A collection of Washington state symbols, natural history style

On Nov. 11, 2014, Washington state turns 125. In the spirit of celebrating, we highlighted 12 objects in the Burke collections that are quintessentially Washington—at least according to the Revised Code of Washington (RCW), a compilation of all laws enacted by the state's Legislature.

Washington has 22 official state symbols to date under the RCW, and 12 of them can be found at the Burke Museum—the Washington state museum of natural history and culture since 1899. We care for these objects, and millions more, as a record of nature and culture to help us to understand how the choices we make today will affect the future.

Here are the 12 Washington state symbols in the Burke collections:


State Tree: Western Hemlock

The western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) is found in Washington's temperate rain forests. This evergreen conifer can grow up to heights of 230 feet, with the longest living specimen being more than 1,200 years old; it became the State Tree in 1947. Fun fact: new-growth needles can be steeped to make vitamin-rich tea. Date collected: May 6, 1967.

7 good reads recommended by Burke staff

Tell us what you're reading this summer 
in the comments below or on Facebook or Twitter. 
Photo: Simon Cocks / Creative Commons

Whether you're heading out on the road or hanging out in the sun, summer is a great time to explore new worlds through reading.

The following seven books are recommended by Burke staff for your summertime enjoyment—whether you like the prehistoric or present, natural history or culture—or all of it!

Be sure to check out the end of this post for museum-related offers for summertime readers.

30th Anniversary of 1980 Eruption of Mt. St. Helens

The 30th anniversary of the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens is tomorrow, and many may wonder: How far did ash from eruption of Mt. St. Helens travel?

On May 18, 1980, large clouds of ash from the eruption of Mt. St. Helens brought more than 500 million tons of ash to parts of Washington, Idaho and Montana. Traces of the ash were also found all over the world, and some remnants of ash particles stayed in the earth’s atmosphere for several years after the eruption in 1980.

In terms of measurable accumulations, the ash also traveled to central states, including parts of Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado, the Dakotas and Nebraska. The longest distance recorded of the ash fallout was nearly 2,000 miles away from the volcano in the state of Oklahoma!

Photo courtesy of USGS

The ash itself caused many problems in the hardest hit regions downwind from Mt. St. Helens and around the Northwest. It destroyed crops and clogged machinery, and also impacted ground and air transportation. Although the short-term effects of volcanic ash are costly and often times deadly, ash also restores chemical nutrients to soil.

Learn more about the eruption and how the “blast zone” has changed over the last 30 years at the Burke Museum’s 30th Anniversary of the Eruption of Mt. St. Helens event. Attend presentations from local scientists about what they have learned from the eruption and view displays of specimens collected from the blast zone Tuesday, May 18th from 6 – 9 pm. For more information, click here.

New podcast features stories in stone

Posted by: Julia Swan, Communications

A new podcast was added to the Burke's Interactive Web site this morning. It features David Williams, a geologist and an educator at the Burke, who recently published the book Stories in Stone: Travels Through Urban Geology and who will be presenting about that book at the museum on July 29.

I really enjoyed listening to David talk about how building stone, which can be found in nearly all urban environments (certainly Seattle!), can be indicative of so much: regional geologic history, fashion trends, the relative affluence of a city, etc. In recording this podcast with David, I learned that there are buildings in downtown Seattle made out of stone that is literally more than 1 billion years old. That's pretty amazing!

Listen to David's stories and learn more for yourself about Seattle's urban geology here.

A new fish family?

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham

It looks like this handsome fellow...

...might just represent a newly discovered family of anglerfishes, according to Burke Curator of Fishes Ted Pietsch, one of the world's leading authorities on anglerfishes.

Though its missing the tell-tale prey-attracting lure that usually sprouts from anglerfishes' heads, the fish's eyes, flat-face, and leglike pectoral fins clued Dr. Pietsch in that this is most likely an anglerfish.

Pending DNA and morphology studies to confirm this classification, this fish could represent the first new family of anglerfishes described in a long, long time. In fact, according to Dr. Pietsch, in the last 50 years, scientists have described only five new families of fishes and none of them were even remotely related to anglerfishes.

