News Archive

• Production and exchange at a prehispanic site in Oaxaca.

Gary Feinman, MacArthur Curator of Anthropology, and Linda Nicholas, Adjunct Curator of Anthropology, have published the newest Fieldiana Anthropology (# 48) as part of the BAR International Series. Domestic Multicrafting for Exchange at Prehispanic Ejutla, Oaxaca, Mexico presents results of archaeological investigations at the prehispanic Ejutla site in Oaxaca, Mexico. The discoveries have had a foundational role in reframing our perspectives on Mesoamerican economies, specifically craft specialization. The volume reports on the excavations of a residential complex located at the southern limits of the Valley of Oaxaca system, where evidence was recovered for multiple craft activities associated with a single non-elite domestic unit. The residential occupants crafted a variety of ornaments from marine shell, mostly sourced to the Pacific Coast, but few were consumed by the householders themselves. In addition, the Ejutla craftworkers produced a range of ceramic vessels, including domestic wares and figurines, as well as small lapidary objects. Many of the craft goods produced were destined for exchange, circulating in both local and longer-distance networks. The findings have laid a basis for new theorizing on prehispanic economic production and the revision of prior notions that presumed principally local economies, in which specialized production for exchange was centered in nondomestic workshops. The authors wish to thank the Negaunee Integrative Research Center for supporting their research efforts, and Field Museum Anthropology Illustrator Jill Seagard for her invaluable help during the process of manuscript production. The monograph is published Open Access and can be downloaded here.

• Population dynamics and imperial expansion in eastern Shandong (China) during the last millennium BCE. Gary and Linda are also co-authors of a newly published collaborative paper (bearing that title) in the journal Archaeological Research in Asia, with colleagues from Shandong University. The article reports on the latest findings from their regional survey while integrating those discoveries into a broader perspective, drawing on surrounding archaeological studies and relevant texts, to discuss five millennia of history along the Shandong coast (China). The paper can be downloaded at no cost until October 16, at this link.

September 6. 2024

Adaptive radiations represent the response of successful lineages in the face of ecological opportunity. By diversifying in their morphology and behavior, daughter lineages can exploit new and different resources, thereby avoiding competitive exclusion. The mouse-eared vesper bats Myotis offer an instructive example. With 139 species, Myotis is the second-most species-rich genus of mammal, and six of Illinois’ 13 species of bats belong to this genus, including the little brown bat. Myotis is cosmopolitan in distribution, found on all continents save Antarctica. Its global success has been fostered through the adoption of three very different foraging modes that allow them to access highly differentiated resources: gleaning, trawling, and aerial hawking. Each mode is characterized by different sets of phenotypic features that have evolved multiple times in the evolution of this genus. In the new study, the team examined the genomes of 30 bat species, looking for evidence of selection in a sample that included 21 species of Myotis with gleaners, trawlers and hawkers each from multiple continents. They screened 16,426 genes for positive selection and associations between relative evolutionary rates and foraging strategies. The colonization of new environments may have required changes in genes linked to hearing sensory perception, fecundity and development, metabolism of carbohydrates, and heme degradation. These changes apparently reflect the needs of prey acquisition and digestion. The repeated evolution of bat ecomorphs does not always involve changes in the same genes but rather in genes with the same molecular functions.

September 6. 2024

The essay discusses the context for including contemporary art in the Field Museum exhibition Native Truths: Our Voices/Our Stories. The authors highlight how the exhibitions team working collaboratively with the Native American Advisory Committee and numerous contemporary artists used the displays to disrupt stereotypes of Native Americans as existing only in the past.  Rather, contemporary art together with the historical cultural items from the collection tell the stories of continuous striving for resilience, resistance to efforts to erase cultural practices and livelihoods, and creative ingenuity.

September 6. 2024

The article is part of a special issue Lichen Forming Fungi in honor of Prof. Ana Rosa Burgaz in Journal of Fungi. The genus Xanthoparmelia comprises species with widely varied morphology, primarily in the Southern Hemisphere. This paper reports on the first small lobed, leaflike species lacking usnic acid occurring in the Northern Hemisphere. The species had previously been ascribed to the genus Lecanora (Lecanora olivascens), but subsequent studies of the morphology, secondary chemistry, and molecular data of the nuITS rDNA indicate that this species instead belongs to Xanthoparmelia. Consequently, the authors propose a new species combination, Xanthoparmelia olivascens. The paper also discusses the unique presence of another Xanthoparmelia species lacking cortical usnic acid in the Northern Hemisphere. This species fits phylogenetically into a lineage that was previously only known from the Southern Hemisphere, and hence represents another example of North-South disjunction in lichenized fungi.

September 6. 2024

The Nkuba Conservation Area (NCA) is a protected habitat for the often ignored and critically endangered lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla beringei) of eastern DRC. Over the past 12 years the Fossey Fund has developed impressive infrastructure, employing 160 local residents that monitor and track gorilla movements/habitats as well as promote local community support and sustainable activities such as agriculture, husbandry, fish farming, youth and adult education, and aspects of biodiversity including tree phenology and carbon storage and now, small mammals. “This impressive field team has been previously trained in data gathering, documentation and the use of GPS, and are a pleasure to work with,” says Julian. Research Associate Terrence Demos is continuing small mammal survey work, this time focusing on bats, with longtime Research Associate Paul Webala (Maasai Mara University, Kenya). Terry has secured an MOU agreement with colleagues at the Centre de Recherche en Sciences Naturelle (CRSN) de Lwiro, the federal institution with whom the team has worked previously. As Julian observes, “prospects look bright for the future of this program as in addition to Terry, Dr. Holly Lutz (FM Research Associate and incoming Curator of Mammals at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science) is developing plans for host-pathogen work in the region. Congolese MSc aspirant Jean Marie Kibiswa is using the data collected for his proposed MSc study, and other enthusiastic Congolese participants look forward to other opportunities.”

Highlights from the trip include the collection of such iconic Congo basin taxa as the otter shrew (Potamogale velox), the Hammer-headed Bat (Hypsignathus monstrosus) and the hero shrew (Scutisorex spp.), the rare rat, Congomys verschureni, the small poorly known Zenker’s Fruit Bat or Tear-drop Bat (Scotonycteris zenkeri) and the Little Collared Fruit Bat (Myonycteris torquata), and a host of small shrews (species indeterminate, for now). Lowlights, according to Julian, include “a body coated in insect bites and associated allergic reactions, and wasting an entire week in Goma, due to alleged GPS jamming by the M23 rebel group, which prevented my UN helicopter from departing for the field.” Urbain Ngobobo, the Fossey Fund Director for the DR Congo, noted in an e-mail, “this training and associated research is extremely important for our staff, the majority of whom come from local forest-owning communities that make up the NCA (ca 2400 sq kms.) and who are expected to continue the work of conserving this forest massif, whose biological diversity remains to be discovered.”

September 6. 2024

The team traversed both low-elevation and cloud forests from eastern Panamá to the border with Costa Rica, looking for flower beetles and flies. Surprisingly, Bruno discloses, “At our first stop (Mount Chucantí), we encountered a very loud outbreak of cicadas. So, leaving Chicago was not enough to avoid waking up quite early to cicada noise! Some of them will be eternized in our collections.” The team returned to Chicago with almost 300 lots of samples, including new species that will be described soon. These samples will be added to the FMNH Insect Collections and also support ongoing studies on genomics, phylogenetics and interactions between beetles and their host plants.

August 23. 2024

Until the project began in 2019, these specimens remained uncatalogued on separate shelves. After five years of dedicated work, they have all been cataloged in the Emu database. Significant effort was expended throughout the project by Volunteer Robert Salm (much of it at home during the pandemic), and by Volunteers Jenny Earlandson, Noah Hedgman, and Bryan Peters, while Mycology Collections Assistant Wyatt Gaswick played a key role in supporting the EMu imports. Labels and specimens were photographed by interns supported by the National Science Foundation GLOBAL TCN grant (“Building a Global Consortium of Bryophytes and Lichens: Keystones of Cryptobiotic Communities”), led by Collections Manager of Mycology and Lichenology Todd Widhelm and Matt von Konrat (Head of Botanical Collections). In July, Intern Kenneth Koster, relocated all the specimens to the main Field Museum lichen herbarium. Thorsten was reportedly thrilled to see his earliest collections (with collection numbers in the single digits) now on the shelves.

August 23. 2024

Three new species of this large and surprisingly diverse group (which occurs, as far as is known, only on wood that has sunk to the seafloor) isn’t huge news in and of itself, but these new species were “hiding in plain sight” (albeit in taxonomically mixed groups) in Smithsonian collections for almost 50 years, most all of them having been collected in 1975 by a single person, C. Lamb. As Janet well knows, getting these clams out of wood they have bored into is never easy, so she felt this herculean effort deserved some sort of commemoration. Hence, she named one of the species Xylophaga lambula, based on a single, small specimen (the suffix -ula referring to small, as in little lamb). Above is a scientific illustration of the species by Lisa Kanellos (against a stock background of the deep sea). Through colleagues at the Smithsonian, Janet found out that C. Lamb was one Cathy Lamb, who is alive and well and living in Sweden. The name was bestowed with her blessing, and she was further honored by the illustration at right, created by her sister (who dramatically improved the attractiveness of these boring clams). As Cathy said in an email to Janet “The unique thing about working at a museum is that the work one does still can be relevant even 50 years later. It is special for me to have a new species named by a female curator who is building on the work done by the aforementioned Ruth Turner, who was one of the very first female curators in natural history.” These deep-sea species all occur off the east coast of the United States in the northwestern Atlantic, a fairly well-known area for wood-borers, thanks to the work of Ruth Turner of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. However, these animals occur at greater depths (more than 2000 meters) than do most of those Turner could access. In addition to describing the other new species Xylophaga microdactylus and Xylophaga platyplax, the paper also provides new records of known species, with some supplemental information on morphological characters. Janet also remarks on the remarkable similarity of X. microdactylus to X. microchira, a northeastern Pacific species she described in 2007, which suggests a close relationship between the xylophagaids of the deep northwestern Atlantic and those of the northeastern Pacific. Given the size of the oceans (over 68% of the planet) and that few areas have been as well documented as the west Atlantic, a huge number of additional species of wood borers are likely to be out there, unknown.

August 23. 2024

Madagascar’s remarkable biodiversity is threatened, and accessible data regarding the distribution, habits, and conservation status of endemic species are key to effective conservation planning. Isotopic research on the island has increasingly helped with biological studies of endemic organisms, including evaluating foraging niches and investigating factors that affect the spatial distribution and abundance of species. The IsoMad database should facilitate future work by making it easy for researchers to access existing data (even for those who are relatively unfamiliar with the literature) and identify both research gaps and opportunities for using various isotope systems to answer research questions. The authors also hope that this database will encourage full data reporting in future publications.

August 23. 2024

The study presents genome assemblies for 18 snake species that represent all modern snake families and have never before had their whole genome sequenced.* From these new genome assemblies, the team extracted thousands of loci commonly used in systematic and phylogenomic studies, including target-capture datasets composed of ultraconserved elements (UCEs) and anchored hybrid enriched loci (AHEs), as well as traditional Sanger loci. The phylogenetic relationships inferred from the two target-capture loci datasets were identical with each other, and strongly congruent with previously published snake phylogenies.

To show the additional utility of these novel genomes for investigative evolutionary research, the researchers mined the genome assemblies of two snake species endemic to New Guinea (S. admiraltiensis and T. doriae) for the ATP1a3 gene, a thoroughly researched indicator of resistance to toad toxin ingestion by squamates. The results indicated that both snakes possess the genotype for toad toxin resistance, despite the fact that New Guinea had no toads until the human-mediated introduction of Cane Toads in the 1930s. These species each have the same exact genetic mutation as their Australian relatives which are known to eat the invasive cane toads in Australia; this suggests that the New Guinea snakes also possess resistance to bufotoxins and could safely eat cane toads as well. Overall, the paper demonstrates the utility of short-read high-coverage genomes, as well as improving the deficit of available squamate genomes with associated voucher specimens.

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*  Acrochordus granulatus, Aparallactus werneri, Boaedon fuliginosus, Calamaria suluensis, Cerberus rynchops, Grayia smithii, Imantodes cenchoa, Mimophis mahfalensis, Oxyrhabdium leporinum, Pareas carinatus, Psammodynastes pulverulentus, Pseudoxenodon macrops, Pseudoxyrhopus heterurus, Sibynophis collaris, Stegonotus admiraltiensis, Toxicocalamus goodenoughensis, Trimeresurus albolabris, and Tropidonophis doriae.

August 23. 2024

The subject of his poster was “Neon and Helium Isotopic Evidence for the Earliest Solar Cosmic-Ray Irradiation Record in Refractory Oxides.” This honor comes on the heels of Xin’s receipt of a 2023 National Outstanding Self-Funded Student Scholarship from China’s Ministry of Education about a month ago. Xin collaborates with Robert A. Pritzker Curator Philipp Heck in studying the minerals that formed in our Solar System that were the building blocks of the planets.

August 23. 2024

The presentation won an award, which was announced thusly by the host of the ceremony:

And the award for the best lightning talk in the category ‘Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, Career Development, Sustainable Research Practice, and Science Policy’ goes to Sabina, er―I will not pronounce your surname. You know who you are, so please come to the stage.

During the MCAA conference, the Communications Working Group organized a blogging contest wherein attendees were invited to write blogs covering various sessions throughout the conference and capturing key insights. Partly inspired by the moderator’s challenge with the pronunciation of her last name, Sabina penned a blog about how the conference inspired “a type of scholarly kinship, and a feeling of acceptance, amidst peers who were more than just scholars of kinship,” and fostered a sense of community, encouraging creativity, and a need for change. That blog, entitled “C³: Community, Creativity, and Change,” was judged one of the best entries, and can be read here.

August 23. 2024

Just as animated movies teach our kids to imagine themselves as princesses and their entourages, for more than a century, museum celebrations of ancient royalty, as in the first displays of the treasures of King Tut, have encouraged us to imagine the past from the point of view of those in power. [. . .] The rise of elites and hierarchy are depicted as progress, a good and necessary step forward, a more sophisticated society than the egalitarian world which came before.

“First Kings of Europe” is a bold inversion of this, a history of the origins of inequality spanning from the Neolithic period through the Iron Age that shows its kings rising through wealth and violence, keeping the point of view firmly centered on the experience of the many while chronicling the means and brutality of the rising few.

[After walking the reader through the show, the review concludes thusly:]

Back at the exit, the gift shop staff have found their biggest sellers are the Beer for Kings cans and the Beer for Commoners T-shirts. An audience that wants to enjoy the king’s beer but wear the commoner’s shirt is a good synthesis of today’s wealthy democracies, which encourage us to feel that we can enjoy luxuries while still identifying with the masses, not the exploiters. This attitude is not without problems, especially as wealthy nations continue to fund their luxuries at the cost of harm to many regions, including the Balkan Peninsula itself, but the dream of putting the riches and fruits in the hands of the people is certainly the right one, especially if paired with the sense of universal—not national—human solidarity that “First Kings of Europe” conjures so powerfully. Certainly, we are in a different and better museum exhibition than the many shows where the only T-shirt celebrates a king.

Congratulations to Curator Bill Parkinson and Research Associate Attila Gyucha (University of Georgia and former FMNH postdoc), who curated the exhibition.

August 23. 2024

The story of this paper started a few years ago when I needed to sequence 300 weevils on a tight budget. So I adapted a method previously used, in which we “fish” the parts of a genome that we are interested in by using probes home-cooked in the lab (a genome probe is a single-stranded sequence of DNA or RNA used to search for its complementary sequence in a sample genome). These kinds of probes are costly to purchase, and their commercial version needs dry ice shipping and minus-80ºC preservation. It worked very well for weevils, so we decided to test the method with something that my friend Zhengyang Wang was working on: Ophiocordyceps fungi (aka zombie ant fungus) infecting moths in China. We were looking for the DNA traces of the caterpillars, which, by the time they are collected, are long gone and basically a shell full of fungi. Because almost all of the DNA left is fungal, many methods fail to sequence the caterpillars, but with this method we got their complete mitochondrial genomes. The method is also very cheap and uses widely available reagents.

The authors propose that “PCR-based hybrid enrichment” will be useful worldwide, especially in places where it might be hard to get the traditional expensive and finicky probes. The approach allows customization of enrichment probes for any taxa at any number of genomic regions. In particular, since there is no commercially available hybrid enrichment probe set for ants, the authors suggest that the method would be particularly useful in elucidating the identities of innumerable fungal–ant symbiont complexes found across the globe.

