In celebration of National Fossil Day (October 17, 2012), an event first organized by the National Parks Service (NPS) two years ago, we would like to call your attention to a feature on The Paleontology Portal website: "Fossils in US National Parks." First announced in January of this year (see the January 2012 UCMP News), the module's interactive map enables one to see all the parks where fossils are present and to find out what fossils (along with their geologic ages) are in any particular … [Read more...] about Finding fossils in our national parks
Latest News
Announcing UCMP’s 2013 Fossil Treasures Calendar
Twelve elegant examples of archival richness Open any drawer in the UCMP collections and you will view an assortment of clues to the past. Each labeled object provides a "what, where, and when" and thus helps to portray slices of past biodiversity on different spatial and temporal scales. But these fossil treasures are, by themselves, only a small piece of the story and represent only a small part of the role of a natural history museum. It is when you add in the field notes, the correspondence … [Read more...] about Announcing UCMP’s 2013 Fossil Treasures Calendar
UCMP receives a grant to develop Understanding Global Change
The University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center for Science Education are undertaking a new project that ultimately will enhance 21st Century science literacy in the context of the causes and consequences of global change. The need: Although scientists are in agreement that significant changes (including climate change) are occurring on a global level, the public remains confused and often views statements of change with ill-founded skepticism and in some instances … [Read more...] about UCMP receives a grant to develop Understanding Global Change
The Arrival of the Fossils
The UCMP houses one of the largest fossil collections associated with a university in the world, so it is no wonder that some of the fossils need to be stored off-campus at the UC Regatta facility, located nearby in Richmond. This large warehouse is home to multiple campus-wide museum collections, including a variety of enormous whale skulls, huge ichthyosaur skeletons, and cyclopean bones of mammoths and dinosaurs from the Museum of Paleontology. The Regatta facility is also the current … [Read more...] about The Arrival of the Fossils
UCMP receives $401,833 to develop a program to increase understanding of evolutionary trees
UCMP, in partnership with the Museum of the Earth, the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, and the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, has received a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences: The Tree Room: Teaching and learning about evolutionary relationships This three-year project will result in a freely accessible online resource for science educators and ISI professionals – The Tree Room. Building on scientific expertise, the learning … [Read more...] about UCMP receives $401,833 to develop a program to increase understanding of evolutionary trees
Fossil neighbors
About once a month, I drive from Berkeley to Walnut Creek to pick up specimens for my thesis (dead birds for a study of the evolution of development in Aves), which necessitates a pass through the Caldecott Tunnel. Each time, I heave a sigh and try to shore up my patience as traffic before the tunnels slows to a stop. However, this bane has recently metamorphosed into an object of great interest, for it has come to my attention that the construction here is also uncovering of one of Earth’s most … [Read more...] about Fossil neighbors
Plants have a lot to tell us about the past …
Jeff Benca is a welcome addition to the Department of Integrative Biology and UCMP’s highly active paleobotany group as a member of Cindy Looy’s lab. However, Jeff also spends a lot of his time “up the hill” at the UC Botanical Garden, where he has been given space for his astonishing collection of lycopods that he brought with him from his days at the University of Washington. This ancient vascular plant group (along with rare carnivorous plants and orchids) actually caught his interest while … [Read more...] about Plants have a lot to tell us about the past …
Cataloging the archives: Chaney, the Emperor and Metasequoia
Another in a series of blog posts relating to the museum's "cataloging the archives" project The UCMP archives contain five large scrapbooks containing museum-related newspaper clippings dating from 1948 to 1989. The earliest clippings in the oldest scrapbook concern UCMP paleobotanist Ralph Chaney's 1948 trip to central China to see for himself, Metasequoia, a tree thought to have been extinct since the Miocene. The existence of this living fossil had just been publicized in a paper by Hu and … [Read more...] about Cataloging the archives: Chaney, the Emperor and Metasequoia
Archosaurs: A new online exhibit
UCMP is proud to announce the completion of its web exhibit on archosaurs — I guess you could call it a Diapsida exhibit but we've chosen to focus on the archosaur lineage. It's roots go back to the end of the spring semester, 2006. Former UCMP grad student John Hutchinson (Ph.D., 2001, now a Professor of Evolutionary Biomechanics at the University of London's Royal Veterinary College) had updated a number of the museum's web pages on dinosaurs, and he was asked whom he'd recommend for … [Read more...] about Archosaurs: A new online exhibit
A collaborative grant to examine what triggers megafauna extinction
Tony Barnosky, with Charles Marshall as co_PI, has received an NSF grant that will support a highly collaborative research program to test the synergistic effects of climate change and human population growth in magnifying extinction intensity. South America offers a natural site to test these effects. Barnosky and graduate students Emily Lindsey and Natalia Villavicencio hypothesize that if human impacts were significant in causing extinctions, then the last records for taxa should be found … [Read more...] about A collaborative grant to examine what triggers megafauna extinction
