after they've been excavated. B. and C. The exposed fossils are plastered to protect them for transport to the museum.

Emily’s collaboration with UNP members in Peru was part of her goal to compare asphalt seeps from different locales. “I think the Talara tar seeps in Peru are pretty similar to La Brea, geologically & taxonomically, just my site in Ecuador is distinct from them,” says Emily. “This isn’t necessarily true of other asphalt sites here on the Santa Elena Peninsula, which may represent more traditional “tar pit” scenarios.”  Emily presented her results in a lecture at UNP last year.

Another large focus of Emily's work has been to tease apart the roles of climate change and habitat degradation from the arrival of humans on the disappearance of large mammals.  Several of the fossils uncovered at her site in Ecuador were found with cut marks. Though this might suggest that humans played a hand in overharvesting and subsequently pushing these mammals to extinction, there is no further evidence of human activity at her site. “It is also possible that the marks are ‘taphonomic’ features, caused when the bones were swept down a river or rubbed against other bones and rocks in the tar pit,” says Emily. Likely both climate change and human activities led to the downfall of these South American megafauna. The question is, how much did each factor contribute.

Other important tasks to do at the site include A. mapping out the location of the bones, B. measuring the stratigraphic layers, and C. sifting for microfauna.

With a much deserved award under her belt, we look forward to hearing more about Emily’s discoveries in the future!

A display of a giant ground sloth at the Museo Paleontologico Megaterio (MPM).

En Español:

Felicitaciones a la estudiante de doctorado Emily Lindsey, ganadora este año del Premio George D. Lauderback. Emily ha estado trabajando los últimos años investigando la cronología, los patrones y los actores principales en la extinción de la megafauna sudamericana al fin del Pleistoceno.

Tal como el famoso sitio Rancho La Brea en Los Ángeles, California, USA, el sitio que Emily está excavando en la Península de Santa Elena en Ecuador es un charco de asfalto que preserva los restos de una gran variedad de organismos. Sin embargo, a diferencia de los charcos de brea en Los Ángeles, el sitio en Ecuador no parece que fue una trampa donde varios animales murieron atrapados en brea, sino la ultima morada de restos trasladados por agua corriente y luego enterrados en el asfalto.

¿Y cual megafauna misteriosa ha encontrado Emily en los charcos de Santa Elena? Principalmente perezosos gigantes (Eremotherium laurillardi), desde críos hasta adultos, junto con gonfoterios (un pariente de los mastodontes parecidos a elefantes), armadillos gigantes, y caballos prehistóricos. En total, el sitio tiene menos biodiversidad en comparación con otros conocidos fosilíferos charcos de brea. De hecho, hasta ahora solo han encontrado herbívoros, a diferencia de Rancho La Brea, donde los fósiles más encontrados incluyen los famosos – y carnívoros – tigres dientes de sable y Canis dirus.

¡Emily no podría hacer todo este trabajo sin ayuda! Para las excavaciones, unió a un grupo de colaboradores de distintos continentes a des-cubrir (:)) y entender los misterios sobre la extinción de la megafauna Pleistocena sudamericana. La Universidad Estatal Península de Santa Elena (UPSE) apoyó la excavación y guardó los fósiles excavados en el Museo Paleontológico Megaterio (MPM). Personal del Museo de Historia Natural en Los Ángeles, California, también vino a ayudar con las excavaciones, contribuyendo con su alta experiencia y conocimiento sobre los charcos de brea. Además, varios alumnos y exalumnos de la Universidad de California en Berkeley han llegado como voluntarios a ayudar con los excavaciones. Algunos artículos internacionales han sido escritos sobre el trabajo emocionante de Emily, incluyendo uno del Museo de Historia Natural en Los Ángeles, y otro del Universidad Nacional de Piura (UNP) en Perú.

La colaboración de Emily con el personal del UNP fue en conexión con su proyecto de comparar charcos de brea de distintos lugares. "Yo creo que los charcos de brea en Talara, Peru son bien parecidos, geológicamente y taxonómicamente, con los de Rancho La Brea en Los Ángeles; solo el sitio que yo tengo es distinto," dijo Emily. "Esto no necesariamente es el caso con los otros sitios de asfalto que encontramos aquí en la Península de Santa Elena, los cuales podrían representar escenarios mas tradicionales de "trampas de brea."

Otro gran enfoque del trabajo de Emily ha sido diferenciar las contribuciones de cambios climáticos y degradación de hábitats y la llegada de los primeros humanos a Sudamérica, como causantes de la desaparición de mamíferos gigantes del continente. Algunos de los fósiles descubiertos en su sitio en Ecuador fueron encontrados con marcas parecidos a las hechas con cuchillos. Aunque esto podría sugerir que los humanos tenían un papel en la sobrecaza de estos animales y su eventual extinción, no hay mas evidencia de acciones humanos en el sitio. "También es posible que las marcas sean características 'tafonómicas,' producidas cuando los huesos fueron arrastrado por un río o cuando se frotaban unos contra otros o contra piedras en el charco de brea," dice Emily. Probablemente, ambos procesos – cambios climáticos y acciones de humanos – contribuyeron a la extinción de la megafauna Sudamericana. La pregunta es, ¿cuánto contribuyó cada factor?

Ya con un premio bien merecido, ¡esperaremos escuchar mas sobre los descubrimientos de Emily en el futuro!

UCMP's David Lindberg and the Smithsonian's Nicholas Pyenson determined how many gray whales could be supported by the ocean through periods of global cooling and warming. Their results, published in the latest edition of PLoS ONE, show that in the past 120,000 years gray whales survived periods when their feeding grounds were greatly-reduced due to glaciation. The authors propose that gray whales were able to survive the lean times by diversifying their feeding habits, a behavior that has been observed in modern gray whale populations.

Additional links:

• Read more about this research at UC Berkeley Newscenter.
• Read the full paper at PLoS ONE

Roy Caldwell was delighted to receive word yesterday morning from the Selection Committee of the Chang-Lin Tien Scholars in Environmental Sciences and Biodiversity that they had approved the nomination for Joey Pakes as a Tien Scholars Graduate Fellowship recipient! The amount of $21,000 will be awarded to Joey for tuition, fees and/or stipend for the 2011/2012 academic year. This is a one-year award with the possibility of a 2nd year of funding based on research progress and application.

"The committee noted that there was an extremely talented group of nominees and the Selection Committee did not have an easy task." So congratulations, Joey!!!

To learn more about Joey's work, enjoy Remipedes and cave diving: Field notes from Joey Pakes.