With the start of a new academic year, many university professors might be deliberating on what they’ll be teaching, and many students similarly (and hopefully) might be wondering what they will be taught. For me this academic year, my plan is not to put so much emphasis on the “what,” but more on the “how,” and put it in the form of a basic question: How could I be wrong?
In my experience, this is a question we professors and other educators we often ask, regardless of whether we are in the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, or some blend of those educational realms. Now, this is not to say that we should continuously live our lives in doubt of our hard-earned skills and knowledge, succumbing to imposter syndrome. So what I will suggest is that we use it in our teaching, leading by example for our students. For instance, when my students see me question an initial interpretation of mine, correct that wrong interpretation, and show delight when this happens, then they will feel more comfortable asking themselves the same question, too.
So how do I apply this method to my research disciplines of paleontology and ichnology? If I am observing a natural phenomenon in the field, museum, or other settings, and I find myself jumping to a conclusion too rapidly, I take a moment to pause, back up, and try to disprove that hasty conclusion. Sometimes it turns out that, yes indeed, I was an idiot. But if this debunking process fails to find anything terribly wrong with my original explanation, or I modify it accordingly in the face of newly acquired evidence, then I’ll think this: So far, so good.
Whoa, check out the tracks made by this eight-legged river otter! This eight-legged otter must have been the result of some freak mutation, or genetic engineering, or joined twin otters, or a robot spider with otter feet…What? Was it something I said? (Scale in centimeters; Photo by Anthony Martin.)
Moreover, because so much of paleontology and ichnology involves interpreting the products of non-witnessed lives, behaviors, and environments, such as bones, shells, leaves, tracks, and burrows, careful documentation of this evidence is key for making reasonable interpretations. Because we can’t prove ourselves wrong by watching a video of whatever happened in the pre-human past, we also have to ensure that the evidence can be shared and evaluated by other paleontologists and ichnologists.
In the following video, I explain these two basic scientific principles – how could I be wrong, and so far, so good – by using a few examples from a forested area next to the Emory University campus in Atlanta, Georgia. This is the place where I often teach first-year (freshman) students in a small-class seminar how to track the animals on and around our campus. Because most of these animals are nocturnal, most remain “invisible” to the students’ during their four years on campus. So my students really do learn how to use trace evidence to make reasonable hypotheses about animal presence and behaviors, and by the end of the semester, they get pretty good at it.
This sort of educational fruition is what made for the most fun part about doing this video, which was having a former student of mine who took the class four years ago play the role of my willing and eager “student.” In this, we demonstrated how the two basic principles – how could I be wrong, and so far, so good – are applied when in the field. It actually wasn’t much of a stretch for my former student, as Dorothy (Dottie) Stearns (Emory College ’16) was one of my best students in the class when she took it, and she really enjoys getting outside and tracking, so her enthusiasm is genuine.
The video is part of a series that Emory is producing on the theme of Evidence at Emory, with professors from a wide variety of disciplines explaining how they incorporate evidence-based reasoning in their courses. First-year students at Emory are the specific target of the videos so they are exposed to different disciplines and how scholars evaluate evidence in those disciplines. But there’s also hope that students will retain these discernment skills in life after college. Nonetheless, I think anyone who likes observing and thinking about what they observed can benefit from watching them. I could be wrong on that, but if not, I’m fine with that, too: for now.
Wait a minute, you’re saying these tracks could have been made by two otters, with one following closely behind the other? Huh, hadn’t thought of that. But that doesn’t mean eight-legged otters aren’t out there somewhere. Or freak mutated otters. Or genetically engineered otters. Or a robot spider with otter feet. What? Was it something I said?
Acknowledgements: Thanks to the Quality Enchancement Plan of Emory University for encouraging me to more overtly incorporate evidence as a main theme in my class, to Dottie Stearns for being such an awesome student/actor, and to the Center for Digital Scholarship, also of Emory University, for their fine work on the video production.
For the past ten years, Labor Day weekend in my adopted home town of Decatur, Georgia means the Decatur Book Festival takes over the downtown area. This is always a good thing, as attested by the 70-80,000 people and more than 500 authors who attend it each year, as well as the tens of thousands of books sold, making it the largest independent book festival in the U.S. But this year I thought of a way to make it a little more exciting: Bringing back some recently departed Pleistocene megafauna to the area.