Barnosky on Earth’s tipping points in Nature
Twenty-two scientists including lead author Tony Barnosky urge us to understand the danger of global environmental tipping points in their review paper in the June 7 issue of Nature. They examine data from past global environmental changes, compare it to how humans are changing the planet today, and discuss what that could mean for our future. They conclude that if we continue at our current rates of environmental destruction and resource use there will be dramatic impacts on the quality of life … [Read more...] about Barnosky on Earth’s tipping points in Nature
Accolades continue for UCMP websites
The UCMP websites continue to rack up recognition and serve users around the world. Here's a taste of the latest website news: Understanding Evolution has been recognized as a key teaching resource in a recent NAS publication, Thinking Evolutionarily: Evolution Education Across the Life Sciences: Summary of a Convocation that was organized by a committee under the aegis of the Board on Life Sciences of the National Research Council (NRC) and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and held on … [Read more...] about Accolades continue for UCMP websites
Lessons for today in ancient mass extinctions
This month's Evo in the News on Understanding Evolution looks at the work of incoming UCMP faculty curator Seth Finnegan. Seth is the lead author on a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that the end of the Ordovician marked a true mass extinction caused by habitat loss due to falling sea levels and cooling of the tropical oceans. The Evo in the News feature explains and discusses the significance of this research, and includes additional links, resources, … [Read more...] about Lessons for today in ancient mass extinctions
Dispatches from Clear Lake, part 1
UCMP's Cindy Looy is leading a project to collect 130,000 years worth of sediment data from Clear Lake in order to better understand how life has adapted to climate change. Along the way, members of her team will report back to us with all the progress and drama from the field. Here's our first set of dispatches. From Ivo Duijnstee: Thu, April 26 First mud It has begun. Except for some minor delays, the Clear Lake drilling expedition had a relatively smooth start. When our … [Read more...] about Dispatches from Clear Lake, part 1
A special night at UCMP
Cal Day is the one day of the year when lucky members of the public can tour UCMP's collection. But this year, on the night before Cal Day, UCMP hosted a special event to take some of our closest friends behind the scenes. This invitation-only event included sneak previews of Cal Day exhibits, tours of the collection, the paleo art of William Gordan Huff, and fossils recovered during the construction of the Caldecott Tunnel's fourth bore. UCMP-affiliated faculty curators, scientists, … [Read more...] about A special night at UCMP
Cataloging the archives: Geology camp 100 years ago
Looking at UCMP's modern offices and collections space, one might not appreciate that the paleontology tradition at Berkeley stretches back more than one hundred years. But now the CLIR/UCMP Archive Project is bringing this history to light. Some of the oldest supplemental locality files I have come across this semester contain class reports and geologic maps prepared by a Cal field geology class in the summer of 1911. Led by Bruce L. Clark, who eventually became the first director of the … [Read more...] about Cataloging the archives: Geology camp 100 years ago
UCMP awarded a two-year collections improvement grant
We are pleased to announce the receipt of a grant of ~ $470,000 from the National Science Foundation – a two-year collections improvement grant to "Complete the rehabilitation of the orphaned USGS fossil invertebrate collection at UCMP." In 1997 the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) accepted responsibility for an extensive invertebrate collection (170,000 fossils from 12,100 localities) the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Menlo Park. Unfortunately, the comprehensive … [Read more...] about UCMP awarded a two-year collections improvement grant
Photo shoots for UCMP science
This semester, the UCMP has been excited to host a visiting photographer, UC alum Dave Strauss. A self-described "computer guy" for the last 42 years, he is also an avid naturalist, hiker, and mountain biker. Dave finds inspiration at the UCMP through the opportunity to use his talents to communicate evolutionary and historical knowledge to the broader community. Collaboration with Dave has provided many opportunities to contribute to science. He has confronted technical challenges … [Read more...] about Photo shoots for UCMP science
Erin’s Adventures in Marine Conservation: A quick introduction to a snail’s tale
Follow Erin Meyer as she takes us on a journey through the Caribbean, on the tail of an important snail she hopes to conserve. To learn more about her seasonal trips, visit her blog - "Adventures in Snail Conservation." … [Read more...] about Erin’s Adventures in Marine Conservation: A quick introduction to a snail’s tale
Another award winner!
Lucy Chang, who is advised by Charles Marshall, has been awarded a three-year National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Lucy started as a Ph.D. student at Berkeley in 2010 with a general interest in paleoecology. Upon notification of this award, Lucy initially expressed both gratefulness and shock, but is now settling in to the wonderful realization that this will give her just the time and resources needed to move forward on a dissertation topic with an interdisciplinary … [Read more...] about Another award winner!