Read more about its discovery over at uwnews.org.

- Rebecca

Photo by M. Snyder, starknakedfish.com/divingmaluku.com.

Wilderness Conference coming up

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham

How do we preserve wilderness for future generations in a world where environmental and social change is occurring more rapidly than ever?

If you are interested in meeting the many people who have created and protected the wilderness areas of this region or if you want to learn more about how change impacts local wildlife, you should check out the 2008 Wilderness Conference, April 3 – 5.

From sessions on global warming, to bridging political divides through environmentalism, to indigenous perspectives on wilderness, there’s a lot to take from this event.

Of special interest to Burke fans:

Steven Kazlowski, the photographer behind the Burke’s upcoming exhibit The Last Polar Bear, will be there signing books with publishers The Mountaineers Books. Stephen Brown, editor of Arctic Wings, on which the Burke’s upcoming fall photography exhibit of the same name is based, will be featured as the Saturday night Banquet Speaker.

Details on registering can be found online at the conference home page. It’s not too late to register and there are some affordable options.

A number of the Burke staff will be attending the kickoff event on Thurs., April 3 at Kane Hall on the UW campus – a presentation by award winning photo-journalist Gary Braasch, author of Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming is Changing the World. See you there!

- Rebecca

I see your fish lizard, and raise you a pliosaur

Posted by: Karyn Gregory

Remember last month when the Burke Museum installed its new marine reptile fossil, the ichthyosaur? Well, now there's another marine reptile making the news.

Nicknamed “The Monster” by scientists, this previously unknown species of ancient marine reptile is a type of pliosaur, which are short-necked variants of plesiosaurs.

It was discovered on Spitspergen in 2006, in the Arctic island chain of Svalbard. After excavation and partial articulation, the researchers are now certain they can claim that their pliosaur find is the largest ever on record. From the BBC News article today:

…Dr Jorn Hurum, from the University of Oslo Natural History Museum, said the Svalbard specimen is 20% larger than the previous biggest marine reptile - another massive pliosaur from Australia called Kronosaurus.

"We have carried out a search of the literature, so we now know that we have the biggest [pliosaur]. It's not just arm-waving anymore," Dr Hurum told the BBC News website.

"The flipper is 3m long with very few parts missing. On Monday, we assembled all the bones in our basement and we amazed ourselves - we had never seen it together before."

The Burke’s own plesiosaur, a long-necked type known as the elasmosaur, is on display in our long-term exhibit The Life and Times of Washington State.

- Karyn

Photos:

Top: Newly discovered pliosaur flipper, photo by J. Hurum.
Bottom: Plesiosaur suspended from above in Life and Times.

This is how we do it

Posted by: Rebecca Durkin

Q: How does a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex premaxilla get from this point:

to this point?

A: With hours and hours of careful work done by fossil preparators:

Most vertebrate fossils are found enclosed in solid rock, with just a little bit of bone exposed. While it can take days to carefully collect a fossil in the field, it can often take weeks, months, or years to uncover enough of the fossil back in the lab so that it can be studied or exhibited!

At this year’s Dino Day event on Sat., March 1, fossil preparator Bruce Crowley (pictured above) will be up in the galleries working on the T. rex bone live in front of visitors. You can watch him up close as he uses miniature jackhammers, sand blasters and chisels to remove the enclosing rock and expose the fossil. It’s a fascinating process and one that rarely gets the spotlight in the glamorous world of fossil hunting. Don’t be afraid to ask him about his work – he doesn’t bite!

More on the fossil…

The premaxilla was put through a CAT Scan to produce this neat all-around view (the white parts are plaster):

Join us at Dino Day for a glimpse at this hunk of T. rex (actual fossil portion highlighted in brown below) and lots more dino and fossil goodness.

- Rebecca

Photos:

Top: Burke paleontologists uncovered the T. rex fossil in Wyoming, 2007. Photo by Christian Sidor.
Middle: Example of a T. rex premaxilla fossil, National Museum of Nature and Science, Japan. Photo by Christian Sidor.
Bottom: Bruce Crowley prepares a brontothere fossil bone. Photo by Rebecca Durkin.