A small sample of book lovers attending the 2015 Decatur Book Festival, walking up and down Clairemont Road in lovely downtown Decatur on a beautiful day. The only thing that would improve this picture is a rampaging herd of mammoths, perhaps accompanied by a pack of dire wolves. (Photograph by Anthony Martin.)
As a “local boy done good,” I’ve been lucky enough to participate directly in the festival the past few years as an author and introducer of authors. In 2012, I was part of a panel discussion with authors Maryn McKenna and Dr. Holly Tucker about science authors using social media. In 2013, I was invited by the Atlanta Writers Club to present on my then-new book Life Traces of the Georgia Coast, and in another session introduced Brian Switek, there to talk about his book My Beloved Brontosaurus. Last year, I was delighted to be invited as one of the featured authors in the Science Track of the festival for my book Dinosaurs Without Bones.
With the planning of the 2015 Decatur Book Festival, and a new book in the works but nowhere near published, I figured my role in it this year would be as a spectator and probable book purchaser. So I was very pleased when festival organizers, in cooperation with the Atlanta Science Tavern, asked me to introduce one of the featured authors in the Science Track, Dr. Beth Shapiro, an invitation I readily accepted. Her new book, How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction, promised to be one of the more exciting titles showcased in the Science Track. Of course, I was also happy that my trip to this event involved only a 15-minute walk from home.
To start prepare for introducing Dr. Shapiro at the festival, I bought her book and read it beforehand, cover-to-cover. I’m not going to review it here (that’s partially covered in my introduction anyway), but the following book trailer, narrated by Shapiro, succinctly tells its story while using nicely rendered watercolors to illustrate its main points.
This is how science-book trailers should be done: Short and simply told, using lots of pretty pictures, but injected with enough intrigue to make you want to learn more about the topic. The video is narrated by Beth Shapiro and the artwork by Peter Durand, and is available for free download from Vimeo at this link.
After reading Dr. Shapiro’s book, I started writing my introduction for her, using some of the main ideas posed in the book and some biographical information. Yet somehow I knew that to just do that could be really boring. I also knew that because this was a book festival and I was a book author, it would be totally appropriate for me to actually write something original and read it to this literary-loving audience. This was not the time to “wing it” with a stumbling, impromptu little speech that just said, “The book’s great, she’s great, get the book!”
So this is when I took a page (or two) out of my most recent book (Dinosaurs Without Bones) and created a scenario to draw in and involve the audience more directly. In Dinosaurs Without Bones, I open the book with a detailed description of dinosaurs interacting with one another and making traces (tracks, burrows, nests, and more) in a given hour back in the Cretaceous Period. This time, though, I imagined a re-booted Pleistocene megafauna cavorting in downtown Decatur immediately after Shapiro’s talk (described below), then followed it with laudatory comments about the book and its author. Once written, I edited the rough draft, edited it again, and a third time, then rehearsed and timed the introduction four times. I only had about 3 minutes, and the final version came out to 3:30 minutes: Close enough.
I figured her talk, scheduled for 1:15 p.m. Sunday (September 6) at the Marriott Conference Center in downtown Decatur, would be packed, and it was. By about 1:05 p.m., the room was already nearly filled, and by the time I started my introduction, about 400 people were in the room, with many standing in the back and on the sides. This turned out to be the best attended of all Science Track talks at the festival, which was not surprising considering the interesting subject, lots of advance press about her book, and Dr. Shapiro’s engaging presentation style.
A panorama of the crowd as Beth Shapiro (far right) sets up her laptop at the podium, just before my introduction. The few empty seats you see in this photo were filled within minutes. (Photo by Anthony Martin.)
I also met Dr. Shapiro for the first time about 10 minutes before my introduction, where we had a lively and fun exchange (including the coincidence that we had both attended the University of Georgia, albeit at separate times). We even had time to pose for a picture, taken by my wife, Ruth Schowalter.
Just in case you were confused, that’s me on the left, and Beth Shapiro on the right. (Photo by Ruth Schowalter.)
