Humboldt, Bergmann, and Haeckel: The German Roots of Ecology

One of the axioms of science is that any report on your research should include a thorough overview of the topic it addresses. This often means that introductions to scientific papers include some very old citations (for some authors, trying to find the oldest publication you can legitimately cite has become a game, and a pretty fun one at that). I'm in the process of writing the first chapter of my dissertation on the influence - or lack thereof - of climate on body size evolution in mammals, which turns out to be a very long-standing area of study. In working back to the roots of the debate, I've found myself returning to three papers from the early to middle 19th Century, one of which has a direct bearing on my research, another that is a little more tenuously connected, and a third that is only indirectly related but has a profound impact on everything I study. These papers were written by three very different scientists who were studying very different groups of organisms, but all three papers share one major commonality and, as I hope to convince you, several smaller ones as well.

The most recent of these publications is Haeckel (1866): Generelle Morphologie der Organismen by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel. Haeckel is remembered today for many things; some of these are positive (he was continental Europe's most eloquent and effective supporter of Darwin and one of the most accomplished scientific illustrators of all time) and some of them very, very negative (he used evolution and his studies on development to justify scientific racism), but he makes an appearance here because it was in his 1866 book that he introduced the word 'ecology' to the world. Haeckel defined his newly-minted word (which roughly translates as 'house study' in Greek) as the study of the environments of organisms. In modern popular culture, environment is often taken to mean the group of abiotic factors - variables such as climate, geography, and geology - that influence an organism, but to ecologists, this is only half the story; organisms also interact with a biotic environment shaped by factors such as predation, competition, and productivity. Ecology, then, is the study of how biotic and abiotic variables influence organisms or, more simply put, the study of why organisms evolve (as opposed to how life has evolved and is evolving, the province of evolutionary biology, though of course there is a huge overlap between the two fields). Because he coined the term, Haeckel is often thought of as the father of ecology, but in fact he would have had no field to provide a name for had it not been for the work of earlier scientists studying the influence of environment on evolution.

One of the most influential of these proto-ecologists was Karl Georg Lucas Christian Bergmann, whose work forms the backbone of my dissertation and of countless other research projects over the course of the last century and a half. Very little biographical information is available for Bergmann: the salient points are that he was born in 1814, attended the University of Göttingen, taught at both his alma mater and at Rostock, and died in 1865, one year before Haeckel wrote his landmark book. While at Göttingen in 1847, Bergmann published the paper for which he is best remembered today: Über die Verhältnisse der Wärmeökomie der Thiere zu ihrer Grösse. The title is a bit of a tongue twister for non-German speakers, but the concept is straightforward enough. Bergmann observed that species of mammals (not individuals within species, as is commonly thought) that lived near the poles tended to be larger than those living towards the equator. Bergmann's explanation for this was that large mammals have small surface area to volume ratios and can therefore retain heat more easily while, conversely, small mammals can shed heat more effectively. Naturally, the poles are colder than temperate regions which are in turn colder than the tropics, and therefore as you head from the former to the latter, you should expect to see a decrease in body size. Bergmann's rule, as this hypothesis has come to be known, has been put to the test several times; his relatively simple explanation has been both supported and attacked by ecologists through the years, but regardless of what you think of his rule, it can't be denied that Bergmann was a pioneering ecologist. By assigning a physical cause to a biotic pattern - and eleven years before Darwin and Wallace introduced the world to natural selection, no less - Bergmann set the tone for generation of ecologists to follow, and as such he deserves to be remembered as a father of the field.

If Bergmann is one of the fathers of ecology, then surely its grandfather was Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt (1769-1859). As opposed to the relatively obscure Bergmann and the politically distasteful Haeckel, Humboldt is one of the best-known and most beloved figures in the history of science; his Latin American travels and research garnered praise from such luminaries as Edgar Allen Poe, Simon Bolivar, and Thomas Jefferson (himself a scientist of no little reputation) and would inspire Darwin's voyage on the Beagle. While it was his travel narrative that would establish his fame, Humboldt also laid the cornerstone of ecology when, along with his traveling companion Aimee Bonpland, he published Essai sur la géographie des plantes in 1805.  During his sojourn in South America, Humboldt had climbed the volcanic peak of Chimborazo in the Ecuadorian Andes (though he failed to reach the summit) and was struck by the distinct zones of vegetation he encountered during his ascent.  His notes, coupled with observations of similar patterns on European mountains, gave Humboldt the data necessary for his 1805 paper as well as the large-scale figure that accompanied it (itself a milestone of scientific illustration).  By tying vegetation to factors such as temperature, air pressure, and soil type Humboldt became the first scientist to seriously study the influence of the environment on organisms, earning his reputation as a pioneering ecologist as well as countless citations in manuscripts (including mine) over the course of the subsequent two centuries.
The authors of these three papers no doubt had many things in common, but perhaps the most striking is that they shared a country of origin.  At first glance, it seems illogical that ecology should have been born in Germany (which, after all, was only a collection of smaller kingdoms and principalities until 1871).  Germany has always produced great scientists, from Leibniz to Einstein, but in Humboldt's time Paris was the center of the scientific world, and many of the most celebrated accomplishments of 19th Century science took place not on the Continent but across the English Channel.  Even within biology, France and Britain played a dominant role, producing some of the greatest anatomists and, later, evolutionary biologists that have ever lived.  Nonetheless, ecology was, at its root, a uniquely German phenomenon.  This begs a rather obvious question: why?  While I'm a far better paleontologist than historian, I think think I have the glimmer of an answer, but in the interest of keeping unassailable historical facts apart from more baseless arm-waving, I'll save my thoughts for a later post.  Stay tuned...

