Malacology at the Burke

Photo courtesy Dr. Rowell

Do you know what malacology is without looking it up? Malacology is the study of molluscs – which includes squid, snails, and many of the critters that leave beautiful shells on our beaches. The Burke Museum has a malacology collection and also a collection of corals and the shells of non-molluscs. “It’s what most people would call a shell collection,” explains Dr. Kirsten Rowell, the Burke’s curator of malacology. Most people would call her a curator of shells.

Dr. Rowell’s job is to sort out the malacology collection, which has never had a formal curator. The collection began in the 1890’s when P. Brooks Randolph, one of the founding members of the Pacific Northwest Young Naturalists, joined efforts to explore, collect, and catalogue the diverse flora and fauna in the PNW. “The malacology collection used to have a pretty prominent role at the Burke – the Mezzanine level [of the Museum, now a staff-only area] was funded in the early 1960 by an National Science Foundation grant to support the invertebrate collection”.” A room filled with shells once stood where the Burke's gift shop now stands. “Shells have always captivated the interest of people walking on the beach. They’re like the birds of the sea, they are beautiful and accessible… people tend to gravitate towards collecting them and learning more about them.”

Photo courtesy Dr. Rowell

Dr. Rowell’s interest in the collection is a little different. She’s actually not a malacologist (she doesn't focus on molluscs). She’s an aquatic biologist and ecologist. She uses the malacology collection at the Burke to study past aquatic environments. People have been collecting shells for a very long time, and that gives us a unique record of what water was like at the time those shells' inhabitants were alive. Dr. Rowell uses the shells (and a technique called geochemistry) to study animal populations, ocean acidification, and climate change at specific sites around the world.

For example, Dr. Rowell and her colleagues studied the shells of black murex snails, a species that is heavily harvested in the Gulf of California. Information from the shells told them how fast the snails were growing, and how much harvesting local populations might tolerate.

The Burke's malacology collection contains shells from around the world. If we know when and where they were collected, they can provide us with valuable information about what their habitat used to be like. By comparing this information with modern measurements, we can track changes in aquatic environments over long periods of time.

The shells at the Burke - like all the other specimens here - are like a library, ready to help us answer questions about the natural world.

Posted by: Winifred Kehl, Communications

SCIENCE!! Comics - Episode Four, "The Sound of One Claw Snapping"

This week! What's the sound of one claw snapping? (About 210 decibels.)

Learn more!

This week's comic was based on a number of sources, although it started with a press release on the phenomenon of sonoluminescence. 

You can read more here or watch a video of the snap here (with an explanation by one of the scientists studying these guys). And here is a video from the BBC.

I didn't get to talk about sonolumniscence much because it's pretty hard to explain, but it's really fascinating.

As usual, any mistakes are mine alone.

Posted By: Winifred Kehl, Communications

The Dinosaur in the Lobby

Paraphysornis brasiliensis

Like many natural history museums, the Burke has a dinosaur in the lobby. Ours just happens to be a terror bird. (All birds are dinosaurs, but not all dinosaurs are birds!) In honor of this year's Dino Day, meet our terror bird.

The theme of Dino Day this year is "Predators and Prey"—and terror birds were top predators. These giant flightless South American birds had huge hooked beaks and sharp claws. Ranging in size from the 3-foot-tall Psilopterus lemoinei to the 10-foot-tall Brontomis burmeisteri, they probably killed their prey by stabbing it with their hooked beak. Their strong legs might have helped hold down struggling prey while the beak stabbed and ripped it.

Terror bird foot

As for who they ate, we can't be sure. Larger terror birds probably could have eaten small- to medium-sized mammals.

There are no birds alive today close enough to terror birds to tell us exactly how they lived and hunted. Modern large, flightless birds—ostriches, emus, rheas, and cassowaries—are not hunters (although they can be dangerous). Terror birds' closest living relatives, the seriema, may be close to what the smallest terror birds looked and acted like.

Terror bird head

The Burke's terror bird is a cast (replica) of Paraphysornis brasiliensis. It lived in Brasil 23 million years ago.



Dino Day 2012 is coming up on Saturday, March 3rd!

Posted by: Winifred Kehl, Communications

SCIENCE!! Comics: Episode 3

This week! The Elephant's 6th Toe

Learn more!

This week's comic was based on a recent science paper, but has been thoroughly covered in the news (including the New York Times and the BBC News). There's much more to learn about the "toe" - like its similarities to the panda's "thumb" - but I was trying to keep this one short and sweet.

As usual, any mistakes are mine alone. I drew a female Asian elephant (which doesn't have tusks) and should note that apparently the number of toenails they have can vary. Both the elephant and the bones are a bit cartoony and shouldn't be taken as anatomical illustrations.

Posted By: Winifred Kehl, Communications

Volunteer Spotlight: Fish Collections

I love profiling volunteers at the Burke Museum because it gives me the opportunity to share unique stories and people who work hard and are dedicated to the museum, all without being on salary! These aren’t usually people you will see in the news, but they do a lot of great work at the museum deserving of newsworthy coverage. Today I’d like to introduce you to Saul Rico, a volunteer in the Ichthyology collections.

Jessica: Saul, tell me a little bit about what you do in the Ichthyology collections.

Saul: I process newly acquired specimens, loans and loan returns, enter data, re-label existing specimens, and any other tasks as needed.

Jessica: How did you end up volunteering for the Burke Museum’s Ichthyology collections?

Saul: I recently moved to Seattle and decided the transition would be a good time to make a career shift that aligned better with my interests and passions. I have always been interested in marine biology, particularly marine mammals and fishes, so I decided to quit my job of 10 years to pursue a career in fisheries management/research and perhaps apply to the graduate program at School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. I've been taking classes as a non-matriculated student to boost my knowledge in marine sciences and became aware of the fish collection when I took Ted Pietsch's Biology of Fishes course. He gave us a tour of the facility early in the course and I knew immediately that I wanted to be involved in some capacity. I approached him and asked if I could help and luckily there was some work I could do.

Jessica: What do you like most about volunteering at the Burke?

Saul: I really enjoy learning about the different fishes that inhabit our local waters and getting to see them first hand.  I also really enjoy working with the staff and other volunteers in the collection.  Not only are they very knowledgeable which presents a learning opportunity for me, but they are fun too. 

Jessica: Tell me a funny story that’s happened while working in the fish collections.

Saul: I think seeing school children come through the collection as part of a school field trip presents lots of opportunity for spontaneous fun. Some of the questions are very insightful and well thought out, while others are questions that only a child could come up with.  During one particular tour one kid had a question about a half-man, half-alligator that I thought was pretty funny. He really seemed to think that one existed and must have thought that as a scientist, the collections manager should be an authority on the topic and must know something about it.

Jessica: What would surprise people about what you do?  

Saul: I think people don't quite grasp what the fish collection is about and why it's important. But when they realize that it truly is just like a library of fishes that other researchers can "check out" to study them more carefully, it becomes clear that I'm a kind of like a librarian.  Oh, and some people are surprised that I don't get paid for what I do!  

Astroscopus y-graecum specimens. Some of Saul's favorite specimens from the Burke's Icthyology collections, these fish are a shallow water species from the East Coast.

Jessica: Briefly describe your most memorable project.  

Saul: I had a nice opportunity to work with another volunteer identifying some fish that had only been identified to the genus level. Many fishes can be easily classified by ichthyologists to the family or even genus level, but once you get to the actual species level, it gets difficult to differentiate them, particularly since some differences between species can be quite subtle.  So in order to identify them, we used a dichotomous key to correctly identify their species.  A dichotomous key is kind of like a map of fish characteristics.  If followed correctly it can help distinguish fish species from one another. I'd never done this before, so it was not only fun but a great learning opportunity for me.  

Posted By: Jessica Newkirk, Volunteer Coordinator

Science Behind-the-Scenes: Mammalogy Edition

Have you ever been to the Burke and wondered what's in the rest of the building? Behind the exhibits (actually, under them, around them, and above them!) are offices, the exhibit workshop, and enough cabinets full of wonder to make Indiana Jones jealous.

In this edition of Science Behind-the-Scenes, meet the Burke's mammal collection and find out why we keep drawers full of flattened animals and their bones!

Mammals on display at Meet the Mammals

Mammalogy is the study of mammals (a mammal is an animal with a backbone that has hair and produces milk for its newborns). Over 5,400 species of mammals live on Earth today and many more species have lived and died since the time of the dinosaurs. That's right—running around the feet of Allosaurus and Stegosaurus were little furry mammals. 

Fossil mammals can be found in the paleontology collection. Humans are mammals but anything to do with humans is usually found in the archaeology or ethnology collections. The mammalogy collection houses all the Burke's "recent" (non-fossilized) mammals—bones, skins, whole animals, flattened animals. Mammalogy has everything from exotic animal skins confiscated from smugglers to squirrel skeletons used by scientists to study local squirrel populations. 

The Burke Museum's mammal collection has over 50,000 specimens (a specimen can be one animal or part of one animal). We've got everything from wolves to wolverines, bats and flying squirrels, tiny shrews and huge whales. You won't find many of these out on display because there's just not enough room! But you can see a lot of mammals during our annual Meet the Mammals event—and even touch a few.

Even though visitors don't get to see the mammalogy collection often, it's important and gets a lot of use from students and researchers. Collection manager Jeff Bradley keeps all the mammals clean, safe, organized, and available for research. He works with graduate students and volunteers to process new specimens (sometimes that means picking up a dead whale from the beach!) and keeps track of the old ones.

Wolverine bones laid out for study

Graduate students and scientists from the University of Washington and elsewhere use the collection for research. Current research in the collection includes studying how mammals have responded to environment change in the past several million years. This could also tell us how humans have affected other mammal populations.

Paleontologists who study prehistoric mammals also use the mammalogy collection to figure out what extinct mammals may have been like, how they spread across continents, and how they evolved. Stay tuned for more behind-the-scenes news from the mammalogy collection and look for more Science Behind-the-Scenes at the Burke to learn about the bird, fish, and DNA collections!

Posted by: Winifred Kehl, Communications