There was never any question of who would be the first scientist in my blog. Call me biased, but if you spoke the phrase “successful field paleobotanist” and asked me what immediately came to mind, it would be the woman in the photograph above. Dr. Bonnie Jacobs is precisely what a successful field paleontologist looks like: 5’2” of intelligence, determination, toughness, and spunk!

Africa is an extremely challenging place to do field research. It’s super expensive, logistics and local bureaucracies are intimidating, and conditions can be downright dangerous (large and scary animals; microscopic yet scary things that make you really, really sick; unstable governments and coups). Until recently, Bonnie was the only American scientist working on African plant macrofossils (fossils you can see without having to use a microscope: e.g., leaves, fruits, seeds, wood). Funny story how that came to be. For her PhD, Bonnie investigated past vegetation and climate change in the southwestern US by studying 42,000 year-old fossil pollen. But, she ended up doing a lot of her microscope work at the National Museums of Kenya, where her husband had taken a job. After Bonnie completed her PhD, she applied for two grants: one, a continuation of her graduate research, and the second, to work on plant macrofossils from the Tugen Hills in Kenya. To her surprise, Bonnie was awarded the latter, despite never having worked on macrofossils or on African fossils. And thus began an admirable field career!

Bonnie studies macrofossils from the last ~50 million years in sub-Saharan Africa. She is best known for her work using leaf fossils to interpret past climate. However, she has also done incredible work on the biogeography and evolution of African forest ecosystems. Bonnie’s work is important because humans are causing tremendous changes to Earth’s climate – by studying fossils from warm intervals in Earth’s history, we can better predict how Earth’s climate and ecosystems, particularly those diverse and vulnerable ones in the African tropics, might respond to present-day global warming.

With 30+ years of African fieldwork, Bonnie has some of the most amazing stories I’ve ever heard. I’m only going to give the barebones skeleton of my two favorites, because I hope that Bonnie will one day write a best-selling memoir (nudge, nudge). The first is a near-death encounter with a large, terrifying animal that kills more people in Africa each year than any other. Not crocodiles, not lions, but hippos! Bonnie once unknowingly placed her tent between a hippo and its favorite food supply while doing fieldwork in Kenya. I can’t imagine what must have been going through her head as she lay in the dark, listening to the hippo get closer and closer. The second story is from when Bonnie and her husband were living in Nairobi. A coup had broken out, and one day fighting erupted around their house. Bonnie described barricading themselves in their house, taking cover under furniture, hoping for the best and fearing the worst. After several nerve-wracking hours, the shooting stopped. Bonnie and her husband fled their house and escaped to the house of their bosses, Richard and Maeve. How’s this for paleo street cred: A coup erupted, there was fighting all around our house, so we escaped and took shelter at the Leakeys’.

For more information about Dr. Bonnie Jacobs, visit:

http://www.smu.edu/Dedman/Academics/Departments/EarthSciences/People/Faculty/B%20Jacobs

http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/author/bonnie-f-jacobs/