What’s charming about the Decatur Book Festival is that even the introducers are introduced, so I had to wait while the room captain (Anthony) read a brief biography about me, then I jumped up on stage for my introduction. All I’ll say is that it went very well, and I’m even more pleased to report that Shapiro’s talk was excellent, serving as a model for effective science communication.
Me on stage introducing Beth Shapiro (far right), with a large happy, enthusiastic crowd listening, and there for a science book. Did I already say how much I love the Decatur Book Festival? (Photo by Ruth Schowalter.)
My introduction follows in its entirety, and you’ll just have to think about how it would sound while reading it out loud, and with much dramatic emphasis.
Imagine exiting this building, but you have to pause for a moment because a herd of mammoths is strolling down Clairemont Road. On the Decatur town square, you move warily around a giant ground sloth tearing apart a Southern magnolia, and likewise give wide berth to several wooly rhinoceroses grazing by the gazebo. A pack of dire wolves dash by, chasing down a soon-to-be locally extinct coyote. However, you are amused when, in what looks like an act of vengeance, a giant bison crashes through the front door of Ted’s Montana Grill. Suddenly, a sunny day turns dark, and you look up to see a vast, dark cloud, from which a gentle rain falls. Only the “cloud” is composed of a billion passenger pigeons, and that’s not rain you’re feeling.
The animals just mentioned were all here, but separated from us by the geologically brief time of 11,000 years, or for passenger pigeons, only a hundred years. In Dr. Beth Shapiro’s brilliant new book, How To Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction, she highlights our close temporal proximity to these extinct animals, while also exploring the feasibility of bringing them back alive, to the here and now.
Part lesson in the once-separate realms of genetics and paleontology, part wistful elegy to these recently departed animals, and all-good storytelling, How to Clone a Mammoth is a book that provokes weighty thoughts about improving our future by reliving the past. These animals or their proxies may be just what we need to repair environments devoid of long-gone keystone species. Forget Jurassic World with its super-sized mosasaurs, constipated dinosaurs, and improbable heels: We want “Pleistocene Park.” And our perfect guide for learning how to create that park is Dr. Shapiro.
As an Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California-Santa Cruz, Dr. Shapiro studies de-extinction, a word that originated in science fiction, but thanks to her efforts and those of her colleagues, is now evolving into science fact. I also envy her UC-Santa Cruz students, who surely gain new and life-changing insights in her classes, benefiting directly from her field experiences in Siberia and laboratory expertise.
How to Clone a Mammoth is a provocative book, literally, as it provokes many questions. For instance, can we really clone a mammoth? How do we reconstruct their genome and those of other long-extinct animals? Once made, how does a “de-extincted” species become a self-sustaining population? How does this population fit into a modern community of microbes, plants, and animals? And, most importantly of all, should we try to bring back extinct animals, even those that only recently departed this earth? In other words, when creating a “Pleistocene Park,” will we make something more akin to Stephen King’s Pet Cemetery?
To answer all of those questions and more, we are very lucky to have Dr. Shapiro here today to talk about her book, How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Beth Shapiro.
So if you were there at the Decatur Book Festival, I hope you enjoyed it, and especially the Science Track. Oh, and by the way, y’all really need to get (and read) Beth Shapiro’s book, How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction (2015, Princeton University Press).
My copy of the book, personally autographed by Beth Shapiro. No, I’m not going to sell it to you: Get your own copy. (Photo by Anthony Martin.)
With the much-awaited publication of my new book (Life Traces of the Georgia Coast), it’s now time to talk about it. Fortunately, I’ve had plenty of time to prepare for this part of the launching of the book, which is one advantage gained from its publication taking longer than originally anticipated. (I’m not complaining, just saying.)
A brief preview of my book, which I gave to my peers in August as a 20-minute talk at the International Congress on Ichnology meeting (Ichnia 2012) in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada. Please note that all subsequent talks about the book will not involve audience members to be screeched in, although folks attending my talk to the Atlanta Science Tavern event on January 26 might be tempted.(Photograph by Ruth Schowalter.)
But what’s been most exciting about this process is the overwhelmingly positive reception to my inquiries about giving talks. Amazingly, no one (so far) has said “no” when I asked if I could speak. This is a lesson for other authors who might be organizing public presentations on your own, without the financial or logistical support of a trade-book publisher: pick what you think are the right venues for speaking about your book, then ask. Until then, you never know who will agree that having you speak about your book would be a fine idea.
