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 semester, one of the foci of the CLIR/UCMP Archive Project has been cataloging what are called “supplemental locality files.” These files contain materials (other than field notes) that are relevant to UCMP collections, such as polaroid pictures of fossil sites, letters of correspondence involving UCMP scientists, and environmental impact reports for land development proposed in areas with known fossil sites. As such, they are unique records of how collections came to be, and how collections have since been used for research, education, and protection of paleontological resources on public lands.
My work on the project is (1) to improve the preservation of these materials by rehousing them in archival-quality containers and (2) to make entries in the UCMP collections database to link the archive and collections records. The latter makes it possible for anyone interested in, say, the holotype of Cretaceous plesiosaur Hydrotherosaurus alexandrae to look up what archival materials exist in the museum that are related to the specimen (by following the “Link to Archives” in the specimen record or administrative locality record; alternatively, the search function of the Archon database can be used).
In this example, the supplemental locality file includes photographs (below) and corresponding negatives of the excavation site taken in 1937, photographs of prepared specimens, William Gordon Huff’s reconstruction of the animal, and type-written captions for the photographs that were perhaps prepared for an exhibit. When combined with field notes, pictures of excavation sites like these often carry important information on how skeletal remains were buried, which in turn can provide insights into the habits and habitats of long-extinct animals (learn more about this topic). Beyond their scientific values, these pictures preserve vivid images of field work in the early 20th Century, enticing those of us who study paleontology today to ponder on the history of the discipline and personal development of yesterday’s workers whom we hold in high esteem (read about Samuel P. Welles).
You can see a replica of the Hydrotherosaurus skeleton at the City College of San Francisco.
Stay tuned for more exciting “digs” from the Archive Project!
[Larger versions of the photos below can be seen on CalPhotos.]
Left: A scraper pulled by a mule was used to remove fragments of shale from the surface and expose fossil-bearing layers of rock. Center: The holotype of Hydrotherosaurus alexandrae was recovered in the Panoche Hills of Fresno County, California, in 1937 by a joint party from Fresno State College (now CSU Fresno) and UC Berkeley. Right: Samuel P. Welles (left) and Lloyd Conley extracted a block containing the neck of the plesiosaur. Welles, then a graduate student, later described and named the plesiosaur after UCMP benefactor, Annie Alexander.
Center: A caption associated with this photo reads ‘We put the heavy blocks on a sled to get them out of the deep canyon ...’ Left: ‘... then, with a tractor up on top and a long cable going through a pulley which was anchored to a large sandstone dike, we gradually worked the sled down the main canyon.’ Right: Albert Branch (left) and Welles are surrounded by plaster jackets containing fossils.
Left: The UCMP holotype skeleton of Hydrotherosaurus alexandrae, specimen number 33912. The 30-foot skeleton was prepared by two WPA workers over 18 months and was put on display at the Golden Gate Exposition in 1940. Right: William Gordon Huff's reconstruction of Hydrotherosaurus alexandrae.
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.
Point Reyes and the surrounding area in Marin County is a beautiful place to visit and learn about local geology, paleontology, botany and zoology. Marin County contains large outcrops of the Franciscan Complex rocks. These rocks, mostly Cretaceous in age, are a mélange of rocks that originated to the west and accreted to the California coast as the Pacific Plate subducted beneath the North American Plate. The Franciscan Complex includes metamorphics, chert, greywacke, shale and pillow basalts. The pillow basalts formed on the ocean floor 100 to 200 million years ago, thousands of miles to the west at a spreading center or a hotspot.
Point Reyes is on the western side of the San Andres Fault, a large fault system that runs along the coast of California. The geological layers that make up Point Reyes originated further south and are traveling north (about 1.6 inches per year) along the fault line. The basement rock of Point Reyes is 350 to 450 million year old granite and the sedimentary rocks the granite metamorphosed. Overlying these rocks are a series of Tertiary sedimentary deposits including the Pt. Reyes Conglomerate, Laird Sandstone, Monterey Shale and “Drake’s Bay Formation”. This last formation, Miocene in age, has been subdivided into the Santa Margarita Sandstone, Santa Cruz Sandstone and the Purisima Formation. All three of these formations outcrop further south in the East Bay, Santa Cruz and at the San Gregorio Beach, respectively, providing evidence that Point Reyes is traveling north. The Purisima Formation outcrops at Drake’s Beach where several whale fossils have been found by UCMP researchers along with several invertebrate fossils.
