All of the scientists profiled here love fieldwork. How could they not? They collect data to satisfy their curiosity (sometimes, there truly is the thrill of discovery!), develop camaraderie and close friendships with their field mates, visit foreign and beautiful lands, and experience different cultures. But, there are also physical, mental, and emotional hardships associated with outdoor labor in the oft-rugged terrain that is home to many of our most interesting field sites. Blazing heat or icy cold, sun, dust, wind. Bugs (insects, pathogens, or both), poisonous snakes, bears. Hauling in the water you need, digging your own toilet, digging out stuck field vehicles. For the newcomer, this can all be a bit daunting.

Which is exactly why rookies need to go to the field with someone like Dr. Naomi Levin. According to her students, Naomi likes to add fun and games to fieldwork. For example, after spending a few days at the Elandsfontein archeological site in South Africa, she started a game in which she’d buy pizza and beer for all the students if she could correctly predict what they would find in a 2-meter hole. Crucial explanation point #1- The rock layers of interest at Elandsfontein are largely buried by modern dunes, and so many holes are needed to reconstruct the paleolandscape. Crucial explanation point #2- Students do most of the digging. Crucial explanation point #3- The game ended with many happy students.

Another popular game that Naomi created at Elandsfontein- “It’s time to play fizz or no fizz!!” The basis for this game is that for decades, white nodules in the sediments were thought to be carbonate: the color was right and the hypothesized paleoenvironment was right. But, carbonate fizzes if you drop HCl on it, and Naomi discovered that the many of the nodules did not fizz. Naomi used the “fizz or no fizz” game to get archeological students to learn if the white nodules and other material at the study site had carbonate or not and why they may or may not have carbonate. Many of these students left that season very interested in rocks!

Many of you may be wondering what the big deal is about carbonate nodules, and why Naomi spends so much time finding and analyzing them. Carbonate forms in some soils, and chemical analyses can be used to determine the environment in which that soil formed. The amount of heavy vs. light carbon documents past vegetation. Grasses incorporate more heavy carbon into their cells than do most shrubs and trees, and so carbonate nodules formed in grasslands also have heavier carbon than those that form in forested regions. The ratio of heavy to light oxygen can tell us about the amount and seasonality of rainfall, as well as the source water for the rain.

Thanks to Naomi’s work on carbonates, isotopes in fossil teeth (similar principles of reconstructing paleoenvironment as described for carbonates), and stratigraphy in East Africa, we now know a lot more about the environments in which our earliest hominid ancestors arose and evolved. In particular, considerable controversy surrounds the question of whether our earliest ancestor who walked on two legs was a savanna or forest dweller. Did a transition from forests to grasslands drive the evolution of bipedalism, or were other factors more important (e.g., freeing up our hands for tool use, infant care, or other)? Thus, Naomi’s work bridges disciplines – geology, paleontology, anthropology, and paleoclimate – and she has shown that crossing disciplines produces really excellent science!

For more information on Dr. Naomi Levin, please visit: http://www.nlevin.net

In October, Naomi received the Donath Medal, the highest award given by the Geological Society of America to a scientist under 35. Her citation and response are available here and an interview with GSA TV here.

It is common knowledge that burning fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, coal) adds carbon dioxide (CO₂) to the atmosphere. All scientists and a steadily increasing proportion of non-scientists also know that CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, which means that increasing the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere will cause temperature to rise. And thus we have GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE, which has been widely publicized and (regrettably) politicized. Unfortunately, global climate change is not the only misfortune of our CO₂ emissions. CO₂ does not remain in the atmosphere for all eternity – it has to go somewhere, and one major somewhere is the ocean. Adding CO₂ to water makes it more acidic, and voila, OCEAN ACIDIFICATION, global warming’s popularly neglected, ugly stepsister. So why care if the ocean is getting more acidic? Well, many of your favorite marine critters (corals, clams, snails) have external hard parts made of calcium carbonate, which dissolves in acid. Even minor changes in the ocean pH (e.g. 8.2 to 8.0) can cause problems with skeleton building, growth, reproduction, or survival, especially when coupled with warmer temperatures. Get it? Got it? Eek!

