Sam Noble Museum

The Croaking Crisis

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:17:00 -0500

When you think of endangered species, you may draw to mind pictures of Giant Pandas and Black Rhinos, but would you ever picture a bullfrog from your own backyard? According to Save the Frogs, an American public charity dedicated to preserving these amiable amphibians, 2,000 amphibian species are threatened with extinction and may not survive the 21^st century.

The last Saturday in April is now internationally known as Save the Frogs Day, a day of bringing awareness to this pressing matter. This year, the Sam Noble Museum’s herpetology collection manager, Jessa Watters, traveled to Cesar Chavez Elementary School in Oklahoma City to celebrate Save the Frogs Day with seven kindergarten classes, while teaching them a thing or two about preservation.

Watters teaching students about frog endangerment.

According to Watters, a quarter of the world’s amphibian populations are in decline due to habitat pollution, pet trade, pesticides and an amphibian fungal disease known as chytridiomycosis. Pet trade poses one of the largest threats as frogs are taken from their natural environment and improperly cared for in artificial habitats. On the flip side, problems arise when frog owners release unwanted pets into the wrong habitat, which can create a domino effect of difficulties in a given ecosystem.

Of course, this is a lot of information for kindergarteners to absorb, so Watters focused on teaching the students the basics of herpetology: What is an amphibian? How is it different than a reptile? Is it better to be camouflaged or poisonous as a frog? Watters and the children then drew and colored pictures of frogs while discussing the importance of taking care of the environment and the animals that dwell in it.

The students coloring their favorite frogs.

At the end of the day, each student took home a 3D paper frog as a reminder that every day should be Save the Frogs Day.

Historical Heroes: Saving the Spiro Lace

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:22:00 -0500

Although preservation knowledge is in no short supply, unfortunately, it is not always possible to administer optimal care to all of the millions of items that a museum houses. According to Lindsay Palaima, the Registrar at the Sam Noble Museum, museums often cannot show their most valued items as they are too fragile without extensive preservation efforts.

“It’s so hard working in museums because you show only three to five percent of what you have,” Palaima said.

The largest obstacle in artifact preservation is a lack of public awareness, which is why organizations have founded programs like the Oklahoma Cultural Heritage Trust. The program consists of a 2-year initiative funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Service that strives to generate publicity for the preservation needs of Oklahoma artifacts.

The Oklahoma Cultural Heritage Trust established the Top Ten Most Endangered Artifacts Campaign to do just that. Museums, libraries, and archives from across the state submitted their artifacts for selection, and between May 1 and June 1, the public will vote for their ten favorite artifacts.

On May 1, the Oklahoma Cultural Heritage Trust announced the Sam Noble Museum’s Spiro lace as a final contestant at a ceremony held at the Oklahoma State Capitol building. The museum received the Cultural Heritage Stewardship Award for their campaign progress thus far, but the museum will fight diligently for a spot in the top ten.

The twenty-five finalists at the OK State Capitol.

The Spiro lace, from 1400 AD, was discovered by a University of Oklahoma excavation team in the late 1930’s. It was buried beneath Craig Mound at the historic Native American Spiro Mounds location in eastern Oklahoma, which is known as one of the most significant ceremonial sites in North America. The site was actively used from 800 to 1450 AD.

The Spiro Mounds in eastern OK.

Archeologists discovered many artifacts beneath the mounds, and the lace survived in part because of its probable proximity to copper plates, whose metallic properties served as a preservation tool.

A close-up of the Spiro lace.

“It looks like they had many clothing and elaborate costumes we know nothing about,” said Dr. Elsbeth Dowd, the collection manager in the Sam Noble archaeology department. To read a more in-depth article about the lace, you can visit the museum’s archaeology blog.

According to Dr. Dowd, this fragment of lace survives as Oklahoma’s oldest textile and offers previously unknown information about the way Native Americans lived centuries ago. Unfortunately, to prevent further deterioration and tearing, the founders glued the textile to a yellow matboard.

Current preservation efforts are geared at finding out if there is a way to safely remove the lace from the matboard, as the acidic properties of the board will gradually inflict damage. Additionally, with the lace removed, archaeologists like Dr. Dowd would be able to conduct a more informative analysis of the lace using methods such as fiber analysis and 3D scanning.

“Being able to conserve this to give people access to the lace would really be great for research,” confirms Dr. Dowd.

Dr. Dowd and Palaima at the OK State Capitol.

Dr. Dowd, Palaima, and Dr. Marc Levine, the Sam Noble’s Archaeology Curator, are working as Spiro lace advocates to save Oklahoma history. Now, you can too.

By voting online for the Spiro lace, you are propelling the museum one step closer to a place in the top ten. To vote, click here.

There is no limit to how often you can vote, so remember to vote and vote often. Oklahoma has a unique and rich heritage, and it’s our job as Oklahomans to be responsible stewards of the great land we’ve inherited. So cast your vote, and stay tuned for the results June 1!

The Man Behind the Camera

Mon, 06 May 2013 16:43:00 -0500

Last Friday, May 3, recent University of Oklahoma graduate and noted photographer Thomas Shahan visited the Sam Noble Museum for a Gallery Talk, a chance to discuss photography techniques, Oklahoma spiders, and everything in between. Shahan also spoke about his work on display in the museum’s exhibit, Beautiful Beasts: The Unseen Life of Oklahoma Spiders and Insects.

Shahan discussing his work.

All eyes and ears were on Shahan as he walked through his process of shooting his captivating, insect models. Many guests were astonished to hear that all of Shahan’s work features local spiders and insects, many of which he discovered biking through Norman, Oklahoma.

Shahan and his glamorously furry model.

This was no ordinary lecture, however. Shahan’s animated personality lit up the room as he actively engaged his audience. Shahan structured the Gallery Talk as more of a two-way discussion rather than a straightforward lecture, which many of his visitors appreciated. By engaging guests in his discussion, Shahan engaged them in his art.

Shahan interacts with some young fans during the Gallery Talk.

After the Gallery Talk concluded, guests stuck around for a chance to socialize with Shahan during the reception. Over some complimentary hor d’ouevres, visitors chatted with Shahan one-on-one as they caught a rare glimpse of the man behind the camera.

What a spread!

Guests chatting with Shahan after the Gallery Talk.

The Mysterious "Tail" of the Red Shiners

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:00:36 -0500

A red shiner minnow.

Now you see them; now you don’t. After years of being the most common fish in local creeks, the red shiner seemingly disappeared from several streams in southern Oklahoma.

