Notes from the Field

Paula Mikkelsen and Brian Gollands were in Fort Pierce, Florida, in April to collect bivalves for the Bivalve Tree of Life Project (see www.bivatol.org). Armed with shovel and sieve, and assisted by Sherry Reed from the Smithsonian Marine Station, they searched the seagrass beds for their targeted species. Though the setting is lovely, surrounded by calm water, mangroves, and the occasional splash of a fish or diving bird, the bivalves are few and far between. A cry finally punctuates the tranquility - "Yes!" - a living specimen of Lyonsia floridana, the Florida Lyonsia, is found.




"Yoyo clams" (family Galeommatidae) are tiny clams that live commensally in the burrows of a foot-long mantis shrimp (/Lysiosquilla scabricauda/) on shallow sand flats in the Indian River Lagoon. In April, members of the BivAToL research team went to Ft. Pierce Inlet to search for specimens for the project. This location is actually the "type locality" of 5 species of yoyo clams - that is, they were described as new species from this spot (in the 1980s by PRI's Paula Mikkelsen and Field Museum's Rudiger Bieler, two participants on this trip). Burrows are sampled using a "yabby pump" - a type of bait pump invented in Australia to collect "yabbies" or burrowing shrimps that are used as fish bait. Once a mantis shrimp hole is located, the yabby pump acts like a slurp gun for mud, sucking up the water in the burrow and part of the burrow walls to which the yoyo clams attach. The contents go into a sieve, and the tiny clams (which have internal shells and crawl around like snails) are picked out. We were successful, finding 3 of the 5 species that live at this site.

Fossil of the Week

Crinoids, known as sea liles or feather stars, are echinoderms, a phylum that includes seastars, sea cucumbers, brittle stars, sea urchins, and sand dollars. Echinoderms are famous for pentamery or five-fold symmetry (although some crinoids have more than five arms). Although they look a bit like flowers, crinoids are invertebrate animals. The mouth of a crinoid is located at the center of a radiating set of feathery arms. They have a U-shaped gut, with the anus located next to the mouth (a very common configuration in invertebrates that requires various kinds of sanitary solutions!). There are two basic kinds of crinoids: stalked crinoids (like the one pictured here), with a long "stem" and a holdfast that clings to a hard surface like a rock, and free-swimming crinoids, which lack the stem and have a holdfast very close to the arms. The earliest known crinoid fossils are from the Ordovician Period (488-444 million years ago), and a few hundred species are alive today. Fossil collectors often find segments of crinoid stems, which look like round, straight-sided buttons, sometimes with a hole at the center; in the past, these were threaded into necklaces or rosaries called "St. Cuthbert's beads." Crinoids are the state fossil of Missouri. Living crinoids are all marine, and live in shallow waters to 6,000 meters (nearly 20,000 feet) deep. The are filter feeders, capturing planktonic particles on their arms and passing them to the central mouth. They are not permanently attached, and can "crawl" using the holdfast or "swim" by undulating the arms.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen, Photo courtesy J. Casciano

Fossil Hunting at Portland Point

Yesterday a few staff members from PRI's Outreach Department took a break from their week by heading out to one of our favorite fossil collecting spots to collect some fossil-rich shale for one of the Discovery Labs in the Museum. Although the weather had turned from sunny and warm to much cooler in anticipation of an evening storm, they had a great time and found some interesting fossils. Here's a short video with Trisha Smrecak, our Evolution and Global Change Projects Manager, all about one of her finds.

Starting Your Own Fossil Collection

A few weeks ago we had a question about what are some common mistakes to avoid in starting your own collection. Here is what our staff had to say.

1. Label everything. Too much information is never a bad thing. The last thing you want is to go back to the fossil and wonder where you got it.
2. Be aware of collecting regulations before taking anything. It would be bad if you found something amazing and a museum wouldn't be able to take it or display it because you collected it illegally (even if unintentionally).
3. Avoid permanently marking the specimen itself. If an impression is hard to see, try not to highlight it with marker or waxy crayons or white out. Even chalk can be hard to remove if it is ever to be on display. Definitely avoid covering it with a varnish to highlight the specimen. This can create more problems in the long run.
4. Don't be too aggressive with your preparation. A partially uncovered trilobite is better than a shattered or flaking trilobite. Know when to stop working on a specimen.
5. Avoid storing specimens in areas of high humidity and temperature fluctuations. They may start to deteriorate including a very detrimental infestation of pyrite disease. You can learn more about this process here: http://www.vertpaleo.org/education/documents/Shinya_and_Bergwall_2007.pdf

Happy fossil hunting! Don't forget that we offer Fossil Collecting Field Trips throughout the summer. Learn more about them here.

Who We Are: Sarah "S.A.M." Moody

Meet Sam Moody. Sam is the Assistant Director of Museum Operations and the Volunteer Coordinator. Interested in volunteering at PRI and its Museum of the Earth? Let Sam know. She can be reached at moody@museumoftheearth.org.




Events at Museum of the Earth:

Natual History at Noon:
Understanding Your Pearls with Dr. Paula Mikkelsen
Saturday, April 25
12pm - 1 pm
Included with Admission

Community Day
Saturday, May 2
10 am - 5 pm
(Activities from 11 am - 3 pm)
Free and open to the public.

Fossil of the Week

Happy Earth Day everyone! Be sure to visit our climate change blog today! - http://climatechange101.blogspot.com/.


Dragonflies and their more slender relatives, damselflies, are members of the insect order Odonata. This order is among the most ancient of insect groups. Dragonfly ancestors first appeared during the early Carboniferous, about 340 million years ago, with the true Odonata appearing in the Permian, about 275 million years ago. Early dragonflies and their ancestors ranged greatly in size, from the smallest species ever known, with a wingspan of 1.85 cm (0.73 in), to a dragonfly ancestor with a wingspan of about 71 cm (28 in). Today, our largest dragonfly species is about 14 cm (5.5 in) in wingspan.

Adult dragonflies are strong and agile flying predators, spending much of their time in the air catching their winged insect prey. Their immature stages, however, are aquatic and voracious predators of many types of aquatic life from small insects to minnows as large as themselves. The Odonata are unusual among insects in that the male reproductive organs are located near the head-end of the abdomen. This accounts for the common sight in the summer of two dragonflies flying attached over a pond -- the male in the lead, clasping the female with appendages on the tip of its abdomen, and the female bending its abdomen forward to contact the male. With their acrobatic flying and the variety of colors sported by different species, dragonflies and damselflies turn a summer pond into an aerial circus!

Text by Brian Gollands, PRI. Photo courtesy J. Casciano

What's Cooking?

I came across this interesting Q&A in The New York Times about evolution. Check it out:


A Conversation With Richard Wrangham

From Studying Chimps, a Theory on Cooking

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

Published: April 21, 2009
The New York Times

Richard Wrangham has spent four decades observing wild chimpanzees in Africa to see what their behavior might tell us about prehistoric humans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/science/21conv.html

-BK

Waking the Baby Mammoth...

Dan Fisher, a contributor to PRI's membership magazine, American Paleontologist, will be featured in an upcoming National Geographic Channel show about mammoths. Fisher is also the Claude W. Hibbard Collegiate Professor of Paleontology at the University of Michigan.

"Waking the Baby Mammoth" airs on Sunday, April 26 at 9pm (EST). Learn all about Lyuba, a one-month-old wolly mammoth that was found in Serbia in 2007. Find out where she came from and how she was found 40,000 years after her death!

To see videos, photos and more click here: Waking the Baby Mammoth

To learn about PRI's American Paleontologist click here: PRI Publications

To leran more about Dan Fisher's role with baby Lyuba click here: Dan Fisher

Who We Are: Richard Kissel

Richard came to PRI and its Museum of the Earth from the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. He is a paleontologist, cartoonist and author. Check out the book he co-authored -- Evolving Planet: Four Billion Years of Life on Earth. Meet Richard Kissel:

Fossil of the Week

Eurypterids, or sea scorpions, were first discovered in New York in 1818 where they are extremely common in the state’s Silurian strata. They are such an important part of the state’s paleontological heritage that,one species, Eurypterus remipes, has been designated as New York’s official State Fossil.