Dr. Rowan Martindale scours the fossil record for past examples of ocean acidification and its effect on reef ecosystems, particularly the corals themselves. Her dissertation research focused on the Late Triassic (235 – 201 million years ago), when the ancestors of the creatures that make up our modern reefs were just gaining prominence. Rowan investigated reef composition and ecology to understand how these reefs worked, and she also compared reefs from different parts of North America and Austria to document geographic differences in reef composition, diversity, and structure. Rowan’s knowledge of Late Triassic reefs is especially important because the Triassic-Jurassic boundary is one of the five largest mass extinctions in Earth’s history and included  widespread reef collapse.

At the end of the Triassic, a huge amount of magma quickly (by geologic standards) erupted, splitting the supercontinent Pangea and creating what is now the Atlantic Ocean. The volcanic province covered an area larger than the United States or Canada and released lots of CO₂, SO₂, and other nasty gases into the atmosphere and ocean.  Analyses from plant fossils and soil carbonates at the T-J boundary provide an independent line of evidence for increased CO₂. Using a range of interdisciplinary studies from geology to climatology to modern reef ecology, Rowan and her colleagues have concluded that oceanic acidification was likely a major player in the T-J extinction. Rowan has now moved on to studying another reef extinction event in the Early Jurassic (~183 million years ago) that coincides with large volcanic eruptions across South Africa and Antarctica. She and her colleagues seek to determine whether ocean acidification also played a role in this event, which produced a less severe extinction. By comparing and contrasting this extinction and reef collapse with the T-J event, Rowan hopes to determine what factors allow organisms to survive a major climate perturbation event.

In keeping with the field theme of the blog, I asked Rowan to share one of her favorite field stories, and it’s a good one:

“Before I went to Austria (PhD work), I consulted one of the great Austrian paleontologists Dr. Alfred Fischer who was an emeritus faculty at USC. Al is a legend and even in his late 80s still had a photographic memory of field sites he’d only been to once in his 20s/30s. Unfortunately due to his age, Al couldn’t join me in the Alps, but he gave me directions to several great sites (some of which were just ‘up the hill, to the left a-ways’….. which turned out to be a 3-5 km hike up a kilometer of elevation). While I was doing research on the Late Triassic Steinplatte reef near Tyrol, Austria, my field assistant and I found that the Austrians had built numerous billboards on the mountain to explain the paleontology that one might encounter during your hike (e.g. under your feet is the Rosso Ammonitico, a red limestone with fossils of ancient nautilus-like organisms). We hiked up the mountain (all the while thinking what an awesome idea this was), and when we reached the top, where the best corals were supposed to be, low and behold there was a big billboard about Fischer’s coral reef! I couldn’t believe it…. even though he was sitting at home in San Pedro, CA, Al had managed to join me in Austria! We took a bunch of photos and tried to read all the German descriptions of the fabulous corals that were at our feet and then brought them back for Al to see his enduring influence.”

I am seriously jealous that no such billboards exist for the paleobotanical sites of Roland Brown, Harry MacGinitie, Leo Hickey, and Scott Wing that I’ve visited in Western North America!

For more information on Dr. Rowan Martindale, visit her professional website here or UT’s profile of her.

It’s been nearly 3 weeks since my last post, and I have not yet reached my goal of 30 profiles. Life got in the way, and I had to spend nearly every minute of that time packing up my house and lab at Miami University and moving cross-country to my new position at the University of Wyoming. I am eternally grateful to my parents for spending two entire days carefully wrapping fossil plants in toilet paper – to misquote a favorite shirt of one of my former colleagues, “My job is rarely glamorous but never boring.” Now that I am at my new post in Laramie, awaiting the arrival of nearly all my worldly belongings, I will get back to work on the 15 profiles that remain from my original commitment. And then we’ll see where things go from there. There are some fabulous scientists coming up!

But first, I want to take a minute to publicize two creative projects that aim to combat the subtle yet persuasive biases that dissuade girls from pursuing careers in STEM fields.