I am also blessed with a very good infrastructure for giving talks here in Georgia, particularly in the metro Atlanta area. Despite all of the tired jokes about banjo music – along with urging participants to accompany this music with porcine sounds – Atlanta has a thriving scene of science and natural history enthusiasts. This intellectual richness is exemplified the Atlanta Science Tavern, which was even noticed by some out-of-town newspaper for its “Mars Landing Party” last July.
Lastly, the subject of the book is of great interest to many people in Georgia, especially those who have been to its barrier islands. More than a million visitors are estimated to visit the Georgia coast each year, with many of those driving the 4+ hours from Atlanta to get there. Of these million people, at least a few walk along a beach or marsh, or hike through a maritime forest, and see traces made by the animals that live there on the islands, prompting them to ask, “I wonder what made that?” For those folks and more, these talks are for you.
Here’s my current schedule of appearances for the next few months, but be sure to check in once in a while on this Web site for updates. Hope to see you at one or more of these events!
Wednesday, January 23, 4:00 p.m., Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. Talk title: Big Burrows through Ecospace and Time. This talk is part of the Department of Environmental Studies Seminar Series for the spring semester, 2013; all seminars are in Math & Sciences Building, Room N304. Free and open to the public.
Saturday, January 26, 7:00 p.m. – Atlanta Science Tavern, at Manuel’s Tavern, Atlanta, Georgia. Talk title: Exploring Tracks and Prints, Marks and Holes on Georgia’s Barrier Islands. Preregistration required, $3 suggested donation. This event is currently FULL, but you can put your name on the waiting list through the preceding link.
Saturday, February 16, 5:30 p.m. – Jekyll Island Green Screen Event, Jekyll Island Convention Center, Jekyll Island, Georgia. Poster presentation (along with other presenters) summarizing some of my latest research on the Georgia barrier islands (exact title of poster to be updated later). Free and open to the public.
Sunday, February 24, 3:00 p.m. – Andalusia, home of author Flannery O’Connor, in Milledgeville, Georgia. Tentative talk title: Tracks and Traces of Flannery O’Connor’s Favorite Birds. Free and open to the public.
Sunday, March 24, 2:30 p.m. – Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Atlanta, Georgia. Tentative talk title: Tracking Exotic Mammals on the Georgia Coast. Admission fee applies if you’re not a member of the museum, but the lecture is free with admission.
P.S. Bookstores, just remember, if you invite me to speak in your store, I will bring your employees this. Consider yourselves bribed.
(This post is the second in a series discussing academic scientists and public outreach of their science, but with a focus on my recent experiences in using ichnology and paleontology for public outreach. The first of the series, introducing science outreach in general and some of its challenges for academic scientists, is here.)
One of the clichés of the environmentalism is to “think globally, act locally,” and the same principle applies well to public outreach done by scientists. For example, here in Atlanta, Georgia, I live near Fernbank Museum of Natural History. And by “near,” I mean I can ride my bicycle to it in 10-15 minutes from either home or my workplace at Emory University. Over my 20+ years in Atlanta, I’ve tried to cultivate a relationship with Fernbank, having done some informal consulting for them on exhibits, given public lectures about my research in ichnology and paleontology, shown some of my science-based artwork there, and otherwise done volunteer work that qualifies as public outreach.
Look, a real paleontologist who somehow escaped from his “ivory tower” (or stone house) and found time to talk with the public! This is a small visual sample of the fun I had this past Saturday at Fernbank Museum of Natural History, talking with children and their parents about dinosaur trace fossils. Why yes, those are Paleontologist Barbies (one of them quite famous) sitting in the box to the right of me. Do you have a problem with that? (Photograph by Ruth Schowalter.)
But one of my acknowledged deficiencies in public outreach with Fernbank and elsewhere has been sharing my science with kids. Full confession: I don’t have children. (As far as I know, that is. If I ever run for political office, I’ll find out for sure.) Moreover, nearly all of the students I teach are 18 to 22 years old, and I normally don’t have children around me through family, friends, or neighbors in everyday life. Thus most of my experience in communicating science at any level is with adults. This leaves me feeling a little handicapped and less confident about my abilities to adapt and use the unique set of skills needed for relating sometimes-complex scientific concepts to children.