Eurypterids first appear in the fossil record in the Middle Ordovician (about 460 million years ago) and became extinct after the end-Permian mass extinction (about 251 million years ago). Eurypterids were bottom dwelling predators but were probably also capable swimmers. Contrary to the "sea" in their name, most species lived in brackish lagoons or freshwater. Most individual eurypterids (like the one depicted here) were less than 10 inches (4 centimeters) long but some grew much larger. The largest was probably about 10 feet (3 meters) in length, (we have only pieces of these monsters), making eurypterids the largest known arthropods to have ever lived. The largest known complete specimen of a eurypterid in the world is 49.5 inches (1.25 meters) long and is in fact on display at the Museum of the Earth.
--- Ursula Smith

Photo courtesy J. Casciano

PaleoGeeks

This week's paleogeeks article is:

"Gradual versus punctuated equilibrium evolution in the Turkana basin molluscs: Evolutionary events or biological invasions?" by Bert Van Bocxlaer, Dirk Van Damme, and Craig S. Feibel published in Evolution - the International Journal of Organic Evolution - Volume 62(3) pgs 511 - 520. You can find the article online here.

Abstract:

"A running controversy in evolutionary thought was Eldredge and Gould's punctuated equilibrium model, which proposes long periods of morphological stasis interspersed with rapid bursts of dramatic evolutionary change. One of the earliest and most iconic pieces of research in support of punctuated equilibrium is the work of Williamson on the Plio-Pleistocene molluscs of the Turkana Basin. Williamson claimed to have found firm evidence for three episodes of rapid evolutionary change separated by long periods of stasis in a high-resolution sequence. Most of the discussions following this report centered on the topics of (eco)phenotypy versus genotypy and the possible presence of preservational and temporal artifacts. The debate proved inconclusive, leaving Williamson's reports as one of the empirical foundations of the paradigm of punctuated equilibrium. Here we conclusively show Williamson's original interpretations to be highly flawed. The supposed rapid bursts of punctuated evolutionary change represent artifacts resulting from the invasion of extrabasinal faunal elements in the Turkana palaeolakes during wet phases well known from elsewhere in Africa."

Let us know if you have some thoughts on the article by leaving us a comment! Happy reading!

Earth Day @ Museum of the Earth

Check out our Climate Change 101 blog to find out what Museum of the Earth has in store for Earth Day '09!

-BK

What We're Reading

I’ve always believed that you can learn quite a bit about a person by the books that they read. Look at a person’s shelf and you can immediately get a sense of his or her mind, interests, and maybe even if you two will get along. Since we’ve started posting some getting to know PRI shorts on the blog, I thought it might be fun to take a quick look at the bookshelves of some of our staff. Here’s a smattering of what the staff had to say when I asked them what they were reading this month.

Scott Callan is the Associate Director for Institutional Advancement here at the Museum and he had a whole list of books going this month. Five to be exact! Scott was a history major in college, so its not surprising that his books covered that particular realm, but you’ll also notice a book about birds (he and his wife are avid birders), and some local fiction.

• The Stevensons: A Biography of an American Family, by Jean Baker. The sweeping, multi-generational tale of one of America's great political families.
• Parts Unknown, by Tim Gallagher. Vicarious birding in Greenland from one of the best nature / travel writers out there (not to mention a new PRI Trustee).
• Rousseau's Dog, by David Edmonds and John Eidinow. Chronicles the travails of what happened when two 18th century philosophical heavyweights (and eccentrics) decided it'd be a good idea to become roommates.
• First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, by Loung Ung. Given to Scott by his brother-in-law, who recently spent two months traveling through Cambodia and Vietnam.
• Castle, by J. Robert Lennon. Ithaca native, Cornell professor, and a master of acidic, winding fiction.