Meet the Devil Toad

Posted by: Rebecca Durkin


With Dino Day coming up on March 1, I’ve had the old beasts on the brain lately. It’s never too hard to feed my fossil appetite, because there’s always something in the news from dino-times. This week, it’s an ancient hell frog…

They are calling it Beelzebufo – “devil toad” or “frog from hell.”

The bowling-ball-sized frog that lived among (and possibly snacked on) dinosaurs 70 million years ago is making some scientists rethink ancient geography. This fossil frog found on Madagascar is most closely related to South American frogs, suggesting to some that land bridges may have still connected the separated land masses at the time Beelzebufo lived.

Details are now published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Let the debates begin!

(I have to confess, while dinos are cool, at the Burke's Dino Day, I’m often more interested in the fossils of the other plants and animals living at the time of the dinosaurs – the paleontological underdogs, overshadowed by the popular giants. Here’s to the devil toads, marine reptiles, and ammonites so often ignored!)

- Rebecca

Photo: Artist impression of the "devil toad," courtesy of Stonybrook University.

The Fish Lizard is here!

Posted by: Rebecca Durkin

Q: What measures 21 feet in length, ways over a 1000 pounds, and takes 5+ hours to hoist onto a wall?

A: The Burke’s newest fossil – a 125 million year old ichthyosaur! Ichthyosaur means “fish lizard” in Latin, a name that describes well this fully aquatic marine reptile of the Mesozoic.

I didn’t push or lift a thing the whole time, but yesterday I witnessed the installation of this giant fossil from beginning to end, and found myself exhausted just watching the process which took hours.

After icy road delays, our friends at Artech arrived early at the Museum and unloaded the crated fossil, split into three pieces for manageability. First up the ramp was the most difficult piece, the 1200 pound body and center of the fossil. The lighter head and tail pieces flew up the ramp by comparison.

Museum staffers showed up to help with the pushing, pulling, and hoisting of the giant specimens, which were super tricky to maneuver through the doors of the Burke Room. (Sure I could have helped, but then who would have taken the photos?!)

I was surprised by how quickly the pieces went up once they were secured to the chain pulleys. The middle went up first and we finished with the head – a crowning for the day.

Want to watch the whole 5 hours of action condensed into one minute? Check out the video slideshow below.

Lots of cameras showed up to capture the process for local news – check out today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Seattle Times for feature photos in the B sections. KING, KOMO, and KIRO TV also featured the story on last night’s news.

- Rebecca

Photos

Top: Ichthyosaur in Burke Room

Bottom: Scan from The Seattle Times, 1/16/2008, (The Seattle Times photo by Steve Ringman).

Meet the Mosasaur

Posted by: Rebecca Durkin

The new year brings us a new friend on the UW campus.

Head down to Hitchcock Hall in south campus and you'll find a newly installed 85 million year old mosasaur fossil. And yes, it's real.

The mosasaur is an extinct marine reptile, a dominant predator of the Cretaceous Period. The one on display, newly donated to the Burke's paleontology collections by the Hart family, is probably a species of mosasaur known as Platecarpus.

Next week we install a 21-foot-long (!!!), 125 million year old ichthyosaur in the Burke Room, also donated by the Hart family. The scoop on that with lots of photos will be coming up soon on Burke Blog.

- Rebecca

Photos

Top: Burke Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology Christian Sidor (left) and Fossil Preparator Bruce Crowley (Right) put finishing touches on the new mosasaur installation in Hitchcock Hall.

Bottom: Ichthyosaurus painting by Heinrich Harder

And you thought "living" roaches were bad

Posted by: Karyn Gregory

Let's go buggy for...


Two new states for roaches have been discovered recently: the undead and the robotic.

The undead "zombie" roaches are the victims of the jewel wasp, whose brain-injected toxin stops a roach's will to escape. Creepy as that is, scientists are now using this parasitic relationship to better understand the chemical nature of movement.