Why should I bother getting bothered about this, especially in doing outeach with a local natural history museum? Well, a simple reality of natural history museums today is that their economic survival relies on children visiting them, and preferably (although not necessarily) with their parents in tow. Sure, educating the young has always been a role of natural history museums. But pitching science solely to kids while bypassing adults has become so pronounced in some museums that adults have begun complaining about the “infantilization” of museum exhibits.
Fernbank is not immune to this charge. For example, the traveling exhibit they have there now – The Scoop on Poop – is clearly aimed at viewers 10 years old and younger, and is inspired by a children’s book with the same title. To be fair, though, Fernbank hosting the Darwin exhibit from the American Museum of Natural History last year was a refreshing concession to adults who certainly felt like kids, filled with excitement and awe, while learning about the roots of evolutionary theory.
A study in contrasts of traveling exhibits that have been to Fernbank Museum. Above, here’s part of the sign that greeted visitors to the Darwin exhibit, shown there September-December 2011…
…and here’s the sign welcoming people to the Scoop on Poop exhibit, showing there now. Gee, do you think each was intended for a different audience?
So it was with a mixture of mild trepidation, but also eagerness, that I welcomed an opportunity for outreach with kids and their parents last Saturday, July 14. One of my friends who works at Fernbank asked me several weeks ago if I’d be interested in participating in a museum event they organized for July 14-15, called “The Scoop on Dinosaurs.” In this event, Fernbank put together a range of dinosaur- and other science-related activities and programs for kids, but of course also designed it with the assumption that these kids would be accompanied by parents or other adults. The problem was, all of the planned activities lacked a real, practicing scientist, let alone a paleontologist. And seeing that I’m one of the few paleontologists in the Atlanta area, I live close by, and I enjoy doing public outreach, it made sense for me to participate.
After discussing it with my Fernbank friend, we decided that a simple “meet the paleontologist” format would work best, with me sitting at a table and talking informally with people about one of my research topics – dinosaur trace fossils – as they dropped by. I also thought it would be good to have a few props, and ones that would provoke inquiry-based learning, or what educators used to call “thinking.”
For example, I brought with me two sets of dinosaur bones, one of which was noticeably denser than the other. (And by the way, real bones are essential, so the kids could say and remember when they held real dinosaur bones.) These differences, which engaged a sense other than sight, lent well to the question, “Why is one bone heavier than the other, even though they’re the same size?,” followed by a discussion of the preservation of dinosaur bones.
Whoa, dinosaur bones! The darker dinosaur bone on the left is noticeably heavier than the lighter-colored one on the right, which the kids could feel for themselves right away when they put one in each hand. After they noticed this, I asked them why, and next thing you knew, we were having a scientific discussion.
Of course, because I’m ichnologist, you just knew some traces and trace fossils were somehow going to be involved in this, too. Sure enough, my friends at Fernbank printed out and laminated the following two photographs of mine, which I used to introduce the concept of dinosaur tracks to the kids. But rather than just blabbing on about each track, I showed them the photos and asked “Which one is the dinosaur track, which one is the bird track?” One track was from a modern sandhill crane (Grus canadensis) made on a Georgia barrier island, whereas the other was from a non-avian Cretaceous theropod dinosaur.
Which is the bird track and which is the dinosaur track? It’s kind of a trick question, but one that also introduces the concept that questions can have multiple right answers, and those answers lead to more questions and deeper meaning. And just in case you were wondering, the track on the left is from a theropod dinosaur, preserved in Early Cretaceous rocks that are about 105 million years old, and the one on the right is from a modern sandhill crane. (Both photographs by Anthony Martin, the left one taken in Victoria, Australia, and right one taken on St. Catherines Island, Georgia.)
For the more shy kids, I asked them to just point to the one they thought was the dinosaur track, and assured them that it was OK to be wrong, because being wrong is also part of science. So what was fun about this exercise was how they could be right no matter which they picked. If they pointed to dinosaur track, I would tell them they were right. But if they instead pointed to the modern sandhill crane track, I smiled and said, “You’re right, but it’s from a modern dinosaur, because birds are dinosaurs, too.”