Fossil Vertebrate of the Month: Megatherium americanum

FVOTM is back from its extended holiday vacation, and because February 12th is Darwin Day, this month's vertebrate is an animal that played a crucial role in the development of evolutionary theory: the giant ground sloth Megatherium americanum.  The species would have been familiar to Darwin before he ever departed on the Beagle: it had been named in 1796 by no less a figure than Baron Georges Cuvier and its size (comparable to that of a modern elephant) and bizarre combination of traits (such as teeth without enamel and claws that the animal evidently walked on) had made it immensely popular.  Darwin himself uncovered fossils of Megatherium - as well as the hippo-like ungulate Toxodon - at Bahia Blanca, south of Buenos Aires.  While it is impossible to pinpoint exactly where or when Darwin first began to understand the patterns that he would later use to support natural selection, his recognition that Megatherium shared many features - including its apparently aberrant teeth and claws - with modern tree sloths certainly represents a milestone, as the great scientist would himself acknowledge in the opening lines of his epochal On the Origin of Species: "When on board H.M.S. Beagle, as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent.  These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species - that mystery of mysteries as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers."

Fossil Vertebrate of the Month: Diplodocus carnegii

Last month's Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting was held in Pittsburgh and while animal chosen for the conference logo was the awkwardly-named tetrapod Fedexia, there is another animal that will forever be associated with vertebrate paleontology in that city's Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The museum has existed since 1895, but it was in 1898 that its namesake would spur the discovery of its most famous specimen. It's unclear whether Andrew Carnegie was alerted to the publicity value of sauropod skeletons by a visit to the American Museum of Natural History or by a sensational newspaper headline trumpeting the discovery of "The Most Colossal Animal Ever On Earth." Regardless of the cause, he hired away some of the AMNH's paleontologists and sent them to the badlands of Wyoming to find a giant dinosaur for his museum. His team succeeded spectacularly, and in 1901 the fruits of their labor were described as Diplodocus carnegii. The skeleton, which for decades was the longest - though far from largest - dinosaur known, was a huge hit in Pittsburgh and around the world, as Carnegie presented casts of the skeleton (known affectionately as Dippy) as gifts to museums in capitals across the globe. Dippy even has a couple of connections to paleontology in Oregon: D. carnegii was one of the taxa modeled by UO computer scientist/paleontologist Kent Stevens, and the cast presented by Carnegie to London's Natural History Museum was the first fossil I ever saw and was largely responsible for setting me down the path I'm still traveling today.

Research Report: Mexico City

Whenever I tell anyone that I'm a paleontology student, one of the questions I inevitably get is 'Where do you do your field work?' When I tell them that I don't really do field work and that I do my research in the basements of museums, they usually say something to the effect of 'Oh, that's too bad.' Actually, it isn't. For one thing, the best science in our field is done indoors in collections, libraries, and labs. For another, I actually enjoy collections work (you can see a lot more fossils in a day in a museum than you ever will in the field). For yet another, it can take you to some of the best parts of the world. So far my collections visits have brought me home to Seattle, across the Cascades to John Day, to the great cities of California, to the university towns of the Rockies and Great Plains, to New York's unsurpassed temple to natural history, and now they've brought me to one of the greatest, most historic, and culturally rich cities on the planet. I'm writing this post from Coyoacan, a colonial town turned urban neighborhood in Mexico City. I've come to visit the collections of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in order to expand the scope of my dissertation to all of North America rather than just the US. While I've made an avowed effort to cut down on travelogue-type entries on this blog, this is the first international research trip I've taken, and as such a few posts from south of the border might be of more general interest than the usual "this is what I did today and this is what I think of it" travel update. I'll do my best to supply a few of these posts on the state of my research and of paleontology and science in Mexico during the duration of my visit this week, so stay tuned.

Fossil Vertebrate of the Month: Epicyon haydeni

Last month, while measuring teeth in the collections of the University of Montana and Idaho State University, I came across jaws of one of the more impressive carnivores ever to have lived. The picture at left (from UM) may not do the size of the animal justice, but Epicyon haydeni is the most massive known canid; the largest known individuals may have exceeded 200 pounds, putting them well within the size range of modern black bears. Epicyon was a member of a group of canids known as borophagines that were among the most common carnivores of the North American Oligo-Miocene. Borophagines are often described as hyena-like, and many of the larger taxa - including Epicyon - were likely bone-crushing predators. However, the group was very diverse and many of its members, especially in the Oligocene and Early-Mid Miocene, were actually fairly small; at least one species had an almost raccoon-like morphology. In many Late Miocene faunas, two species of Epicyon co-occur: the larger E. haydeni and the smaller (but still very big) E. saevus. Canid experts extraordinaire Xiaoming Wang and Richard Tedford have suggested that this is the result of character displacement, making Epicyon an excellent example of how the fossil record can record ecological and evolutionary patterns.