Dr. Edie Marsh-Matthews, an ichthyologist at the Sam Noble Museum, and her colleagues have been studying the fish community of Brier Creek in southern Oklahoma for many years. In 2005, they noticed that red shiner minnows had disappeared from many creeks where they had once been very common, including Brier Creek. All of the creeks from which red shiners disappeared are direct tributaries of Lake Texoma, a manmade impoundment of the Red River and Washita River in southern Oklahoma.

The loss of the red shiner was very puzzling because it is very common and tolerant of extreme conditions, such as high temperature and low oxygen in the water. To explain the loss of this hardy fish, Dr. Marsh-Matthews and her colleagues suggested that the creeks might have been altered over time due to the reservoir in a way that increased habitats for predators on red shiners. Then, in 2007, there was a major flood during which lake waters backed up many miles into the creeks, and red shiners reappeared in some of the creeks. The scientists expected that the red shiners would once more become common in Brier Creek, but surprisingly, they were not.

Dr. Marsh-Matthews and her student at Brier Creek.

To try and understand the reasons that red shiners could not become re-established in Brier Creek, Dr. Marsh-Matthews and her colleagues designed a series of experiments using the artificial streams located at the University of Oklahoma’s Aquatic Research Facility.

Artificial streams are used to replicate natural environments.

A peek inside the observation window.

By producing artificial environments similar to those of Brier Creek, Dr. Marsh-Matthews could control variables while closely monitoring changes in the red shiner population. After conducting several rounds of experiments, she and her colleagues found a possible explanation why red shiners may not be able to re-establish in Brier Creek. In their experiments, sunfish predators lowered survival and reproduction of red shiners. Scientists had discovered that the number of sunfish has increased in Brier Creek over time.

“So, we think that these predators are not only involved in the initial loss of red shiners but also as they became more abundant in these altered streams, but maybe they’re not letting them come back,” Dr. Marsh-Matthews said.

Dr. Marsh-Matthews introducing red shiners to the artificial stream.

These studies on the red shiner disappearance and failure to re-establish in Brier Creek can have importance for many stream ecosystems. Although the red shiner is a native species in Oklahoma, what we learn about its ability to re-invade its native habitat will contribute to invasion biology, the study of factors that affect the establishment of species outside their native range.

2013 Volunteer Appreciation Week

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:40:13 -0500

It takes many helping hands from generous volunteers to run the Sam Noble Museum, and this week, April 22-26, is national Volunteer Appreciation Week. During this time, the museum honors volunteers for their invaluable contributions. This year, Mary LeBlanc has been selected to receive the 2013 Tom Siegenthaler Volunteer of the Year Award. Mary has been a volunteer at the museum for 18 years and is the longest-serving active volunteer in the Vertebrate Paleontology Department.

In 1994, Mary saw a newspaper article describing a fossil preparation class at the museum. Having a degree in History and minors in Anthropology and Art History, Mary knew this was an opportunity she did not want to pass up. “I signed up since it met at night, and I could do it while still working full-time at the University.”

Mary enjoyed her time at the Sam Noble so much she would work at the University of Oklahoma in the day and volunteer for the museum in the evening. Since she volunteered before the museum moved into its present facility, Mary actually had a hand in preparing some of the displays in the Hall of Ancient Life. “It’s very exciting to be able to walk around the Hall of Ancient Life and see the various specimens we worked on. When I take relatives to the museum, I can show them the different specimens I helped create.”

After retiring from OU last year, Mary started volunteering full-time. She has been an asset with administrative and computer projects in several offices, tirelessly worked almost every special event, and takes advantage of a wide variety of professional development opportunities.

When asked about why Mary was chosen for this prestigious award, Volunteer Coordinator Terry Allen complimented Mary on her work ethic. “She’s eager to help in any way that will further the mission of the museum, and because of that, she’s a perfect example of a top-notch Sam Noble Museum volunteer.”

The Tom Siegenthaler Volunteer of the Year Award will be presented to Mary on Thursday evening, April 25, during the Museum’s annual Volunteer Appreciation Dinner.

The Future is Bright for Native American Culture

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:49:00 -0500

Native American languages are often associated with a bygone era of history, but many people fail to realize that Native American culture thrives today just as it did centuries ago through families dedicated to keeping their heritage alive. Now, more than ever, the emphasis on cultural preservation is being placed in the hands of Native American youth.

One way these students promote the continuation of their heritage is through the Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair, held annually in early April. Since 2003, children and teens from all across the state of Oklahoma and elsewhere have traveled to compete in their knowledge of Native American languages through music, drama and dance. This year, the fair received a record-breaking 921 students.

A group performance at the 2013 ONAYLF.

“I wanted to compete in the language fair because I wanted to push myself to try and learn more language and tradition,” Chyna Chupco said, a Muskogee-speaker and past ONAYLF participant.

Although students come to the fair to gain language experience, they often take away even more. Kiowa-speaker Kristin Allen said that the fair has helped her overcome a personal struggle.

“I decided to come back [to the fair] because it’s fun, and it helps me with my shyness,” she said.

Native American languages are not outdated, as some may believe. They have developed over time like any other language by adding words for new concepts, even Facebook. By constantly adapting to changes in society, Native American languages retain their relevancy for younger generations.

In this way, Native American culture can also go hand in hand with pop culture. To hear a clip of previous ONAYLF winner Niigan Sunray singing Adele’s popular song “Someone Like You” in Kiowa, simply click here.

Niigan, and her siblings, Tdohasan, Kowi and Onde, are all first language Native-American-language speakers. They are currently involved with the KIOWA KIDS language program, which recently assisted Kiowa elder Modina Waters in publishing a children’s book through through Native American Languages at the Sam Noble Museum. The book, titled Saynday Kiowa Indian Children’s Stories, tells traditional Kiowa fables in both Kiowa and English. Through their involvement with the children’s book, the Sunray children have learned at an early age the importance of cherishing and preserving their culture.

KIOWA KIDS language program attendees.

“We can teach our children to keep the language going on,” Niigan said, the eldest child. “Not many people know it anymore.”

Every night the Sunray children sing a traditional Kiowa hymn together, called A-HO Dawkee (Thank You, God). To hear them sing A-HO Dawkee, click here.

Many previous ONAYLF participants consider their role in cultural revitalization an honor as opposed to a burden as they stated a strong interest in passing down their language to future generations of their own. Katy Shackelford, a 16-year-old Chickasaw-speaker, expressed difficultly in imagining a future without Chickasaw.

