Congratulations to Paleontology Collections Manager Christina Byrd for her award-winning photo! Representing the Paleontology Department, Christina entered photos from her work at the Museum in the American Geosciences Institute’s “Life as a Geoscientist” photo contest. The photo titled “Bringing fossils into the digital age” won first place in the “Data Visualization” category. It shows two Fort Hays Department of Geosciences students photographing a fossil clam shell encrusted with oysters. Graduate student Amber Michels (left) and undergraduate student Hannah Horinek (right) both work on a National Science Foundation grant awarded to the Sternberg Museum to digitize Cretaceous fossils; images and data collected over the course of this project will be available online. Cheers to Christina, Amber, Hannah, and the five other students working on data digitization and visualization in the paleontology collection!
National Fossil Day with NSF
To celebrate National Fossil Day (October 11, 2017), the National Science Foundation featured four paleontologists on its social media accounts and on Science360 Radio. Dr. Laura Wilson was one of the featured scientists. Her and Sternberg Museum Adjunct Curator Mike Everhart’s recent Science Friday segment was featured on the air, and pictures of her research were shared across social media platforms. Laura currently has two National Science Foundation grants to support the paleontology collections at the Sternberg Museum.
NSF Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/US.NSF/posts/10155566238757900
NSF Twitter: https://twitter.com/NSF/status/919190210910531585
NSF tumblr: http://nationalsciencefoundation.tumblr.com/post/166433503138/fossils-hunting-in-the-kansas-sea
NSF Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsfgov/
Two images include fieldwork with Quinter High School students in the Late Cretaceous Smoky Hill Chalk (Niobrara Formation) in Western Kansas. Laura and students from the Advanced Biology class (along with their teacher) excavated a mosasaur fossil in the spring of 2014. The third image is of the internal bone structure of a Hesperornis leg bone from the Arctic.
We can’t think of a better way to celebrate National Fossil Day than with Fort Hays State University paleontologists!
Sternberg scientists hit the airwaves!
Though it may not be news to paleontologists and visitors to the Sternberg Museum, not everyone in the country knows that Kansas was covered by an ocean 85 million years. To address this, Sternberg paleontologists had the opportunity to take to a national stage and talk about the ocean that covered Kansas in the Cretaceous. On Friday September 15th, Chief Curator/Curator of Paleontology Dr. Laura Wilson and Adjunct Curator of Paleontology Mike Everhart appeared on public radio’s Science Friday. The Saturday before, they recorded their segment at Wichita’s Orpheum Theater in front of a sold-out studio audience. Fielding question from host Ira Flatow and the audience, Laura and Mike discussed the paleontological history of Kansas, the Western Interior Seaway that covered Kansas, and the extinct animals that filled the sea. They also got to touch on subjects close to their research. Mike has studied many of the vertebrate groups that lived in this Cretaceous Seaway and is known as a mosasaur expert. Laura studies the seabirds that lived in the Seaway and works on putting together the ancient ecosystem structure. If you missed it, the segment is available online.
Paleontologists Abroad
Every year, paleontologists from around the world converge on an unexpecting city to share research, make new connections, and unite with old friends at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) annual meeting. This year’s meeting was in Calgary, Alberta (Canada) – a stronghold in Canadian paleontology. Six current students and two recent alumni from the Department of Geosciences at FHSU joined our Curator of Paleontology Dr. Laura Wilson at the conference. Like most professional conferences, the SVP annual meeting is filled with poster presentations and technical talks, workshops and field trips, exhibitors showcasing the latest technologies and resources, and roundtables and luncheons for subsets of the society tackling specific issues (for example: the Women in Paleontology luncheon and student roundtable).
New research always takes the limelight, and most of the FHSU representatives in attendance presented original research. We have been working hard to make the Sternberg Museum a leader in Western Interior Seaway research. The Western Interior Seaway is the ocean that covered Kansas and most of the interior of North America from roughly 100 to 66 million years ago – these are the fossils that fill our exhibit galleries, education collections, and research collections. Presentations by Sternberg Museum students and staff showcased research on marine animals from the Seaway. Third year graduate student Cyrus Green presented research on the internal bone structure of Clidastes mosasaurs; second year graduate students Pike Holman and Amber Michels presented on determining age in Dolichorhynchops pliosaurs and determine the trophic ecology of Cretaceous fishes, respectively. Recent alumni Kris Super and Logan King presented on the smallest specimen of Xiphactinus fish ever reported, and Curator Laura Wilson presented on what we know about the ecology of the Seaway based on seabird fossils.
Collections Progress Report: August 2017
In 2016, the Sternberg Museum’s Paleontology Department was awarded two National Science Foundation grants to support collection improvement projects. “Implementation of a relational database for the Sternberg Museum paleontology collection” is funded though the Collections in Support of Biological Research program, and “ The Cretaceous World: Digitizing Fossils to Reconstruct Evolving Ecosystems in the Western Interior Seaway” is funded through the Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections program. The collection staff has been working hard to refine and archive data, curate new specimens, photograph fossils, and build a database, so we wanted to update you on our progress!
Over the course of the year, almost all of our hand-written ledgers have been transcribed into a digital format; they will soon be archived in a new database being tailored specifically for the Museum’s paleontology collection. Collection cabinets have been reorganized, specimens have been rehoused, and data tables have been cleaned up. 2,105 new specimens have been cataloged into the collection, bringing the curated total to 21,545 fossil specimens (19,147 vertebrates and 2,398 invertebrates). 342 invertebrate fossil specimens have been photographed. We have presented project updates at two conferences: the Association for Materials and Methods in Paleontology and the Kansas Academy of Science.
Thanks to these grants, we have also been able to fund four graduate students and 11 undergraduate students to work in the paleontology collection and be trained in collection management and digitization techniques. They have been exposed to primary research, new software programs, aspects of natural history previously unexplored, and have gained valuable experience working in groups, working individually, with recordkeeping, and in organization.
We still have two more years on both grants, so we are looking forward to continue collection improvement and working with new students. In the next few weeks, we should be finalizing our new database, which will be accessible by the public via our website. For now, you can see some of the images of Sternberg Museum fossils on cretaceousatlas.org, and you can follow the paleo department on Twitter @FHSU_Paleo for collection updates.
Wilson Paleontology Research Group 