Fossil Vertebrate of the Month: Oncorchynchus rastrosus

Salmon are a symbol of the Northwest, and with good reason: not only have they been a staple food for humans for millennia and a hugely important link in regional food chains for much longer, but they have very deep roots here. Go back to the Late Miocene and you would still see salmon in the rivers of Oregon; you would, in fact, see one of the most impressive prehistoric fish ever discovered: Oncorhynchus rastrosus, the sabertooth salmon. The features that gave the fish its common name (and its original genus name, Smilodonichthys) are its enlarged canines which, arresting as they are, are not as unusual as they might seem, as many modern salmon grow large breeding teeth while migrating upstream to spawn. The size of O. rastrosus, though, is unique: at lengths of up to 2 meters, it was a good deal larger than the largest known Chinook salmon and head and shoulders beyond sockeyes, its nearest living relatives. The sabertooth salmon was in the news this last month (both in the paper and on TV) after a team led by the University of Oregon's own Edward Davis performed a CAT-scan on its skull. The result of this research is a series of impressive 3-D reconstructions, which can be viewed in an online exhibit by the U of O Museum of Natural & Cultural History; if you'd rather see the original in person, it will be part of the museum's revamped PaleoLab exhibit opening this month.

Field Report: Field Camp 2010

As many of you may know, I was the TA for the paleontology portion of the U of O's field camp this year. Since I got back earlier this week, several people have asked me what we did and what we found. I may not be a great blogger, but even I know the first rule of journalism, so in the interest of giving the people what they want, here's a brief summary of what went on (You'll notice that I'm not giving names or locations of any of the work we did; we were at two sites, both of which are publicly owned, and since illegal collection on federal land is a recurring problem in eastern Oregon, I don't want to provide any information that an unscrupulous fossil poacher might be able to use; for those of you who are wondering, yes, we did have the appropriate permits).

The first site we visited (let's call it Site 1, since imagination is precious and should be conserved) was an exposure of the famous John Day Formation, which has yielded one of the largest and best-preserved Oligocene faunas in the world. Since the primary purpose of our trip was to teach basic paleontological field methods, the bulk of our time was devoted to creating stratigraphic sections for the outcrop. There was, however, time for fossil prospecting as well, and it was very - almost ludicrously - productive. Among the things we uncovered were rodents (particularly squirrels and aplodontids), hypertragulids (mouse deer), canids, nimravids (sabertoothed, cat-like carnivores), horses, entelodonts (bearlike relatives of pigs), and rhinos. Perhaps the most impressive specimens we unearthed were four skulls of oreodonts, pig- and/or sheep-like ungulates that were abundant in the late Oligocene of Oregon (we found ample oreodont postcrania as well, some of which are pictured above).

Our second site (being creative once again, let's call it Site 2) was less fossiliferous but scientifically much more interesting. Instead of just getting a handle on the local stratigraphy as we'd done at Site 1, we were also interested in pinning down the age and paleoenvironment of Site 2, both of which were big question marks going in to field camp. Fortunately, the fossils we found were exactly the ones we'd hoped for to be able to assign an age to the fauna: jaws of the canids Tephrocyon and Cynarctoides, teeth of the horses Archaeohippus and Merychippus, the beaver Monosaulax, and a smattering of camels and paleomerycids (antelope-like ungulates). For those of you who know your North American biostratigraphy, that places you unequivocally in the mid-Miocene (~16 Ma), which in this part of Oregon means you're in the Mascall Formation. Pinning down the paleoenvironment was made easy by the discovery of a bird (probably some kind of waterfowl) and by several shell fragments of pond turtles (I won't insult your intelligence by telling you exactly what the students concluded about the site's paleoecology, but if you can't figure out what environment is likely to be represented by waterfowl and pond turtles, I question whether this is the blog for you).

So there you have it: for a trip whose primary motivation was teaching, we had a remarkably successful couple of weeks in the field (and not just in terms of finding fossils; we were very lucky weather-wise as well, though the last couple of days did manage to break the 100° mark). We and our specimens are now all safely back in Eugene, with the latter awaiting curation and, eventually, a trip back east, where they will be reposited in the collections of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

Fossil Vertebrate of the Month: Bradysaurus

In honor of this year's World Cup host, July's fossil vertebrate is South African. Bradysaurus (literally "Slow Lizard," represented here by a skeleton from Berlin's Museum für Naturkunde) was a pareiasaur, a group of large, armored herbivores that may be distantly related to turtles. Though pareiasaurs have been found in late Permian sites throughout the Old World, Bradysaurus is unique to the Karoo Basin north and east of Cape Town. While pareiasaurs were among the largest members of the South African ecosystem, the fauna was dominated by therapsids, or "mammal-like reptiles," including the now-iconic, predatory gorgonopsians and burrowing dicynodonts. The Karoo has been the focus of many research projects in recent years because it is one of the few regions with a terrestrial fossil record of the Permian Extinction, the largest mass extinction in the history of life. Pareiasaurs were among the groups that would not survive the end of the Permian; if you want to see one today, I recommend Oregon's very own Prehistoric Gardens.

Fossil Vertebrate of the Month: Platanistoid Dolphin

Modern dolphins are by many measures the most successful group of cetaceans: they are diverse, intelligent, and in many cases have proven more resistant to anthropogenic change than their larger relatives. Some dolphins have even colonized freshwater environments. These 'river dolphins' are often referred to as platanistoids, a name based on the modern genus Platanista that inhabits the Ganges and Indus Rivers (other genera inhabit the Amazon, La Plata, and - until recently - Yangtze Rivers), but there has been much debate about whether or not all river dolphins are actually related, as was originally thought. If the world's living and extinct river dolphins really are the product of separate colonizations of freshwater habitats, then they represent a striking example of convergent evolution: platanistoids share many morphological characteristics, perhaps the most striking being a long, pointed rostrum (or snout; this feature makes them similar in form to many other fish-eating vertebrates, such as ichthyosaurs and swordfish). The specimen at left, an as-yet unnamed platanistoid from the mid-Miocene of Oregon, exhibits this characteristic rostrum. However, it was uncovered from the Astoria Formation, a marine unit from the Oregon Coast, making it a saltwater freshwater dolphin. This implies that at least one lineage of river dolphins evolved its unusual morphology before migrating inland. To see this specimen, drop by the U of O's Museum of Natural & Cultural History's Paleolab exhibit, where it will be on display until this summer; if you're in Seattle, some very nice skulls of the similar (but unrelated) Eurhinodelphis are on display at the Burke Museum's Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway exhibit until the end of May.

Exhibit Review: San Diego Natural History Museum

I've been thinking for a while that it might be fun to try my hand at reviewing new (or at least relatively new) books, exhibits, papers, and the like from the world of paleontology, and this is my first attempt at doing so. Any thoughts on the format or the utility of this sort of post would be much appreciated.

Museum: San Diego Natural History Museum, San Diego, California

Exhibit: Fossil Mysteries

Theme: Paleontology

Grade: A+

This exhibit isn't new per se, but it is new to me and it's recent enough that I feel justified in reviewing it. Part of my impression of the San Diego museum may be colored by my time doing research in the collections, and it's worth noting that the facilities there are excellent, from the well-appointed prep lab to the well-organized cabinets of fossils to the offices with views over Balboa Park. That said, the exhibits there are among the best I've seen anywhere. The focus of Fossil Mysteries is deceptively constrained, displaying only fossils from the San Diego area. This is the sort of seemingly narrow focus that could lead to an exhibit consisting primarily of fossils on shelves: interesting, perhaps, to scientists, but with little value for anyone else. However, when put in the correct context, local fossils from sites familiar to museumgoers can be used as springboards to present broader concepts, and Fossil Mysteries does this to great effect. As the name of the exhibit suggests, this is done by presenting visitors with a series of questions. Some of these are rhetorical and answered fairly quickly (e.g. 'How can you tell different groups of carnivorous mammals apart?). Others (e.g. 'Why are there no more mammoths in Southern California?') are intentionally left unanswered, though visitors are provided with evidence they can use to draw their own conclusions. Of course, relying on museumgoers to actually read all an exhibit's signage is a bad bet, and several interactive displays are in place to appeal to younger visitors (my favorite was a series of self-powered displays on animal locomotion, all of which fed into the larger theme of adaptation). Models of some of the more impressive fossils are much in evidence (some of which are half skeletal, half fleshed-out); the full-sized Carcharodon megalodon and a prowling Panthera atrox are particularly impressive. A walk-through diorama of an Eocene jungle serves as an introduction to paleoecology. Many of the displays are augmented by vibrant murals by William Stout, which, taken as a whole, constitute one of the more impressive paleoartistic undertakings since Rudolph Zallinger's Age of Reptiles mural at Yale. One of the only drawbacks to Fossil Mysteries is the placement of these murals directly behind specimens, making them difficult to see and detracting from their full effect.

Many of my paleontological friends are likely reading this and despairing over another fossil exhibit based primarily on interactive displays. I would respond by saying that, first of all, we, as a discipline, should get past the delusion that fossils and fossils alone are enough to draw - and more importantly, to educate - a general audience, and second of all that, at least in this case, there's no cause for concern. One of the great strengths of Fossil Mysteries is its balance of interactive and specimen-based displays, and some of the specimens chosen for exhibit are impressive indeed. There's the San Diego ankylosaur (complete with encrusted oysters), bird tracks from the Oligocene Otay Formation, the Chula Vista walrus, a complete fossil gray whale, and several large mammals from Rancho La Brea, as well as several other smaller fossils too numerous to detail. It's hard to imagine Fossil Mysteries not having some appeal to anyone with even the remotest interest in paleontology or science in general, and because of that it stands head and shoulders above most recent paleo exhibits.

Notes From a Golden Age

Apologies for the text color issues with this post; Blogger is either acting up today or I'm being an idiot. Either way, as an unredeemable perfectionist, I find it even more annoying than you do.