Photos courtesy of Nick Matzke, Jenna Judge, and Lucy Chang.
Please note that a collecting permit and official permission is required to collect, or even pick up, any vertebrate fossil or fossil fragment in any of California's State and National Parks. Other public lands, including city parks and open spaces, may have similar regulations. Best to check in with the appropriate land use office wherever your adventures take you to inquire where the best spots are to see fossils in the field and what is and is not permitted while hiking and exploring our fossil heritage in these natural preserves.
The UCMP's Understanding Evolution and Understanding Science websites have been updated for February with the following features:
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.
I think it took us all by surprise to learn that Tilden Park contains several fossil localities and has a rich history with the UCMP. Don Savage, a former professor of paleontology and past chair of the Department of Paleontology at Cal, found a gomphothere jaw by Inspiration Point off Nimitz Way in 1961 and John C. Merriam collected the type specimen of Eucastor lecontei from deposits near Vomer Peak.
Underlying the beautiful rolling hills of the park are terrestrial deposits of the Miocene. The oldest of these deposits are the Claremont Formation containing chert and siliceous shale layers deposited 14 to 16 million years ago in a deep marine basin. Overlying this formation are the alluvial-fluvial mudstone, sandstone and conglomerate deposits of the Orinda Formation that originated from a higher, mountainous region west of the East Bay. You can see clear views of the Orinda Formation just east of the Caldecott Tunnel on Highway 24. The Moraga Formation overlies the Orinda Formation. This basaltic flow erupted from a volcano at Round Top in the Robert Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, just south of the Caldecott Tunnel, about 9-10 million years ago.
There are a number of lava flows visible from Highway 24, east of the Caldecott Tunnel, that are several feet thick. Many of them have a red zone or baked contact at their base where the hot lava contacted with the wet and cool alluvial deposits of the Orinda Formation, oxidizing the sediments. These volcanic deposits are resistant and now form the ridges of the Berkeley Hills and San Pablo Ridge. Some of the lava flows dammed rivers causing the formation of lakes. Deposits from these lakes formed the Siesta Formation composed of fine-grained light gray sediments. These soft rocks are easily eroded and have resulted in several landslides. Capping these deposits is another lava flow called the Bald Peak Basalt (9 million years old), visible at Vomer Peak in Tilden Park. All of these rock layers were folded due to tectonic activity. This created a large north to south plunging syncline that encompasses Tilden Park.
Photos courtesy of Nick Matzke, Tony Huynh, and Lucy Chang.
Please note that a collecting permit and official permission is required to collect, or even pick up, any vertebrate fossil or fossil fragment in any of California's State and National Parks. Other public lands, including city parks and open spaces, may have similar regulations. Best to check in with the appropriate land use office wherever your adventures take you to inquire where the best spots are to see fossils in the field and what is and is not permitted while hiking and exploring our fossil heritage in these natural preserves.
Polished amber in the Museum of Amber in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. (Photo by Alejandro Linares Garcia (CC BY-SA 3.0))
"More than 300 years ago, Sir Francis Bacon spoke of amber as 'a more than royal tomb' for tiny insects. Twentieth century scientists may quite agree."
But how do insects end up as amber fossils? What else is found in amber? How are these amber fossils prepared for study?
The answers to these questions can be found in one of the hidden collections of UCMP's archives — the 1561st broadcast of "The University Explorer." This show was narrated by Hale Sparks, former head of broadcasting for the University of California, during which time he ran two educational radio shows — "Science Editor" and "The University Explorer."
Mosquito encased in Miocene-aged amber from the Dominican Republic. (Photo by Didier Desouens (CC BY-SA 3.0))
The October 6, 1957 broadcast of the program, entitled "Forever in Amber," featured Berkeley entomologist Paul D. Hurd, Jr. It follows the path of an ancient insect as it becomes entombed in amber, uncovered, prepared, and studied. The narration moves from the famous Baltic amber deposits to Berkeley's own amber research efforts in Chiapas, Mexico, and from the struggles of a small fungus gnat caught in sap to the thrill of a scientist's discovery.
"These insects, which were so remarkably preserved in the fossilized tree gums of the prehistoric forests, are now clearly visible to us in amber. They often appear to be virtually alive."
A complete transcript of "Forever in Amber" can be found online here or as a pdf.
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.
