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Wednesday, August 28, 2024

New Book on Paleontology's Frontier: Microfossils and chemicals

 Dake W. Greenwalt

Remnants of Ancient Life: The New Science of Old Fossils

Princeton, 2022. 278pp.


Like DNA, this book folds a great deal of information into a compact space (228 pages of text plus a good reference section). Greenwalt is a scientist at the Smithsonian, specializing in fossil insects, and here he covers the highlights of the new frontier of paleontology: retrieving chemical signatures, proteins, and biomolecules from fossils. There are chapters on pigments, biometals, and the indicators of fibers and feathers on our friends the dinosaurs.

Greenwalt became famous for a paper reporting the presence of hemoglobin in a mosquito 46 million years old. What animal it fed on can’t be determined, though Greenwalt suspects it was a bird. Greenwalt takes us back to the beginnings of life: a claim of isotopic evidence 4.2 billion years (BY) old, stromatolites 3.7 BY, and then the great leap to the first known multicellular animals at 1.6BY. A singular moment in detecting biomolecules came later: Dr, Kliti Grice isolated molecules including a “cholesterol-like” one in a crustacean 380 million years old. Chlorophyll? Found in still-green fossil leaves in the stomach of a German mammal fossil 46MY old.

Greenwalt explains the function of individual molecules and why we find them in the creatures we do. Melanin is not just a skin pigment: it evolved as an antioxidant and is used in many places in nature, including serving as a clotting factor for an injured insect. It   turns up in a dizzying array of creatures up to 300 MY old. Phosphorus molecules are markers showing the presence of bones that rotted away before fossilization. Copper can help us determine the color of an ancient creature.

Greenwalt examines the use of molecular clocks, a useful if imperfect way of using changes in the genes of a protein tracing relationships and estimates the time a group emerged. He offers an example everyone has heard of, the enormous ape Gigantopithecus. He describes the work of Chinese anthropologist Wei Wang in excavating wonderfully preserved Giganto molars 1.9 MY old, whose enamel yielded partial sequences from six proteins. This was matched with other evidence to prove the theory Giganto was a hominid closely related to the orangutan (sorry, Bigfoot fans.)

He celebrates the countless recent discoveries, including thought-impossible finds like collagen sequences from a T. rex, which some scientists argue are impossible: other labs reported they could not replicate it and there must have been contamination. We revisit the iceman, Otzi, and learn what we know so far of prehistoric humans and our close relations. Greenwalt explores the mechanics and limits of preservation in amber and goes into the oft-overlooked topic of molecular clues in plants.

It’s all clearly explained: I’ve no chemistry background, but I understood everything.

Greenwalt tackles two side topics. He sees no chance for bringing back dinosaurs, On the mammals, he asks whether the effort to create something resembling a mammoth, if possible, would be the best use of the enormous resources involved. He also takes a look at the quest for biosignatures on Mars. Based on the finds at the time of publication, he doesn’t think we have the evidence but offers hope we may yet find it. He mixes in stories of discoveries and fieldwork that make the topic about scientists as well as science. Onne section walks us through the exhaustive efforts needed in a laboratory to isolate the desired clues while avoiding contamination. The illustrations (photographs and drawings, like phylogenetic trees) are good, but I wanted more diagrams of the structures and molecules he was writing about.

An interesting idea I’d never read elsewhere is using extant creatures including “living fossils” to gain some insight into elements of a long-vanished common ancestor’s genome. As an aficionado of Dunkleosteus terrelli, I wondered if we could “triangulate” genetic information bony fishes (the placoderms’ descendants), and coelacanths: that’s likely a step too far, but it shows the kind of imagination this book sparks in readers taking a new look at a lost world.

Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Read Matt's Latest book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction.


Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Impressive Orca Exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science

On the 18th, with my daughter Corey and her girlfriend Samantha as company and support staff, I visited the Orca exhibit currently showing at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  I love orcas, and it was sort of Orca Week, with my friend Dr. Mithriel MacKay appearing with humpbacks and orcas on the new Nat Geo series OceanXplorer.  (Another post on that will follow).'

