What really killed the dinosaurs? K-12 teachers are helping us find out

By Gregory P. Wilson

Many of us think of extinction as a terrible process that strips us of amazing biodiversity. On one hand, that’s certainly true. It’s estimated that more than 99.9% of living things that once existed are now extinct! On the other hand, extinctions often benefit the survivors.

As a paleontologist with the Burke Museum and University of Washington, I examine the evolution and ecology of early mammals in the context of major events in the earth's history.

Dr. Wilson in the field.

There’s no better example of this than the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs (except for birds) and allowed mammals to expand into all corners of the earth, all body sizes, and all modes of life.

Marine fossils from around the world contain important clues to understanding this mass extinction event. But relevant terrestrial fossils, including dinosaurs, can only be found in a handful of places.

One of the most famous and intensively studied fossil sites is the Hell Creek badlands in northeastern Montana, where the type specimen of T. rex was discovered in 1902 by paleontologist Barnum Brown. In the 1980s, this area became a testing ground for the ‘Alvarez hypothesis’, which posited that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs in a geologic blink of an eye.

Museum Collections and the Story of Life on Earth

How do we really know what happened before we were here?

Objects are the key to understanding the story of life on earth. Many of us have personal collections that remind us of the past - people, places, and experiences. At the Burke Museum, we care for 15 million objects (and counting!) in our natural and cultural collections.

We gather and hold these objects as a record of nature and culture – and use them to generate new knowledge and celebrate our shared heritage (see some of these objects in our ever-growing Facebook album).

What can objects tell us about the world around us, and the life before us? These are the questions that motivate Burke researchers every day.

Watch this short video for a glimpse into our collections and the people who care for, and learn from, these objects to help better understand the world around us:

How Gertrude the Hippo led me to the Burke

By Norah Farnham
Guest Writer

When I was hired as the hippo zookeeper at Woodland Park Zoo in 1999, the hippos were the first animals I was assigned to care for, and I have been with them ever since.

Though I had worked as a zookeeper for 13 years at two previous zoological facilities, I had never worked with Common, or Nile, Hippos. I was instantly fascinated by 36-year-old Gertrude (Gertie) and 21-year-old Water Lily – and so were the zoo visitors.

The hippopotamus is one of Africa’s most iconic animals, and a favorite among zoo visitors. Their immense size and aquatic habits make them one of the most recognizable and popular animals, and one that people expect to see when they visit a zoo.

Since hippos commonly live only into their 40s, and hippos are highly social animals, it was not long after I became the hippo keeper that we began discussions about adding a third hippo to our group, as company for Lily when Gert eventually passed. In 2003, we welcomed 2-year-old Guadalupe as the newest member of our little herd.



Water Lily, Gertrude, and Guadalupe
Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo

Short Takes on Plastics

Look around you and you'll notice that plastics are everywhere today. From children’s toys to parts on the Mars rover Curiosity. It’s difficult to imagine what life was like before them. Products made with plastic are often more convenient, cheaper, lighter, safer and more durable, but they also present unwanted side effects to our health, cultures, and environments across the globe.

As part of our Plastics Unwrapped exhibit at the Burke, we recently invited a range of experts from the University of Washington (UW) and beyond to present their perspective (or "Short Takes") on a range of topics related to plastics in front of a live audience at the Neptune Theatre in Seattle. We've captured a few of the presentations on video to share with you:

What was life like before plastics?
Lauren Palmor, a UW Art History student shows what life was like before plastics - specifically related to food. How did people preserve their food without plastic? Watch Lauren's presentation in this video to find out:

Plastics in our Collections: A Sign of the Changing Material Culture?

"Before Plastics" objects on display

in the Plastics Unwrapped exhibit

The Burke Museum’s new exhibit, Plastics Unwrapped, examines how plastics went from being rare to being everywhere in a short period of time, and how material culture was changed by plastics.

To help visitors explore what life was like before plastics, several objects from the Burke’s ethnology collections – made from a range of materials found in nature – are on display. These objects include: a rain hat made of twined cedar bark, a child’s waterproof parka made of seal gut, toy blocks made of wood, and containers made of clay.

That made me wonder, will more and more plastic objects begin to make their way into the Burke Museum’s permanent collections as a reflection of this shift in material culture?

I asked Rebecca Andrews, ethnology collections manager, and she pointed me towards several objects in the ethnology collection that are either partially or fully comprised of plastic. For example:

Tracked at the molecular level: Wolverines return to the North Cascades



Logan was live-captured for the first time on January 24, 2013
near Easy Pass. (Photo by U.S. Forest Service).

Wolverines are one of the rarest and most elusive mammals in North America. After being hunted to extinction in Washington state in the 1930s, they’re finally starting to return to the northern Cascade Range.

Keith Aubry, research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, has led a study to track wolverines found in Washington since 2006. Each winter, he and his team carefully live-capture wolverines, like “Logan,” the young male in the photograph to the right, to document their appearance, sex, age, and condition.

There's hope for the survival of frogs

Leopard running frog, Kassina arboricola.
Photo by Duncan Reid.

Amphibians are one of the most threatened animal groups in the world; almost one third of all species are under severe threat. One of the main reasons for this is a nearly worldwide distribution of a chytrid fungus that causes a highly-lethal disease in frogs, called Chytridiomycosis. The fungus attacks the skin and blocks respiration in infected frogs, eventually killing the animal.

Chytrid is particularly widespread in Africa, with new positive records reported from countries in southern, eastern, and central Africa each year. One hypothesis is that the chytrid fungus originated in Africa and dispersed globally via the pet trade.