“We speak Chickasaw words every day, even if it’s not necessarily whole conversations,” she said. “You can’t really get rid of who you are. A lot of things that we do we do with the tribe, with our culture.”

Katy and Dale Shackelford at their first fair (2004) and the 2013 ONAYLF.

Katy and her brother, Dale, also emphasized a commitment to sharing their culture with those who may hold outdated ideas about Native Americans.

“We do inform people about Native American culture, even if it’s not specifically Chickasaw,” Katy said.

“Even in Oklahoma, there are lot of misconceptions about Native Americans,” Dale added.

Through outlets like the ONAYLF, Native American youth like these are given the tools and support necessary to preserving their heritage. Participants in the ONAYLF give reason to believe that the future of Native American culture is bright indeed.

You can read more about this year’s ONAYLF on the KFOR website.

Science Wants YOU!

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:36:00 -0500

What is citizen science?

When you hear the phrase “scientific research” you may call to mind images of scientists in lab coats, but have you ever pictured yourself as a research tool? Now you can, thanks to the merging of technology and research.

Katrina Menard, head of the insect department at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, has been tracking Velvet Ants in Oklahoma with student Jacob Mitchell as part of a research project with the University of Oklahoma Honors Research Assistantship Program. The program allows students to work alongside professionals for hands-on experience.

How does it work?

First, participants download the free iNaturalist app at the App Store or Android Market on their cell phone. Then, they simply snap a picture of the Velvet Ant and upload it to the app, which will record the user’s location. Menard then collects the results and archives them as part of her research. Contributors even have the chance to get credit for photos published in scientific journals.

Note: the photo above is of a scientific specimen. No Velvet Ants should be harmed in this project.

To watch Menard’s brief tutorial on how to submit a photo to iNaturalist, simply click below.

Menard’s project, called “Mutillidae of Oklahoma,” has only been active on iNaturalist for about two weeks and is still considered to be in a trial stage. If successful, Menard said that citizen science tools like iNaturalist could be used in a greater educational context in the future.

Why citizen science?

“Citizen science allows us to integrate everyone’s natural ability to observe, make hypotheses and contribute information about their experiences of the world around us,” said Menard. “This allows us to gather more information and observations than we can do alone as dedicated professional scientists.”

In addition to her work with iNaturalist, Menard will also be participating this April in Entoblitz, another citizen science project hosted by the Texas A&M Entomology Graduate Student Association. Entoblitz is open to anyone interested in entomology and will give participants the opportunity to hunt for bugs in the name of science.

So whether you’re an amateur entomologist, a stay-at-home mom or a middle school student, you can become part of the scientific process. By simply using your smartphone, you can lend a helping hand to the scientific community. So what are you waiting for? Science wants you!

Museum Adopts Orphaned Collection

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 10:09:00 -0500

Orphaned collections are a growing concern for natural history institutions worldwide. An endangered or orphaned collection is any considerable body of material, which is or soon may be no longer regarded as of value in its present ownership. According to the American Association of Museums, every year more institutions, agencies, corporations, and individuals divest themselves of their collections. When this occurs, “orphaned” collections need to be “adopted” by an existing natural history collection.

In November of 2011, Eugene Young, a professor in the Agriculture and Life Sciences department at Northern Oklahoma College in Tonkawa, Okla. contacted the Sam Noble Museum about the possibility of adopting an orphaned collection from the A.D. Buck Museum.

Originally called the Yellow Bull Museum, the A.D. Buck Museum’s science exhibits included mounted specimens of birds and mammals. Sam Noble Museum curator Gary Schnell and collection managers Marcia Revelez and Tamaki Yuri traveled to the A.D. Buck Museum to view the specimens. Upon further inspection, the team found many specimens that had been on loan from the Sam Noble Museum.

A total of 14 specimens were loaned to A. D. Buck in 1961, including an adult grizzly bear, all still in good condition. Most of the collection’s Oklahoma birds and mammals were found in the early 1900s, such as the marsh hawk, in 1910, and a Pintail, in 1913.

Many of the specimens in the A. D. Buck collection are significant to Oklahoma’s history, such as the Spotted Skunk found in 1934 in Kay County, an area that had no previous record of having that species before the 1990s. After evaluation, a crew returned in December to pack up the collection of birds and mammals and bring them to their new home at the Sam Noble Museum.

The A. D. Buck specimens are not the first collection the museum has adopted. Recently, the museum’s Department of Mammalogy adopted approximately 26,000 mammal species from the University of Memphis Mammal Collection.

“It’s an ongoing goal for the museum to aid orphaned collections,” Revelez said.

Natural history collections play a vital role in understanding cultures, habitats, biodiversity and more. They safeguard specimens, inspire, educate, and tirelessly continue the research and study of various sciences. We welcome back our mammals and birds that have been on loan for so many decades and will always strive to maintain and preserve Oklahoma’s rich natural history.

Why volunteers matter

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:23:54 -0500

It’s National Volunteer Appreciation Week and the prefect time to talk about those people in the museum that make such an impact on staff, visitors and the community: our volunteers.

Every year, the museum dedicates this week to honoring volunteers for the hours they dedicate to natural history, to servicing the community and providing personal knowledge, assistance and experience to our visitors and staff.

In 2011, 161 volunteers dedicated 16,291 hours to the museum through their work as docents, with children in the Discovery Room or with staff behind the scenes.

We honored our volunteers at a reception this week, highlighting a particular volunteer who represented the volunteer core as a whole. He exemplified what it means to be a museum volunteer, serving for almost 12 years donating more than 3,100 hours to the museum. For that, Michael Laing received the 2012 Tom Siegenthaler Volunteer of the Year Award.

I am proud to know Michael and more important, thrilled that he represents a part of the museum that touches our visitors and staff alike. If you are interested in becoming a part of our museum, visit our website and browse the opportunities! (Click here)

Oklahoma Fossils Identified!

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:57:07 -0600

I’d like to share a link with you to a new web page created for identifying Oklahoma fossils, www.CommonFossilsOfOklahoma.snomnh.ou.edu.

It’s packed with images of living plants and animals and their respective fossils, details about how paleontologists search for fossils, and ways to identifying Oklahoma fossils and learn about the communities these plants and animals came from.

If you’re in need of help identifying an object or fossil, submit a request, it’s easy!

Feel free to visit the site and learn something new about Oklahoma fossils!