As for the 'droids, European scientists have newly invented a robotic cockroach. The machine, covered in a paper filter drenched in cockroach pheremones, is capable of influencing roach group-behavior. Researchers speculate that these robots could be used to lead cockroaches to traps, eliminating the need for pesticides.

Check out the BBC video here.

- Karyn

Photo courtesy Ram Gal, via news.nationalgeographic.com

Dino-mummy!

Posted by: Karyn Gregory


In 1999, paleontologists unearthed a mummified dinosaur complete with much of its skin and tissue intact. On Monday, Dec. 3, this find was revealed to the public.

The discovery is expected to rewrite the book on hadrosaur muscular structure and show us how the dinosaur’s skin really looked.

You should definitely check out the National Geographic image gallery as well. You can see the individual scales on the dinosaur's skin. Speaking as someone who used to have a pet snake, those scales are huge!

-Karyn

Photo: Tyler Lyson © 2007 National Geographic

Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway

Posted by: Rebecca Durkin

What do you get when you take one Seattle-born paleontologist, add one wacky Northwest artist, stick ‘em in a pick-up truck, and set them off on an adventure? Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway, the new book by Kirk Johnson and Ray Troll, takes us on an “epoch” journey across the western states at 65 mph in search of fossils.

The hilarious duo will be reading from their new book and signing copies at the Burke tonight at 7 pm – tickets are $5 at the door and free to members.

Want a taste of what you’re in for? Check out their brief interview on NPR’s All Things Considered, discussing “Jurassic Pork” and “PNS” (Paleo Nerd Syndrome). Then join us tonight for the real scoop!

- Rebecca

A lot can be learned from a mammoth molar

Posted by: Rebecca Durkin

The Burke’s collections total over 12 million objects, many of which are partial fossils or pieces of artifacts. But if you think that incomplete means insufficient, check out the excellent interview with Burke paleontology associate Bax Barton from Monday’s Herald (Everett, WA) .

Presented with a possible mammoth molar recently found on Hat Island, Barton takes us through the stages of paleontological research to show us what can be learned from this small piece of an enormous puzzle.

From the one tooth alone, Barton determined the specimen to be a Columbian mammoth (one of four North American species) and that the animal was roughly 21 years of age at death. With further lab study, the tooth could reveal when the animal lived, what the temperature and precipitation was like in its environment, and the diet of the mammoth.

Do you have a fossil that needs to be identified? You can make an appointment with Burke paleontologists to learn more about your fossil. Or join us on Sat., Feb. 9, 2008 at our annual Artifact ID Day and check out what other fascinating goodies community members have to inspect.

- Rebecca

Photos:

Top: Fossilized mammoth molar, photo by Suzanne Schmid, courtesy of The Herald.
Bottom: Mastodon (Mammut americanum) on display in the Burke Museum, Life and Times of Washington State exhibit.

The Adaptable Turkey

Posted by: Karyn Gregory

This Thursday, millions of Americans will enjoy that traditional Thanksgiving culinary delight: turkey (in the United States at least – Canada’s Thanksgiving is on the second Monday in October). The plucked and frozen turkey most available at the grocery store is a domestic turkey.

But did you know that thanks to reintroduction efforts, their wild cousins have returned from the brink of extinction? They are now thriving in the suburbs of New England, seven million strong! From the linked article:

"Wild turkeys have been spotted in towns and suburbs across New England—and have even been seen strolling through downtown Manhattan.

The turkeys' ability to take to these urban environments was a surprise to biologists."

- Karyn

Photo: Male North American turkey, M. gallopavo. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Gettin’ Squiddy With It

Posted by: Tim Stetter, Environmental Education Coordinator

Talk about having a great day at the museum!

On Friday, we hosted 37 very cool middle school students from Eton School over in Bellevue for a day of hands-on ocean science. Our focus: squid research. With scientists in the UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS), we explored our exhibit In Search of Giant Squid, planned research expeditions, saw real at-sea footage from an expedition up in Alaska’s Bering Sea, and dissected some of the biggest squid around!