This revelation led to a short explanation of how some dinosaurs are still around as birds, even if all of the other dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. (Most of the kids already knew this, but I’m not so sure all of their parents did.) They also could clearly see that the tracks, which were very similar in size and shape, comprised one piece of evidence showing the relatedness of these two animals, even though they were separated by more than 100 million years. With a few of the older kids, we even talked some about how they were able to distinguish the fossil track from the modern one. (“That looks like a rock, and that looks like sand,” some of them said. Couldn’t have said it better myself.) What was really fun about this approach was to see how much the kids’ parents learned from this ichnologically based exercise, too. In other words, this wasn’t just done with children in mind.
Another simple trace-fossil-oriented quiz came from a photo of a 75-million-year-old dinosaur coprolite. Only I didn’t tell them it was a coprolite; instead, I told them what was in it (bits and pieces of plants), that my hand was in the picture (showing the size of the rock), and that the rock was a type of dinosaur trace fossil.
What’s this? It has bits and pieces of plants in it, it’s big (there’s my hand for scale), and it came from a dinosaur. If you said “paleo-puke,” that’s not bad, but you’re thinking of the wrong end of the dinosaur. It’s a coprolite, probably from a hadrosaur (like Maisaura), and is from the Late Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation of northwestern Montana.
With just those few clues, sometimes aided by my holding my nose, some kids actually figured it out (“DINOSAUR POOP!”), and even those who didn’t immediately get it were delighted with their answer after guiding them with just a few more questions. There’s probably something about their having recently learned proper toilet habits (reinforced daily) that makes feces loom large in a child’s imagination. So linking such traces to dinosaurs makes those feces even bigger, smellier, and hence more memorable.
With regard to other academic paleontologists who do public outreach, several parents mentioned that their kids regularly watch the TV show Dinosaur Train on PBS, and that’s how their children were learning about paleontology (or, more narrowly, just dinosaurs and pterosaurs). Although I’ve only seen a few clips from this show, I knew its host is also a real, academically trained research paleontologist with a Ph.D., Dr. Scott Sampson, sometimes known simply by the kids as “Dr. Scott.” So I made sure to tell these parents how fantastic it was to see an academic paleontologist with such credentials teaching paleontology in a children’s show. In other words, I was trying to counter the “Sagan effect,” while helping to dissuade parents from the notion that academic scientists are all disengaged from the public. (Maybe we paleontologists could call it the “Sampson effect.”)
Dr. Scott Sampson, an academic paleontologist who went on to do something a little different in his career, which was to become a science communicator with a recent focus on teaching paleontology to kids. Yet he still does peer-reviewed research on dinosaurs, meaning the two are not mutually exclusive. And you know what? The rest of us academic paleontologists think that’s cool.
Of course, I had lots of kids say, “I want to be a paleontologist!” Not wanting to crush their dreams with tales of pessimistic woe from academia (see my previous post if you need a big downer on that), I instead saw this as a chance for them to learn science in upcoming years, regardless of whether they become paleontologists or not. So advice I gave to those kids included (in particular order):
Get outside as much as possible. Although I’m not an overly fervent acolyte of Richard Louvand his “get kids in nature” movement, I do agree with the basic premise that kids need to connect more directly with nature by simply getting their little butts outside. From what I understand, “Dr. Scott” preaches the same message, so it’s good for kids to hear this coming from paleontologists, who do lots of their best work outside.
When you’re not outside, read as much as possible. Although, now that I think about it, I should have advised them to read outside.
Take lots of math classes. These kids represent the future, and the future of paleontology means more computer applications and more quantification of our data. So they can’t think about doing paleontology without also thinking about how math will be used in that science. Even though some kids wrinkled their tiny noses at me when I said “lots of math,” they got the message.
Take lots of science classes. And for the science classes, I told them that they’d better take geology, but also biology and chemistry. (I’m not sure if I mentioned physics, but maybe that was my way of getting back at fictional physicist Sheldon Cooper for what he’s said about geology.)
Yes, I know, all of this sounds wonderful, in a self-congratulatory, back-patting sort of way. Yay me! Nonetheless, while doing this outreach, I remained conscious of how I also fulfill a tenacious stereotype in paleontology. This typecasting has been discussed by fellow paleo-bloggers Victoria Arbour (here) and Brian Switek, the latter dubbing it the “male and pale” syndrome. It’s a syndrome exemplified by documentary filmmakers who pretend that the entire paleontological community is composed of middle-aged men of European descent, or, to throw in some diversity, older men of European descent.