August 9. 2024

Debarun works with Philipp Heck (Robert A. Pritzker Curator of Meteoritics and Polar Studies) and Nicolas Dauphas (Research Associate and Prof. at the University of Chicago). At the Field he uses Raman spectroscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy techniques to characterize and classify meteorites, and also contributes to education and outreach events such as Members Nights and tours. He is interested in the early evolution of the Solar System, and in his words, “loves to use chemistry to unravel the mysteries that lay buried in meteorites, asteroids, and exotic Igneous rocks like Carbonatites or Nephelinites.”

Now in its second year, the Quad Fellowship supports exceptional master's and doctoral students pursuing studies in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in the US. Initially supporting students from the four “Quad” countries—Australia, India, Japan, and the United States—the program has expanded this year to include students from various Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. The goal is to develop a network for science and technology experts that will advance innovation and collaboration in their own countries and among the Quad countries and Indo-Pacific. The fellowship is administered by the Institute of International Education (IIE). Debarun will receive a $40,000 award to support his graduate study, as well as access to robust programming and a growing network of Quad Fellowship alumni. He will be joining a cohort of 50 Fellows (out of nearly 3,000 applicants), and will have many opportunities to get to know his cohort members, network with leading innovators in government, academia, and industry, and attend the Quad Fellowship Summit event in October in Washington DC with diplomats of the Quad countries.

August 9. 2024

The Chinese version was released earlier this year by Paragon Press (the original English version was published in 2017 by University of Chicago Press, and a Korean translation was published in 2019 by SOSO Ltd. Press.) The event was sponsored by the National Museum of China and Paragon Book Gallery. Lance spoke about the role museum curators play in research, conservation, collection building, and education. Lance’s 40-minute presentation was followed by two summaries delivered to the audience by Chinese translators. This was followed by a question-and-answer period between Lance and the audience with the help of Chinese/English translators. The event was viewed live by an audience of over 2300 people in China, a full-length video of the event is being released on WeChat, China’s largest social media platform, and you can watch it right now on YouTube. As Lance delivered his presentation, AI devices translated his words into Chinese for viewers, which was a unique logistical experience for Lance. He later commented that “perhaps the clear exchange of shared scientific principles between major eastern and western public educational institutions can help bridge some of the growing political divides in the world today.”

August 9. 2024

In Africa south of the Zambezi River, archaeologists and other experts have long explored the impact of climate and environmental changes to the development of ancient civilizations during the Iron Age (CE 200–1900). However, some of the prevailing thought is still rooted in environmental determinism, informed by selected ethnographies, stable isotopes and archaeological evidence. As the authors note, while climatic reconstructions are important, attributing political and social changes solely to environmental conditions undermines human agency and oversimplifies complex ways in which people lived their lives in Iron Age Southern Africa. For instance, the drought brought by the medieval Little Ice Age is assumed to have caused the collapse of the civilization at Mapungubwe in the Shashi-Limpopo valley around 1300 CE. And yet, within the wider region, civilizations in similar ecological settings upstream (Shashi and Upper Limpopo) and downstream (Lower Limpopo), persisted and thrived through the same climatic challenges. In the new paper, Foreman and colleagues from the UK, South Africa, and Zimbabwe considers the sites of Mapela (CE 1150–1310) and Little Mapela (CE 1296–1489) in the Shashi region, part of the wider landscape where the borders of Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe meet at the confluence of the Shashi -Limpopo rivers. The team draws on African cosmologies, resilience theory, and archaeological evidence to spotlight adaptation strategies utilized by the inhabitants of these settlements to build resilience through time. The main conclusion is that even in cases of climatic extremes, humans responded to opportunities and constraints in context-specific ways.

July 26. 2024

The students spend two weeks in the classroom at the Museum, and two weeks doing fieldwork in the Green River Formation in Southwestern Wyoming—specifically, the Fossil Butte Member, whose deposits contain a 52-million-year-old community of exquisitely preserved plants and animals “locked in stone.” The class was led this year by Negaunee Assistant Curator of Paleobotany Fabiany Herrera, with the able assistance of Akiko Shinya (Chief Fossil Preparator) and James Holstein (Collection Manager of Meteoritics and Physical Geology). Over 200 fossil plants were collected from the 52-million-year-old Fossil Lake Deposit, making this trip the most paleobotanically productive to date! All specimens were brought to Chicago and will be studied in the near future. Fabiany also had the good fortune of finding a fossil stingray, a very rare addition to our Museum, which is now part of the Vertebrate Paleo Collection. Additionally, at least 200 fossil fish were collected, with a dozen superb specimens added to the Museum collections. The success of this productive trip was due in large part to the help of volunteers Brian Morrill, Story Morrill, Stephen Gieser, Maxwell London, Jelle Wiersma, Caroline Cox, and postdoc Michael D’Antonio. Curator Emeritus Lance Grande, who first started S&B 20 years ago, participated in the classroom portion of the extravaganza.

July 26. 2024

It recognizes doctoral students with exceptional academic achievements or significant research potential. Out of more than half a million Chinese students studying abroad annually, only 650 young talents from various disciplines are selected globally each year, making this award highly competitive. Recipients of this award include Chinese students in the United States, EU countries, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Japan, Australia, and more. The award ceremony is traditionally held at the local Chinese Embassy or Consulate. The award specifically honors “self-financed students abroad,” meaning those who are not funded directly by the Chinese government but often hold full scholarships from overseas universities. Xin’s main research focus involves the first minerals that formed in the Solar System that were the building blocks of the planets. He uses Scanning Electron Microscopy, Raman, XCT scanning, mass spectrometry, and combines these techniques with dynamical modeling to provide new insights into the activity and evolution of the young Sun and early Solar System. In the photo above, taken yesterday, Xin is operating a noble gas mass spectrometer at the ETH, Zurich. As this missive goes to press, he and Robert A. Pritzker Curator Philipp Heck are boarding a plane to Brussels to attend the Meteoritical Society meeting.

July 26. 2024

To address this question, Research Scientist Chad Eliason and a roster of international colleagues built a massive database of bird species to explore the spread of color across the globe. And as they now report in Nature Ecology & Evolution, they found that iridescent, colorful feathers originated 415 times across the bird tree of life, and in most cases, arose outside of the tropics–and that the ancestor of all modern birds likely had iridescent feathers, too.

There are two main ways that color is produced in animals: pigments and structures. Cells produce pigments like melanin, which is responsible for black and brown coloration. Meanwhile, structural color comes from the way light bounces off different arrangements of cell structures. Iridescence, the rainbow shimmer that changes depending how light hits an object, is an example of structural color. Tropical birds get their colors from a combination of brilliant pigments and structural color. Much of Chad’s work has focused on structural color, so he wanted to explore that element of tropical bird coloration. He and his colleagues combed through photographs, videos, and even scientific illustrations of 9,409 species of birds—the vast majority of the 10,000-ish living bird species known to science—logging which species have iridescent feathers, and where those birds are found. They combined this data with a pre-existing family tree, based on DNA, showing how all the known bird species are related to each other, then fed the information to a modeling system to extrapolate the origins and spread of iridescence. Based on all this data, the modeling software determined the most likely explanation for the bird colors we see today: colorful birds from outside the tropics often came to the region millions of years ago, and then branched out into more and more different species. The model also suggests that the common ancestor of all modern birds, living 80 million years ago, had iridescent feathers. Chad was excited to learn that the ancestral state of all birds is iridescence. “We’ve found fossil evidence of iridescent birds and other feathered dinosaurs before, by examining fossil feathers and the preserved pigment-producing structures in those feathers,” he observed. “So,” he went on, “we know that iridescent feathers existed back in the Cretaceous. Those fossils support the idea from our model that the ancestor of all modern birds was iridescent too. We’re probably going to be finding a lot more iridescence in the fossil record now that we know to look.” But big questions remain, like why iridescence evolved in the first place. Notes Chad, “Iridescent feathers can be used by birds to attract mates, but iridescence is related to other aspects of birds’ lives too. For instance, tree swallows change color when the humidity changes, so iridescence could be related to the environment, or it might be related to another physical property of feathers, like water resistance. Knowing more about how there came to be so many iridescent birds in the tropics might help us understand why iridescence evolved.” For more, read Kate Golembiewski’s press release, which just broke this morning, and from which this blurb was condensed. The research has already been picked up by Popular Science and Scienmag, with more sure to come throughout the day.

*  Co-authors include Michaël P.J. Nicolaï of Ghent University/Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Cynthia Bom of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Eline Blom of Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Liliana D’Alba of Ghent Univ./Naturalis Biodiversity Center, and Matthew D. Shawkey of Ghent Univ.

July 26. 2024

Using a paleo-CO2 proxy based on leaf gas-exchange principles (the Franks model), the authors studied two species of the fossil plant Pseudotorellia from three samples at the Tevshiin Govi lignite mine in Mongolia. Their findings showed median CO2 concentrations of 2132, 2405, and 2770 ppm. Earlier reliable CO2 estimates were under 1400 ppm; the newer high values, though accompanied by large uncertainties due to low stomatal density in the leaves, align better with the current understanding of Earth's long-term climate sensitivity. The study suggests an Earth-system sensitivity of 3–5°C per CO2 doubling, closer to modern estimates. It also highlights the need for careful scrutiny of inferred inputs in paleo-CO2 estimates, as these contribute significantly to overall uncertainty. These new insights could reshape our understanding of ancient climate dynamics and improve future climate projections. Co-authors include scientists from the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Research Associates Pat Herendeen (Chicago Botanic Garden) and Peter Crane (Oak Spring Garden Foundation).

July 26. 2024

Their article updates and extends a 2016 treatment of this topic by Bruce with a novel analysis of species discovery in the 21st century by Anderson. No other group of animals exhibits a comparable range of body sizes (over eight orders of magnitude, from ~2 gram bats and shrews to 200-ton whales), or occupies such a wide range of habitats (from deep-sea abysses to 22,000 foot mountains). Incredibly, 12% of all known mammal species have been discovered in the 21st century (see map) many described at Field Museum—notably, South America, Africa, Madagascar, and the Philippines.

July 26. 2024

The team recently made some major discoveries, as Luis recounts in this e-mail:

In one excavation sector, we revealed what seems to be an ancient theatre composed of a stage, a kind of backstage, and a frontal patio, accessed through a staircase (badly damaged by looters, sadly). Descending from the staircase, we found two clay slabs decorated with high-relief designs [photo at right]. One of them depicts a mythological creature whose body is made up of bird and reptile attributes. We also found a mural decorated with geometric designs in red, yellow, black, and blue colors [photo lower right]. Probably representing the head of a bird (upside-down), the design seems to be part of a greater fresco that is still unexcavated. Pending the results of C14 dates, this structure might be part of a 4,000-year-old religious complex, contemporary to some of the oldest religious constructions from the Andean Initial Period (2,500–1,500 BCE).

In the second excavation sector, we have uncovered a Late Moche (650–850 CE) monumental construction, which was previously unknown as it was fully covered by an extensive dune of sand. We have exposed part of the structure’s eastern façade, showing a stair-like decoration. Part of the structure (roughly 25 meters high) was covered with a fine, although badly damaged, clay plaster. Both religious constructions are associated to burials and what appear to be human offerings [example at right].

The temple predates Machu Picchu by roughly 3,500 years, and was made long before the Inca and their predecessors, including the Moche and Nazca cultures. “We don’t know what these people called themselves, or how other people referred to them,” Luis told Kate Golembiewski of the Field Museum of Natural History's Public Relations Deptartment. “All we know about them comes from what they created: their houses, temples, and funerary goods”—all of which hold clues about the origins of complex religions in the area. The excavations are supported by various institutions from Peru and the US, including Dumbarton Oaks, Archaeology in Action (former Stanford donors), the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, and the Field Museum. The find received worldwide media coverage, starting with Kate’s press release, and continuing on CNN, (and CNN Brasil), MSN, Infobae, Andina, El Comercio, El Peruano, La República, ArtNews, and many more outlets.

July 12. 2024

However, a new study just published in Systematic Biology by Assistant Curator of Mammals Anderson Feijó and collaborators used DNA and museum specimens to reveal that the nine-banded armadillo is actually four very similar but genetically distinct species, including one new to science.

Frédéric Delsuc of France’s Scientific Research Center (CNRS), the study’s senior author, began working on armadillo genetics in 1998, comparing samples from the invasive US populations with those found in French Guiana. His work pointed to splits within the nine-banded species, but at the time there wasn’t enough evidence to formally separate them into different species, as a more geographically widespread sampling was lacking. For the new study, Frédéric, Anderson, and an international team* built a much larger sample set of nine-banded armadillos (81), including skeletons and skins in museum collections (including the Field’s) as well as blood and tissue for DNA work.

The combination of genetic data and morphological traits led the scientists to the conclusion that the nine-banded armadillo, Dasypus novemcinctus, is actually four genetically distinct species. Accordingly, several subspecies within this species have been elevated to being species in their own right. The armadillos found in Mexico and the United States, formerly considered the subspecies Dasypus novemcinctus mexicanus, are now just Dasypus mexicanus, the Mexican long-nosed armadillo (accordingly, the state mammal of Texas is now renamed). Dasypus fenestratus, found in the central part of the range, has been elevated from subspecies to species, and the original species name novemcinctus is now restricted to South America. Meanwhile, the data showed that another branch of the armadillo family tree didn’t belong in any of these three pre-existing groups: Dasypus guianensis, the Guianan long-nosed armadillo, found in the Guiana Shield. “They’re almost impossible to differentiate in the field,” says Frédéric, but “this news species is a bit bigger than the other three, has slightly longer hairs, and has an additional neck bone. That said, the delineation of four separate species suggests that each might have distinct ecological requirements. Thus, different food and habitat requirements could impact efforts to preserve healthy populations of these animals in different areas via re-populating individuals from one area to another. While the nine-banded armadillo has not been considered endangered, Anderson emphasizes that “this discovery totally shifts the way we think about conservation for these species and the way we think about how threatened they are.” You can read more in the press release, Newsweek, Miami Herald, MSN, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Popular Science.

* From the University of Montpellier, Uppsala University, the University of Cyprus, the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education at Ensenada, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Valdosta State University, and the Institut Pasteur de la Guyane.

July 12. 2024

The fossil is named for the Gai-as Formation in Namibia where it was found, and the late Jenny Clack, a noted paleontologist. In life Gaiasia jennyae would have looked something like a cross between a salamander and a moray eel—at least eight feet long, perhaps up to fifteen—with a long, flexible body, a deep tail fin like that of a gigantic newt, and tiny limbs (or maybe none). With a two-foot-long, flat, squared-off head and huge fangs, it was well equipped to suck in prey. “It’s a big predator, but potentially also a relatively slow ambush predator,” notes Jason, probably hung out near the bottom of swamps and lakes.

Claudia Marsicano, the University of Buenos Aires paleontologist who discovered the fossil with colleagues, was initially struck by the structure of the front of the skull. “It was the only clearly visible part at that time,” she recalled in an interview. “And it showed very unusually interlocking large fangs, creating a unique bite for early tetrapods.” The team unearthed several specimens, including one with a well-preserved, articulated skull and spine. Based on the fossils, the team determined that Gaiasia belonged to a family of bigheaded, swamp-dwelling vertebrates called colosteids, which had split off from other land animals long before the ancestors of more modern lineages like amphibians, reptiles and mammals evolved. “It’s really, really surprising that Gaiasia is so archaic,” Jason says. “It was related to organisms that went extinct probably 40 million years prior.” Claudia adds, “It was displaced in time, displaced regionally, and also far too big.” Today Namibia lies just north of South Africa, but 280 million years ago it was further south, near the 60th parallel, almost even with the northernmost point of today’s Antarctica. At that time, the Earth was nearing the end of an ice age; the swampy land near the equator was drying up and becoming more forested, but closer to the poles, the swamps remained, potentially alongside patches of ice and glaciers. There were other archaic animals still hanging on at the time, Jason observes, “but they were rare, they were small, and they were doing their own thing. Gaiasia is big, and it is abundant, and it seems to be the primary predator in its ecosystem.” The broader insights the discovery provides on the Permian are significant. “There were a lot of groups of animals that appeared at this time that we don’t really know where they came from,” says Jason. “The fact that we found Gaiasia in the far south tells us that there was a flourishing ecosystem that could support these very large predators.” News coverage appears in The Independent, BBC/Discover Wildlife, The New York Times, Popular Science, The Washington Post, Discover Magazine, New Scientist, and The Guardian, among many other sources.

July 12. 2024

These lie far off the Chilean coast in the Pacific and count among the least studied island groups. Juan Fernandez served as a rare provision stop in the eastern Pacific during the era of sailing vessels. The earliest description of a bivalve species stems from such a stopover by Darwin’s Beagle. The Desventuradas Islands, about 750 km to the north, are even more remote and have neither a harbor nor permanent inhabitants. During the 1997 trip, Rüdiger recognized that most of the species appeared new to science but held back with formal descriptions because too little was known about the diversity of the Chilean and Peruvian mainland coast. That changed when two Argentine colleagues, Diego Zelaya and Marina Güller (both of Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas [CONICET], and Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina), studied and published on the coastal fauna. Rüdiger invited them to the Museum in 2019 with support from the Science and Scholarship Funding Committee, and in due course the trio added specimens from the few prior expeditions to the region. They then developed a regional monograph, which is just out in PeerJ, and ended up doubling the known bivalve fauna of these island groups. The team identified a total of 48 species, including 19 new species, and six others that might be new. The paper has wonderful photos for those that like to see sea shells from the sea shore. Says Rüdiger, “one of the most interesting outcomes is that the bivalve fauna is largely endemic to these islands, which supports the consideration of this region as its own faunal province and its need for ongoing protection.”

July 12. 2024

It also ranked second among all anthropology journals according to the Journal Citation Index, and third based on Journal Impact Factor. Adjunct Curator Linda Nicholas has been the journal’s Managing Editor since its inception, and Curator Bill Parkinson joined as a co-editor a few years ago. Says Bill, “I cannot tell you how much I have learned from working with Gary and Linda, even in this short time; it’s like a master class in journal editing! They really deserve all the credit for the journal’s success.”

July 12. 2024

Empirical data on the relationship between body mass and immune defense is limited. The metabolic theory of ecology predicts that larger organisms would have weaker immune responses, but recent studies have suggested that the opposite may be true, leading to the “safety factor hypothesis,” which proposes that larger organisms have evolved stronger immune defenses because they carry greater risks of exposure to pathogens and parasites. In the new study, Emily and team simulated sepsis by exposing blood from nine primate species (the largest being Homo sapiens, the smallest being the grey mouse lemur) to a bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS), measuring the relative expression of immune and other genes using RNAseq, and fitting phylogenetic models to determine how gene expression related to body mass. The researchers saw a positive association in the expression of innate immune genes, such that large primates had a disproportionately greater increase in gene expression of immune genes compared to small primates—in other words, the expression of inflammatory genes changed with body size when they were fighting an infection. This “hypermetric” immune gene expression appears to support the safety factor hypothesis, though this pattern may represent a balanced evolutionary mechanism to compensate for lower per-transcript immunological effectiveness. The study contributes to the growing body of immune allometry research, highlighting its importance in understanding the complex interplay between body size and immunity over evolutionary timescales.

July 12. 2024

The paper also describes a new species that provides the earliest evidence of Vitaceae in the Western Hemisphere. Scientists’ understanding of ancient fruits often comes from the seeds, which are more likely to fossilize than the soft tissue. The earliest known grape seed fossils were found in India and are 66 million years old—about when a huge asteroid hit the Earth, triggering a massive extinction that altered the course of life on the planet. “We always think about the animals, the dinosaurs, because they were the biggest things to be affected,” says Fabiany, “but the extinction event had a huge impact on plants too. The forest reset itself, in a way that changed the composition of the plants.” And the absence of dinosaurs might have helped that reset. Large animals alter their ecosystems, and the ramblings of dinosaurs may have made forests more open than they are today. Absent the huge reptiles, some tropical forests, including those in South America, became denser, forming an understory and a canopy, and providing an opportunity. “In the fossil record, we start to see more plants that use vines to climb up trees, like grapes, around this time,” Fabiany observes. Diversifying birds and mammals may have also aided grapes by spreading their seeds in the years following the mass extinction.

The team studied nine species of fossil grapes from Colombia, Panama, and Perú, spanning from 60 to 19 million years old, including four species “new to science” described in this paper. At 60 million years old, Lithouva susmanii is the earliest known South American grape fossil, and among the world’s oldest from anywhere. This new species is also important because it supports the idea of a South American origin of the group in which the common grape vine Vitis evolved. Taken together, the new and extant species e lucidate previously unknown dispersal events for Vitaceae in the region, and a more dynamic biogeographic history than previously recognized, marked by multiple local/regional extinctions, including the extirpation of two major lineages from the Neotropics. “The fossil record tells us that grapes are a very resilient order. They’re a group that has suffered a lot of extinction in the Central and South American region, but they also managed to adapt and survive in other parts of the world,” says Fabiany. Such discoveries are instructive because, in Fabiany’s words “these little tiny, humble seeds can tell us so much about the evolution of the forest,” and they also reveal patterns about how biodiversity crises play out. The discoveries received international news coverage, which you can sample here.

July 12. 2024

1. An article in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (whose authors include former FM curator Chap Kusimba) attempts to source carnelian beads—including those depicted at right—found at three different sites located on the eastern coast of Africa using LA-ICP-MS. The results indicate the beads came primarily from the regions of Gujarat and Maharashtra in modern India. The diverse sources and different patterns of beads at the three sites illustrate the complex economic and social networks that linked communities in East Africa and South Asia.

2. An NSF-supported study co-authored with Maria Wade (University of Texas at Austin) in Open Access Journal of Archaeology and Anthropology details the analysis of glass found at Iron Age and Roman sites in north Portugal, which had been understudied from a glass perspective. The compositional differences reflect the chronological diversity of the sites. Glass patterns suggest a common exchange network for the sites, all but one of which are located within a 25 km radius.

3. An article in Antiquity led by Research Associate Heather Walder (University of Wisconsin – La Crosse), and Alicia Hawkins (U-Toronto –Mississauga), investigates what beads reveal about interregional exchange systems in the Great Lakes ca. AD 1600–1670.  Wendat/ Wyandot confederacy members moved toward the Western Great Lakes after AD 1650, some 20 years before Europeans arrived. Chemical analysis of over 1,000 European-made glass beads revealed some beads dating to before 1650, indicating that Wendat people independently traded beads with the region’s existing inhabitants, e.g., the Anishinaabe and other First Nations. This is strong evidence for Indigenous agency, and expands knowledge of early trans-Atlantic exchange networks.

4. And in Archaeological Science: Reports, co-authored with researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar and Banaras Hindu University, comes a study of the compositions of glass bangles from Sarethi, Uttar Pradesh (as seen at right). LA-ICP-MS analysis indicated that the most abundant glass type at the site was the poorly documented m-Na-Al 8 glass. It was not possible to say where this glass was manufactured, but the bangles might have been produced locally for local consumption. Comparison with the Kopia site, located 70 km away, indicates distinct glass patterns, suggesting their inclusion in different exchange networks despite their contemporaneity and proximity, thus adding insight into the organization of the ancient Indian glass industry at a more regional scale.

July 12. 2024

With these grants, the EAF has been able to attract highly collaborative projects by offering financial support to offset some analytical costs and provide subsidies for travel and accommodation expenses for students. The key part of these grants is the training of undergraduate and graduate students in method development, statistical processing of data, and interpretation. These NSF grants have enabled the EAF to link leading scholars and graduate students to the Museum’s extensive collections and other collections, and has provided them the tools to analyze these assemblages.

July 12. 2024

Chun Kamei (Collection Manager, Herpetology) gave an invited talk entitled “An introduction to caecilians (Gymnophiona) with a special focus on the north eastern region of India” in the Gans Foundation Symposium on Global Perspectives on the Frontiers of Herpetology. Chun wowed the audience with fascinating aspects of the biology of this little-known tropical group of amphibians, including showing the rewards of her arduous field work in her native region of India. Chun and Research Associate Stephen Mahony also participated in the Gans Workshop on Museum Collections. Project Assistant Madelynn Sinclair gave a paper on “Resurveying the amphibians and reptiles of Chicagoland forest preserves,” coauthored with Research Associate Tom Anton, Michelle Thompson (formerly of the Keller Science Action Center, now Director of Conservation Biology at the San Diego Natural History Museum), and Assistant Curator Sara Ruane. The resurvey work, in the Will County Forest Preserves, is in its third field season, and is funded by a Biota Award from the Walder Foundation to Michelle and Sara. Madelynn, who will be starting graduate school at the University of Chicago in the fall as a student of Sara’s, was also selected to attend the pre-conference Gans Foundation Workshop on Functional Morphology. Research Associate Greg Mayer University of Wisconsin–Parkside) spoke on his and Madelynn's work on “Quantitative genetics in the museum: heritability of morphological traits in the short sea snake (Hydrophis curtus”), work that depends critically on the absolutely fabulous FMNH sea snake collection amassed by Curator Emeritus of Herpetology Harold Voris. Greg also coauthored a poster with his colleagues Tony Gamble (Marquette University), Alice Petzold (Museum fur Naturkunde, Berlin), and Mark Scherz (Natural History Museum of Denmark) on “Sequencing archival DNA from the extinct Anolis roosevelti,” in which they used the technique pioneered by Sara to recover sequenceable DNA from fluid-preserved museum specimens.

July 12. 2024

To determine contamination of this sentinel species, which utilizes different diet sources as a scavenger, the team conducts surveys and analyzes the eagles’ blood for heavy metals (e.g., mercury, lead), per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), organochlorines (e.g., DDT), and Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs) They also identify the presence and intensity of target emerging pathogens (e.g., avian influenza) and blood parasites (e.g., avian malaria), and employ novel techniques to explore how a gradient of contaminants influence baseline and induced measures, and ex vivo gene expression, of innate immune function. Even after the first field season it was clear that eagles exposed to high levels of contaminants appear to have lower white blood cell counts and natural antibody levels compared to birds with less exposure. Emily and colleagues are also observing a reduced expression of genes related to inflammation in birds from more contaminated regions. This has huge implications for how birds might respond to an actual infection, and might indicate that birds in more contaminated areas are less likely to survive if something like Wisconsin river hepacivirus or avian influenza enter the region.

June 21. 2024

For one article, she is part of an international team of paleontologists who just published the description of a remarkable new species of horned dinosaur in PeerJ. The description of Lokiceratops rangiformis is based on a skull and partial skeleton that were unearthed in Kennedy Coulee in northern Montana along the USA-Canada border. The creature is distinguished by a number of unique features including the lack of a nose horn, along with the number, pattern, and shapes of the horns along the edge of the frill. The name Lokiceratops translates as “Loki’s horned face” honoring the Norse god Loki, while rangiformis refers to the differing horn lengths on each side of the frill, similar to the asymmetric horns in caribou. The skull is longer than that of any other dinosaur within its group, Centrosaurinae, approaching the size of later horned giants. It is the largest centrosaur ever found in North America, and was the most massive herbivore in its ecosystem. At 78 million years old, Lokiceratops rangiformis is one of the geologically-oldest species of horned dinosaurs in the northern USA and Canada, appearing at least 12 million years earlier than Triceratops. Excavated by a commercial fossil dealer, the specimen was sold to the Museum of Evolution in Maribo, Denmark, where its skull has been on display for more than a year (photo at right), while the species description was underway. Not surprisingly, the news coverage has been fairly robust, with coverage in New York Times, ABC News, CNN, BBC Wildlife, Discover, and more.

Jingmai is also a co-author on a new article in Science Bulletin that sheds new light on the evolution of the mammalian neck, written with  colleagues from University of Potsdam (Germany), Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (Beijing), and University of Chicago. The typical mammalian neck, consisting of seven cervical vertebrae (C1–C7), was established in the cynodont forerunners of modern mammals by the Late Permian. This structure is precisely adapted to facilitate movements of the head during feeding, locomotion, predator evasion, and social interactions. Eutheria, the lineage including crown placental mammals, has a fossil record extending back more than 125 million years, and evidences significant morphological diversification in the Mesozoic. However, very little is known about the early evolution of the eutherian neck, and its functional adaptations. The team analyzed a specimen of Zalambdalestes lechei—a shrew-like mammal from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia—which boasts exceptional preservation of an almost complete series of cervical vertebrae (C2–C7) revealing a highly modified axis (C2). The team explored the significance of this cervical morphology by integrating comparative anatomical examination across mammals, muscle reconstruction, geometric morphometrics and virtual range of motion analysis. They compared the shape of the axis in Zalambdalestes to a dataset of 88 mammalian species (monotremes, marsupials, and placentals) using three-dimensional landmark analysis. The results indicate that the unique axis morphology of Zalambdalestes has no close analog among living mammals. Virtual range of motion analysis of the neck strongly implies Zalambdalestes was capable of exerting very forceful head movements and had a high degree of ventral flexion for an animal its size. These findings reveal unexpected complexity in the early evolution of eutherian neck morphology, and suggest that Zalambdalestes had a feeding behavior similar to insectivores specialized in worm-eating, and defensive behaviors in akin to modern spiniferous mammals (e.g., porcupines, echidnas).

June 21. 2024

Co-authors include former FMNH postdoc Dawson White, John Clark (first author), a research botanist at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens and a long-time collaborator of Nigel, and scientists from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Ecuador, Quito. John is pictured below right with a specimen of the plant. As Nigel relates,

John is a taxonomist who specializes in the Gesneriaceae (the African Violet family), which is exceptionally diverse in coastal Ecuador. After our 2021 rediscovery of forest fragments at Centinela and rediscovery of Gasteranthus extinctus, John surveyed Gesneriaceae in some of the forest fragments we found. He also joined the field work we did at Centinela in September 2023. During those trips John discovered a new species of a tiny wildflower currently known from two forest fragments in the Centinela region, and he invited Dawson and me to co-author the article and species.

As with the (inaptly named) Gasteranthus extinctus, the discovery of Amalophyllon miraculum demonstrates that the region’s biodiversity may not have suffered as badly as first feared. Centinela Ridge is well known for heavy deforestation over the last century. The ridge was once home to a huge diversity of species, but it was believed that most of the area’s unique plants had been wiped out when the forest was cleared for farmland. However, more recent research has revealed that some species are hanging on. A. miraculum was discovered on a farmer’s land in one of the few surviving forest patches, the result of what John calls the “heroic efforts of local landowners” to preserve the remaining forest. “Centinela is still alive because a few farmers chose to conserve the forests on their property instead of cutting them down,” he told reporters. “The remnant forests of Centinela are the result of these enlightened farmers who were inspired to maintain the beauty of a waterfall.” The researchers were particularly surprised that the plant survived despite its very specific lifestyle—it has to grow on rocks, but it also has to stay moist. “The lifestyle of Amalophyllon miraculum is closely tied to persistently wet areas, particularly on rocks that receive perpetual mist from waterfalls,” John says. “Even minor changes in habitat conditions can lead to the absence of this tiny species, highlighting the delicate balance necessary for its survival.” He also calls the discovery “a humbling reminder of how much we still have to learn,” and “just how important it is to preserve these unique ecosystems.”

In considering the species name, the authors reflected on the fact that Gasteranthus extinctus was named after its own (supposed) extinction. “That got us thinking,” says Nigel. “What if we use the description of the new Amalophyllon to take those good vibes to the next level? What if we give it a name that reflects our commitment to ensuring that this Critically Endangered plant never goes extinct? What if we name it after its own conservation?” Thus, Amalophyllon miraculum, where, miraculum, as the paper notes, “reflects the extraordinary and unexpected persistence of remnant forest patches” in the Centinela. You can learn more in coverage from the NHM(UK), CNN, and Newsweek, and from Globo (Brazil), and Infobae (Argentina).