1. LEGO’s Research Institute

LEGO has confirmed that as of August 2014 “Paleontologist Barbie” will no longer be the only paleontologist doll made by a major toy company. LEGO will release a “Research Institute” LEGO Ideas set that consists of three female scientists, the brainchild of geochemist Ellen Kooijman. Unlike the Mattel model, Kooijman’s LEGO paleontologist wears the eminently practical blue jeans paired with a tan long sleeved shirt (no short shorts or bright pink canteen here!) and carries a large gray magnifying glass. Here’s hoping LEGO follows her design. Thank you to everyone who wrote to inform me of this. Can’t wait to get my set!

2. The Bearded Lady Project: Challenging the Face of Science

This summer, I’m stepping out of my scientific comfort zone and taking part in a creative, artistic endeavor with director Lexi Jamieson Marsh and photographer Kelsey Vance. Exciting? Absolutely! Terrifying? Truthfully, yes, but then I remind myself just how talented and motivated my collaborators are!

Intrigued? Check out the TBLP tab on my blog, or click here to visit the project’s website.

When paleontologists whose field skills and savvy you admire rave to you about how amazing a colleague is, that’s bulletproof evidence that she is! Dr. Kay Behrensmeyer was always on my list to include, but many colleagues wrote and even called to ask me to get her profile in here.

When I asked Kay for some pictures and a list of field sites, she sent a comprehensive list of locations, years, PIs, and project objectives. Always the detailed and well-organized field scientist! (Do check out her chapter in Michael Canfield’s edited volume Field Notes on Science & Nature to pick up a few tips on how to keep a good field notebook!) The range of countries and geologic ages Kay has studied is incredible. So many of us focus on a single time period or geographic area, but as Kay wrote to me, “My long-term goal has been to touch down in as many time periods as possible, in the terrestrial record, to see how vertebrate (and some plant!) taphonomy and paleoecology plays out over the Phanerozoic up through the Recent. Still haven’t hit the Carboniferous, Permian, Eocene-Oligocene though I’ve been on field excursions for some of these.”

Because it is impossible to distill Kay’s field research down to a single paragraph, I’m going to focus on just one: the Amboseli (Kenya) Bone Taphonomy Project, which Kay has led for almost 40 years and she considers one of her proudest achievements. Kay’s early work at Amboseli included defining weathering stages for modern bones and determining how long a bone would have to lie on the surface to reach each stage of decomposition. This is important not just to understand how much time is represented by fossil or archeological site, but also because skeletal remains could be used to census modern populations (they don’t move on their own!). Kay has collaborated with ecologists at Amboseli to test just how faithfully modern skeletons (death assemblages) record the living populations. Are the same species present? Does a species have the same relative abundance in both life and death assemblages? The Western and Behrensmeyer 2009 Science paper (one of my all time favorites) is a compilation of 40 years of data and shows that death assemblages do accurately record the changes that are occurring in the living communities.

I have not yet been in the field with Kay. Luckily, Dr. Scott Wing, one of Kay’s colleagues at the Smithsonian, made a point of calling me to share his adventures with Kay in Cameroon. The group was staying in town and driving each morning out to a field site. They’d been working the same site for a week when one morning, while getting out of the car, Scott saw a green mamba. (From Wikipedia, “Its venom is a highly potent mixture of rapid-acting presynaptic and postsynaptic neurotoxins (dendrotoxins), cardiotoxins and fasciculins.” Eek!) Scott was understandably frightened, but as he didn’t say anything about the snake so as not to alarm anyone else. Later in the day, he excitedly told Kay what he’d seen, and she replied, with just the faintest touch of boredom in her voice, “Oh yeah, it’s been there all week.” The next field site the group visited consisted of small outcrops separated by tall grass. Scott explained that after the green mamba incident, it was scary to walk from outcrop to outcrop because he couldn’t see his what his feet might come down on (another mamba, perchance?). So he walked slowly and cautiously between outcrops. Kay, on the other hand, moved quickly and purposefully through the grass. It was clear that she couldn’t wait to explore the next outcrop for fossils and wasn’t going to let things like venomous snakes stand in her way. That confidence and inquisitiveness inspired Scott to put aside his fears and keep up with her.