Orcas: Our Shared Future was created by the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, Canada and MuseumsPartner in Austria. It fills a huge exhibit space, nicely set off with curtain screens to create an immersive space divided into several large rooms. The initial attention-grabbers are three Southern Resident Killer Whales (J pod, to be exact), sculpted life size.  There's an outstanding section on the science of orcas: evolution, ecotypes, the growth of our knowledge, instruments created to study them, and so much more. The ecotypes and populations are presented on screens in illustrations and text: the recent paper naming a second species is not mentioned, but otherwise it's very up-to-date. There's an interactive light-table exhibit (I'm not sure if that's the right term) where visitors can move through views of the orca's body systems and anatomy. There's even a display of models of inner-ear bones of whales and their ancestors, although it needed more labeling about how important these are to scientists.  Static screens and video also depict the complex, long-lasting family bonds of orcas. 


While the range of the species (if it is one species) is vast, orcas are especially deeply entwined with the Indigenous cultures of Northwestern North America. That link is explored in carvings, objects like a canoe-sized cedar gift-serving dish for a potlatch ceremony, dance, paintings, and oral history. There are dozens of such objects all tolled in this room and throughout the exhibit.


The exhibit lays out how humans have viewed and learned about orcas through the ages.

The recent history of orcas and humans, again focused on North America, fills two rooms, one on captivity and one mainly on conservation. We "met" the celebrity orcas like Namu, Shamu (a name applied to many captive orcas), and Keiko. I explained how I'd seen Lolita (Tokitae) in the Miami Seaquarium when I was a kid in the 1970s, when I didn't realize how small and miserable her tank must be to her and tankmate Hugo.  I'd been startled to learn some 30 years later she was still there.  I wonder if she was sane when she died in 2023: Hugo had basically killed himself in 1980. 

Corey Bille and Samantha Weiss explore marine hotspots.

Tilikum and Blackfish are covered, as is the case of Morgan, rescued for rehab and supposed release but kept as a new bloodline for the captive market. Scientist Lori Marino, who I know slightly, is featured in a video arguing for Morgan's personhood, a complex matter on which not much has been decided. Objects like marine debris, maps, and a game table explore the threats to orcas and marine life in general. There's another interactive spot where visitors can see how thew sounds of different ships affect the whales' world. That's an item of special interest to me: I made a presentation on satellite tracking to the  Conference on Small Satellites in 2018 where we used new software to display sound clouds around vessels.  There's a poll where visitors can express ideas on matters like the most important steps to take to safeguard the species.

It's a memorable exhibit. The level of the text and other information is nicely chosen for a broad audience without talking down to anyone. The detail is thorough but won't overwhelm any but the youngest schoolchildren. Everyone will leave with newly-acquired knowledge, and very few will leave unchanged.

Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Read Matt's Latest book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction.

Saturday, August 10, 2024

New Ocean Exploration Series Looks Awesome

 I’ve always been fascinated by marine life, and we have so much still to learn about the ocean realm. National Geographic is presenting a new series, OceanExplorers. My friend Dr. Mithriel MacKay of the Florida-based Marine and Coastal Ecology Research Center has an important role concerning one of my favorite topics, cetaceans, in the premiere episode on August 18. 

The show’s Instagram page says, “OCEANXPLORERS premieres Aug. 18 on @natgeotv and streams Aug. 19 on @disneyplus and @hulu. This thrilling six-part adventure takes viewers on board the OceanXplorer, OceanX’s cutting-edge scientific research and exploration vessel, to explore the farthest reaches of the world’s oceans.” James Cameron is one of the executive producers, and the BBC joins OceanX for this endeavor. The trailer features sharks, cephalopods, polar bears, and other creatures along with the whales and dolphins. For us tech fans, the ship comes with its own helicopter, submersible, and holographic visualization lab. For more on the show, see the home page

Dr. MacKay (PhD, Marine Biology) founded and runs the MCERC, a nonprofit focused on research, education, and outreach on marine and coastal biodiversity. It includes degreed scientists, educators, interns, citizen scientists, and students. 

MCERC's Humpback Whale study team (copyright MCERC)

On the first episode of the Nat Geo show, MacKay, as the marine mammal behaviorist, and acoustic specialist Dr Kerri Seger study humpback whales and their unwanted (by the humpbacks) companions, the killer whales.

Each expedition followed on the show includes two guest scientists in addition to a crew made up of three teams – operations, science, and media. MacKay says of the crew, “They are great guys. The people made the expedition.”

What did they learn? Tune in to find out!


Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Read Matt's Latest book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction.