5 minute read
PREHISTORIC PENGUINS
By: Mercy Back, UHM MOP Student
Many theories exist in the world of paleontology as to how the age of dinosaurs ended 66 million years ago. Some scientists say that a change in climate could’ve wiped out 3/4th of the life on Earth, but others argue it was a meteor impact that caused many dinosaurs to go extinct. But what exactly happened after the dinosaurs went extinct? New life emerged from every corner of the world, including penguins whose fossils were recovered near the Chatham Islands off the coast of New Zealand. This penguin called the Kupoupou stilwelli, Kupoupou, meaning ‘diving bird’ in Te Re Moriori, was a fairly large bird that is a distant relative of the King Penguins, which stand tall at 1.1 meters (about 3.5 feet). Paleontologists have not discovered any remains of penguins before the Cretaceous extinction, but these birds are hypothesized to be the one of the first ancestors of penguins who could not fly. Their skeletal structures imply that, like the extant species of penguins that we love and adore, they waddled on land, unlike some other fossils of penguins recovered from around that time period. The Senior Curator of Natural History, Dr. Paul Scofield, of the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand says that this discovery of these giant birds helps prove the hypothesis that penguins evolved rapidly after the mass extinction event occurred. K. stilwelli, the ancient ancestor of modern penguins, gives paleontologists more insight into the evolution of the world’s penguins and how the diversity of these species emerged. Dr. Scofield said to press “It’s not impossible that penguins lost the ability to fly and gained the ability to swim after the extinction event of 66 million years ago... If we ever find a penguin fossil from the Cretaceous period, we’ll know for sure.”
By: Zada Boyce-Quentin,
Last month, I was delighted to have a chance to sit down with Dr. Sarah McAnulty, a teuthologist currently leading an Atlas Obscura expedition in Honolulu. In addition to her research on Hawaiian bobtail squid, she is extremely committed to developing the field of science communication and has launched a number of innovative and highly effective initiatives such as Skype a Scientist, an organization which matches scientists with classrooms, her Squids Across America tour, her Drunk Scientist Trivia nights, and her cephalopod coloring book.
Z: What first drew you to squid? When did you first know you wanted to be a teuthologist? M: When I was eight, I rented a video from the library which had cuttlefish doing this passing cloud maneuver. (This involves rapid color shifting of chromatophores; pigment-containing cells found in cephalopods that allow them to display different colors at will.) At that point, I didn’t really know what cephalopod work looked like, but in college I heard a talk about cuttlefish camouflage at Woods Hole, and I’ve been working with cephalopods since then. Z: So you did your graduate research on bobtail squid and Vibrio Fischer. What first got you interested in that? (For her graduate research, McAnulty studied the interaction between bacteria Vibrio fischeri and the Hawaiian bobtail squid, and how hemocytes in the bobtail squid help maintain the symbiotic relationship between the two.) M: I took an immunology course in my senior year, which was really interesting. I wanted to bring cephalopods and immunology together. So I started working with Dr. Spencer Nyholm, looking at how the immune cells of the bobtail squid can differentiate good bacteria from the bad. (You can read her paper here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28111565.) Z: What inspired you to make scicomm a focus and start Skype a Scientist? M: Around 2017, there was a lot of anxiety in the science community; people didn’t really know what the future of science held. There was a lot of energy and I wanted to funnel that into something useful, so I started Skype a Scientist. I didn’t really anticipate having it be a big part of what I was doing, but we connected 800 classrooms in the first semester. I was doing my PhD at the time, and it definitely took as much time and energy as that, so now I’m running it full-time. Z: What’s been the most rewarding part of organizing Skype a Scientist? Bobtail squid. By: Christian Gloor, Flickr.
By: Zada Boyce-Quentin, Seawords Editor
M: I love hearing testimonials from teachers and scientists. Teachers who might not have the resources to organize field trips can virtually hop into a lab, and scientists can get really jazzed about their work again. Doing research can get exhausting, so being able to explain your work and get kids excited can help you remember that, ‘Hey, my job is awesome’. Z: In addition to Skype a Scientist, you’ve also gone on tour! What motivated that, and what was the best part? M: There were a few reasons I decided to go on tour; I was writing my thesis and was stuck in front of my computer, and I’ve always wanted to do a cross-country road trip. I also wanted to get scientists focused on scicomm and get them excited. It was a late-night idea that blew up into a big tour. As for a best part, there were a lot- you only get a little cross-section of the work going on through writing, so I got to see the greatest hits and museum collections at all these universities around the country. And I got to see a bunch of new parts of the country! Z: What is the focus of scicomm for you? M: It really depends on each scientist. Some are good with science policy, others are good as getting people intrigued, providing the first step. It works as an ecosystem; everyone’s doing something different. Find out what’s fun and what you’re good at. Z: What advice would you give to people looking to get started in scicomm? M: Practice all the time, and take pictures of everything. And also, make sure you really understand diversity, equity, and inclusion. You don’t want to say anything insensitive before even getting started. Z: If you could have any squid adaptation, what would it be? M: Definitely chromatophores! Polarized vision would be cool too. To learn more about Dr. McAnulty and her work, visit her website at: https://sarahmcanulty.weebly.com/ or follow her on Twitter and Instagram @SarahMackAttack.