The squid we dissected is called the Magister Armhook Squid or Berryteuthis magister. Here’s a picture, straight from the boat that caught them.

I overheard a lot of fun comments during the dissection. Notice these statements all end in an exclamation point!

“That’s awesome!”

“Don’t poke the ink sac!”

“Whoa – eggs! Now we know it’s female!”

“So all the water is polluted with squid poo? EWW!”

One of my favorite parts of the day was hearing more about the research expedition in the Bering Sea. Sandy, a UW Research Associate, showed us all amazing photos and video footage of sending the trawl out to sea, bringing in the catch, measuring squid, and some of the strange creatures they caught. That whole trip looked fun.

Lots of people helped pull off this special program. Sandy, Kirsty, John, and David from SAFS; five college students from an ecology class up at the UW’s Friday Harbor Labs; four or five parent-chaperones; a pair of teachers; and a couple educators from our Burke Education office. Let’s not forget the students: some of them just may be our future ocean researchers and educators.

So this is a call out to all the students: what did you think of the day? Anything you’d like to share with us bloggers?

- Tim

Maybe the Dingo Ate Your Blogger

Posted by: Karyn Gregory

Hi everyone! It's Karyn, back from a fairly lengthy hiatus (or as I like to call it, summer vacation). As I set out to write an entry for this week, I found that the natural science news was not very forthcoming. Oh sure, there are new planets and giant rockets but nothing in the natural history or science realm has really jumped out at me lately (with the exception of the albino ratfish, which has now joined the Burke’s fish collections).

This caused me to look internally for an interesting update. One of my biggest personal accomplishments lately has been figuring out how to create a database. After a few hours of tutorials I managed to develop a very simple object tracking program. This experience made me truly appreciate one of the most important yet often unnoticed aspects of the Burke's main website: the collections databases. If you follow that link, you can select from any of the Burke's research divisions and search our internal database for artifact and specimen images and info (including those not currently on display). Who knows what sorts of things you might find?

Happy hunting!

- Karyn

Squids!

Posted by: Rebecca Durkin

Desperate to know how squid mate? Curious to see the squishy innards of squid?

Well, maybe you weren’t always, but that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy the oodles of squid knowledge you’ll pick up on the opening day event of the Burke’s newest exhibit, In Search of Giant Squid, developed by the Smithsonian Institution.

Seafarers, pirates, and families will all find something intriguing in our schedule of activities for Sat., Sept. 22, 10 am – 5 pm:

11 am – Exhibit Tour with Alan Kohn, Burke Museum Adjunct Curator of Malacology (Malacology is the study of mollusks, and giant squid are, in fact, giant mollusks)

12 noon – Squid Dissection with the Seattle Aquarium

1 pm – Learn about cutting-edge, real-time ocean observation technology with Professor of Oceanography John Delaney

2 pm – Exhibit Tour with Alan Kohn, Burke Museum Adjunct Curator of Malacology

2:30 pm – Captain John Burke and Blue Peter present songs of the sea: shanties, ballads and other lies.

4:00 pm – Poetry Readings with the Cephalopod Appreciation Society

All day – The Artful Squid crafts with Port Townsend Marine Science Center

I'll be there taking photos, as usual. You'll know me by the giant camera around my neck. Be sure to say hi and let us know you're a Burke Blog reader!

- Rebecca

The Hunger

Posted by: Karyn Gregory

In a tale that sounds like it came from a grade B scifi/horror film, comes this gem about radiation-eating fungi:

"Since the 1986 meltdown, at the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station, the numbers of 'black fungi', rich in melanin, have risen steeply. [Researcher] Casadevall speculated that the fungi could be feeding on the radiation that contaminates the ruin of the nuclear reactor."

Essentially, the mold uses melanin (yes, the same melanin found in human skin pigment) to transform radiation into energy. The implications of this discovery are staggering. Not only could this hold the key for an alternative energy source, but the fungus may also be the answer for tackling nuclear waste.

Wow!

-Karyn

(via apostropher)