I suspect that many people reading this have been in the field with Kay and have their own favorite Kay story. As part of my ongoing search for inspiration, I’d love to hear these tales, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. If you have a few minutes to stroll down memory lane, how about jotting a small memory in the comments below? (I really wish I’d thought to invite you all to do this sooner, so if you have fun stories about field work with previously profiled scientists, please share those in comments on the appropriate pages.)

For more information on Dr. Kay Behrensmeyer, visit http://paleobiology.si.edu/staff/individuals/behrensmeyer.html

Or even: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Behrensmeyer

This month, I am learning that it takes a hell of a lot more time to get even than it does to get mad. Fortunately, it’s also infinitely more satisfying, invigorating, and productive! I’ve had so much fun learning about the research of some pretty amazing scientists. Case in point: I spent twice as long as I should have on Leslea Hlusko’s profile because I could not tear myself away from reading about her baboon studies! And as some of you know, I really, really HATE baboons. I had originally planned to restrict my profiles to living, breathing, active scientists in order to remind myself of the community that surrounds me. However, thanks to an email from Rowan Martindale, I learned that today is Mary Anning’s 215^th birthday, and it will be commemorated with a google doodle! So, let’s take a brief look at the woman the Natural History Museum of London calls the greatest fossil hunter ever known and the Royal Society lists as one of the ten most influential British female scientists.

Pretty darned impressive for a person with no formal education.

From an early age, Mary Anning made a living scouring the cliffs of Lyme Regis for Early Jurassic (210-195 Ma) marine fossils and selling them. It was dangerous work; she had to correctly time the tides, navigate steep and slippery shores, and avoid mudflows and landslides. Her beloved dog Tray, constant companion on her fossil hunts (the original field paleontology dog?!), was killed when a cliff collapsed and he was buried in the landslide. The common ammonoids and belemnites earned her a few shillings, and the occasional big find earned a few hundred pounds (upwards of $250K today).

Those big finds helped revolutionize paleontology. Mary Anning discovered complete ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and even a pterosaur. Today, extinction is universally recognized, and pretty much every paleontologist does research that can be somehow tied to extinction. When Mary Anning lived, however, most people supported the biblical record of Earth’s creation and had no means to explain how there could be species from Earth’s past that were not still present. Extinction implies imperfect creation, which was difficult to reconcile with early 1800’s religious doctorine. Through Anning’s careful excavation, preparation, scientific illustration, and anatomical evaluation (all self-taught!), she recognized that the fossils she discovered in the cliffs of Lyme were species no one had ever seen alive. Because she was a woman, and even worse, a working class woman, she was not allowed to publish on her finds, but many of the great geologists and anatomists of her day (Cuvier, Buckland, Owen, and others) published on her specimens, though few acknowledged her as the collector.

Now that you have been (re)introduced toMary Anning, I invite you to check out some of the many resources already published on this ground-breaking field paleontologist. For a straight-up biography, I recommend Dr. Torrens’ 1995 “Presidential Address: Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme; ‘the greatest fossilist the world ever knew'” in the British Journal of the History of Science (v. 28, p. 257-284). Two historical novels that feature Anning, Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier or Curiosity by Joan Thomas, have also been published in the last 5 years. Additional web resources on Mary Anning include http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/anning.html and http://www.strangescience.net/anning.htm. For the younger crowd, try http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/famouspeople/mary_anning/

Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania: one of the richest paleontological and archeological sites in the world. The name alone sends shivers of excitement down many spines. Its sediments record the last two million years and preserve four hominid species (2 holotypes are from Olduvai) and many, many stone tools. In fact, the stone tools from Olduvai are so significant that the earliest stone tool technology is called the “Olduwan Industrial Complex.” Olduvai Gorge was the stomping grounds of the Leakeys for over fifty years, in addition to numerous other paleontologists, archeologists, and geologists. Today, it is the primary field site of Dr. Leslea Hlusko, co-director of one of four active projects at Olduvai: the Olduvai Vertebrate Paleontology Project (OVPP).