Sneak a peek into Papua New Guinea

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:02:25 -0600

Working at a natural history museum is quite a rewarding experience. My enthusiasm is partially from being one of the most recent hires at the museum. I began in September and have enjoyed working with Dan Swan, curator of ethnology, and his team planning our upcoming exhibit, Warrior Spirits: Indigenous Arts from New Guinea. Nearly 100 pieces from the collections of the Sam Noble Museum and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art will be displayed beginning Feb. 4.

The collections include a variety of cultural objects, including masks, drums and ceremonial garments, many of which were collected during surveys in the 1970s assessing petroleum and mineral resources. U.S. soldiers also contributed items collected while Allied Forces manned listening stations in New Guinea during World War II.

Here is a sneak peek at the people and culture surrounding our upcoming exhibit:

The people of Papua New Guinea are mostly descendants of Melanesians, closely related to the islanders of Fiji, New Caledonia and Vanuatu. The island was one of the first landmasses to become populated by modern humans, about 50,000 years ago.

Hundreds of cultures live on the island of New Guinea in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. These groups reside in small, remote rural villages- more than a third of them in the rugged highlands- and make their living by fishing, farming, hunting, and gathering. As a result of the villages’ isolation, many different languages are spoken on the island. With nearly one thousand distinct dialects spoken there, New Guinea possesses the greatest concentration of languages in the world.

The traditional Melanesian cultures are kept alive in elaborate rituals that accompany deaths, feasts, marriages, compensation ceremonies and initiation rites. Many of the artifacts in our collections reflect the diversity of the region, highlighting such ceremonial traditions as the dramatic fire dances practiced in the Highlands of West Papua and the ritualized veneration of ancestors among the Sepik River groups of New Guinea.

Art in New Guinea is as varied as its people. Carving, twining and weaving, produces many different types of art. Carved wooden sculptures, masks, canoes, and storyboards from New Guinea are valued around the globe in private collections, museums, and art markets.

The objects in Warrior Spirits, which include daggers carved from the bones of cassowary birds – a large flightless bird native to New Guinea and prized for its aggressive territorial nature—along with carved shields, war-clubs, spears and bows and arrows, were created and used by the indigenous peoples of present-day Papua New Guinea and West Papua, Indonesia.

Warrior Spirits: Indigenous Arts from New Guinea will be on display from Feb. 4 through May 13. Augmented with maps, graphics, and audio and video elements, this exhibit allows visitors a glimpse into the fascinating world of New Guinea. For more information, visit our website: www.snomnh.ou.edu.

Fish hooks

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 14:28:52 -0500

This morning I had the pleasure of escorting Fred Greenlee around some of our collections. Fred is a producer for the History Channel show “Swamp People,” and has been doing some location scouting in southern Oklahoma. He called me up earlier this week, hoping that our museum had some examples of prehistoric fish hooks he could photograph, to tie into an upcoming episode of the show.

I asked Don Wyckoff, our curator of archaeology and, sure enough, we do have some examples of fish hooks, both finished hooks and several in various stages of completion. Dr. Wyckoff brought them out of the collection for Fred to photograph, and explained to us how these fish hooks were made.

The work begins with a little piece of deer or turkey bone. The tool-maker would use a piece of sandstone to wear away the bone at an angle at one end, using the natural interior curve of the bone to form the U-shape that will become the hook. Once the U-shape was honed, the artisan would then begin to sand or break away bits of the bone from the edge of the curve to form the hook and the shank. A groove around the end of the shank would keep the line in place. Bigger hooks could be made from larger pieces of bone, of course, and we saw one whose shank was about two inches long, but the hook had broken off.

I was amazed both at the delicate craftsmanship of these little fishhooks, and at the ingenuity required to come up with this technique for creating the hooked shape out of a curved bit of bone. There’s some serious geometry in this design!

Dr. Wyckoff tells us that peoples all over the plains and into Georgia and Tennessee were making this same kind of fish hooks, and hooks had been used as far back as 6,000 years ago. (The ones he showed us were about 2,800 years old.) Hooks are rare because they are made of bone, and most are quite small, so they often decompose unless they are deposited in soils with just the right chemical make-up to preserve them, as these were.

Fishing, Wyckoff explained, was an activity that was often done by children in hunter-gatherer societies. It was a way they could contribute to the household before they had developed skills in more aggressive types of hunting. Seine nets were also used to catch fish, often in oxbow lakes where river fish would congregate. Our collection includes some very nice net-weights made for this purpose.

I looked at those little hooks and I realized something: people who lived 2,800 or 6,000 years ago were every bit as ingenious and skilled as people today… they were just further down the technology discovery chain. The first human who sought out a way to catch a single fish using bait on a hand-crafted hook was every bit as forward thinking as Bill Gates, and the technology that arrived from that brainstorm was every bit as far reaching and life changing for the people at the time. We stand, as Sir Isaac Newton said, on the shoulders of Giants. Sometimes we stand there and fish.

Get Outside!

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 16:23:45 -0500

Summer is upon us, boys and girls. And that means it’s time to unplug your headphones, close your laptop, put down the Wii remote and GET OUTSIDE!!!

I return to this theme at this time each year because I cannot stress enough how very important it is that our children, and ourselves, get out into nature. Our planet is approaching a major environmental crisis – what some scientists are already calling the Sixth Great Extinction. Honeybees are being decimated by Colony Collapse, Bats are falling victim to White nose syndrome, and frogs around the world are afflicted by the devastating chytrid fungus. Animals are disappearing from our planet faster than our scientists can discover and name them all. Now, more than at any time in our world’s history, we must get back in tune with nature.

I don’t mean just going out and wiggling our toes in the invasive Bermuda grass of our suburban lawns, either. We need to get out there and see what it’s really like. That doesn’t necessarily mean a trip to the Amazon, but it does mean a trip to the forest, a neighborhood stream, or native grassland. We need to educate ourselves, and more importantly, we need to educate the next generation about the importance of maintaining the fragile and unbelievably complex web of life that sustains us. The scientists of the future – the ones who may be able to stop the downward trend in species diversity – are quite probably in grade school right now. Yeah, that kid on the sofa with the remote and the bag of Cheetos: potentially the next Darwin.

Can a generation so removed from nature that they do not know the difference between a mammal and an amphibian be expected to chose ecology as a course of study? There is a real push in schools and families for kids to go into technology… computers are the new “plastics” so famously touted in the 1967 film “The Graduate.” And yes, computers are and will continue to be central to our civilization. But our civilization is itself built upon a planet that has complex and delicate “systems” of its own… ones upon which all our lives are dependent.