June 21. 2024

The lead author is Imke Schmitt, who was a Resident Grad Student here at the Field a while back and now associated with both of the German institutions. Lichens are an important part of forest ecosystems, but documenting their diversity requires time and substantial skills in collecting and identifying lichens, which is a factor in the completeness of inventories. DNA barcoding of individual lichen specimens and bulk collections is helping address these challenges, and eDNA methods are just starting to be evaluated as a tool for lichen surveys. This new paper assesses which species of lichenized fungi can be detected in eDNA swabbed from bark surfaces of living trees in central European forests, compared to an expert floristic survey carried out in the same plots about a decade earlier. The team studied 150 plots located in three study regions across Germany, taking one composite sample based on six trees from three species (Fagus sylvatica, Picea abies and Pinus sylvestris). The eDNA method yielded 123 species versus 87 from the floristic survey. The total number of species found with both methods was 167, of which 48% were detected only in eDNA, 26% only in the floristic survey and 26% in both methods. The eDNA contained a higher diversity of inconspicuous species. Many prevalent taxa reported in the floristic survey could not be found in the eDNA due to gaps in molecular reference databases. The authors conclude that at present eDNA has merit as a complementary tool to monitor lichen biodiversity at large scales, but cannot be used on its own, and they advocate for the further development of specialized and more complete databases.

June 21. 2024

Island endemic bats are of considerable conservation concern, as islands are vulnerable ecosystems facing natural and anthropogenic threats such as growing urbanization. The article focuses on the Reunion free-tailed bat (Mormopterus francoismoutoui), an endemic species to Reunion Island that has adapted to urban settings. It examines the evolutionary history of Mormopterus at a regional scale, as well as sex-specific and seasonal patterns of genetic structure on Reunion. The team sampled 1,136 individuals from 18 roosts and three biological seasons (non-reproductive/winter, pregnancy/summer, and mating), and additional samples of Mormopterus species from neighboring islands (Madagascar and from Mauritius). Complementary information gathered from both microsatellite and mitochondrial markers revealed high genetic diversity, but no signal of spatial genetic structure, and weak evidence of female philopatry (the tendency of an animal to remain in or return to the area of its birth). Regional analysis suggests a single colonization event for M. francoismoutoui, dated around 175,000 years ago, and followed by in-situ diversification and the evolution of divergent ancestral lineages, which today form a large metapopulation. Population expansion was relatively ancient (55,000 years ago) and thus not linked to human colonization and the availability of human-constructed day-roost sites. Discordant structure between mitochondrial and microsatellite markers suggests the presence of yet-unknown mating sites, or the recent evolution of putative ecological adaptations. The study illustrates the challenge of detailed genetic studies to gain critical insights on insular ecology and evolutionary history, and the importance of both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA in exploring in-situ diversification of an urban-dwelling bat endemic to a small island.

June 21. 2024

Colleagues Eric Hilton (Virginia Institute of Marine Science) and Matt Friedman (U-Mich Museum of Paleontology) kicked off the doings with a presentation on the career of Curator Emeritus Grande, and his impact on paleontology and systematic biology. This was followed by 13 other papers on fossil fishes, which will soon be assembled into a book. The complete program, with abstracts of the talks, can be accessed here.

June 21. 2024

Arjan studied fossil fishes for his M.Sc. at the University of Toronto, and received his Ph.D. from Carleton University, where he worked on the renowned, only-in-Illinois Mazon Creek fossil assemblage. The Field’s Mazon Creek collection is second to none, and Arjan has used it extensively in his research. He visited the collections in April-May of 2016 to study the taxonomic diversity of the gorgonopsian Lycaenops (predatory therapsids), as well as Mazon Creek tetrapods, and returned in October of that year for more Mazon Creek tetrapod work. His publication record includes articles in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Frontiers in Earth Science, Royal Society Open Science, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, and Journal of Paleontology. And you may recall a paper in Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology last November that Arjan co-authored with Curator Ken Angielczyk and Research Associate Christian Sidor, which elaborated on the anatomy of the synapsid carnivore Gorgonops that Arjan in. More collaborations and further illumination of Mazon Creek animals are sure to come.

June 7. 2024

The meteorite was discovered on May 9, 2009, when it was unearthed by Jim Koch while he was preparing his field for alfalfa planting. A cut sample was sent to the Field Museum in March 2015, where it was confirmed and classified as an IVA iron meteorite. These are exceptionally rare, representing only about one per thousand of all known meteorites, and about 7% of all known iron meteorites. (This is the second meteorite classified by the Pritzker Center from the US Midwest found near a small town that shares its name with a major European city, the other being the Hamburg meteorite.) The classification was performed by Robert A. Pritzker Curator Philipp Heck, with help from Meteoritics Collections Manager Jim Holstein, and University of Wisconsin scientists Carrie Eaton, Noriko Kita, and Rich Slaughter. Research Scientist Laure Dussubieux also provided guidance in the Museum’s Elemental Analysis Facility. The classification was published in Meteoritical Bulletin, and you can read more in the University of Wisconsin News.

June 7. 2024

The effort was spearheaded by Chicago Region Interim Director, Abigail Derby Lewis, and collaboratively developed with scientists from the Keller Science Action Center and the Negaunee Integrative Research Center, including Aster Hasle (Lead Conservation Ecologist), Karen Klinger (GIS Analyst), Bruno de Medeiros (Negaunee Assistant Curator of Pollinating Insects), and Alissa Doucet (PhD student, Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago). The event brought together over 90 experts from 18 states and 3 countries, including researchers, conservationists, and museum experts, to explore how the rapidly evolving technology of environmental DNA (eDNA) can inform pollinator conservation. The workshop marked the first in a series of collaborative events to exchange knowledge, broaden collaboration, and address challenges related to pollinator diversity and conservation on a national scale. A key focus was on leveraging museums’ curated collections and expertise to advance pollinator eDNA conservation initiatives. As challenges to pollinator health and habitat persist, these collaborative endeavors stand as a testament to the power of leveraging the Museum's expansive collections and cutting-edge research to advance nationwide conservation strategies.

June 7. 2024

This trip was generously supported through a donation from the Feay family. Matt and Thorsten’s previous visit to Taiwan had focused on collecting in northern sites; this one concentrated on locations along the southern and east coasts, where they made nearly 400 collections of lichens and free-living algae. This visit was coordinated by Jen-Pan Huang (former FM postdoc, and current Associate Research Fellow at Academia Sinica in Taiwan) and Yi-Hsiu Kuan (Administrative Assistant for JP’s team), and joined by Trevor Padgett and Zong-Yu Shen, PhD candidates at Academia Sinica. Many tropical and subtropical lichens were collected from a range of sites, including from a fossilized coral reef that is now in the middle of a forest. Some lichens even contained chemicals that would fluoresce under UV light at night (see Instagram video for more). In addition to collecting, Matt and Thorsten enjoyed some Cordyceps soup and dishes containing Nostoc cyanobacteria (photosynthetic bacteria that forms lichens, and associates with a range of plants). This summer, interns working with Matt will use DNA barcoding to identify algal symbionts from the collected specimen.

June 7. 2024

The first is a paper in Austral Entomology co-authored with Brazilian colleagues escribing a new species of weevil associated with a species of Cecropia (also known as trumpet trees) in the high-elevation grasslands of the Cerrado biome in western Brazil. The lead author is Aline Lira (Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, Recife), who just defended her PhD thesis in Brazil (co-advised by Bruno), and conducted research at the Field last year thanks to support from the Science and Scholarship Funding Committee. Cecropia trees are abundant in the Neotropics, especially in disturbed areas. Aline collected weevils from Cecropia in her hometown while visiting family, and found that they were a completely new species, which the team named Udeus cerradensis. Species of Udeus are generally rare in collections and their biology is poorly known, despite a high abundance in nature. The tree species in question, Cecropia saxatilis, shares many of the putative traits related to beetle and weevil pollination, and a species of Udeus has been previously implicated as a pollinator of Cecropia, thus the team wanted to test whether this was the case here. Direct observations and sticky traps failed to find evidence that U. cerradensis is attracted to female flowers, leading to the conclusion that it is unlikely to be a relevant pollinator of Cecropia saxatilis. The study also reports on predation of U. cerradensis larvae of by the wasps Synoeca surinama and Protopolybia sedula. Says Bruno of the study, “It is a really beautiful natural history work, showing that there is a lot to be discovered literally in one’s own backyard. It will lay a foundation for many evolutionary studies that are underway in our lab.”

The other paper, published in Biotrophica, deals with potential palm pollinators in Ecuador. Co-authors include Jholaus Ayala González and María Cristina Peñuela Mora (Universidad Regional Amazónica Ikiam, Ecuador). The palms Prestoea acuminata and P. schultzeana are important components in the dynamics of the Andean–Amazon transition forest, and are used by local communities, but little is known about their strategies for reproductive dynamics. Accordingly, the researchers studied the diversity of flower visitors and pollinators of each species, the differences between their pistillate and staminate phases, and the species shared between them. The study was carried out in the Piedmont evergreen forest and the Napo low evergreen forest of Ecuador. The team collected 15 inflorescences of P. acuminata and nine of P. schultzeana, and then divided the flower visitors into morphospecies and counted, photographed and identified them to the best possible taxonomic level. Says Bruno: “Palms in this genus were generally thought to be pollinated by bees or maybe flies. But guess what, it is actually mostly beetles and flies!” They counted 10,123 flower visitors from 82 species in P. acuminata and 1,192 from 42 species in P. schultzeana. Based on abundance and frequency of species, and observations of pollen in the pistillate phase, they found six potential pollinators in P. acuminata (all Coleoptera—beetles), and five in P. schultzeana (three Coleoptera and two Diptera—flies). “Someone had to just do better observations than spending a few hours next to flowers with a sweeping net,” says Bruno. “And almost all of those pollinators are currently unknown species.” Jholaus will visit the Museum this fall to work with Bruno on identification tools for palm pollinators in Ecuador.

June 7. 2024

The article also documents 15 new records of lichenized fungi from Thailand, plus, provides a worldwide key to species of the genus Ampliotrema—all in one place! The new species are Ampliotrema subglobosum (A, B, C in photo), Ocellularia lichexanthonica (D, E, F) and O. saxiprotocetrarica (G, H).

June 7. 2024

Janet contributed a chapter on Graneledone pacifica and coauthored two other chapters (one on global biodiversity and biogeography of coastal octopuses and one on past, present, and future trends in octopus research) for this impressive publication. With contributions from nearly 100 experts, the volume describes important aspects of the lives of these fascinating animals, including their origin, biogeography, life history, distribution, behaviour, migratory patterns, diet, predators, and parasites. The emphasis is on species in highly variable coastal environments and includes a discussion of the potential threats and unexpected benefits of our changing climate and oceans. The book provides detailed accounts for 21 species selected from around the world, each of which is described by local experts. The final chapter provides a detailed breakdown of research on octopuses and the topic areas in which this field is likely to expand in the future, recognizing in particular the growing importance of research into the effects of global changes. Besides climate change, key areas covered include behavior and cognition, iEcology and citizen science, bio-robotics, deep-sea research, and culture and welfare.

June 7. 2024

Studies of evolution and biodiversity require a solid understanding of species systematics revealed by molecular phylogeny using genomic data. Large-scale genomic analyses nevertheless remain difficult due to limited access to samples and molecular resources, especially in countries from the Global South. To help overcome this limitation, ultra-conserved elements (UCEs) have been developed to generate large nuclear datasets and build more robust species phylogenies. However, UCE libraries target only nuclear regions, which limits the comparison with mitochondrial genes. A new study in Mammalian Biology co-authored by Assistant Curator of Mammals Anderson Feijó and colleagues from Hong Kong, Canada, Brazil, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee tests a new method (MitoFinder) to extract mitogenomic data from off-target fragments in UCE libraries for mammals. They applied this method to serotine bats (genus Eptesicus), a widely distributed group whose evolutionary history is still poorly understood. The results indicate that MitoFinder yielded accurate mitogenome data derived from UCE libraries and can provide a valuable resource for estimating mitochondrial phylogeny and detecting mito-nuclear discordances at no additional costs. And based on the new dataset, the team revealed a complex evolutionary history in serotine bats, including evidence of interspecific hybridization within and across subgenera. Additionally, by incorporating published and newly collected gene sequences, they generated the most taxa-complete phylogeny ever for Neotropical Eptesicus, significantly enriching its sequence archive. They also found strong evidence of cryptic diversity, with potentially new species from Peru, Uruguay, and Brazil. The next step will be to formally describe these new bat species.

Understanding why some regions have higher biodiversity than others is a long-term goal in biogeography. Most studies have focused on forested areas while far less attention has been devoted to arid regions. A new study published in Current Zoology co-authored by Anderson and colleagues from China and France investigated the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that explain present-day patterns of Gerbillinae diversity—a subfamily of arid-adapted rodents that include gerbils, jirds, and sand rats—in Eurasia and Africa. The team also explored the time and origin of this highly diverse subfamily. They found that the highest species richness of Gerbillinae is present along the coastal areas of northern Africa, particularly in Egypt and Libya, followed by the Sahara-Sahel region. Multiple ecological and evolutionary factors jointly determine the spatial pattern of Gerbillinae diversity, but evolutionary time, speciation rate, and habitat heterogeneity were the most important. Based on the available fossil record and range ancestral reconstruction, the team hypothesized that Gerbillinae likely originated in the Horn of Africa during the Middle Miocene, and then dispersed and diversified across arid regions in Africa and Eurasia, forming their current distribution pattern. The new study emphasizes the importance of integrating evolutionary and ecological approaches to better understand the mechanisms underlying large-scale species diversity patterns in arid regions.

June 7. 2024

The ceremony took place in conjunction with festivities for the Journée Internationale de la Biodiversité (International Biodiversity Day). Madagascar’s recently named Minister of the Environment, Max Fontaine, presented the award. Steve describes him as “a notably young and dynamic fellow who is very engaged in reforestation projects,” and the two have met recently to discuss various conservation issues and projects of Association Vahatra. After the ceremony Steve congratulated the minister for considering the importance of research in the development of conservation programs on the island.

June 7. 2024

He received his BA General Degree from the University of Zimbabwe (Harare) in Archaeology, History and Economic History, followed by a Special Honors degree in Archaeology from the same university. This was followed by a Master’s in Archaeology at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and a Ph.D. in Archaeology and Ancient History from Uppsala University in Sweden. His doctoral research focused on iron production in Great Zimbabwe, southern Africa’s Iron Age civilization that was at its peak in the 12th and 16th centuries AD, which is famous for its monumental dry-stone architecture and international trade. His work has appeared in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, Evolutionary Anthropology, Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, Law, Religion, and the Family in Africa, African Archaeological Review, WIREs Water, and the books Archives, Objects, Places and Landscapes: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Decolonised Zimbabwean Pasts, Zimbabwean Archaeology in the Post-independence Era, and the World of Great Zimbabwe (forthcoming). He describes his perspective thusly:

I am passionate about using my academic research skills and knowledge to illuminate poorly understood material and social practices of extinct and extant populations of Zimbabwe specifically, and Africa as a whole generally. My rootedness in the cultures of Zimbabwe, together with my dual persona as an archaeologist and heritage professional, well equip me to explore the socio-cultural and material knowledge of extinct and extant people of Zimbabwe, as well as related communities around. Overall, my passion is driven by the desire to explore the nuanced interactions between technological and social dynamics, unravelling the sophisticated interplay of innovation, practice and social transformation, which shaped early African civilizations like medieval Great Zimbabwe in southern Africa and others.

Ezekiel will be collaborating with Assistant Curator Foreman Bandama on advancing archaeometric research in Africa and engaging with anthropological collections, as well as working on the development of the new Africa hall at the Field Museum.

May 24. 2024

At the Society for American Archaeology conference in New Orleans (April 17– April 21), he gave five presentations, two symposium discussions, one commentary, a co-authored paper, and a multi-authored poster. After a brief trip back up to Chicago, Gary traveled south to Santa Marta, Colombia, where he presented an invited keynote address, entitled “Archaeology’s Conceptual Heritage: A Foundation Not a Cage,” at the biannual Congreso Colombiano de Arqueología. He also participated in a Closing Question and Answer session at the Congress in which he helped sum up the meeting’s thematic focus on heritage. After his return, Gary and Adjunct Curator Linda Nicholas were contributors to a two-day workshop on Indigenous Roads and Nodes of North and Central America: Urbanism, People, and Infrastructure, at the Mansueto Institute, University of Chicago, where they spoke on, “Routes of Obsidian Exchange in Prehispanic Mesoamerica.” The workshop is intended to serve as a foundation for a longer-term collaborative working group whose comparative focus will be on communication networks across time and space.

May 24. 2024

The meeting celebrated 17 years since the BHL was founded, during which time more than 61 million pages of content have been uploaded to the site—including this paper by the Museum's Elmer Riggs, which is the first description of Brachiosaurus. The capstone of the week was a symposium that included national CBS coverage of featured cicada expert Gene Kritsky as well as Assistant Curator of Mammals Anderson Feijo and Insects Collections Manager Maureen Turcatel. It was definitely an event in which both the Museum and Chicago shone brightly.

May 24. 2024

All Archaeopteryx specimens come from a fossil deposit in southern Germany called the Solnhofen Limestone. This fossil was unearthed by quarry workers in 1990, and has been in the hands of private collectors ever since. A coalition of supporters helped the Field Museum procure it, and it arrived at the Museum in August 2022. “When the specimen arrived, it was still unprepared, meaning that most of the skeleton was obscured by a top layer of rock,” reports Jingmai O’Connor, Associate Curator of Fossil Reptiles. “We weren’t sure how complete it was—when we X-rayed the fossil slab and saw that the fossil inside was nearly 100% complete, we cheered.” The preparation was led by Field Museum Fossil Preparators Akiko Shinya and Connie Van Beek, whose work preserved fine details that are critical for research. Jingmai declares that it is the best-prepared Archaeopteryx anywhere, and she is preparing a study on never-before-seen details of the animal’s skeleton, especially its skull.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle were on hand Monday for the unveiling of the fossil as part of a press preview. The fossil went on public display the next day, accompanied by a hologram-like animated 3D projection showing how Archaeopteryx would have looked in life. Field Museum Members are also getting to see the specimen at Members’ Nights, when our exhibitions and behind-the-scenes collections are open for Members to explore. Following the Field’s Dinopalooza celebration on Saturday, June 8, the fossil will be removed from view in preparation for its permanent exhibition in a large immersive display opening in Fall 2024.

Acquisition of the specimen was made possible through the generosity of the Walter Family Foundation and a challenge grant from an anonymous donor, with additional support provided by Diana and David Moore, Jessica and Steve Sarowitz, Nicholas J. Pritzker, the Lauer Foundation for Paleontology (Bruce Lauer and René Lauer), and the Marshall B. Front Family Charitable Foundation (Laura De Ferrari and Marshall B. Front). For copious news coverage, just Google “Archaeopteryx Field Museum,” and you’ll see links to WTTW, WGN, U.S News and World Report, ABC Chicago, NBC-5 Chicago, Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, Smithsonian Magazine, and more.

May 10. 2024

As detailed in a new article in Heritage, analysis with liquid chromatography–quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-qToF-MS) revealed the presence of several multiply chlorinated xanthones that are produced only by certain species of lichens. Various lichen dye sources have been documented in the literature for centuries and are classified as either ammonia fermentation method (AFM) or boiling water method (BWM) dyes based on their method of production. However, none of these known sources produce the distinctive  metabolites present in the Heroes tapestry. The researchers also used LC-qToF-MS to compare the chemical composition of the dyes in the tapestry with that of several species of crustose lichen. They definitively identified lichen metabolites, including thiophanic acid and arthothelin, based on comparison with lichen xanthone standards, and a reference of Lecanora sulphurata, confirming the presence of a lichen source. This is the first time that evidence of lichen dye from a variety of species has been found in a historic object, and also the first evidence that boiling water methods were used before the 18th century.

Background from the Met: The motif of Nine Heroes drawn from Classical, Jewish, and Christian traditions was first mentioned in a French poem in 1312, and soon became a popular theme throughout art and literature in late medieval Europe. Pulled from both history and legend, Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar represented the Heroes of the Classical era. Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus, from the Hebrew Bible and related accounts, constituted the Jewish Heroes. Finally, from medieval Europe, King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon formed the Christian Heroes. Celebrated as perfect embodiments of chivalry, the Nine Heroes provided exemplars of worthy warriors and just leaders for men of the noble and upper classes.

Dating to around 1400, The Cloisters’ Heroes are among the oldest surviving medieval tapestries in the world. Their state of preservation is remarkable, even though only five heroes are still extant. Made entirely of wool, these hangings were both decorative and practical, keeping stone interiors warm and festive during the colder months of the year.

Since the acquisition of the Heroes Tapestries, scholars have suggested that they may have been made for Jean, duke of Berry (1340–1416), son of John II, King of France. Of the fourteen heraldic banners in the upper part of the Hebrew tapestry, ten display Jean’s coat of arms. Of the remaining four, three show the royal arms of France and one the arms of Jean’s younger brother, Phillip the Bold, duke of Burgundy. Tantalizingly, inventories of the collections of the duke of Berry indicate that he did own tapestries featuring the Nine Heroes, but these hangings—unlike those in The Cloisters’ collection—were made with gold and silver threads. Although Met’s tapestries may have resembled the the duke’s, there is no conclusive proof regarding their original ownership.

In this tapestry, Julius Caesar wears the imperial crown and brandishes a falchion, a specialized single-edged saber. A shield bearing a double-headed eagle, signifying the ancient Roman Empire, hangs from a spear at his side. He is surrounded by musicians and foot soldiers whose blue apparel and accessories mimic Caesar’s regal role. Originally, Julius Caesar would have been part of the Classical Heroes tapestry alongside Hector of Troy and Alexander the Great. Another tapestry preserved at The Met Cloisters (47.101.2d) most likely depicts Hector, or possibly Alexander; the third hero does not survive. The Julius Caesar tapestry is currently off view and undergoing an intensive treatment in the Museum’s Department of Textile Conservation.

May 10. 2024

The research focused on deploying BRUVs (Baited Remote Underwater Video) around the lower Florida Keys. The team collected 100 hours of video, which will be examined to understand the diversity of elasmobranchs—sharks, rays, skates, and sawfish—in the area. The team also tagged and sampled nurse sharks during the trip. These samples will be part of a larger study examining nurse shark population genetics throughout the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.

May 10. 2024

She argues that collaboration and dialogue between disciplines holds enormous potential for expanding knowledge about our ancestors and how they lived. The interview, entitled (in English) “Dialogue as a Key to Prehistory,” can be read (if you read German), here.

To read Sabina's article that led to the interview above, you can click on its title here: Why kinship still needs anthropologists in the 21st century.

May 10. 2024

The essay challenges the prevailing concept of an evolutionary and linear transition of how metal tools replaced flint ones right after bronze metallurgy spread over Europe around 2000 BCE. The authors argue that various patterns of tool selection were not diachronic but depended on the rank and network in which particular manufacturing centers participated. The piece also contributes to a general discussion about the reception of technological innovations in communities of various degrees of social complexity.

May 10. 2024

During that time, he served as a content specialist on Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery, and expanded the results of his doctoral work on the funerary performances and religious landscapes of the Moche culture, which flourished in northern Peru between the 2nd and 9th centuries CE. From that post, Luis went on to a Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he collaborated on the development of another exhibition, Taming the Desert: Resilience, Religion and Ancestors in Ancient Peru, which will open in November. During his term, he also held the status of Visiting Professor at the UCLA Department of Art History/Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, teaching classes on Andean archaeology and ancient art. He is currently spearheading the Ucupe Cultural Landscape Project in Lambayeque, Peru, a multidisciplinary project that seeks to study the origins of Moche religion in relation to climatic fluctuations in the Andes in the first millennium CE. Luis, who holds a MA and Ph.D. from Stanford University and a BA and Licenciatura from Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, is interested in the interface of performance, death, and politics in the ancient Andes, and his work integrates anthropological and performance theory with multi-scalar methods of spatial analysis and absolute dating techniques.

April 26. 2024

As part of a panel that included former Peruvian Minister of Tourism and Commerce Rogers Valencia, Luis spoke about the critical issues of Machu Picchu’s carrying capacity, the control and circulation of visitors, and the construction of a new large-scale visitors’ center. Luis also spoke last week on the same podcast about the current conservation situation of Kuélap, a pre-Inca fortress located in the Amazon Region, Peru. Regarding the Nasca Lines site, Luis and colleagues presented a poster at the “2024’s Geo-Science from Latin America Conference” held at Eichstätt, Germany. This poster synthesizes recent geoscientific studies on the Nasca and Palpa Lines, in southern Peru. The study seeks to assess progressive changes in the moisture, heat, and compaction levels of the desert soil produced because of climatic change. This poster presented, for the first time, flooding hazard maps of the Nasca basin and the potential impact of future ENSO events on the Nasca geoglyphs.

April 26. 2024

Now back in Chicago, Sara has been expanding on the broader boa reconnaissance. Sara and Arianna’s goal was to collect genetic samples from the island’s four species of boas: the tree boas Sanzinia madagascariensis and S. volotany and the ground boas Acrantophis madagascariensis and A. dumerilli. Despite being large conspicuous snakes—primarily a Neotropical group but with scattered representatives in other parts of the world—there has not been much work done on this group since the advent of advanced high-throughput genetic techniques that would allow a better understanding of both boa biogeography and dispersal, as well as population and species diversity. Sara and Arianna flew to Madagascar where they met up with Fandresena Rakotoarimalala, a doctoral student at the University of Antananarivo co-advised by Sara and Professor Achille Raselimanana. Fandresena was a recipient of an African Visiting Scholar Fellowship from the Museum’s Science and Scholarship Funding Committee last year, and spent six weeks here learning molecular techniques for her dissertation work. Fandresena works on chameleons of Madagascar’s Central Highlands, examining populations in fragmented habitats with respect to usage and gene flow, but for this field trip, the focus was on boas. The trip started out with a stay at Mantadia, where the trio joined up with the aforementioned field school. Sara reports that

it rained for what seemed like all day every day. But the boas were plentiful. By putting out the word locally, Fandresena’s phone was ringing every day with calls from people finding boas. With each find, we jumped into our field car (Nissan SUV) and were off with a tissue kit to get samples for DNA extraction. Boas were also found by hiking the region, especially at night.

After five days working at and around the field school, Sara, Fandresena and Arianna, along with their driver Ange, set off north, heading towards the city of Tomatave. The drive there and back produced eight more boas, including tissues collected from those found dead on the road, as well as babies of both Sanzia and Acrantophis. Says Sara, “boas give birth to live young and this was the season for it!” After long hours in the car, the next stop was Ranomafana, the first national park of Madagascar. This was a short visit (less than two days) but produced another boa so was well worth it, as there are no tissue samples from that locality in any searchable database. After the long drive back to Tana, the last of the trip was spent working with Fandresena’s chameleon dataset and planning further on the next steps with the boa project.

April 26. 2024

The area in question, known as Ala Atsinanana, was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007 and is composed of six different national parks scattered along the 1200 km long eastern side of Madagascar and with a total surface area of slightly less than 500,000 ha (~1.24 million acres). In 2010, a UNESCO commission placed the area on the list of at-risk World Heritage sites, due to high levels of illegal exploitation of precious forest trees and capture of lemurs for bush meat in two of the six sites—problems that were closely tied to a major political upset on Madagascar, with a coup d’etat in 2009 that created havoc across the country and allowed different foreign groups to get a foothold in remote areas and illegally exploit different natural resources.

However, there were flaws in the assessment. The shapefiles used by the GIS specialist engaged by the commission were not the official government files, and the calculations of forest loss within the parks were seemingly miscalculated. As documented in the analyses Steve presented using the official shapefiles, most of the large-scale deforestation took place outside the World Heritage sites. Further, at the Nairobi meeting the Malagasy delegation from Madagascar National Parks presented information on the current status of the zone and the corrective measures put in place to address the reasons Ala Atsinanana was considered as at risk. As Steve notes, “it is important that Ala Atsinanana has a correct status,” and at the confab Steve discussed in detail the truly remarkable levels of biodiversity and endemism this World Heritage site represents in relation to national and world-wide levels. The needed initial steps to remove the zone from the “at risk” list have commenced, which is important to the conservation of Madagascar's protected areas for several different reasons, and the process, if successful, will take several years.

April 26. 2024

A total of 11 posters and 14 oral presentations reported on research carried out with EAF instrumentation by former and present UIC-FM students and faculty and colleagues from all around the US and beyond. Maria Isabel Guevera Duque, a PhD student at UIC presented a poster (with MacArthur Curator Gary Feinman) dealing with the portable XRF and LA-ICP-MS study of Mesoamerican copper artifacts from the FM collection in an attempt to identify different regional productions and having a better understanding of copper circulation in ancient time in this part of the world. Other presentations focused on the extensive research Ryan Williams and his colleagues (Adjunct Curator Donna Nash and Research Associate Nicola Sharratt) have conducted in Peru, to the change in circulation patterns of Mesoamerican obsidian through time (Research Associate Mark Golitko and Curator Gary Feinman) or to the exchange of glass beads around the Indian Ocean and beyond (Laure Dussubieux and colleagues). Dr. Kuan-Wen Wang from the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica travelled from Taiwan to present her research on glass beads found in Taiwan (1st millennium CE) coming from the Middle-East

April 26. 2024

The authors analyzed mammalian skeletal scaling using two systems. First, they looked at a group of Philippine rodents known as the cloud rats, which range across several orders of magnitude in body size, with body mass ranging from 15 grams to about 6 pounds. For this group, they analyzed how body mass affects the external shape of vertebrae and the internal shape of vertebral trabecular bone (the spongy bone that fills vertebrae, the ends of long bones, and some parts of the skull). The cloud rats are all tree-living herbivores, and this uniform ecology controls several confounding variables, making it easier to isolate the effects of body size. For the other approach, they analyzed trabecular bone scaling in a larger group of mammals that included all the cloud rats plus an additional data set covering a much wider range of body masses, from shrew-sized to elephant-sized. They found that small mammals and large mammals have different scaling patterns in their skeletons. For example, in mammals under around 3.75 lb. in mass, the thickness of their internal trabecular bone components increases “with geometric similarity”—which basically means they are the same size relative to the whole bone no matter how much the animal weighs. But above that weight, that rate slows down, and the trabecular elements start to become thinner and thinner relative to the size of the whole bone. This seems backwards, noted Dr. Smith in an e-mail,

because trabecular thickness is correlated with the strength of the bone it’s in—which raises the question of why bigger, heavier animals developed this trait that probably makes their bones less strong relative to their mass. This is a question that has received some attention in the literature, and other workers have tested hypotheses about how overall bone cross sectional area and limb posture change in extremely large vertebrates. But the more interesting follow-up question is what this mean for the biomechanics of tiny skeletons. Like, is this why mice can fall off a shelf and run away without having suffered any apparent damage? Are their bodies “overbuilt” for the types of stresses they undergo on a daily basis? Is there some other selective pressure that has resulted in them having relatively thick, dense trabecular bone?

Based on results obtained thus far, there are likely to be biomechanical consequences of the relative robusticity of these tiny skeletons. Now, Stephanie is leading an NSF-funded follow-up project (with Ken and a colleague from Bucknell) that considers how body size relates to actual functional performance of tiny mammal bones.

April 26. 2024

The program included a special symposium on Friday April 12 to celebrate the upcoming 70th birthday for Sir Peter Crane (see photos here). Peter has served the Field Museum in a variety of roles since the 1980s, including Curator of Paleobotany, Vice President and Director, and currently, Trustee. During his tenure as curator and Vice President, Peter built an internationally recognized paleobotany research program at the Museum and led major improvements to the curation of our extensive paleobotanical collections.

On Saturday the celebrations continued with the 41st Midcontinent Paleobotanical Colloquium (MPC). One of Peter’s early contributions as curator was to initiate this meeting in 1983, which was hosted that year at the Field. The MPC program on Saturday was a very full day with 23 presentations and 17 posters, enjoyed by 120 attendees from across the USA, Mexico, Panama, the U.K., Ireland, Germany, and China. On Sunday, April 14 attendees enjoyed a field trip to the famous Mazon Creek fossil area near Braidwood and Coal City. The birthday symposium included 11 presentations by former graduate students and postdocs and collaborators from throughout Peter’s career, including Susana Magallon, Rick Lupia, and Paul Kenrick. In addition, there were several recorded congratulations messages from colleagues who were not able to attend the conference. Tony Kirkham, former Director of the Arboretum at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, was the after-dinner speaker.

The organizers are especially thankful to Amanda Dick (Administrative Coordinator, Negaunee Integrative Research Center) for spearheading the logistics. The weekend was a success largely due to her hard work.

April 26. 2024

For example, some groups like the horsetail relatives have their spore-bearing bracts attached to the axis in whorls at nodes, whereas in others the spore-bearing bracts are attached alternately. The rare and enigmatic Pennsylvanian cone Tetraphyllostrobus was unique and conflictive as it externally resembled cones of Sphenophyllales (an extinct group related to the horsetails) except for its apparent decussate architecture (opposite bracts at a node are arranged at right angles), and has since been considered of uncertain affinity. In a new study published in the American Journal of Botany, Negaunee Postdoctoral Scientist Michael D’Antonio, Negaunee Assistant Curator of Paleobotany Fabiany Herrera, Research Associate Peter Crane (Oak Spring Garden Foundation), and collaborators Carol Hotton (Smithsonian Institution) and Selena Smith (University of Michigan) have reconstructed in 3D a cone specimen externally resembling Tetraphyllostrobus from the Field’s Mazon Creek Paleobotany Collection. Using a combination of advanced visualization techniques including X-ray micro-computed tomography, scanning electron microscopy, Airyscan confocal super-resolution microscopy, and optical microscopy, they determined that the cone had a whorled architecture and other anatomical characters specific to Sphenophyllales. They also analyzed in-situ spores which they determined to be of a type specific to Sphenophyllales. After detailed comparison to other small sphenophyll cones, they determined that the cone represented a new form and established Hexaphyllostrobus kostorhysii as a new genus and species. The fossil was named “kostorhysii” in honor of Jim Kostorhys, an enthusiastic Mazon Creek collector and the donor of the specimen to the Museum. These findings show the utility of state-of-the-art visualization techniques for Pennsylvanian plant systematics and suggests that as better-preserved Tetraphyllostrobus material becomes available, reconstructions of that cone, too, will likely indicate a whorled architecture.

April 26. 2024

Niche overlap in sympatric cichlids, including an incredibly enigmatic species. The cichlid genus Rocio includes a well-known species to many who enjoy keeping cichlids or other fishes in aquariums: Rocio octofasciata, aka the Jack Dempsey Cichlid, which are distributed from southern Mexico south into the Caribbean slope of Honduras. Another species in that genus, Rocio spinosissima, is endemic to the Río Dulce basin in eastern Guatemala and has long been considered a rare and fairly enigmatic species largely due to its scarce representation in collections despite fieldwork efforts. In fact, efforts by Cesar, Diego, and Caleb as part of the IUCN working group for Central American freshwater fishes, assessed the conservation status of R. spinosissima as endangered. Río Dulce is an important area to study to better understand the population status and ecology of this enigmatic cichlid, but given that both species of Rocio occur here, it is also an interesting system to test hypotheses about niche overlap between two sympatric closely related fishes. With Resident Graduate Student César Fuentes, Windsor Aguirre (DePaul University and FMNH Associate), and Christian Barrientos (Wildlife Conservation Society), and Caleb and Diego recently published a paper in the journal Ecology of Freshwater Fish aiming to answer these questions. Environmental data based on their fieldwork showed similarities in habitats for the two species, but a larger range of suitable area for the widespread Jack Dempsey Cichlid compared to the endemic R. spinosissima. Additionally, analysis of morphological data to study patterns of variation in body shape uncovered interesting results trends, not only in very clear differences between the two species, but differences that become more pronounced as the cichlids grow from juveniles to adults. One of the hopeful outcomes of this study was that while R. spinosissima warrants attention to habitat needs and availability, our ichthyologists were excited to find this species might not be quite as rare as initially thought. The results of this work set up new ideas and questions to be studied for these cichlids as well as other fishes in the area. This basin is the study site for a new NSF grant awarded to Caleb to study historical shifts in fish communities and populations.

Disentangling historical relationships within livebearing fishes using genomic data.

Livebearing fishes (family Poeciliidae) are widely distributed across the Americas, with over 270 species across 27 genera. FMNH ichthyologists Diego Elias (Bass Postdoctoral Fellow) and Caleb McMahan (Collections Manager of Fishes) are authors on a recent study in Molecular Phylogenetics & Evolution that used data based on sequences of ultraconserved elements in the first attempt to use genomic data to study evolutionary relationships and diversification in this family of fishes. Additionally, the authors used the large dataset to assess the influence of various analyses and evolutionary processes on our understanding of relationships across livebearing fishes. While a number of genera or major groups of livebearers were found to be monophyletic (descended from a common ancestor), there were several that were not, and their evolutionary history will be the basis of ongoing and future projects on these fishes—currently under study at the Field Museum.

April 26. 2024

Nominations are submitted by members, and the Leonard Medal Committee reviews those nominations and makes a recommendation to Council. Fellows are elected in even-numbered years, and no more than 1% of the membership can be elected for each class. The 2024 Fellows will be recognized at the annual Meteoritical Society, which will be held in Brussels, Belgium, from 28 July – 2 August, 2024. Read more on the Meteoritical Society website.

April 26. 2024

Peter is recognized as a world leader in evolutionary biology, globally acclaimed for his groundbreaking contributions to the field of plant diversity, both living and extinct. His extensive body of work spans from the origin and fossil history of plant life to its current state, encompassing themes of conservation and practical utility. His palaeobotanical discoveries, combined with phylogenetic analyses of morphological data, have profoundly altered our outlook on early angiosperm evolution. After leaving the Field in 1999, he went on to serve as Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental and is currently President of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation. He has pursued these roles with an unceasing spirit of innovation, inclusion and engagement.

April 26. 2024

Thorsten Lumbsch has served as Vice President of Science & Education (now Collections, Conservation, and Research Division) since June 2017. Thorsten joined the Museum as Curator of Lichenized Fungi in 2003.

In addition to his administrative and research roles, Thorsten is also active as a mentor to the scientists of tomorrow. He is a lecturer at the University of Chicago, and is active in advising graduate students there and the University of Illinois–Chicago. He also supervises postdoctoral scientists at the Museum and participated in K-12 educational programs, and served as content adviser for the exhibit Lichens: The Coolest Things You've Never Heard Of (2014–2017).

Thorsten previously received the Gerhard Hess Award from the German Science Foundation for outstanding young scientists in 1999, and in 2017 he was named a Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher.

The new Fellows will be celebrated on September 21, 2024 in Washington, D.C.

April 19. 2024

Raman spectroscopy non-destructively identifies molecules in an object by directing the light produced by a laser onto its surface and measuring the scattered photons that interact with the samples. In Anthropology, this instrument is used to characterize pigments on ceramics or other substrates, determine the nature of certain stones, or identify unknown materials. The instrument comes in a case on wheels that contain the heart of the instrument (the laser) and can travel into collections, avoiding any need to move objects to the lab. Additionally, the apparatus is able to analyze oversize artifacts. This unit will complement the table-top Raman instrument housed in Geology and will expand the suite of non-destructive techniques the EAF can apply to museum objects.

April 5, 2024

The trip was supported by a grant to the Lincoln Park Zoo from the Walder Foundation and involved over 20 scientists, graduate students, conservation practitioners, and people from local villages. The project had a training as well as a conservation aspect, documenting the plants and animals living in the park. The lowland moist evergreen forest sites surveyed included one that was largely intact, some that were more heavily degraded, and regenerating forest formations. Assistant Curator Sarah Ruane and colleague Arianna Kuhn (Virginia Museum of Natural History), spent a few days with the group to find boas. Of the five Master’s students that took part in the field school, four will receive stipends and research funds for the work associated with their theses.

April 5, 2024

1. "Prehispanic Population Estimates for the Valley of Oaxaca.” In Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Urbanism, Social Complexity, and Change, edited by Adrian S. Z. Chase, Arlen F. Chase, and Diane Z. Chase, pp. 309–335. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2024.

2. "Rethinking Politics and Spectacle in the Deep Past: Parallels for the Present.” Authored with Adjunct Curator Linda Nicholas. In Pomp, Circumstance, and the Performance of Politics: Acting Politically Correct in the Ancient World, edited by Kathryn R. Morgan, pp. 15–47. ISAC Seminar Series No. 16. Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago, Chicago, 2024.

3. "All Crises Are Unhappy in Their Own Way: The Role of Societal Instability in Shaping the Past.” SocArXiv Papers (with 15 co-authors).  February 16, 2024.

4. "Economic Archaeology.” In Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2nd edition, vol. 1, edited by E. Nikita, and T. Rehren, pp. 253–259. Academic Press, London, 2024.

5. "Understanding and Calculating Household Size, Wealth, and Inequality in the Maya Lowlands,” and “Measuring Inequality: The Effect of Units of Analysis on the Gini coefficient.” (With three co-authors.) Ancient Mesoamerica vol. 34 (2023).

6. “Salud esquelética entre los zapotecos mesoamericanos de Tlacolula, Oaxaca.” By Gary, Linda, and Ricardo Higelin Ponce de León. In Población y movilidad entre zapotecos prehispánicos de Oaxaca, edited by Ana Julia Aguirre Samudio, Edith Ortiz Díaz, and Ricardo Higelin Ponce de León. Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2023.

7. “Rethinking Premodern Governance: Passing the Torch.” Social Evolution and History vol. 22, 2023.

April 5, 2024

The team wanted to determine whether metal knives found in late Bronze Age deposits in Karmin in western Poland (ca. 900–800 BCE) could have been used as multi-tools in processing hard materials like red deer antler and animal bone. To get at this question, they applied an experimental method involving a five-piece collection of late Bronze Age knives from four deposits, and a contemporary replica of a late Bronze Age bronze knife tool. They subjected the replica to use-wear analysis—the first such study to focus on the knife instead of the material that was processed. The experiment included five movements engaging various sections of the knife blade and tip, and produced diversified traces depending on the type of technique and raw material worked. The results showed that an adequately cast knife, hardened by cold working, could have been applied in all stages of manufacturing antler and bone objects, from initial material division (cross-cutting), to over shaping (surface cutting, whittling), to finishing (scraping, drilling). Although the tool required frequent resharpening, it efficiently performed various movements. The traces on the replica, such as U-shaped notches, chips, blunting, bows, scratches, and serrated and wavy edges, correspond well with those observed on the knives from Karmin.

Justyna also recently published a review of The Life and Journey of Neolithic Copper Objects: Transformations of the Neuenkirchen Hoard, North-East Germany (3800 BCE) by Henry Skorna (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2022) in Journal of Anthropological Research.

April 5, 2024

1. Pikas are emblematic animals of high mountain habitats. These mammals—closely related to rabbits and hares—can live at extremely high altitudes, reaching up to 6,000 meters (nearly 20,000 feet) in the Himalayas. Since 2017, Dr. Feijó has been pursuing projects and field surveys across China in collaboration with colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences to better understand how these animals can survive such extreme environments. Another piece of this puzzle has just been published in the Journal of Mammalogy. Studying differentially expressed genes across tissues can reveal physiological adaptations associated with distinct environments, and in this study the team compared high-altitude pikas and mid-altitude pikas, analyzing sets of genes under expression in the heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney, and brain. They found that the tissues of high-altitude pikas have an elevated expression of genes related to DNA damage repair, energy metabolism, and immune regulation (e.g., some highly expressed genes are known to inhibit the development of liver cancer, and metabolic regulation mechanisms are important to survive at low oxygen levels). The results suggest that high-altitude pikas may improve the metabolic capacity of carbon compounds and reduce reliance on oxygen as an adaptive mechanism to survive in high-altitude hypoxic environments. In addition, enhancing immune cellular performance in the liver and the expression of genes associated with cell repair are beneficial in regulating inflammation and mitigating tissue damage caused by high UV radiation. These findings illuminate the physiological demands required to survive in extremely high elevations. The team now plans to replicate these analyses for other mammals and expand to other montane regions like the Andes.

2. Understanding the evolution of widespread groups of animals can shed light on the development of biogeographical realms. This requires the study of large numbers of species, knowledge of their distributional ranges, and genetic data—data that are rarely available for species-rich groups of invertebrates, severely limiting global-scale analyses. In a new study published in Journal of Biogeography, Anderson and colleagues from China, the United Kingdom, and Czech Republic found a way to partly circumvent this problem. Anderson and his colleagues were particularly interested in assessing the eastern boundary between the Palaearctic (northern Eurasia) and Oriental (southern Asia) realms as these regions were never divided by open ocean and lacked obvious physical barriers (the western boundary between these two realms is clearly defined by the Himalayas). To get at this, they focused on a highly diverse group of leaf beetles (Chrysomelidae), with nearly 40,000 species recognized, and generated hundreds of mitochondrial genomes from beetle communities in selected places to represent each of the major zoogeographic regions of the world, including areas in China, Borneo, and Panama. Based on this global dataset, they explored the geographic evolutionary history across lineages as old as 160 million years using analytical methods Anderson had developed and applied previously to understand mammal evolution in Asia. The new study shows that the Qinling Mountains located in eastern China act as a contact zone of evolutionarily deeply separated biotas of mainly (sub)tropical origin in the south from those of temperate origin in the north that have come into contact fairly recently. These findings help define the Qinling Mountains as an important biogeographical zone, harboring a mixed biota with distinct evolutionary histories, and numerous endemic species. The site-based sampling method can be widely used for other poorly known, super-diverse lineages of invertebrates and make global-scale biogeographic analyses possible beyond well-studied vertebrates.

March 22, 2024

Although forests are crucial to the ecological integrity of floodplains, understanding of their species composition and how this may differ from surrounding forest types is very limited, particularly as changing inundation regimes begin to reshape floodplain tree communities and the critical ecosystem functions that they underpin. This article addresses this gap by taking a spatially explicit look at Amazonia-wide patterns of tree-species turnover and ecological specialization of the region’s floodplain forests. The study indicates that the majority of Amazonian tree species can inhabit floodplains, and about a sixth of Amazonian tree diversity is ecologically specialized on floodplains. The degree of specialization in floodplain communities is driven by regional flood patterns, with the most compositionally differentiated floodplain forests located centrally within the fluvial network and contingent on the most extraordinary flood magnitudes regionally. The research results provide a spatially explicit view of ecological specialization of floodplain forest communities and expose the need for whole-basin hydrological integrity to protect the Amazon’s tree diversity and its function.

March 22, 2024

MacArthur Curator Gary Feinman has been a leading advocate for developing better models to interpret the past and synthesize archaeological information across time periods and geography. He observes that “we can now begin to assess a truly global historical record that is not narrowly restricted to just literate societies or the European past. For a long time, the classical Mediterranean world or medieval Europe—both known from texts—were used as proxies for humanity’s past. Now, we know that is not appropriate, as our past as a species has neither been uniform nor linear.” This synthesis of human origins research and new understanding of human biology presents a powerful perspective and roadmap for dealing with some of our biggest challenges. Gary discusses the implications of this perspective in Rozenberg Quarterly, which you can read here.

March 22, 2024

The paper appears in Earth and Environmental Science: Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Olivier, long-time collaborator Li Chun (Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology [IVPP], Beijing), and other colleagues originally described the species in 2003—those of you who have been around a while may recall seeing the first articulated specimen of the species, which was exhibited here at the Field as the Sneaky Sea Creature in 2005. The discovery of additional, more complete specimens, including one that is fully articulated, has allowed scientists to depict the bizarre long-necked creature in full for the very first time.

With 32 separate neck vertebrae, D. orientalis had an extraordinarily long neck that draws comparison with that of Tanystropheus hydroides, another strange marine reptile from the Middle Triassic of both Europe and China. Both reptiles were of similar size and have several features of the skull in common, including a fish-trap type of dentition. However, Dinocephalosaurus is unique in possessing many more vertebrae both in the neck and the torso, giving the animal a much more snake-like appearance. The reptile was clearly very well adapted to an oceanic lifestyle, as indicated by the flippered limbs and exquisitely preserved fishes in its stomach region. Despite superficial similarities, Dinocephalosaurus was not closely related to the famous long-necked plesiosaurs that evolved around 40 million years later. The fossils were discovered in Guizhou Province, southern China. Dr. Nick Fraser FRSE, Keeper of Natural Sciences at National Museums Scotland and a co-author, calls the fossil “yet one more example of the weird and wonderful world of the Triassic that continues to baffle palaeontologists.” Researchers from Scotland, Germany, America and China studied the fossil over the course of 10 years at the IVPP. The research was covered by NPR, CNN, BBC, ABC, CBS, MSN, as well as many outlets that don’t have three-letter acronyms, like The Independent, India Today, Daily Mail, People, and many more.

March 22, 2024

1. With support from the EAF’s NSF program, University of Oklahoma PhD student Pierce Wright investigated the coalescence of Choctaw communities in the 18th century via LA-ICP-MS ceramic analysis, as reported in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

2. In another article in the same journal, Lambert et al. analyzed a single copper bead using LA-ICP-MS to show how a late Archaic community in Southern Mississippi established long distance connections to obtain this object manufactured from copper from the Great Lakes region

3. In an article in American Antiquity, Stevenson et al. studied copper object compositions via LA-ICP-MS to investigate the circulation of European smelted copper artifacts in Virginia during the 17th century.

4. Dussubieux et al. reported in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences on elemental and isotopic analysis of glass beads from northeastern Thailand to show network ramifications reaching as far as the Middle East and the South China Sea, as well as India and Sri Lanka.

5. In Archaeometry, Gilg et al. used LA-ICP-MS and Raman at the Field Museum to study garnet beads housed at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago. The beads are from Lower Nubia and spanned 4000 years, and the analysis revealed how the trade of such ornaments evolved in that region through time.

6. Finally, in Latin American Antiquity, former Resident Grad Student David Reid (now Visiting Research Assistant Professor, UIC) used pXRF and LA-ICP-MS to investigate the circulation of obsidian in the Arequipa region of Peru during the Middle Horizon.

March 22, 2024

1. A grant from the Pritzker Center for Meteoritics and Polar Studies funded sampling of Antarctic Gentoo Penguin (Pygoscelis ellsworthi) colonies at multiple sites in and around the Antarctic Peninsula in 2022. A new paper based on this and other sampling, co-authored by Curator of Birds John Bates and Research Associate Sushma Reddy, is just out in Molecular Ecology. This data set was part of expedition member Rachael Herman’s dissertation at the University of Stonybrook (NY). The study presents genomic data documenting genetic differentiation among colonies at impressively local geographic scales (birds are not moving between colonies that can be less than 100Km apart). Thanks to a new grant from the Pritzker Center, the expedition group is currently working on securing permits that will allow them gather samples for genomic data across similarly distributed colonies of Falkland Gentoo Penguin (Pygoscelis papua) in December 2024. 

2. A new paper in BioScience entitled “Increasing the impact of vertebrate scientific collections through 3D imaging: The openVertebrate (oVert) Thematic Collections Network” summarizes a multi-institutional effort to CT-scan anatomical species in vertebrate collections and make those digital 3D scans available through the on-line portal MorphoSource. This effort was funded by a four-year grant from the National Science Foundation. Collections Manager of Birds Ben Marks, former Amphibian and Reptiles Collections Manager Alan Resetar, and Curator of Birds John Bates were co-Principal Investigators on this project, and over 1200 CT-scans of Field Museum vertebrates (mostly birds and amphibians and reptiles, but also mammals and fish) were created using the micro-CT scanning facility at the University of Chicago under the direction of Associate Zhe-Xi Luo (also a co-PI on the grant). John, Ben, and Daryl Coldren (Collections Assistant, Birds) were co-authors on the new paper, which details how these data are being downloaded by researchers, educators, and the public for a growing array of projects. The capacity to make digital CT-scans of vertebrate specimens broadly available is opening up entirely new areas on study of morphological evolution (e.g., Research Scientist Chad Eliason and Associate Curator Shannon Hackett's recent work comparing evolution of brain size and bill shape across kingfishers). At the same time, as rich and useful as our collections are, the paper and the project highlight the need for future specimens to fill gaps in sampling (e.g., for 50% of the 10,800 species of birds there are one, two, or zero anatomical specimens in any collection in the world).

3. Most curators would agree that one of the best aspects of the job is working with graduate students and seeing them move on in their careers. Three former Field Museum Resident Grad Students based in Birds have started or will be starting faculty positions this year. Jacob Cooper graduated from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Evolutionary Biology (CEB) in 2021, did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Nations University, and is now a tenure-track faculty member in the Dept. of Biology at the University of Nebraska–Kearney. Valentina Gómez Bahamón graduated from the University of Illinois–Chicago in 2021. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Penn State University, she will be starting a tenure-track faculty position in the Department of Biology at Virginia Tech University this coming Fall (as will her herpetologist husband Roberto Marquez, who did his PhD at the University of Chicago). João Capururcho also did his doctorate at the University of Illinois, Chicago graduating in 2020. He stayed at FMNH on postdoctoral fellowship before returning to Brazil for a postdoc in Manaus, and recently started a faculty position in the Biology Department at the Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora in the state on Minas Gerais. All three continue collaborations with their former advisor Curator John Bates and colleagues in Birds.

March 22, 2024

Archaeologists have been using many of the diagnostic and visualization tools of social network analysis (SNA) since at least the early 1970s. John argues that as a body of theory rather than a set of formal methods, there is a disconnect between the aims and assumptions of modern SNA and the goals of contemporary archaeology. He also posits “relational thinking” and “contingency analysis” as more accurate labels than “network analysis” and “network science,” but observes that as a set of exploratory techniques for data analysis and visualization, the “networks revolution” in archaeology should continue.

March 22, 2024

Lions in the various protected areas sampled comprised two genetic groups, one in the south and the other in the central and northern parts of Kenya. Although no populations showed signs of inbreeding, fenced populations showed little genetic variation while large open areas showed the highest genetic diversity. The data is a valuable tool for Kenyan conservation. The authors hope the information about different genetic groups and their unique evolutionary histories can aid in protecting lion diversity—e.g., by avoiding translocation of problem lions for excessively long distances, and regularly exchanging lions in fenced reserves with other lions to prevent inbreeding. More details on conservation implications can be found in the press release from Leiden University.

If you’re wondering about the lions of Tsavo, they showed the highest levels of admixture between northern and southern groups, not surprising given Tsavo National Parks’ enormous size (the Greater Tsavo Ecosystem is about 40,000 sq km—roughly the size of Massachusetts + Connecticut), and the variability that large populations can sustain. Also relevant is the fact that Tsavo sits on a major faunistic transition zone where species of ostrich, gazelle, and giraffe replace one another. Complicating matters further, for years the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) has been translocating “problem lions” (typically stock raiders) from various parts of Kenya to its largest wilderness areas, Tsavo and Meru—thus human agency may contribute to the admixture pattern in Tsavo (although the prospects for successful translocations are not high, as lions can be inhospitable to intruders). The lead author on the paper, Ms. Monica Chege, is now finishing her PhD at Leiden University with Hans de Iongh and Laura Bertola. Twelve years ago, as a fresh recruit to KWS, Monica received a bursary from the Field Museum for her Associates degree at the Kenya Wildlife Service Institute in Naivasha, thanks to the generous support of former Earthwatch volunteers Bud and Onnolee Trapp. This article marks Monica’s latest step toward a career in conservation management.

March 22, 2024

The first week was spent at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing where Jingmai worked for 10 years before coming to the Field. The second week was spent at the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature in Pingyi, which can be reached from Beijing by 2.5 hours on the bullet train and another hour by car. This museum has the distinction of being “the largest dinosaur museum in the world” in the Guiness Book of World Records. There the team was able to see thousands of specimens of feathered paravians (birds and their closest relatives), from which they plan to describe several new species of enantiornithine birds. Yosef, the team’s molt expert, was able to find additional evidence of molt in two feathered paravians, reinforcing the conclusions from a 2023 paper by he and Jingmai that molt in non-ornithurine feathered dinosaurs was a rare occurrence and likely did not occur on the annual cycle present in living birds.

March 22, 2024

ExMAG supports robotic and human space exploration objectives, particularly in the planning of future sample return missions. The group conducts independent or NASA-requested analyses, covering aspects of sample curation, facility construction, contamination control, and development of analytical capabilities. Additionally, ExMAG serves as a resource for sample-return missions, collaborates with other analysis groups, provides a forum for discussion within the planetary science community, and communicates its findings to NASA and the broader scientific community through workshops and studies.

March 22, 2024

These funds will be used to excavate the site of La Otra Banda, in the Zaña Valley, near the site of Ucape, where he is developing a second long-term project. The summer promises to be intense and exciting, as Luis and his team will be excavating both sites almost in parallel.

March 22, 2024

The plant collection is beautifully preserved, and includes type specimens of the legume, Arcoa lindgreni (at left below, described in 2019 by Research Associate Pat Herendeen of the Chicago Botanic Garden and Assistant Curator Fabiany Herrera while a postdoc at CBG), and the bunny-eared seed, Lagokarpos lacustris , among others. However, this collection had never been comprehensively organized, and most specimens remain uncatalogued. Over the past few months, Paleobotany Volunteer Ellen Gieser and Paleobotany Collections Manager Mike Donovan have reduced specimen crowding and catalogued the collection. This project is ongoing, and the next steps will be to photograph all specimens and reorganize the collection based on taxonomy and/or morphology. The Green River collection is one of most significant in the Paleobotany collection, so this process will greatly increase research useability and accessibility.

March 22, 2024

The pair named it Imparavis attenboroughi (“Attenborough’s strange bird”), in honor of naturalist Sir David Attenborough. Imparavis attenboroughi is a member of a group of birds called enantiornithines, or “opposite birds”, named for a feature in their shoulder joints that is “opposite” from what is seen in modern birds. They were once the most diverse group of birds, but they went extinct 66 million years ago following the meteor impact that killed most of the dinosaurs. Scientists are still working to figure out why the enantiornithines went extinct and the group that gave rise to modern birds, ornithuromorphs, survived. “Enantiornithines are very weird,” says Alex Clark. “Most of them had teeth and still had clawed digits. If you were to go back in time 120 million years in northeastern China and walk around, you might have seen something that looked like a robin or a cardinal, but then it would open its mouth, and it would be filled with teeth, and it would raise its wing, and you would realize that it had little fingers.” Scientists previously thought that the first record of toothless-ness in this group was about 72 million years ago, in the late Cretaceous, but the new species pushes that back by 48 to 50 million years.

The specimen was found by an amateur fossil collector near the village of Toudaoyingzi in northeastern China and donated to the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature. Dr. Jingmai O'Connor first noticed something unusual about this fossil several years ago while visiting that collection. What first drew her to the specimen wasn’t its lack of teeth, but its forelimbs. “It had a giant bicipital crest—a bony process jutting out at the top of the upper arm bone, where muscles attach,” she notes. “I’d seen crests like that in Late Cretaceous birds, but not in the Early Cretaceous like this one. That’s when I first suspected it might be a new species.” The FMNH team and their coauthors in China undertook further study of the specimen and determined that it did indeed represent an animal new to science. One unique trait is its unusual wing bones that could have allowed for muscle attachments that let this bird flap its wings with extra power. Its toothless beak doesn’t necessarily tell scientists what it was eating, since modern toothless birds have a wide variety of diets, but like its fellow enantiornithines, and unlike modern birds, it does not appear to have a gizzard that helped it crush up its food. Most enantiornithines are thought to have been arboreal, but, Jingmai notes, “The differences in the forelimb structure of Imparavis suggests that it may have ventured down to the ground to feed, which might mean it had a unique diet compared to other enantiornithines, which also might explain why it lost its teeth.” The researchers also revisited a previously described fossil bird, Chiappeavis, and suggest that it too was an early toothless enantiornithine. This finding, along with Imparavis, indicates that toothlessness may not have been quite as unique in Early Cretaceous enantiornithines as previously thought.

As for the name, Alex states, “I most likely wouldn’t be in the natural sciences if it weren’t for David Attenborough’s documentaries.” Both authors emphasized the importance of Attenborough’s work for celebrating life on earth, and his warnings about the mass extinction the planet is facing due to human-caused climate change and habitat destruction. Sir David Attenborough declared, “It is a great honour to have one’s name attached to a fossil, particularly one as spectacular and important as this. It seems the history of birds is more complex than we knew.” Read more in the press release, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the BBC.

March 8, 2024

On February 21 he spoke about “The beginnings of Urbanism and Inequality in Greece and Hungary” at the Off Color Brewing Taproom in Lincoln Park. February 29 found him in Wellesley, MA speaking about the First Kings of Europe exhibit at an event sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America. On March 6, Bill gave a lecture entitled “First Kings of Europe” as part of Eastern Illinois University’s Premodern Global Studies Celebration Day, which was pegged to the theme, “Succession: Transfer of Power.” First Kings, an exhibit that opened at the Museum in March 2023 and ran until the end of January, featured artifacts from the Balkan Peninsula of Europe to illustrate the rise of kings from 8,000 years ago during the Neolithic Period to 2,500 years ago during the Iron Age.

March 8, 2024

The publication is one of the longest-standing, most highly-cited of the international interdisciplinary environmental journals After discussions with the head editor, part of Steve’s role will be to help change some aspects of the direction of the journal and work on single issue monograph subjects.

March 8, 2024

Jim was an expert in, and published extensively on, Upper Paleolithic archaeology of the Levant. His research focused on why human populations settled down near the end of the Pleistocene, and the development and relationship between modern human populations and the latest archaic humans, the Neanderthals. His published works include dozens of journal articles and book chapters, four edited volumes, and numerous monographs. Although he was not an expert in later Egyptian prehistory, Jim was the Field’s de facto Egyptologist, and was a consummate exhibitions content specialist for more than two decades, provided scholarly guidance and insight on Dead Sea Scrolls, Cleopatra, Eternal Egypt, King Tut, Mammoths, Horse, Mummies, Lod Mosaic, and Lascaux. In fact, he was instrumental in getting the Tut show to the Museum in 2006. He was also a popular leader of Field Museum tours, which ranged from Paleolithic cave sites in southern Europe to the pyramids of Egypt to the ruins of ancient Turkey. In 2008 Jim administered a program that trained 18 scientists from the Iraq National Museum and other Iraqi cultural institutions in conservation methods, collections management techniques, and modern museum practices, supported by a $1.2 million grant to the Field and the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute from the State Department’s International Relief and Development Unit. He was also involved in several large-scale CT scanning projects focusing on Egyptian mummies and other artifacts.

Jim’s obituary, which includes tributes from many Field Museum friends, can be read here.

February 23. 2024

Volitation:  Flight is surely one of birds’ most fascinating characteristics. But flightless birds like penguins and ostriches are equally fascinating, if not more so. How is it that one group evolved a high-flying lifestyle, and one didn’t? Turns out, the ways the wings and feathers of flightless birds differ from those of their airborne cousins is still not well understood. Associate Curator Jingmai O'Connor and Bass Postdoctoral Fellow Yosef Kiat shed some light on the matter in a new study in the journal PNAS. In examining hundreds of birds in museum collections, they discovered a suite of feather characteristics that all flying birds have in common, providing clues about how the dinosaur ancestors of modern birds first evolved the ability to fly, and which dinosaurs were capable of flight.

Yosef, a feather expert, launched a study of the feathers of every order of living birds, examining specimens from 346 different species—flying and non-flying—in museums around the world. The researchers also examined 65 fossil specimens representing 35 different species of feathered dinosaurs and extinct birds. They found consistent traits among flying species. For instance, all the flighted birds had asymmetrical feathers, and between 9 and 11 primary feathers. In flightless birds, the number varies widely—penguins have more than 40, while emus have none. “It’s really surprising, that with so many styles of flight in modern birds, they all share this trait of having between 9 and 11 primary feathers,” says Yosef. “And I was surprised that no one seems to have found this before.” While Mesozoic birds and Microraptor have traits consistent with extant flying birds, the group known as anchiornithines deviate significantly, providing strong evidence that they were flightless. These findings will inform the ongoing debate as to whether flight evolved in dinosaurs just once, or multiple separate times. “Our results here seem to suggest that flight only evolved once in dinosaurs,” notes Jingmai, but she also acknowledges that the fossil record from the earliest stages of feathered wing evolution is scanty. Read more in the press release, at Discover Mag, or listen to J & Y discuss the research with Ira Flatow on Science Friday.

Vocalization: If you’re the sort of person who can’t get enough about the syrinx—the vocal organ of birds—then you may well start doing backflips when you learn that Chad Eliason and colleagues have just produced another article on that device in Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, hard on the tibio-tarsal joints of a paper in Current Biology on the same topic. We kid, but it’s actually quite interesting. The syrinx is a key innovation in the evolutionary history of vertebrate communication. Three major avian lineages, passerines, parrots, and hummingbirds, independently acquired both specialized syringeal structures and vocal-production learning (the ability to modify the structure of vocalizations as a result of hearing those of others); a functional relationship between the two has been proposed but remains poorly understood. In hummingbirds, the syrinx has never been studied comparatively alongside non-learning relatives in the parent lineage Strisores. In this new paper, Chad and colleagues from the University of Texas-Austin (including Research Associate Julia Clarke) describe the anatomy of the syrinx in 21 species of swifts and hummingbirds (most from FMNH) using enhanced-contrast computed tomography, which reveals structures previously unreported in the group. They also tested for correlations between syringeal and acoustic traits in a sample of hummingbirds and swifts using phylogenetically informed regressions. Swift and hummingbird syrinxes share certain morphological characteristics, and may be ancestral to Strisores. Meanwhile, certain differences in hummingbirds (a shortened trachea and tracheolateralis muscle) led to a significant negative correlation between tracheal elongation and maximum vocalization frequency—in other words, having a shorter trachea enables hummingbirds to produce high-frequency vocalizations.

