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/

Close your eyes and imagine a paleontologist driving a pickup truck out into the badlands of Wyoming to study the most celebrated dinosaur-bearing rock formation in the US and accompanied only by two dogs. Now answer me truthfully, did the paleontologist look like this?

When I wrote to Dr. Kelli Trujillo asking her for a picture of herself doing fieldwork, she replied, “I only have field photos of me teaching, since I’m almost always in the field alone.” Luckily, her work as a paleontological consultant has led to fossil discoveries that require her to supervise fossil excavation crews, and so she could share the picture above. Pity her pups can’t take pictures of her doing fieldwork, though – maybe they’d do better at getting her smiling (beardless) face in a shot!

Kelli is a vertebrate paleontologist who works on the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation (~155-148 Ma). Beginning in the 1870’s, the Morrison has been THE place to find dinosaurs in the American West, so much so that it was at the center of the legendary “Bone Wars” between rival paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh (Peabody Museum) and Edwin Drinker Cope (Academy of Natural Sciences). Thanks to intense collection over 140+ years, many species of dinosaurs have been described from the Morrison, including fan favorites Stegosaurus (Colorado’s state fossil), Allosaurus (Utah’s state fossil), and lots of sauropods. While its dinosaurs are extremely well-studied, the Morrison Formation itself needs more work.

Kelli’s research includes detailed mapping of Morrison outcrops, analyzing the composition of the sediments in order to better understand the environment in which the many dinosaurs lived and died, and obtaining more radiometric dates from different Morrison outcrops to help figure out just how many of these dinosaur species lived at the same time. She also digs quarries and carefully screenwashes the sediments to collect microvertebrate remains –these small animals of the Morrison, not the dinosaurs, are most useful in reconstructing the paleoenvirnment.

A significant portion of Kelli’s career has been in paleontological education, both in formal and informal settings. As a consultant, she works with developers and construction agencies to ensure that our nation’s paleontological resources are properly collected and preserved. As manager of the University of Wyoming Geological Museum, she has introduced thousands of elementary through high school students to the wonders of dinosaurs and paleontology. She also teaches undergraduates and volunteers to clean sediments off of fossils in the museum’s preparation lab, which is visible to the general public. Each summer, Kelli leads fieldtrips in the Morrison Formation for college students from the University of Wyoming and the University of Pittsburgh. She teaches them how to be field paleontologists and gets them digging in the dirt, discovering new fossils. And, of course, most of them love it!

Anyone setting up a new laboratory in the near future needs to visit the Looy Lab at Berkeley for inspiration. I spent a couple weeks there last summer, and every day, I thought to myself, “When I get to Wyoming, I want a lab just like this!” The Looy Lab is nearly always full (when I was there, they had two profs, four-and-a-half graduate students, and at least four dedicated undergraduates, not to mention scientists from other labs who would drop in for a weekly coffee or to have lunch). Folks collaborate on each other’s research, take group trips to the Synchrotron to get high-resolution 3D images of fossils, and just plain look out for each other. Dr. Cindy Looy makes it a fun place to do science.

Cindy is a plant ecologist who works on really old fossils: ~310-245 million year old ones, to be specific. Forests during this time period looked very different from today because they were composed of giant club mosses, seed ferns, and early conifers. Cindy’s research questions focus on the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history (the Permo-Triassic Extinction, ~252 Ma) and the transition from a world with a large Antarctic ice sheet (Late Carboniferous) to a world without ice (Middle Permian). Got the relevance to the present? Excellent. Cindy’s quest for plant fossils from these time periods has literally taken her to all ends of the earth: from mountains in Russia, to deserts in Niger and South Africa, to badlands in Texas and New Mexico. Cindy’s fossils document the aftermath of the Permo-Triassic Extinction: a single genus of quilworts is dominant all over the world, and it took over five million years for Euramerican plant communities to return to pre-extinction diversity and complexity.

Although Cindy’s expertise is on Carboniferous and Permian conifers (one of her papers describes a new species which she named Lebowskia grandifolia – Jeff Bridges thought that was pretty cool), she is advising students doing graduate research on Devonian liverworts, Permian phytoliths, Cretaceous leaf fossils, pollen in recent lake cores, and even experimental manipulation of living plants. The fact that she can advise on such disparate projects speaks to her abilities as a big-picture scientific thinker.

Forgive me the focus these past couple days on paleobotany, but it was nearly impossible for me to write about Caroline Strömberg yesterday without also writing about Cindy, and now vice versa. So, indulge me in another quick trip down memory lane: Back in the good old days of 2007, the three of us roamed the third floor of Smithsonian, getting our science done, but also causing a ruckus that included daily 4PM banana fights and even a wrestling match on the National Mall (I won because, as Cindy put it, “You were throwing your overweight around”)! Cindy’s roommate was in the IT department, and we formed competing bowling teams. We would sure love it if the Paleochicks Bowling Team picture makes it into the next edition of the Taylor et al. paleobotany textbook, which features photographs of both plant fossils and the scientists who work on them. Anybody got connections?

For more information about Dr. Cindy Looy, visit: http://ib.berkeley.edu/labs/looy/index.html

Today’s scientist demonstrates just how much you can accomplish by returning to one main field area every year for fifteen years. Dr. Karen Samonds is a vertebrate paleontologist who studies the amazingly bizarre animals of Madagascar. If it’s not already near the top of your ecotourism hit list, Madagascar should be because most of its plants and animals are not found anywhere else in the world! In scientific terms, we call that endemic. It is also a hotspot of biodiversity – scientists from the Missouri Botanical Garden estimate that the (relatively) tiny island of Madagascar has almost half the number of plant species as the entire African continent. As for the animals, do a quick Google image search on lemurs? Can you possibly get any cuter?

Karen’s research centers on the origin and evolutionary history of these diverse and endemic animal communities. Madagascar is ~250 miles to the east of the southern African coast, and it has been isolated for at least 80 million years. Most of the animal groups that inhabit Madagascar today are thought to have arrived while it was isolated. When and how did they arrive? Where did they come from? What did the original colonists look like, and how much has evolution changed them over the millions of years since they arrived? These questions have remained largely unanswered because there is a 65 million year gap in the fossil record surrounding the time when scientists think that modern groups arrived. Karen and her colleagues journey to remote areas of Madagascar, searching for new outcrops and fossils. So far, they have discovered localities that are 30-50 million years old, allowing them to gradually fill in the gap in Madagascar’s fossil record!

One of the things that impressed me most about Karen is that she and some scientific collaborators founded an NGO to promote conservation, education, development, and also scientific research in and around Tsinjoarivo, Madagascar. In addition to encouraging scientific research (including field censuses of modern lemurs), the Sadabe NGO has organized dental and women’s health clinics, reforestation programs, an annual primatology field school, training of locals in scientific data collection, and creation of ecotourism brochures. Most impressively, in 2005, they partnered with the Madagascar Ankizy Fund to build an elementary school that teaches over 200 students each year. So many of us field scientists travel to places like Madagascar, do research, wish we could do something to help the locals, but then return home and go back to our usual American lives of research, teaching, families, and hobbies. I greatly admire Karen for being both a humanitarian and a scientist!

For more information on Dr. Karen Samonds, please visit:

http://www.bios.niu.edu/samonds/samonds.shtml

http://www.sadabe.org/Samonds/Index.html

For more information on the Sadabe NGO, visit: http://www.sadabe.org