Much of the early work at Olduvai had an anthropological focus, aimed at discovering more hominids or piecing together the development of stone tools. Leslea and her colleagues in OVPP want to reconstruct the entire paleoenvironment of Olduvai. To do this, they spend several months in the field each year, systematically scouring the sediments for new fossil material, carefully noting its location in space (geography) and in time (stratigraphy). In addition, they are compiling a database of all previously collected specimens. This involves visiting museums all over the world that house material from Olduvai and making sure all fossils have specimen numbers, are correctly identified, and are uploaded into the database. Their view is that every fossil is important to understand and successfully reconstruct the landscape in which our ancestors and their early technology evolved.

Besides fieldwork and the OVPP, Leslea collaborates with geneticists and primate biologists to study variation within a species. Variation is key to evolution by natural selection, and so understanding how much and what kinds of variation are due to genes vs. environment is important for diagnosing species and determining how fossil species are related to each other. Leslea focuses on teeth (the most commonly preserved vertebrate fossils) and baboons (primates like us). She and her colleagues make detailed measurements of baboon teeth from the carefully pedigreed Southwest National Primate Research Center. By knowing how the baboons are genetically related, they can start to distinguish the aspects of tooth morphology that are genetically controlled versus environmentally controlled. Leslea has applied her modern results to the fossil record to reinterpret how some hominid species are related to each other.

While genetics and modern baboons are important for Leslea’s science, you can tell from a short conversation with her that she is a field paleontologist at heart. Her advice to future paleontologists includes learning to drive a stick shift, change a tire, use a shovel, shower with less than 1L of water, and identify poisonous snakes. And to use fieldwork as a chance to truly experience different cultures and get a better sense of the similarities and variations within our species. Her passion for paleontology and especially for fieldwork is evident in this interview with for the Leakey Foundation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhaEbYhUeto) and also this portion of an email Leslea sent me. I hope she won’t mind my sharing it, because I think a whole lot of my readers blog can relate.

Leslea wrote, “I do the fieldwork because I love it, just like you and all the other women we know.  Not for the kudos.  In some ways, perhaps the women who do fieldwork have a more pure love of the field sciences, because we definitely don’t get the ‘Indiana Jones’ bump that our male counterparts do.  I mean really, have you ever gotten a hot date based on your fieldwork experience?  If anything, it is a detriment to our romantic lives.”

Based on my own experiences, I couldn’t agree more.

For more information about Dr. Leslea Hlusko, visit: http://ib.berkeley.edu/labs/hlusko/index.php

The Understanding Evolution team has put together a really nice module on Leslea’s baboon work, complete with lesson plan and discussion questions at: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/hlusko_01

Writing a daily blog is way more work than I imagined! But it’s also the most rewarding thing I’ve done in the last five years, and I can already feel how much it has energized me to do science. I have had wonderful conversations with colleagues (male and female), found several new role models, and learned a whole lot more about some pretty inspiring field paleontologists. Today’s profile is a case in point. Before May 1, I had only interacted with Dr. Lisa Park Boush through her role as an NSF program officer. That changed the day I unveiled this blog, when I received a Facebook notification from Lisa. Lisa changed her profile picture to the totally bad-ass picture above, with the comment, “This is for Ellen Currano….” I knew immediately that this was a scientist after my own heart and that I had to learn more about her and feature her here!

Lisa studies ostracodes, also called “seed shrimp.” Still unfamiliar to you? Imagine a teeny shrimp inside a tiny clam shell (~1 mm, but can be up to 3 cm). Freshwater ostracodes are extremely useful for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Because individual species often tolerate only small ranges in salinity, fossil assemblages can be used to infer past lake salinity. If we know how salinity changes, we can interpret lake level changes (more saline = lower lake level), which in turn can be used to reconstruct climate (lower lake levels = more arid conditions). Lisa has conducted live-dead studies of ostracodes from the African rift lakes to better understand the possible taphonomic biases affecting reconstructions of past climate, environment, and lake ecology. (If you didn’t understand that sentence, take a scavenger hunt for an earlier profile that explains some of these words!)

Freshwater ostracodes are also model organisms for evolutionary studies. Lakes are geographically restricted bodies of water, and the African rift lakes in particular are known for their high diversity and endemism (species found only in one place). Lisa’s work comparing the ostracod faunas of Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi demonstrates that a combination of lake longevity (older lakes steadily accumulate species) and lake level fluctuations (driving endemism and extinction) drive ostracod evolution and species diversity.