I spent last week visiting Oregon's southern neighbor, primarily the Los Angeles and San Diego areas, and while native Northwesterners are inherently distrustful of Southern California (LA is the Mordor to the Northwest's Rohan, with the Bay Area playing the role of Gondor in this cumbersome and hopelessly nerdy analogy), speaking purely as a paleontologist, I have to admit it's an exciting place to be right now. In fact, as the collections manager of one of the museums I visited opined, this really could be considered the golden age of Southern California paleontology.

Many people don't appreciate the wealth of the fossil record around LA and San Diego, but it really is remarkable. Everyone is familiar with the carnivores, birds, ground sloths, and ungulates of Rancho La Brea, of course, but it's far from the only Pleistocene site in the region (perhaps even more remarkable are the pygmy mammoths of the Channel Islands, the most unusual members of a unique fauna). Go back to the Pliocene and beyond and you find several remarkable marine mammals, including early baleen whales, walruses, desmostylians, and giant sea cows. Of particular interest to me are the land mammals of the Miocene, which are found in almost unbelievable abundance in the Barstow Basin and in the canyons of the Coast and Peninsular Ranges. San Diego County has its own (though, it must be said, somewhat less spectacular) answer to the Oligocene faunas of Oregon and South Dakota as well as one of the continent's better-preserved Eocene ecosystems. There are even some dinosaurs and Cretaceous marine reptiles, the tip of Baja California's iceberg.

And these fossils have plenty of people around to collect them. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County has one of the best vertebrate fossil collections in the country, and the San Diego Natural History Museum, San Bernardino County Museum, and Raymond Alf Museum (associated, unusually, with a high school) are none too shabby either (the San Diego museum has one of the nicest collections facilities I've seen, and I've visited a great many museums over the course of my dissertation research). Remarkably, all four of these museums either have opened or will soon be opening new paleontology exhibits (again, San Diego really excels here; more on this in a later post, if I get around to it). Several universities in the area are among the leaders of North American paleontology; UCLA and USC are probably the most prominent, but several smaller universities in the area have active research programs as well. The only loser in the world of Southern Californian paleontology at the moment is Santa Barbara, who's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis recently lost John Alroy to Australia and who's natural history museum, while housing some excellent Channel Islands specimens, has no active paleontology program of which I'm aware (though it's worth noting that UCSB is one of the regional departments with a paleo program).

I'm not in the habit of heaping praise on Southern California (so much so that I feel compelled to point out that the collections of Berkeley's UC Museum of Paleontology are still the best on the West Coast). That said, this is an economic climate in which science, along with everybody else, has had to make many cutbacks, some of them very regrettable, and to see paleontology not only surviving, but thriving somewhere in the country is encouraging. May we all soon be following their example.

Fossil Vertebrate of the Month: Cophocetus

This month's fossil vertebrate - and those for all the months between February and May - is a whale. This cetacean theme is in honor of the UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History's current exhibit, Whales of Deep Time. It's the first part of the three-part exhibit Paleolab-Oregon's Past Revealed (tune in this summer to find out about Part 2). This is, to a certain extent, shameless self-promotion, as I played a small part in putting the show together (I wrote some of the labels; drop by to see if you can guess which ones!). It's also the first time in decades that we've been able to put so many of the UO's more spectacular fossils on display, so if you have any interest in Northwest paleontology, it's well worth a visit.

February's whale is Cophocetus oregonensis, a species that, as the name suggests, is unique to the Oregon coast: the type specimen was unearthed near the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse in Newport. Bones that may be attributable to another species of Cophocetus have been uncovered near San Mateo, California. The Newport specimen - currently on display in Paleolab - consists of an incomplete skeleton including a vestigial pelvis, a relic from its distant, land-dwelling ancestors. Cophocetus was a member of the Pelocetidae, an extinct family of whales found worldwide during the Miocene. Pelocetids were early balaenopteroids, making them not-too-distant relatives of modern rorquals, including humpback and blue whales.

2009: The Year In...

...The Northwest

It was a bad year to be a mayor, both in Seattle and in Portland. However, not too much sympathy was lost on Mayors Nickels and Adams, as the economic recession reached (hopefully) rock bottom, particularly in Oregon, and the region's largest city lost a long-time news source. On the plus side, Seattle opened its long-awaited (and desperately-needed) light rail system and it became fun to be a fan of the Mariners and Blazers again. Sticking with sports, it was also the best time in years to be a Duck (who played probably their biggest game ever this December after a disastrous start to the season).

...Science

The biggest science story in 2009 was something that happened 150 years ago. This was Darwin Year, a chance to celebrate the 200th birthday of a great scientist and the sesquicentennial of his epochal work. It was also a chance to take stock of the standing of evolution today. As a theory, it remains sound, well-supported, and a scientific fact. As far as teaching and public acceptance of it, though, the US continues to lag well behind the rest of the developed world. However, for the first time in a long while, pro-science education groups were able to make themselves heard above the ravings of the "intelligent design" community; let's hope this trend continues into 2010 and beyond. Anyone questioning the value of evolutionary theory should take a look at the major role it played in understanding and mitigating the effects of the swine flu pandemic that swept across the world this year.

There were, of course, other science stories in 2009, particularly related to ongoing global climate change and the major conference addressing the topic at year's end in Copenhagen. My favorite discovery of the year, though, was tool-use in octopi, the first time such complex behavior has been observed in any invertebrate.