Chris Besemer, our Teacher Programs Coordinator, is a native to the area and also had great things to say about Castle by J. Robert Lennon. Here’s what she was up reading this month:

• Castle by J. Robert Lennon (fiction novel)
• Open Interval, by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (poetry)

Paula Mikkelsen, Associate Director for Science and Director of Publications, recently returned from the Mid America Paleontology Society Expo and had this to say about her recent reads:

• " I am reading a great book right now that I picked up at the MAPS Expo though it is not new. It is King of the Crocodylians by David R. Schwimmer (same name but not the guy that plays also-Paleontologist Ross on Friends) (Indiana University Press, 2002). The subject of the book is Deinosuchus - a giant Late Cretaceous crocodile (or rather an extinct relative of modern alligators and crocodiles) that actually ate dinosaurs! They were really big - 12 meters (40 feet) long and more than 8 tons - awesome! It has really interesting tooth structure and body plates on its back that supported additional muscles that allowed its great size. I'm thinking that it would make an interesting theme for a future issue of AP."

Sarah Chicone, our Director of Exhibits, betrays her workaholic nature with her book selection for this month. It’s research for our fall exhibit opening next September!

• Amber: Window to the Past by David Grimaldi. Dave who works at the American Museum of Natural History and owns a farm in the area will be helping us out with our Amber-themed exhibit.

Let us know what you think of our reads or what you'd like to learn more about - from a question in paleontology to our suggestions for movies - by leaving us a comment.

~SD

Who We Are: Sara Auer

Sara began her career at PRI and its Museum of the Earth after graduate school at the University of Oregon. She was able to transition from hard working graduate student to a hard working member of team PRI! Meet Sara Auer:

PRI on Newswatch 16

Trisha Smercak, PRI's Global Change Project Manager was interviewed on ICTV Newswatch 16 today! Her interview will air at 7 pm and then again at 10 pm. It can be seen in Ithaca on channel 16 or on the web at the times listed above:
http://www.ictv.org/show/Newswatch/

Dino Eggstravaganza

Please Note that our ad in the Ithaca Journal on 4/9 listed incorrect prices for the DinoEggstravaganza event. This event is included with regular Museum admission prices. We hope to see you there!

Fossil of the Week

"Ecphora" is a gastropod mollusk, or snail, that lived during the Miocene Epoch, about 23 to 5 million years ago. Although ecphoras are all now extinct, they belonged to a family of marine snails that is still living today - the Muricidae or Murex Shells. Snails in this family are often called "rock snails." They lived on hard surfaces, and preyed on other mollusks by boring holes through the hard shells to feed on their soft bodies using a toothed, rasping organ called a radula. Many murexes alive today secrete a noxious mucus when disturbed - this mucus turns bright purple when it comes in contact with air. Ancient Mediterranean peoples used this purple secretion as a dye - called Tyrian Purple - for clothing, especially for signifying royal rank. Ecphora is the state fossil of Maryland, and was the main feature on the original logo of PRI.
--- Dr. Paula Mikkelsen

Photo courtesy J. Casciano

PaleoGeeks

Each week the research members of our staff and the graduate students who work with them gather to discuss an article of interest in the field of paleontology. The meeting was dubbed Paleogeeks some time ago and we'll be starting our own online Paleogeeks series for those of you out there interested in what our science staff are reading and discussing. This week the article in question is:

"An intertidal snail shows a dramatic size increase over the past century" by Jonathan A. D. Fisher, Erika C. Rhile, Harrison Liu, and Peter S. Petraitis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science on March 31, 2009 vol. 106 no.13 pgs 5209-5212. You can find the article online here.

Abstract:
"Changes in the shell architecture of marine snails enhance defenses and greatly improve survival against predators. In the northwest Atlantic Ocean, shorter and thicker shells have been reported for several species following the introduction of predatory Carcinus maenas crabs early in the 20th century. But we report that the shell lengths of Nucella lapillus actually increased by an average of 22.6% over the past century, with no evidence of shell thickening after correcting for shell length. The increases in shell length were greatest on sheltered shores, highlighting the interaction between wave exposure and the sampling period. Comparisons were based on archived shells collected in 1915–1922 from sites that were resampled in 2007. N. lapillus is an important member of North Atlantic marine ecosystems, and our results suggest that the impacts of historical changes in species' key morphological traits on marine ecosystems remain underappreciated."

Let us know if you have some thoughts on the article by leaving us a comment! Happy reading!

Who We Are: Sarah Degen

Sarah began her career at PRI and its Museum of the Earth when she was still a student at Ithaca College. She was able to transition from student-intern to a full fledged member of the team after graduation! Meet Sarah Degen: