Science News Roundup: Mega crocs, mega fires and enamel-sporting crayfish!

Does this mean crayfish should brush?

A University of Iowa scientist has announced the discovery of the largest "true crocodile" in East Africa. At 27 feet long, Crocodylus thorbjarnarsoni probably could have swallowed the 4-foot tall humans who lived alongside (but not too close!).

Analysis of a genetic database of horses indicates that domestic horses originated in the steppes of modern-day Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan and expanded out from there around 160,000 years ago. The herds were repeatedly restocked with wild horses as they spread across Eurasia, possibly by taking mares from the wild.

Science News Roundup: (Mostly) archaeology edition

Some highlights from science news in the past couple weeks:

Penguin from space.

Scientists count penguins from space: Scientists have completed the first count of emperor penguins from space by estimating the number of birds using Very High Resolution (VHR) satellite images of Antarctica and collaborating the counts with ground and aerial counts. (Note that these were penguins being counted from space, NOT penguins from space being counted. :-) Using satellite images allows more accurate counts of the penguins, due to their harsh environment.

DNA points to common ancestors of modern cattle: Modern cattle are probably descended from a herd of just 80 animals that lived 10,500 years ago. An international team of scientists extracted DNA from early domesticated cattle bones thanks to archaeological digs in Iran. The Near East is where cattle, goats, pigs and sheep were first domesticated, and the DNA analysis provides important clues to how and why animals were domesticated.

Human ancestors used fire 1 million years ago: In a cave in South Africa, an international team of scientists found evidence that human ancestors used fire as long as 1 million years ago. The evidence consists of "microscopic traces of wood ash, alongside animal bones and stone tools ... found in a layer dated to one million years."

As if the Great Pacific Garbage Patch wasn't enough: Wind pushes plastic below the ocean's surface, a University of Washington oceanographer recently noticed. Since we currently estimate how much plastic garbage is in the ocean by skimming the surface, this means there's even more garbage clogging the ocean than we thought. Instead of just floating on the surface, the oceanographer found plastic at every depth.

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A note about Science News Roundups: these short blurbs are based on press releases and, therefore, represent one perspective on a news item. If you're interested in a story, be sure to look for more news pieces that feature a variety of sources, including experts who were involved in the work as well as experts in the same field who weren't.

SCIENCE!!! Comics - Episode Seven: We heart WILD River Otters!

This week's comic goes out to all of nature's cute critters that we love and adore and want to take home with us. Still, most animals are better off in their natural habitats. It's better for us to love and appreciate them for what they are—wild animals.

You can see wild river otters around Washington state. Try spotting them from a high lookout (like a bridge or the top of a hill) near their feeding areas. Learn more about river otters and how to live with them if you find them as your neighbors (hint: don't let them den under your porch). If you see an otter (or other wildlife) that looks like it might need help, contact PAWS.

Science News Roundup

Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas

A Burke Blog post on the highlights of recent natural history and cultural news:

Chemists at the University of California at Berkeley have found the chemical fingerprint of fertilizer in the increase of nitrous oxide—a greenhouse gas—in the atmosphere; the rise of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere can now be linked to increased fertilizer use.

A partial foot discovered in Ethiopia provides evidence of another human-like species that lived at the same time as Lucy, 3 million years ago in northern Africa. Unlike Lucy's foot, the new foot has an opposable big toe bone.

The "classic" magma chamber diagram

New research on volcanoes has turned up surprises about the location of magma chambers (which are often drawn as a little bubble under a volcano but in reality are very difficult to map) that could help predict large eruptions.

The building blocks of proteins, RNA and DNA, and cellular membranes probably emerged from our young solar system, according to scientists at NASA and the University of Chicago. Turns out, the secret to life is really just a natural consequence of particle dynamics in the initial stage of planet formation ;-) (I apologize for butchering that quote, Dr. Ciesla, but it was all light-hearted fun.)

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A note about Science News Roundups: these short blurbs are based on press releases and, therefore, represent one perspective on a news item. If you're interested in a story, be sure to look for more news pieces that feature a variety of sources, including experts who were involved in the work as well as experts in the same field who weren't.

Posted By: Winifred Kehl, Communications

Short Take: Recovering Northwest Coastal Indian Food Traditions

Last month, traditional foods educator Elise Krohn joined nine other food experts to give a short talk as part of the Burke Museum's "Short Takes on What the World Eats" at the Neptune Theater. She spoke about individuals and organizations working to restore traditional Native knowledge of the tending, harvesting, preserving, and preparing traditional northwest Native foods. Other speakers discussed topics from wild food foraging to eating bugs.

If you missed Elise Krohn's talk, you can watch it below, and check out our YouTube channel for more Short Takes.



If you enjoyed Elise Krohn's talk, come to the Burke this weekend! On Saturday, March 31st, join traditional food experts for a day of activities and demonstrations of northwest Native foods and diets at the Burke Museum. In addition to seeing how to boil water with rocks and having the chance to sample traditional northwest Native foods, visitors will have the chance to hear from those leading the revival of Native food traditions. The day of events compliments the Hungry Planet and Salish Bounty exhibits currently on display at the Burke, both of which invite reflection and discussion on what the world eats and what we eat.

Posted By: Winifred Kehl, Communications

SCIENCE!! Comics - Episode Five, "Would you eat test tube meat?"

This week! Would you eat test tube meat?

This week's comic was based on several recent news articles about test tube meat, or "in vitro meat" (it's not actually grow in a test tube). Ground meats grown in vitro are probably not far from our grocery store shelves (it's harder to grow meat in the shape of drumsticks, steaks, etc.). They could help provide protein for a world population that's emptying the oceans of fish and crowding the surface with livestock, but are they a good solution? (Scientifically, probably. Economically, we don't know yet.)
New Harvest, which is trying to grow in vitro meat, has an FAQ about how it works.

Posted By: Winifred Kehl, Communications

Meet Our Giant Turtle

Last summer the Burke's fossil preparator, Bruce Crowley and a team of volunteers excavated a giant turtle - but finding it was only the beginning.

The fossil was first spotted on this rocky outcrop. Bruce and volunteers dug around the area where the bone was visible to make sure they got every piece of the fossil.

Enough of the bone was showing to tell that they belong to a prehistoric soft-shelled turtle (the family Trionychidae). The geology of the area tells us that it's about 49 million years old.

Bruce wheels in the giant turtle.

The fossil and the rock surrounding it were covered - first with aluminum foil (or paper towel or toilet paper), then with plaster. The aluminum foil prevents the plaster for sticking to any exposed bone, and makes it easier to remove once it's back at the museum.





Inside this plaster jacket are the fossil remains of a 49-million-year-old turtle. But for the moment, it's covered in rock and it's heavy.

Now that the jacket is in the fossil prep lab at the Burke, the team can begin to remove the rock that surrounds the bones.

Once the rock is removed, the turtle could prove to be the biggest fossil turtle in the Burke's collection.

Bruce uses a cast cutter to open the plaster field jacket. The black tube in the upper left of the photo is a vacuum to suck up plaster dust and dirt. Bruce wears a mask to protect his lungs from plaster powder.

The fossil prep setup. Bruce uses a vacuum cleaner to clean up dust in the work area.

After a couple weeks of work, fossil bone is exposed. It may not look like much, but what you see here represents a lot of work.

The sandbags are used as wrist rests while Bruce works on the bone with air-powered "micro jacks" - tiny, miniature, hand-held jack hammers.

In this close-up of the work area, taken about 2 weeks after the field jacket was first opened, you can see part of the fossil bone exposed. The orange stuff in the upper right is glue to keep the rock from splitting while Bruce is working and breaking the fossils inside.

You can see the giant fossil turtle this Saturday at the Burke's annual Dino Day. From 10 am (9 am if you're a Burke member!) to 4 pm, get an up-close look at the turtle and talk to Bruce and other Burke paleontology experts. 

Posted By: Winifred Kehl, Communications

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

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. 

SCIENCE!! Comics: Episode Two

Click the picture for a larger (readable) version!

This week! Like water off a butterfly's wing - what do butterflies do when it rains?

Learn more!

This week's comic was based on a press release from the American Institute of Physics, but I didn't even get to the point of their research because I got caught up in the details of how butterfly wings shed water and dirt. The cool thing for us humans is that we might be able to manufacture silicon with texture like butterfly wings so that it will shed water and dirt without needing to be cleaned with detergents. 

As usual, any mistakes are mine alone. I should also note that the butterfly mentionedin the press release (mountain swallowtail) is not the same species I drew (blue morpho).

Science Behind-the-Scenes: Paleontology Edition (Part 2)

Do you want to work in the fossil collection of a museum and be surrounded by fossils all day? In this edition of Science Behind-the-Scenes, meet the people who work in the paleontology (fossil) collection, learn about what they study, and meet some of our favorite fossils!

A Leptauchenia skull.

The Burke's paleontology collection houses over 3 millions fossils (as you'll know if you've read Part 1) and quite a few people (live, not fossilized), too!

We've got curators of vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants, a fossil preparator, a handful of graduate students doing research and collection work, a legion of volunteers, scientists from the University of Washington and elsewhere doing research, and one collection manager to rule them all.

There's a lot going on! One of the most important jobs is keeping the fossils safe and organized. With this many fossils, if you put something in the wrong drawer it might be lost for years! (This is no exaggeration!) With good care and attention, the Burke's fossils will be available for research and exhibits forever. That's the goal of paleontology collection manager Ron Eng. 

Caroline's favorite fossil: grass silica.

The Burke's curators are scientists and specialists in their field - for example Caroline Strömberg, curator of plant fossils, is a paleobotanist. She studies the evolution of grasslands (technically speaking, grass-dominated vegetation) during the last 70 million years and how it affected animals. Curators help the collection by being experts - they identify fossils, help interpret fossils for exhibits, and help manage the fossil collection. Caroline's favorite fossil? Microscopic minerals left over from prehistoric plants: "My favorite fossil in the Burke collection is early Miocene microscopic silica from grasses that reflect the earliest grasslands that spread in North America."

Fossil preparator Burce Crowley prepares fossils, which means removing them from rock and gluing them if necessary. His job fascinates just about everyone who visits Burke's Behind-the-Scenes tours and really deserves its own blog post (stay tuned!).

Jonathan's favorite: Geomyid skull and skeleton.

Graduate students from the University of Washington help with collection work (like organizing or numbering fossils) and use the collection for research. Graduate student Jonathan Calede from Dr. Greg Wilson's paleontology lab uses fossils in the Burke's collection to study the evolution of mammals. He looks at the teeth of fossil mammals and compares them to the teeth of mammals in the Mammalogy collection to figure out what extinct animals ate. Jonathan's favorite fossil at the Burke is a skeleton of a prehistoric pocket gopher, a Geomyid.

Bradon's favorite: an Antarctic crocodile femur.

Brandon Peecook from Dr. Chris Sidor's paleontology lab recently returned from fossil-hunting trips to Antarctica and Africa. He looks for fossils there to bring back to the Burke. He studies how different groups of animals are related to each other and how they evolved. This helps him understand the diversity of extinct ecosystems that we have no other way of reconstructing: "Currently my favorite fossil at the Burke is the half femur brought back from Antractica that may actually belong to an early relative of crocodilians - something totally unknown from Antarctica before our recovery of the specimen."


Stay tuned for more from Science Behind-the-Scenes! We'll take a look at Bruce Crowley's job and find out how you get fossils from the field (like in Antarctica!) to the museum.

Posted By: Winifred Kehl, Communications

SCIENCE!! Comics - Episode One

Click here for a larger image!

Learn more!

The Moorea barrier reef was able to recover thanks partly to its population of fish.

Some reefs - like those in the Caribbean - are over fished and do not recover well.

All reefs are threatened by global climate change and ocean acidification.

Moorea Reef Research 

Moorea Reef Education

NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program

This comic was based on a press release from UC Santa Barbara,

but any mistakes are mine, not theirs! (Including anatomical mistakes in my cartoon animals.)

Science Illuminated: Run, T. Rex, run!

Tyrannosaurs may have been faster than previously thought... or slower, depending on who you ask.

Dinosaur paleontologists seem to love arguing over how fast Tyrannosaurs could run. 


In the 70's, R. McNeill Alexander came up with a formula to estimate speeds by measuring the size and spacing of fossilized footprints. Alexander acknowledged its limitations: he made the formula by observing living mammals (like horses). Tyrannosaurs probably didn't run the same way a horse runs. Alexander's formula gives a rough estimate for Tyrannosaurs' speed at around 9 miles per hour (MPH).


You can also look at bones to figure out how an animal moved and how fast it could run. This is called biomechanics. It's a bit like looking at car parts and figuring out how they work together.

A comparison of running speeds (cc Wikimedia)

A 2007 paper by University of Manchester scientists used biomechanics to clock Tyrannosaurs at around 18 MPH max.**



A new paper suggests that Tyrannosaurs may have "power walked" faster by using their large butt muscles to power short, fast strides.*** Paleontologist Heinrich Mallison from the Museum of Natural History in Berlin wrote the paper, which will be published in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 


Heinrich isn't the first person to suggest Tyrannosaurs' butt muscles made it fast. A 2010 paper by a University of Alberta paleontologist looked at Tyrannosaurus's bones and concluded that they could probably outrun every other dinosaur at the time.****


The long and the short of it is: Tyrannosaurs weren't horses or giant chickens (although they're related) - or even ostriches, the fastest critter on 2 legs today. So we don't have an instruction manual to tell us how they worked and how fast they could run. The best we can do is find better analogies and make better estimates.

  

* Dinosaur Biomechanics. R. McNeill Alexander. Proceedings: Biological Sciences , Vol. 273, No. 1596 (Aug. 7, 2006), pp. 1849-1855

** doi: 10.1098/rspb.2007.0846 Proc. R. Soc. B. 7 November 2007 vol. 274
*** http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111107/full/news.2011.631.html

**** http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.21290/full
cc: Images adapted from M. Martyniuk and Wikimedia

Posted by: Winifred Kehl, Communications