February 23. 2024

Arborescent lycopsids exhibited considerable architectural diversity despite being subject to this developmental constraint, but Stigmaria ficoides has mainly been known to have branched by equal dichotomies. However, in a new study published in the International Journal of Plant Sciences, Negaunee Postdoctoral Fellow Michael D’Antonio and Negaunee Assistant Curator of Paleobotany Fabiany Herrera describe two new Stigmaria ficoides specimens that exhibited unequal branching of their axes. These specimens were compared to a spectacular S. ficoides specimen from the Field Museum Paleobotanical Collection, and after ruling out fossilization processes, preservation, and life history as potential explanations for the unusual branching behavior, the authors concluded that these specimens in fact represent evidence of a new developmental pathway for the species that is in line with the development observed in the shoot systems with which it is associated. This finding is part of a broader push by Michael and collaborators to better understand the anatomy, development, and physiology of the charismatic yet strange arborescent lycopsids.

February 23. 2024

European naturalists described the Cape lion as having a particularly black mane and as being morphologically distinct. However, alternative depictions and descriptions of Cape lions from Indigenous people reported mixed or light mane coloration. To shed light on this discrepancy, a Field Museum-University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign team compared the genetic diversity and distinctiveness of Cape lions to modern lions across 13 African countries in a new study in the Journal of Heredity. FMNH authors are Thomas Gnoske (Assistant Collections Manager, Birds), Julian Kerbis (Adjunct Curator), Velizar Simeonovski (Research Associate), and from UIUC, Alida de Flamingh (postdoc, and first author), Ripan Malhi (Professor of Anthropology), Alfred Roca (Professor of Animal Sciences), and Julian Catchen (Associate Professor of Integrative Biology).

As Julian told a reporter, “the scientific name of the Cape lion, Panthera leo melanochaitus, literally means black mane, but this description was based on a single specimen. Historically, we see lots of examples of creatures that are large and attractive like lions, where everybody wants to claim that they’d discovered a new one, without taking into account variation in the population, or whether that species is even unique.” Earlier investigations focused on limited segments of the Cape lion genome offered the first indication that these lions might not be as distinct as initially believed. The new study represents the first comprehensive examination of the entire Cape lion genome in comparison to contemporary lion populations across Africa.

The team gathered samples from two Cape lion skulls housed at the Field Museum that were originally components of taxidermy mounts at the South African Institute in Cape Town (1828–1838). “Unlike most other Cape Lion specimens around the world, these specimens had a traceable history and geographic collection location,” noted Tom. “As such, it was a great opportunity and challenge to see what application of the newest genomic methods could tell us about these specimens.” Adds Alida, “working with museums like the Field is an exciting opportunity to apply ancient DNA analyses to better understand human-animal interactions. I think it’s an area that’s going to be studied more and more as genetic technology continues to advance.” The genetic data from the skulls was compared to 118 existing mitogenomes and nuclear genomes of 53 other lions across Africa. Analysis revealed that the genome of the Cape lions was diverse, and demonstrated genomic links with other lions from both the southern and eastern parts of Africa. The researchers also found that the Cape lion genomes exhibited high heterozygosity [the possession of two different forms of a particular gene, one inherited from each parent], and lacked traits commonly associated with small populations and inbreeding, characteristics frequently observed in endangered species facing population decline. The unexpected absence of such traits in the Cape lion genomes is particularly noteworthy, since the skulls were collected as the species was approaching extinction, suggesting that they were hunted so rapidly that their genomes didn’t have time to accumulate the signatures of long-term small population size. The genomic richness also suggests that these lions likely exhibited significant phenotypic variation, including diverse mane coloration, which aligns with alternative descriptions and Indigenous perspectives on the species. As Ripan observed, the genomic data and analysis didn’t match colonial descriptions of Cape lions, thus “identifying type specimens using information from people who are not originally from that area can result in ignoring diversity in a population that is important for understanding evolution.” The study also underscores the importance of trans-country parks and heightened genetic connectivity between populations across Africa in order to maintain genetic diversity and flow. The study was funded by the USAID Wildlife TRAPS Project, USDA, NSF, and the University of Illinois. You can get more information from the UIUC press release.

February 23. 2024

The extent to which pre-Columbian human societies occupied and significantly impacted Amazonian environments is a long-standing question that remain under active discussion. Data are particularly limited from terra firme forests, that is, formations located away from watercourses that occupy over 90% of the Amazon Basin. This new study investigates pre-Columbian influences on fire and vegetation in three regions of the western Peruvian Amazon through phytolith and charcoal analysis of terrestrial soils. One area, in the Tapiche-Blanco watersheds, had not been previously studied; relevant tree data and soil samples were collected during the Field Museum’s Rapid Inventory 27 in 2014. Previous phytolith research for the other two regions, the Los Amigos Biological Station and the area between the towns of Iquitos and Nauta, was expanded to study forest composition and cultural palm usage through time in more detail. The results indicate that the diverse forests in these regions remained intact and were little affected by human forest clearing and agriculture with annual seed and root crops during the past 2000–5000 years of prehistory. In limited areas within each region, usually in riverine environments, people planted domesticated palm species for food, building materials, etc., creating tree communities now have more domesticated palm trees than forests elsewhere. All in all, however, the accumulated evidence from various proxies indicates the persistence of diverse, forest-dominated pre-Columbian landscapes in western and parts of central Amazonia studied to date.

Two of the co-authors, Marcos Ríos and Luis Torres, are Action Associates who participated in the Tapiche-Blanco inventory. That’s Marcos in the top photo (left) with Nigel, during the RI27 in 2014. Luis spent two months at the Museum last summer (bottom right photo) to identify herbarium specimens from the Tapiche-Blanco tree plots established during that inventory. His visit was supported by the Science and Scholarship Funding Committee. Data from those plots are published with the new paper, and have also been incorporated into the Amazon Tree Diversity Network.

February 23. 2024

“Conservation Strategies for Mammals in Brazilian Amazonia: Future Work at Local, Regional, and Global Scales,” written with co-authors from Brazil, the US, and the UK, considers pathways to work for a future for Amazonia where both humans and other mammals flourish and the rainforest is protected. The authors briefly review the tens of millions of years it has taken to develop the current diversity of mammalian fauna living in Amazonia, then review the current state of research and conservation concerns for nonhuman mammalian taxa in Brazilian Amazonia. They emphasize that the utilization and transformation of Amazonian land and resources continue to be driven by the export of energy and goods to other regions of Brazil and, notably, to international markets, putting the mammalian taxa at risk. The team suggests priorities for conservation interventions in Brazilian Amazonia, including Indigenous Land demarcation; valuing of local community knowledge; enforcement of protection for remaining continuous rainforest habitat; reforestation and re-establishment of connectivity among forest fragments; development and implementation of action plans for diverse mammalian taxa; utilization of a one-health perspective for infectious disease risk surveillance and mitigation; and climate change research and mitigation.

As the sole author of the chapter entitled “Xenarthrans of Brazilian Amazonia: Recent Discoveries, Knowledge Gaps, and Conservation Concerns,” Anderson describes the current diversity of xenarthrans (a group that includes anteaters, armadillos, and sloths) and shows that 10 species were newly recognized only in the last 15 years, representing an increase of 18% over a very short period. Most of the new xenarthran species have geographic ranges within the Brazilian Amazonia, including the two great long-nosed armadillos re-discovered when Anderson was a Ph.D. student working at the Field Museum with Emeritus Curator Bruce Patterson. Of the 39 xenarthran species now recognized, 19 can be found in the Brazilian Amazon, which alone harbors a higher diversity than any other country. Nevertheless, Anderson highlights, studies on Brazilian Amazon xenarthrans are limited, based mostly on a few unquantified observations and short-term studies. Such knowledge gaps are alarming in light of the accelerated deforestation rate in the eastern Amazon, where at least three xenarthran species are endemic. There is vast potential for future projects aiming to explore the taxonomy and ecology of xenarthrans, particularly focusing on Amazonian populations.

February 9. 2024

The presence of Andean plant genera in the moist forests of the Brazilian Atlantic Coast has been historically hypothesized as the result of cross-continental migrations starting at the eastern Andean flanks. This paper tests hypotheses of former connections between the Atlantic and Andean forests by examining distribution patterns of selected cool and moist-adapted plant arboreal taxa present in 54 South American pollen records of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), about 19,000–23,000 calibrated years before present, known to occur in both plant domains. The researchers explored connectivity patterns between these two neotropical regions as well as individual ecological niches during the LGM by way of cluster analysis of fossil assemblages and modern plant distributions. Additionally, the team examined the ecological niche of 137 plant species with shared distributions between the Andes and coastal Brazil. The results revealed five complex connectivity patterns for South American vegetation linking Andean, Amazonian and Atlantic Forests and one disjunct distribution in southern Chile. This study also provides a better understanding of vegetation cover on the large and shallow South American continental shelf that was exposed due to a global sea level drop.

February 9. 2024

The article expands on prior arguments revolving around anthropologist/economist Karl Polanyi’s substantivist thought both by highlighting critical perspectives on capitalism that long predated Polanyian views, and by identifying a bounty of new evidence and theory concerning premodern and contemporary marketplace economies. Together these lines of evidence question and transcend Polanyi’s entrenched claims. The conceptual scheme Gary and Richard present distinguishes between open and competitive marketplaces and the capitalist impulse thereby adding depth and breadth to the analysis of price-making markets and their divergent social and economic outcomes across time and space. The article also highlights Implications for the late second millennium CE rise of the Atlantic powers in the West. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Field Museum and its Vice President of Science, Dr. Thorsten Lumbsch, which facilitated publication.

February 9. 2024

The team included former FMNH postdocs Surya Rout and Xenia Ritter, Research Associate Birger Schmitz (Lund University, Lund, Sweden), and undergraduate interns Katarina Keating and Kevin Eisenstein. The researchers devised a Raman-spectroscopy method (using the Field Museum’s WITec alpha 300R Raman spectroscopy system) to identify extraterrestrial chrome-spinel minerals in limestone excavated from the Lynna River section near St. Petersburg, Russia, and distinguish them from terrestrial minerals. The goal of the study was to identify and analyze extraterrestrial chrome-spinel from sedimentary rock to determine the diversity of sources of these minerals, which include a variety of different asteroid parent bodies including S-type asteroids, Vesta and vestoids. The team found a fundamentally different meteorite flux ~467 million years ago compared to today and other time periods in Earth’s history. They also observed that the grain size range of the samples determines the mix of different sources, i.e., larger grains originate from more thermally altered parent bodies such as differentiated asteroids like Vesta, whereas smaller grains tend to originate from smaller and less altered asteroids. The methodological implications of the study for future research are significant. Application of this method will enable Raman to be used to identify extraterrestrial minerals in sediments of different ages, and together with EDS and oxygen isotopic analysis will enable scientists to determine how the sources of extraterrestrial material that arrives on Earth changes through time. The study was supported by the Field Museum’s Science and Scholarship Funding Committee.

February 9. 2024

The new fossils are about ~125 million years old and are three-dimensionally preserved, showing remarkable morphological and anatomical details. The team studied more than 300 specimens using scanning electron microscopy, anatomical sectioning, light microscopy, synchrotron radiation X‐ray microtomography, and cuticle preparations. The two new species, Mongolitria friisae and Mongolitriae exesum, are unique in that germination occurred by the seed coat splitting into three valves, versus two, as found in many living and extinct gymnosperm seed plants. Mongolitria seeds are similar to other fossil seeds that have been assigned to Cycadales. However, the three-valve splitting is not observed in any living or extinct cycadaceous plant, leaving its higher‐level systematic affinities uncertain. Thanks to the excellent preservation of the seeds, one fossil species shows clear evidence of likely insect‐induced damage (for a 3-D volume rendering video of M. exesum showing the internal insect damage, click here). Maya spent countless hours mapping the internal damage to virtually reconstruct the intricate tunnel-like lesions left in the fossil seed. The type of insect that caused the damage is still unknown, but the new research shows that these gymnosperm seeds were also likely targeted for their nutritive value during the Early Cretaceous.

February 9. 2024

The study scrutinizes the use of anthropological terms such as matriliny and patriliny in ancient DNA studies, arguing that these terms oversimplify political and kinship practices in societies with or without the state. Emphasizing cross-cultural diversity, the article challenges a few assumptions in archaeogenetics, advocating for nuanced empirical exploration. It calls for more engagement in debates on kinship and sociopolitical organization in the deep past from sociocultural anthropological perspectives, which is also an objective of the X-KIN (Exploring Prehistoric Kinship) project.

February 9. 2024

The students that Bill hosted are part of their Youth Diplomats program. After an overview of the history of the exhibition and some Q&A, Bill led them on a tour of the show. According to the organization’s program coordinator, they “had a blast,” and “appreciated the unique opportunity to hear about the historical context and participate in the Q&A.”

February 9. 2024

This book demonstrates how evolutionary systematics and philosophy can yield new insight into the development of organized religion. Combining evolutionary theory with a wealth of cultural records, the book explores the formation, extinction, and diversification of different world religions, including the many branches of Asian cyclicism, polytheism, and monotheism. It deploys a graphic system of evolutionary trees to illustrate historical interrelationships among the world’s major religious traditions, rejecting colonialist and hierarchical “ladder of progress” views of evolution. The Evolution of Religions marshals compelling evidence, starting far back in time, that all major belief systems are related, despite the many conflicts that have taken place among them. By emphasizing these broad historical interconnections, this book promotes the need for greater tolerance and deeper, unbiased understanding of cultural diversity, which may be necessary for the future survival of humanity.

February 9. 2024

A new article in Ecosystem Health and Sustainability by Assistant Curator of Mammals Anderson Feijó and colleagues from 10 institutes in China shows how priority areas for felid conservation in Tibet can be delineated without jeopardizing the livelihood and development of local communities. The team assembled the largest dataset of felid distribution in the region (nearly 500 individual georeferenced localities of 11 species), through partnerships with local governmental bureaus and long-term field surveys. This diverse array includes emblematic cats such as snow leopards, clouded leopards, lynxes, and tigers, making Tibet one of the regions with the highest felid diversity in the world. The study integrates multiple biodiversity metrics incorporating the ecological role and the evolutionary history of the various species, together with livestock density, farmland and urban areas, and other human needs. The team concluded that about 21% of Tibet ranks as a high priority for felid conservation. The selected areas take into account alternative land uses that compete with biodiversity conservation to balance sustainability and societal development. Worrisomely, 76% of the high-priority areas are currently unprotected. Allocating stricter protective management for felid populations and habitats in these areas would minimize human-wildlife conflicts. The largest extension of the key unprotected regions is located in southeastern Tibet close to the border with India, Bhutan, and Nepal, demanding transnational conservation efforts across the whole Pan-Himalaya region. The team also recommends a set of compensation programs to further mitigate human-wildlife conflicts across Tibet.

January 5. 2024

The ecology of Malagasy bat ectoparasites having been little studied, the aim of this research was to produce new insights on the consumption of invertebrates—specifically flies of the families Nycteribiidae and Streblidae—via analysis of the fecal contents of the widespread bat species Rousettus madagascariensis (aka the “Madagascan rousette”). Steve and colleagues collected scat samples from individual Rousettus captured in a cave passage either during the early evening or early morning, and analyzed them to identify and quantify the arthropods they contained. The presence of fragments in the feces confirmed that this species consumes their dipteran ectoparasites—that is, bat flies. The team found that ingestion rates are higher for bats exiting the cave after dusk than those entering the cave at predawn, indicating that consumption rates are greater when bats are in the day roost site as compared to foraging outside the cave. They also found that the quantity of ectoparasite remains is related to the age of individual bats. Given that bat ectoparasites are known to be reservoirs of certain pathogens, the paper raises the question of whether these zoonotic diseases can be transmitted between bats via an oral route.

January 5. 2024