The Earth’s ecological systems are so rich and so diverse that scientists have been studying them for over 100 years and are still only dipping their toes into the amazing scientific wellspring of information they hold. But we will need scientists – biologists, ecologists, paleontologists, and all the other natural history ologists – to decode this information. The IT crew won’t be able to do it alone.

So get outside with your kids! Go see how many different living things you can discover in a square foot of your back yard. You’ll be surprised. Take a net to a local stream or pond and see what you can catch. Look at dirt under a microscope. Discover the world anew and you will come away refreshed, amazed and richer for having done so. And so will your kids.

This summer, as every summer, the Sam Noble Museum offers a series of summer programs for children ages 4 to 14. In subject matter they range from outdoor survival skills to paleontology, aquatic biology and entomology. They are geared to give kids hands-on experience at the excitement and wonder of scientific inquiry, using real objects from the museum’s educational collections. Most of the classes also take the students outdoors to explore and learn under the tutelage of museum educators.

I’ve followed along on these trips from time to time, and it is always a thrill to hear the moment a child engages and gets really curious. They go from squelching merrily through the mud to suddenly standing transfixed with a dripping net in their hands, amazed that they actually caught something! Something alive! A tadpole! A crayfish! A water beetle! And then the questions begin.

“How does it change into a frog?”“Is a crayfish a lobster?”“How does it walk on water like that?”

Ahhhhh! That’s the moment. Each summer, from these sloppy, wet, grubby groups of children with squelching sneakers and red faces, it is possible, just possible, that a brilliant field biologist will be born. One of them might just save the world.

So go on… get out there!

Frogs frogs frogs

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:51:22 -0500

Friday, April 29, is Save the Frogs day. It’s an international effort to raise awareness about the importance of frogs (and o

ther amphibians) to the ecosystem, and the dangers currently facing frog populations worldwide.

Frogs are what biologists refer to as an “indicator species.” What this means is scientists can look at the health of frogs and frog populations in an area to get a good sense of the general health of the ecosystem there. The quality of water in an e

nvironment is central to the health of that environment. Frogs and other amphibians are, of course, dependent upon the water sources in their environments. They cannot live far from water, and because they breathe through their porous skin, any pollutants in the water will directly affect frogs. When frog populations begin to decline, it’s an indication that something is wrong at the very heart of the environment.

Losing frogs may not seem like that big a deal to some. The croak, they hop around… so what? But consider the number of insects that frogs, toads and other amphibians devour every night. And then consider the number of other animals that prey upon frogs and toads for their own survival: birds, snakes, fish, raccoons… etc. Losing frogs cuts at the heart of the ecosystem.

To say nothing of the potential scientific benefits frogs may hold. Many frogs produce chemicals on their skin or inside their bodies that may be of interest to scientists for the source of future medicines. One such frog from Australia actually produced a chemical in its stomach that stopped its stomach from making the enzymes needed to digest food, allowing the frog to swallow its fertilized eggs and provide them a safe place to develop and hatch. When the froglets emerged, the adult frog simpl

y opened her mouth and let them climb out, completely undamaged by stomach acids. Once the froglets had gone, the adult frog was able to “turn on” her stomach chemistry again. These frogs might have provided a key to eliminating suffering for ulcer patients… except they’ve been extinct since 1979.

Frogs have been around for more than 200 million years. They’ve seen the rise and

fall of the mighty dinosaurs, survived ice ages, and thrived on almost every continent. If they are in trouble now… can we be far behind?

So Save the Frogs! Visit our museum on Friday, April 29 to learn more about frogs, view some live Oklahoma frogs, and hear presentations by our curators of reptiles and amphibians. And to learn more about the Save the Frogs Day international, visit their website: www.savethefrogs.or g.

The Bubble vs. the Bugs

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 12:53:42 -0500

There’s a room just off the museum’s loading dock marked “Before Entering: Check CO2 Monitor.” This is where the museum’s CO2 “bubble” is located, and it’s where many objects entering museum collections spend their first month.

Because many of the museum’s 10 million objects in collections are highly susceptible to the depredations of a host of fur, feather and flesh-eating insects, we take pest control very very seriously. Pests in the museum range from dermestid beetles and silverfish to ladybugs and brown recluse spiders. It’s impractical, and not very healthy, to constantly treat the building with pesticides. Instead, the museum employs an Integrated Pest Management System that 1) implements certain rules and procedures to keep incoming pests to a minimum and 2) monitors the whole building to keep tabs on what pests do get in, and where.

To keep from bringing in a nest of insect eggs that could hatch in collections, we need to be sure that any object or specimen coming in has no viable eggs or bugs on board. Since insects and their eggs are very very small, almost every object that comes into the museum has the potential to house a hidden host of them. Some objects have greater potential for hiding pests. Animal skins or taxidermied animals are of particular danger, as are any wooden or paper objects that may have been stored in a place where insects were present. Fresh flowers or plants are not allowed in the museum for obvious reasons. Less obviously, corrugated cardboard is not allowed because the spaces made by the corrugation serve as excellent insect condominiums.

To kill any insects or eggs they could be hiding, all objects or specimens destined to go into museum collections are loaded into the “bubble” – really more like a fabric sided tent – which is sealed up and then pumped full of a mixture of carbon dioxide and oxygen for a month. When the CO2 is vented and the bubble opened up, any pests or their eggs that may have been hiding are dead, and the objects are safe to go into collections.

Interestingly enough, pure CO2 is not used. It turns out that some insects have the ability to go dormant under anaerobic conditions. These insects would simply shut down for their month-long stay in the bubble and then reanimate when the bubble was opened and oxygen was again present. A mixture including just enough oxygen fools the insects into continuing to try to breathe, a process which actually results in their death by dehydration, not asphyxiation.

It sounds sort of unpleasant, but it is vital to the preservation of our collections that we keep these pests out. An invasion of flesh-eating dermestid beetles can devastate a collection of animal skins or Native American buckskin or feathered objects in a very short time.

Of course it’s not possible to keep all insects out of the museum. That’s where the second approach of the IPM system comes into play: monitoring the insects that are getting into the museum. Hundreds of sticky traps are located at key points all over the building. Every few months, Roxie Hites, our IPM technician, (fondly referred to as the Bug Lady) collects the traps and records all the pests she finds in them - their location, species and number. By keeping track, she can spot a sudden uptick in the numbers and head off a disaster before it happens.