...Paleontology

Paleontology is (or at least should be) measured by the theories generated by paleontologists, not by the number of new species described. That said, fossils form the backbone of our science, and it can't be denied that there were several spectacular new fossils described this year. Some of these (Darwinius and Raptorex, for example) were cool but probably overhyped (though having paleontology in the news is never a bad thing). Ardipithecus, on the other hand, is probably worth all the attention it got. Some extremely important marine mammal fossils (the otter-like pinniped Puijila and the pregnant whale Maiacetus) came to light this year, and probably didn't generate as much excitement as they should have. Far and away my favorite new fossil organism is the giant snake Titanoboa (the description of which came complete with an interesting but, sadly, flawed method of using snake size as a climatic proxy).

...Me

My year can be summed up in two words: travel and research. I spent a week in May in New York, a month on the road to Cincinnati and back, a couple of days in Copenhagen, a couple of weeks in Ireland, and a week at my old home in Bristol. Along the way I measured hundreds of mammal teeth and presented some preliminary results from my various research projects at four different conferences. I also submitted my first paper and my second NSF grant proposal, both of which I have high (and hopefully not naive) hopes of seeing come to fruition in the coming year. The NSF grant was just rejected today, so there's one bit of optimism that won't carry on into the new year. Oh well.

...Reflecting on the Aughts

It only came to my attention about a week ago that this was the end of a decade (depending on how you measure these things, of course). Despite my avowed effort to try to steer away from self-reflection on this blog, it really does boggle the mind a bit to look back on a what really has been a momentous ten years, both historically and personally. For my part, on this date in 1999 I had just finished my first quarter of college and was en route to visit my grandmother on Lopez Island (and, it so transpired, to see a fireworks show that put Seattle's to shame). I was just coming to realize how difficult it is to leave the place you grew up and to which you will always feel a profound connection. I was also just beginning to dip my toes into the world of academic paleontology (which, at the time, I thought would end with me working on early dinosaurs). Today, I have recently returned from Lopez (some things never change). I've found at least a temporary home back in the Northwest, and I'm a PhD candidate fully immersed in the world of paleontology. In the interim, I've shifted my focus from dinosaurs to the paleoecology of mammals (much less charismatic but much more interesting). I've travelled the US and the world; I even moved to England for a year for a masters degree. Like many people, I wallowed in depression and fear after 9/11, but not long after I experienced what have been, to date, the happiest times of my life while working at the Pacific Science Center. I've lost family members and seen my best friends get married and begin families of their own. I've experienced love, both requited and unrequited, joy and grief, hope and despair. I'm not sure if everything I've seen and done this decade has made me a better person (I'm sure it's made me more cynical, but I'm not convinced that's an entirely bad thing) but I am sure that's it's been an incredible ride (and I mean literally incredible: if you'd told me what was in store back in 1999, I likely would not have believed you). Regardless of their effect on me, and at the risk of sounding trite, I wouldn't exchange my experience in the Aughts for anything, and I hope that the 2010s will be equally interesting (in the good sense of the word, of course) for me and for all you readers out there.

Fossil Vertebrate of the Month: Tiktaalik

I used to have a feature on my academic site where I would pick a Fossil Vertebrate of the Month, about which I would write a little blurb and provide relevant links. I had let FVOTM lapse, but was recently encouraged to restart it, and I thought I would share it on this blog as well. Enjoy!

This November 24th marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, one of the most important books in history. Darwin famously devoted a chapter of his magnum opus to the imperfection of the fossil record and why transitional fossils supporting his theory might prove to be difficult to find. "Missing links" do remain rare, but they are uncovered from time to time, and the most spectacular example from recent history is this month's featured animal. Famously touted for its combination of fish and tetrapod features, Tiktaalik is actually a link in a well-documented transition between lobe-finned fish such as Eusthenopteron through "fishapods" such as Panderichthys and Acanthostega to true tetrapods such as Ichthyostega. Not only is Tiktaalik an impressive fossil (or, more accurately, group of fossils, as severals pecimens have been uncovered), but it provides an excellent example of the predictive power of evolutionary theory. Chicago paleontologist Neil Shubin actually went out looking for something very like Tiktaalik; he knew the approximate age of a gap in the tetrapod fossil record, he knew that most early tetrapod fossils had been found in rocks from around the edges of the North Atlantic, and that rocks of the appropriate age (Late Devonian) outcropped on Ellesmere Island in the Candian Arctic (one of the closest major land masses to the North Pole, appropriately enough for this time of year). Shubin's hypothesis proved to be correct, and a 2004 expedition uncovered the first remains of Tiktaalik, which has since taken its place alongside Archaeopteryx and Australopithecus as one of the most impressive transitional fossils ever discovered.

Burian & Knight Videos

Back when I first got my new computer, I thought it would be fun to test out the capabilities of Apple's movie program, so just for kicks I put together a couple of video tributes to my two favorite paleoartists, Zdenek Burian and Charles. R. Knight. I stumbled across them today while looking through some of my older files and figured it was time they saw the light of day, as it were.

New Look

Given the neglect this blog has experienced lately, I thought it was high time for some changes to be made. Any of my handful of long-time readers will notice that there's a new look, but I'm also going to make a concerted effort to change the content slightly. Looking back over my last several entries, I notice that a great man of them are somewhat long-winded descriptions of trips I've been on or things I've done. Way back when I started blogging, sharing my experiences was the whole point, given that I was a few thousand miles from all my friends and family. Now that I'm firmly ensconced back in the States, though, I imagine rambling travelogues and the like are getting a little boring. From now on, I'm going to try and focus more on what I think are the strengths of this blog: "insider" thoughts on paleontology and the Pacific Northwest, probably the only two areas to which I can realistically cast myself as an "insider" (whatever that means). There will, as always, be digressions - probably lots of them - but I will do my best to keep things at least relatively interesting to a larger audience. Stay tuned!

In the Wake of the Vikings

For the first time in more than two years, I have the distinct pleasure of updating this blog from Europe. My purpose for being here is twofold: at the moment I'm on a family vacation to Copenhagen and Ireland, at the end of which I'll be hopping across the Irish Sea to my old home in Bristol for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting. My perhaps too-colorful title may make it sound like more of an adventure than it really is (though it is, strictly speaking, accurate, as Ireland and England were colonized by the Norse - and in particular by Danes - during the Middle Ages), but it is one of the bigger trips I've taken in my life, and I will do my best to file periodic travelogues (though now that I think about, a large percentage of my reading audience are either on this trip with me or will be rendezvousing with me in Bristol). I will also post photos to my Picasa account for any of you who might be interested in what, say, Roskilde looks like this time of year.

One Giant Leap for Mankind (and Science!)

Forty years ago today, the astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission became the first people to set foot on an extraterrestrial body. It was - and still is - a monumental technological triumph and inspired a generation of scientists and engineers. That inspiration has proven to be, in fact, the most lasting legacy of Apollo 11; sending humans into space instead of unmanned spacecraft is both highly risky and highly expensive (so much so that the recurring discussions about a manned mission to Mars always strike me as lunacy), but no single image has done as much to galvanize public support for science as that of Neil Armstrong taking a giant leap for mankind. This was, of course, by design: John F. Kennedy was one of the smartest presidents we've had, and he knew full well that a moon mission would give Americans a huge morale boost out of what had been a particularly grim period of the Cold War. His plans succeeded spectacularly, and ushered in an era in which it would have been great to be a scientist. It's no exaggeration to say that since the days when Huxley lectured to London workers on a piece of chalk and Marsh and Cope's fossil discoveries were front-page stories in New York newspapers, science has never been as popular as it was immediately following the moon landing. It is in honor of that, then, that I'm writing this post and reminding every scientist out there that they really should like the moon.

Paleo Road Trip '09: Seattle

After a long, sometimes weary, trip across the country, it was very nice to spend a few days at home in Seattle. I always enjoy showing people around Seattle because, like any Northwest native, I'm proud of where I come from, but also because it serves to remind me that there really is a lot about the city that remains unique. I have made the argument that uncontrolled growth in the last couple of decades has done much to homogenize the place, and I stand by that argument, but it is encouraging to note that even after all that has happened, there are still a great many things you can see and do in Seattle that you simply can't anywhere else. A few cases in point:

• The Ballard Locks: Ballard itself is one of the most sadly altered neighborhoods in the city (though kudos to the Nordic Heritage Museum, Olsen's Foods, and Larsen's Bakery for keeping the community's Scandinavian heart beating), but the locks remain a proud reminder of the city's nautical heritage. Not only that, but the fish ladder is the only place in any major city that I know of in which you can get an underwater view of migrating salmon.
• The Seattle Center: It's something of a failure as a public space (not because it's unpopular, but for a site that plays host to so many major events, you'd expect a little more open space) and some recent additions (well, really just the EMP) were extremely ill-advised, but if you think about it, there are few - if any - places in the world where you can see a comparable collection of legitimately good '60s architecture. The Space Needle, Pacific Science Center, and Key Arena are the cornerstones, of course, but what I've always liked about the Center are its less-visited areas, like the courtyards and fountains outside the Northwest Rooms and the Bagley Wright Theater.
• Archie McPhee: Other cities have novelty stores, yes, but nothing I have ever seen comes close to Archie's (now newly returned to its home in Wallingford).
• Ye Olde Curiosity Shop: If you can ignore all the tourist schlock, the likes of which you could find in any store in any coastal town in the world, and focus on the mummies, shrunken heads, and freak animals, I would argue that a trip to Ye Olde Curiosity Shop qualifies as a unique experience.
• Downtown Library: Most of Seattle's downtown is composed of buildings that, while not ugly, are also not particularly inspiring. The new library, though, really is something different, and I'm generally inclined to agree with the architectural critics who gave it a thumbs-up. The views through the glass shell - a nice nod to the Northwest's often overlooked endemic architectural style - are especially nice.
• Burgers: I have never understood exactly why Seattle is such a hotbed for really good burger places, but I'm glad it is. Growing up here, I thought that having easy access to places like Dick's and Red Mill Burgers was the norm, but nowhere else I've ever lived has ever had anything comparable (not even Chicago, though in its defense it does have the world's best hot dogs).
• Pike Place Market: There's a reason all the tourists flock here. A working farmers'/fishermen's/whatever market right in the middle of downtown - especially one that's been running uninterrupted for over a century - is something you just don't see in many cities.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list, and I'm sure that many of my readers have already thought of additions they would make. If I wanted to be a downer, I could mention that there are plenty of negative unique things about Seattle (the way it's geography is perfectly shaped to funnel drivers into hellish traffic jams and how civic leaders have ignored that fact for decades, for example) or that several formerly unique things have lost much of their luster (like Fremont, where older works of public art such as the troll or 'Waiting for the Interurban' stand as monuments to a time when artists could actually afford to live in this alleged artists' colony). However, I'm sure I'll have enough time to dwell on the city's future in later posts, so I'll end this one with an upbeat reminder for all you Seattleites out there: yes, your city has seen significant change, but at its core it's still something special. That's probably something all of us - even the more jaded among us, such as yours truly - should remember from time to time.

Paleo Road Trip '09: The Journey Home

It's always hard to sum up a road trip, especially one of the magnitude of Cincinnati-Seattle, without falling into the trap of just recounting everything you did in excruciating detail. In the interest of saving everyone's time, then, I present to you this cop-out: a series of bulleted lists inspired by the sights our trio of paleontologists saw en route.

Best Road Signs

1. "Prepare to Meet Thy God/Maker;" we saw one of each version, and both were equally inexplicable.
2. The multiple series of rhyming pro-gun-rights signs across Illinois.
3. "Spelunk This!" and "Get Lost;" from billboards advertising a cave and maze, respectively, in the Black Hills. You could tell both from the wittiness of the slogans and the quality of the signs that these two were real winners
4. The countless signs - especially in the Northern Rockies - peppered by bullet holes from recreational gunfire

Best National/State Parks

1. Yellowstone; don't really know how it could be otherwise. It's always jammed with gawking tourists for a reason.
2. Ashfall Fossil Beds, Nebraska; according to the signs advertising it, it's "America's Pompeii." Not really sure that's accurate, but anyone passing through Nebraska should make time to see it. Think the Dinosaur National Monument quarry, but with rhinos and horses (which of course makes it even cooler).
3. Badlands; if you like pictures of craggy rocks in low-angle afternoon sun, this is the place for you. If you want to see genuine fossils in situ...not so much.
4. Ginkgo, Washington; the reason that Washington's state gemstone is petrified wood, but the real reason to go is for the views of the Columbia. Also, there's wineries nearby!
5. Mount Rushmore; it still strikes me as odd that anyone would look at a mountain - especially one in South Dakota, of all places - and say to themselves, "Hey, you know how I could improve this stunning natural vista? By adding the faces of three incontrovertibly great presidents and Teddy Roosevelt for some reason!"
6. Missouri Headwaters, Montana; given that we were loosely tracing Lewis & Clark's trail most of the way back, there was just no way we could have missed this one, and it's a good thing we didn't, since we saw some migrating pelicans there.

Best Attractions

1. Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, Montana; it's ridiculously dinosaur-heavy and far too prone to presenting Jack Horner's word as gospel, but it's one of the best paleo museums in the West and has only gotten better with time.
2. Dinosaur Park, Rapid City; it's pretty much the best one out there, provided you're not looking for accuracy (or imaginative color schemes) in your dinosaur models. The panoramic views of Rapid City and the Black Hills are a big plus.
3. Berkeley Pit, Butte, Montana; it's an old pit mine! It's home to the most polluted body of water in North America, with a pH slightly lower than that of Coke! It kills migrating waterfowl (though not immediately, as the tourist literature points out)! Someday it will reach the water table, at which point being a citizen of Butte will become even more miserable! If nothing else, it provides plenty of conversation fodder for road-trippers.
4. Snoqualmie Falls; they're very close to home and easy to overlook, but there's a reason David Lynch put them front-and-center in the Twin Peaks credits.

Best Quotes

1. "Daddy, I hate this place." -Remarkably perceptive kid at the Berkeley Pit
2. "Can I join you?" -Extremely drunk southern gentleman who entered our hotel elevator in the lobby, pushed the button for said lobby, waited a few seconds, realized he actually needed to go to the 9th floor, and talked to us the rest of the way about how much his sister had to pay for a room there.
3. "Arrive at Wendy's, on right." -My GPS; imagine, say, Richard Attenborough pronouncing 'Wendy's' to see why this was so funny.
4. "Turn right." -My GPS, directing me to turn into the middle of a prairie dog town, which was occupied by several ground squirrels but by nothing resembling a road.

Best Scenic Drives

1. Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming; the literal high point of our trip was also one of the figurative high points
2. Yellowstone; again, kind of a no-brainer, though the most scenic highways in the area tend to be the ones running through the canyons and valleys just outside the park.
3. Lake Couer d'Alene, Idaho; The lake really is gorgeous, but between the houses clustered along the shore and the fairly thick forests that cover the area, there are disappointingly few good vistas.
4. Mountains-to-Sound, Washington; I-90's path over the Cascades has always been a sentimental favorite of mine, and it certainly is one of the more impressive routes into Seattle.
5. Pintler Scenic Byway, Montana; a nice enough alternative to I-90, though the interstate's course through the mountains north of Missoula is in many ways more impressive.