I’m an Africa-phile, so Lisa’s work on Tanganyika, Malawi, and the Danakil Depression are most fascinating to me. Lisa’s current research, however, is in the Bahamas, coring the saline ponds on San Salvador Island to construct high-resolution climate and hurricane records and to assess the impact these factors have on biodiversity. Climate models have suggested that hurricane intensity will increase with global warming, and so it is important to understand the impact of these storm events on ecosystems.

For more information on Dr. Lisa Park Boush, visit: http://www.lisaparkboush.com/home.html

The other day, I was indulging in one of my absolute favorite workday activities: skyping with another paleobotanist. Being a professor in a small to medium department can make you feel scientifically isolated sometimes. They hired you because no one could teach that discipline, and therefore while your co-workers may be lovely people, you can’t talk to them about new and exciting developments in your field. So, Dr. Regan Dunn and I were happily filling each other in on the progress of our various research projects. I happened to mention that one of my Master’s students would be doing his fieldwork in Oregon this summer. After going over exactly where (middle of nowhere) and what formation (hasn’t been formally named), Regan said, “Yeah, I’ve collected some leaf fossils there. I’ll send you pictures and also my field notes.”

My reaction: Duh! Of course Regan’s been there. I’m pretty sure there is no place in the northwestern US that she hasn’t done paleobotanical fieldwork. Now, let me pick her brain for as many more good field sites as possible before she hangs up on me!

Regan has already had a diverse career in paleobotany. In between her academic degrees, she worked for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and was the paleobotanist at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. She’s studied fossil pollen, leaves, bug bites on leaves, and most recently phytoliths (this is a test – did you learn what that means in a previous blog?). Regan’s PhD work is a critical component of a larger collaborative study investigating how climate change and extinction events affected vegetation structure in Patagonia between 40 and 18 million years ago. Patagonia has an excellent vertebrate fossil record, and better interpretations of vegetation change would also allow paleontologists to look for coevolution between plants and animals.

However, before the fossil record can be interpreted, modern analogs are needed. This took Regan to Costa Rica, where she could sample from all sorts of ecosystems (tropical rainforest, dry tropical forest, grassland, swamp) without having to travel very far. At each of over 200 sample sites, Regan set up a tripod and used a fisheye lens to get a hemispherical photograph of the forest above her. She then collected a soil sample directly below the tripod. Back in the lab, Regan isolated the phytoliths (those teeny-tiny, glassy microfossils that record the plant cell shape) using a series of chemical baths and measured how much the edges undulate. Studies of several living plants have shown that leaves exposed to full sunlight conditions have cell walls with less undulation (waviness) than leaves that develop in shady conditions. Regan’s goal was to find a correlation between amount of phytolith undulation and tree cover as quantified from her photographs. We’re all anxiously awaiting the publication of Regan’s results, and hoping we can apply it to our own fossil sites!

Watch a short movie in which Regan describes her work in Costa Rica and Patagonia at: https://www.burkemuseum.org/paleontology/feature_browse/fossil_plant_remains

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, double majoring in geology and biology, I took a LOT of science classes. Unfortunately, I can count on one finger the number of female professors I had in those classes. Fortunately, Dr. Sue Kidwell was the one I did have. U of C prides itself on giving students a well-rounded education (know any other universities with a swim test?), and I truly believe there is no better model for this than Sue: case in point, the title of one of her Geology papers contains the word “palimpsests.” If you don’t know what that means, go look it up and treat yourself to a fun history lesson.

After graduating from U of C, I knew that Sue was a great professor – she’d won the university’s top prize for undergraduate education and all the students loved her. I’m embarrassed to admit that it wasn’t until I kept coming across her name in early graduate school reading that I realized what a big shot scientist she is (Charles Schuchert awardee, AAAS Fellow, etc.). Together with Smithsonian paleontologist Dr. Kay Behrensmeyer, Sue revolutionized the field of paleontology known as taphonomy, the study of how living communities become fossil assemblages. In particular, Sue has championed an approach called live-dead studies, in which the researcher compares the diversity and composition of living communities (shallow-water marine animals, in Sue’s case) to that of the death assemblage (the dead skeletons lying on the ocean floor).

Initially, Sue was interested in quantifying how faithfully fossil assemblages capture the actual living community in order to answer big picture paleo questions. Stop and think for a minute – all those interesting questions in paleontology (see previous blogs for examples) are about LIVING things, not their fossil remains. Recently, though, Sue has been applying live-dead studies to conservation and remediation. Death assemblages have the potential to provide a baseline against which to compare modern ecosystems affected by humans. Without knowing what an ecosystem was like before any human impact, it is impossible to develop an effective remediation plan. As Sue wrote to me, “So, although basic research questions drive the overall science, and get the funding for it, big personal motivation is to develop methods and protocols for use by enviro managers and restoration ecologists, who are in the trenches of the Anthropocene.”

Because of her interest in conservation, Sue has spent less time doing what she calls “rock-hammer geology” and more time on scientific cruises collecting sediment cores offshore of LA. These sediment cores preserve the last few centuries to millennia, and have potential to provide these necessary baselines for marine ecosystems. In 2012 and in collaboration with Dr. Clark Alexander, Sue co-led a science party of 35 and ship’s crew of 23 on a 300-foot research vessel. Pretty sweet field vehicle, right?! Below are a couple more pictures Sue sent me of that cruise.

For more information on Dr. Sue Kidwell, please visit: http://geosci.uchicago.edu/directory/susan-kidwell

Dr. Kirk Johnson, paleobotanist and author of Cruising the Fossil Freeway, explains paleontology as time traveling with a shovel. It’s a beautiful analogy, because when paleontologists are doing fieldwork, we spend about 30% of our time observing the modern landscape, and the other 70% imagining what it would have looked like thousands, millions, or even billions of years ago. Today, we’re going to travel to really, really deep time with Dr. Phoebe Cohen.

Phoebe studies fossil amoebas – tiny, single-celled animals – that lived in the Proterozoic Eon 2500 – 543 million years ago. You’re perhaps thinking, “Seriously? Amoebas? Can those even fossilize? Why would anyone study amoebas when you could be studying dinosaurs, mammals, turtles, reef creatures, or even insects?” Well, go back 543 million years, and none of those things that you think of as animals existed. That thing next to Phoebe in her photograph is the dominant life form of the Proterozoic: stacked mats of cyanobacteria. The multicellular animals that did exist lacked hard parts. Then, suddenly (I define “suddenly” as less than 20 million years – compared 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history), around 520 million years ago, fossils of nearly every major group of animals appear: sponges, corals, molluscs, brachiopods, arthropods, echnidorms, and even representatives of our own phyla, the chordates.

This Cambrian Explosion was one of the thorns in Darwin’s side as he was puzzling out his treatise of gradual evolution by natural selection. How on Earth could animals have evolved so quickly? What was going on before this sudden appearance of so many different animals with hard parts? Questions like these are at the heart of Phoebe’s research. To get at the roots of animal origins and the evolution and radiation of eukaryotes (life composed of cells with nuclei – e.g., you, plants, mushrooms, and even protists) in general, you need to study the Proterozoic and the tiny amoebas. Phoebe and her colleagues are also working to describe the environmental conditions that served as the backdrop for early animal evolution. During the Late Proterozoic, oxygen levels increased, significant changes in ocean chemistry occurred, and Earth completely froze over at least twice!

You may be wondering what exactly Phoebe does in the field. Well, first off, she does her best to avoid being mauled by grizzly bears (check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAvl1_1pF-g for Phoebe’s recollection of a particularly harrowing experience in the Yukon). Then, she collects rocks that are likely to be rich in microscopic fossils, takes them back to her lab, and uses acid to dissolve away the rock and leave behind the tiny micro-organisms. Unlike many of us who know in the field whether we have collected something groundbreaking, it is months later, sitting at the microscope, that Phoebe learns just how successful her fieldwork was.

For more information on Dr. Phoebe Cohen, please visit: http://sites.williams.edu/pac3/