FAQ about our new dinosaur

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 14:25:50 -0600

I’ve been absent from the blog for some time. My apologies. Things have been busy around the museum, and the last two weeks even more so than usual.

Last week, as you may have read in the papers or seen on television, we announced the naming of a new species of dinosaur, based on fossils in our collection. Brontomerus mcintoshi is a long-necked plant-eater from the Early Cretaceous Period, found in Utah in 1994. It bears the somewhat dubious distinction of having, well, really enormous thighs. We know this because it has an unusually large hip bone. Big bones mean big muscles attached to them, and this one had, proportionately, the largest of any of the big sauropods. So much so, in fact, that its name means “thunder thighs.”

Click here to read the full story about Brontomerus.

The announcement has raised several questions, some of which I will answer here, for the curious. One thing I have been asked several times is “when will it be on view in the museum?” The sad answer, most likely, is “never.” Brontomerus was described based on a handful of broken and very fragile bones (what our vertebrate paleontology curator refers to as “road kill”) that were salvaged from a site that had been looted by commercial bone-hunters. Anything that was display quality had been taken, and what was left was not pretty. There are only a few pieces of two individuals, and these are far too fragile to put on display. The fossils are of great value to the scientific community, however, because Brontomerus is one of several sauropod discoveries from the Early Cretaceous over the past ten years that shed light on a time period for which not much research had previously been done.

Another question I’ve heard is: “How do you know that it’s a new species, or even what it looked like, based on so few pieces?”

Actually, our vertebrate paleontology curator came up with a good analogy for that. You may have met a really good mechanic who can look at a random piece of an engine and tell you at a glance what kind of car it came from. Paleontologists see fossil bones the same way. They know that a bone of a certain size and shape is characteristic of a certain type of dinosaur – in this case, a sauropod. Because they are familiar with lots of sauropods, they know what is typical of this type, and when they run across something new, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

The hip bone on this sauropod is just all out of proportion, to the trained eye, to any sauropod they had seen before. It’s shorter in the back and much broader in the front than the same bone on, say, a Brachiosaurus. Based on that, the scientists knew they had something new. From there, it’s a matter of measurement and analysis of all the bones available, and comparison of those bones to known sauropods. Following that research, the paleontologists are able to write up a paper that describes how the new species is different from any other.

Another question about the new dinosaur is: “Why are Utah bones in an Oklahoma museum?” Well, it so happens that the curator of our collection who co-authored the paper, Dr. Rich Cifelli, specializes on mammals of the Early Cretaceous. To do research on that time period, he has to go to areas where rocks of that age can be found… so he has done research from this area of Utah in the past. He has all the requisite permits for collecting on federal land, and he has a relationship with the Bureau of Land Management there. When officials in Utah discovered that looters had been at work, they contacted Dr. Cifelli to let him know that he might want to come out and salvage what he could from the quarry site, before any more got taken or was damaged by exposure to the elements. Cifelli took a team out to Utah and collected what they could and brought the fossils back here to the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History to be prepared and protected in our collection.

One last question: “The bones were collected in 1994. Why did it take so long to name them as a new species?”

First of all, it takes a long time to get fossils out of the rock. Especially if – like these fossils – they are very fragile and broken. The preparation process has to move very slowly and carefully. Broken fossil fragments must be secured with glue all along the way to keep the bones from falling into a hopeless jigsaw puzzle of fossilized bits.

Once the bones were prepared and identified as sauropod, they would have been included in the collection and became available for the scientific community to study. It so happens that the curators at our museum both focus their research efforts on mammals, not dinosaurs, so these pieces were not of particular immediate interest to their line of study. They were, in short, busy with other things. It wasn’t until 2007, when Dr. Mike Taylor visited the collection from England to look at our sauropods that things really got started. Dr. Taylor is a sauropod specialist. He recognized something unusual about the bones right away, and determined to put the study of them on his To Do list. He worked with Matt Wedel, another sauropod specialist who was a graduate student here at OU when the project started. He’s now a PhD, teaching anatomy at Western University of Health Sciences at Pomona, CA.

It took a few more years to do all the requisite research and writing required to get a new species recognized. The paper itself is 24 pages long and full of words like “preacetabular lobe” and “ischiatic peduncle.” Hardly poolside reading.

So those are my answers to questions you may or may not have been wondering about regarding Brontomerus.

Incidentally, for those who don’t remember this: Brontomerus is the second new sauropod that has been named from the collection of the OMNH in the past eleven years. The first was Sauroposeidon proteles, found in the 90s in southeastern Oklahoma. It was named in 1999, and earned the Guinness World Record for the world’s tallest dinosaur based on Dr. Cifelli’s estimate that it would have stood some 60 feet tall. Its neck alone would have been 40 feet long!

A couple of years ago, we worked with exhibit fabricators from Research Casting International, a Canadian company that specializes in dinosaur reconstruction, to recreate the neck and head of Sauroposeidon and put it on display in the museum. The long neck stretches down from the museum ceiling in our Orientation Gallery and the dinosaur’s head peers out into the Great Hall to greet visitors. You should come see it.

The Elephant in the Room

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:17:39 -0500

After my post several weeks ago on former museum director J. Willis Stovall’s dire warnings about the impacts of human activity on the environment, I decided to do a little informal polling of our current museum curators to ask about what impacts of climate change they have seen during their research.

I went first to Drs. Janalee Caldwell and Laurie Vitt, our curators of amphibians and reptiles, respectively. Much of their field research has been done in the Amazon River area of Brazil, which is, of course, at risk. And since amphibians in particular tend to serve as a sort of early warning system for environmental changes, I expected to get stories of population drops or changes to breeding season or something of that nature that could be attributed to climate change. I got some of that… but the answer that I ultimately received from these scientists was something else. Something much more thought provoking. Something that makes perfect sense when you think about it, but isn’t getting the sort of headline coverage that global climate change is garnering at present.

In the past few years, a downturn in frog populations has gotten considerable news coverage. A contagious fungus known as chytrid is largely to blame for this, and the fungus itself has been directly tied to climate change. (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080401-frog-fungus.html).

Dr. Caldwell pointed out that although she has been working with frogs in the Amazon for more than 20 years, the consequences of climate change take place over larger time spans, so the amount of measurable change that can be seen over 20 years can seem small.

Nevertheless, changes are occurring, and many species are, without a doubt, sliding along the path to extinction. Caldwell points to a review paper published in The Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics in 2006 summarizing 866 research papers that document how climate change has caused such things as changes in breeding cycles, mis-matches between when certain caterpillars emerge and when bird parents are trying to find them to feed their young, etc.

And that was in 2006!

“If the average public understood how many species are being lost, it would scare them to death,” said Laurie Vitt.

BUT, he added – and here is where my search for information about climate change became a discussion about something else entirely – climate change is just a symptom, not the cause of these extinctions. Climate change is just one part of a much larger problem that includes habitat loss, overuse of natural resources (such as fisheries) and pollution. All of these are symptoms caused by one thing: overpopulation by humans.

Some scientists refer to human overpopulation as “the Elephant in the Room” when it comes to environmental change. We struggle with cutting fossil fuel use, making better use of our resources, curbing pollution. But behind all of these massive global problems is one humongous, and growing, cause. There are, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s World Population Clock, 6,869,198,668 people on the planet today, with the number, of course, rising steadily. Improvements in health care and technologies that allow for the automation of farming and production of other necessities caused the population growth rate to skyrocket since the beginning of the Industrial Age. Resources on the earth, however, are finite. Any biologist will tell you that when a population begins to outgrow the rate at which its resources can be renewed, nasty things begin to happen.

“We’re like bacteria in a Petri dish,” Caldwell explains. “As the bacteria multiplies, it uses up its food resources (the agar in the dish) and waste builds up, eventually leading to the death of all the bacteria.”

Many resources on our planet are renewable, of course. So the Petri dish analogy is not exactly correct. We can continue to grow food, though for how long we can produce enough to feed the ever-increasing number of hungry mouths is a question up for debate. More immediate than the question of feeding everyone is the issue of crowding – an issue which is much more immediately pressing (if you’ll pardon the pun), and not just for humans, but for all the other species with which we share the planet. As humans use up more space, other species get crowded into less, and the space available may not be adequate for their needs.

Habitat loss is actually the gravest concern facing many species today. “Species end up in fragmented habitats because we cut big chunks out for housing or highways,” Vitt explained. “Tiger salamanders, right here in Oklahoma, are a good example. Tiger salamanders breed in temporary ponds, but they don’t live there. They live elsewhere. A manmade pasture or road that goes in between where they live and breed interrupts their ability to get to and from the water for breeding.”

So What about a few tiger salamanders? There are plenty of folks who can and do make this argument. To misquote Hamlet: “Who is the tiger salamander to us or we to the tiger salamander that we should mourn for it?”

“All organisms are parts of complex ecosystems,” Vitt warned. “All the species interactions maintain the ecosystem over time. The mix, the complexity, helps to protect the whole.”

Think about the bacteria that live in our intestines. There are millions of bacteria in there, and hundreds of species that do all sorts of things – many which scientists don’t begin to understand yet. But their relative numbers remain pretty constant. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to suffer the very unpleasant consequences of the overgrowth of some of that bacteria…. well, it’s not nice. All the bacteria work together, somehow each helping to keep the others’ numbers in check. Scientists don’t really understand yet how and why these bacteria interact, but one thing is certain, you don’t just randomly do away with some of them and not expect consequences to the community at large.

Mass extinction is a cyclical truth on our planet. Five such extinctions have occurred over the history of the Earth. The greatest of these happened at the end of the Permian Period, when some 90% of all organisms were wiped out. The sad truth is that huge extinctions are likely to occur again. According to Dr. Caldwell, some scientists are saying that we have already entered the “sixth Great Extinction.” Some say the crash is inevitable – that it could take place within my lifetime… or that of my ten-year-old son.

Of course, humans are not bacteria.We have the unique ability to THINK. We are the only species that has the capacity to consider the future. We can observe, cogitate, make predictions based on our observations, and then make plans and take action accordingly. If we have the will to do so.

In a letter to BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences in December, 1969, our museum’s current director, Michael A. Mares – then a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin – wrote:

The public must be made aware of the precarious ecological position in which over-population and technology have placed us. Without the intelligent support of laymen, attempts to institute reforms to meet this crisis are doomed to failure. How many colleges and universities offer even a basic course in human ecology available to all students? What is the percentage of future high school biology teachers acquainted with the rudiments of their own species’ ecology? The answers, I believe, are tragic.

In the very near future, we, as biologists, will know why the pillars of our natural environment crumbled, bringing down the temple of our synthetic surroundings. But to know then will not be enough, just as to know now is not enough. In an attempt to be constructive rather than merely critical, the following is suggested. It is known that delaying the age at which a woman first gives birth slows down population growth. It seems feasible that a series of cash rewards could be paid to a couple for delaying the birth of their first child.… Beyond this point a system of deductions for two children and penalties for more than two could be imposed….These methods and activities may cost us two precious commodities, time and money, but we must ask, how much is an environment worth?

The idea of limiting our population growth is controversial, particularly in a country in which personal freedoms are so central to our idea of who we are. But Dr. Mares’ warning and proposal, along with the earlier warning by Dr. Stovall, and added to the voices of the many scientists who are currently speaking up about “the Elephant in the Room,” does warrant some consideration and discussion. As thinking, planning organisms, dependent upon our ecosystem… how should we proceed?

Classics Exhibit Under Construction

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 14:13:42 -0500

The museum Exhibits team has begun installation of the exhibition “Mediterranean Treasures: Selections from the Classics Collection.” This will be a beautiful exhibit, featuring 100 objects from the the Mediterranean area dating from between the 21st century BCE and the 3rd century CE. The objects come from our ethnology collections here at the Sam Noble Museum. Many of these objects have never been displayed, or have not been displayed in more than 5 years.

I went down to watch the work, and was struck first by the beautiful casework. The coins in particular present a challenge for exhibit designers. How do you display a small coin in such a way that the visitor can view both sides? Our team came up with a very striking solution in these tall cases with a long center light.

Most of the hard work of preparing this exhibition was done long before the installation began. Mount-making is as much an art as it is a science. The mounts that hold the objects secure have to be sturdy but not overwhelming. Each mount is hand-crafted to exactly fit the piece it will hold. It is then painted to match, so it is camouflaged against the object and won’t distract from the viewing. The mountmaking has been going on for months behind the scenes.

Exhibit preparator Scott Jones and ethnology collection manager Kate Barr are now working to carefully install those objects into their mounts in the exhibit cases. It’s a painstaking and precise task, which will soon pay off in a lovely and polished-looking exhibition.

Everyone has a favorite object or display. My favorites are these beautiful glass bottles and jars. The colors are wonderful, and it’s amazing to think that something so fragile has lasted so long. Kate tells me that glass blowing techniques have not changed that much since the Classical period. I like to imagine the breath of some long-gone artisan going into the creation of these elegant objects. Would those artists ever have imagined that their work would so long outlive them?

The Velvet Ant is not an ant, and it's anything but velvet

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:12:55 -0500

Summer is a hard time for curator-hunting. They tend to be Elsewhere this time of year, doing fieldwork or research. But now that school is back in session, I’m beginning to be able to corner them once in a while, to catch up on what’s going on in their departments.

I had a nice long talk this afternoon with Drs. Janalee Caldwell and Laurie Vitt, our curators of amphibians and reptiles, respectively. I initially went up to get their perspectives on local effects of climate change, which I will write about later in the week. But I also had an opportunity to grab some photos of these weird and wonderful insects. The velvet ants.

“Velvet ants” are not ants. They are a type of wasp. They can be found almost all over the world. The females are larger, and wingless, and though both sexes are boldly colored in red and black, the females are notably more so. If the color RED says to you “Danger,” you’re right. These insects are dangerous.

The velvet ant is equipped with an amazing battery of defenses that make it one of the most unpalatable critters on the planet. First of all, its exoskeleton is extremely thick and hard, making it very difficult for a predator to crack open to get to the good bits. It also has large jaws and a bite powerful enough to keep many potential predators at bay in and of itself. In addition to these defenses, however, the velvet ant also exudes a nasty-tasting chemical and is armed with a very long stinger, which it keeps coiled up in its abdomen. The stinger, once deployed, delivers a toxin that causes excruciating pain to its victim – so much so that the larger of the species is commonly referred to as a “cow killer.” (Its sting doesn’t, of course, actually kill the cow… but it certainly gets the cow’s attention.) Finally, the hairs that appear so “velvety” all over the velvet ant’s body are in fact tiny barbed spikes like those on a porcupine. Viewed under a microscope, the velvet ant is a tiny, but formidable war machine.

Lizards, needless to say, don’t care for them.In fact, nothing does. Dr. Vitt could not name a single creature that eats these forbidding insects, though there are a number of other insects and spiders that mimic the velvet ant’s distinctive warning color pattern.

Vitt has collected and identified 17 species of velvet ant on the ranch he and Caldwell own in southeastern Oklahoma. He first became interested in them many years ago when he noticed that he very rarely – almost never – found velvet ants among the stomach contents of the lizards he collected. Normally a lizard doesn’t hesitate to snap up a tasty wasp. The lizard’s strike is so swift, and the crush of its jaws so powerful, that a wasp is crushed and devoured before it has a chance to sting. Yet here was an insect so plump and juicy and brightly colored, it looked like a lizard meal just waiting to happen… but nobody was eating it. Why not?

After checking with colleagues in different parts of the world, Vitt found that they also were not finding velvet ants on the menu for the lizards in their area. So Vitt decided to run a few experiments.

Vitt introduced velvet ants to a number of large skinks, fresh captured from the field. Some of the skinks refused to even nibble the velvet ants. Those that did give them a taste were in for a nasty surprise. Because of the velvet ant’s hard exoskeletons, a skink is unable to crush it on first strike, forcing the skink to manipulate the insect in its mouth and thus giving the velvet ant a chance to deploy its stinger. Once this happened, the skinks who tried out the velvet ants were so busy rubbing their faces in the dirt and shaking their heads that the velvet ants were immediately released. Interestingly enough, the skinks who tasted the velvet ant once were never tempted to do it again. One lesson was more than adequate: do not bite.

Stovall's Prophecies

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:59:57 -0500

Back in 1944, the museum’s director was Dr. J. Willis Stovall, a vertebrate paleontologist and the first of many directors who championed the cause of a new state-of-the-art museum building to house the collections and exhibits.

Stovall was prophetic in his descriptions of the museum of his dreams. He wrote once of envisioning a “beautiful and noble building. It has a feeling of spaciousness and and permanency about it and is set in an appropriately landscaped background. It will stand as an everlasting memorial to the intelligent thought and energy of those who create it.”

He didn’t live to see it, sadly, but his words accurately describe the present museum facility.

This morning I received information about another of Stovall’s prophecies, but a rather less positive one. This one rings eerily true today, and is worth bringing to light here as a reminder to all of us that this whole climate change thing has been around in the scientific community for far longer than it has been in the collective public consciousness.

June 1, 1944. A news clipping from, of all places, the Mangum Star, Mangum, Oklahoma. It reads like this:

There had better be some changes made or greatly reduced population, drastic upsets in climate and failure to find new means for developing power may ultimately lead to the removal of civilization as we know it from the face of the earth, Dr. J. Willis Stovall, professor of paleontology at the University of Oklahoma, believes.

A continuation of a philosophy of exploitation and modern warfare can lead but to one end as population is concerned and that is a greatly reduce number of human beings, ,he added.

Climate, too, is a control on civilization and is a great factor in human progress, Stovall continued. It is probably a main factor in influencing inherent mental capacity and is a condition that prevents civilization from advancing in some places and stimulates it to its greatest activities in others.

If we can believe that the climate of the earth will change as much in the next 1,000 years as it has n the past 1,000 ears, we can assume that some type of change will occur in our civilization, Dr. Stovall predicts.

And, if we are to continue to be an agricultural people we cannot maintain more people than the land can support. Improved agricultural methods will have to be introduced, the professor maintains. He pointed out that in the last two years the earth has lost two or three hundred people in part due to our decreased agricultural capacity.

“If the depletion of our soil continues we may well expect a further reduction of our population and perhaps in time a fall of mankind,” Stovall said.

Of course, in 1944, Stovall could not even begin to conceive of the type of man-made climate change we are experiencing today. His concern was more in regards to our collective response to the cyclical changes in global climate that are recorded throughout the long history of the planet and are bound to continue into our future. But I admit the hair on the back of my neck stood up a bit when I read this clip.

The scientists here at the Sam Noble Museum are admittedly not the ones who are doing direct research on the causes and possible future impact of global warming trends. There are lots of researchers out there doing that, and you can learn more about it here on the EPA’s Website. But our scientists are dealing with and documenting the effects that changes in climate are having on species around our planet right now. I’ll be asking about what they have observed and writing about it here in the weeks ahead.

You can also learn about the research being done regarding climate change at the poles on the Website of the International Polar Year, which ended in March 2009, but still offers lots of fascinating information about what the poles have to tell us about climate change.