Considering I live in an ethnically diverse place – Atlanta is more than 50% African-American, for starters – I’m reminded daily that my face doesn’t match those of most kids around me (and it’s not just the beard). This was certainly true for those kids and parents who stopped by to see me on Saturday: it was a rainbow of ethnicities totally unlike anything I experienced as a kid growing up in Indiana in the 1960s. But for here in Atlanta and many major metropolitan areas in the U.S. and around the world, this is normal. So if paleontologists who look like me plan to do public outreach, they have to be mindful of this reality, get educated about other ethnicities, and adjust accordingly. In this respect, I’ve been enlightened through working some with Emory’s Center for Science Education, which has had great success in implementing a variety of programs working to increase minority participation at all levels in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) in the Atlanta area.
I’m also sensitive to the gender gap in perceptions of paleontologists, or the expectation that all paleontologists will be male, even as the demographics in our profession start to approach equity (though admittedly, we still have a long ways to go). So I made sure, after showing them the photo I had taken of a dinosaur coprolite from Montana and discussing how feces get fossilized, to tell them that the paleontologist who actually studied those coprolites was Dr. Karen Chin. Plus, I pointed toward the nearby Scoop on Poop exhibit and said they should go in there and watch Dr. Chin speak about her research on coprolites in several videos there. (Karen, if you’re reading this, thanks for your virtual help in being a cool role model!)
Dr. Karen Chin, the acknowledged world expert on dinosaur coprolites, who also doesn’t look like me (and that’s a good thing for both of us.) Here she is holding up one of her research subjects, which fortunately is sufficiently fossilized for her to gesture without getting any of it on her or the person behind the camera. Oh, and sorry if my photo taken from a video in The Scoop on Poop exhibit violates some sort of copyright, but I did it for the children. So there.
So it was with great joy and satisfaction that I’ll note my mere two hours of public outreach filled me with hope for the future. Many kids, accompanied by proud parents, stopped by to meet a “real paleontologist” and chat about, well, paleontology. Although I should have taken data, tabulated results, and analyzed them for significance, of the kids who said, “I want to be a paleontologist,” I recall the gender ratios were about 50:50. Probably my favorite brother-sister pair consisted of the brother who wants to be a paleontologist and the sister wants to be a marine biologist. (Making it even better, their dad was very pleased with the prospect of having two scientists in the family.)
I was also occasionally astonished at how knowledgeable some of the kids were. For example, one 10-year-old girl asked me whether one of the dinosaur bones I had brought was from a hadrosaurine or lambeosaurine dinosaur, which we then discussed (based on the extremely scanty evidence, that is). Her mother wore a face-splitting grin as she watched this exchange between her daughter and me, and other kids stood by in awe: looking at the girl, not me. Now that’s peer teaching!
Her (left): “What? You really think the phylogenetic distinction between the hadrosaur clades is based on THAT plesiomorphy?” Her sister (right): “Yeah, who taught you cladistics anyway?” Me: “Um, uh, OK. Say, have either of you ever watched Dinosaur Train?”
Will I do this kind of public outreach again? Sure, and Fernbank can certainly count on me doing more such programs with them in the future. From this experience I also learned that “dinosaurs and kids” as a frame for science education, whether at natural history museums or elsewhere, is a fountain that apparently never goes dry. But even better, I can still use my academic research specialty – ichnology – to provide a different perspective on dinosaurs specifically and science in general, for children and parents alike.
Public outreach in paleontology with kids can be fun and rewarding, given the right setting, preparation, and attitude. Meanwhile, just behind me, Gigantosaurus is apparently chasing Argentinosaurus, giving a whole new twist to the term “ankle biter.” (Photograph by Ruth Schowalter, taken at Fernbank Museum in Atlanta, Georgia.)
Whoa, check out the tracks made by this eight-legged river otter! This eight-legged otter must have been the result of some freak mutation, or genetic engineering, or joined twin otters, or a robot spider with otter feet…What? Was it something I said? (Scale in centimeters; Photo by Anthony Martin.)
