Webb Today: The Alf Research Program Advandced Studies in Paleontology

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WEBB

It is somewhat astonishing to consider the legacy left

by Ray Alf. The paleontologist

and educator certainly had ambitions as a young man, but from what is known of his life, it is clear that before he arrived on campus, none of those included teaching, much less founding a museum. Yet—Alf left an indelible mark on generations of Webb students. Moment of Time, a newly published biography, offers an engaging account of Alf’s life and career at Webb.

Chance encounters had much to do not only with Alf ending up at Webb, but also with key moments in the development of the museum. Alf had moved from Nebraska to Los Angeles in July of 1929 to pursue his goal of qualifying for the 1932 U.S. Olympic Team and was running for the os Angeles Athletic Club. But his efforts to find employment had fallen at. elenting on

The Alf Research Program Advanced Studies in Paleontology

his decision to leave the field of education for a short time, he’d been a high school teacher in ebraska he registered with a teacher’s agency. In a matter of days, he was on a Pacific Electric ailway Car heading to Claremont for an interview with Thompson Webb. He got the job and never left.

The museum has its origins in the mid-1930s, when Alf began collecting fossils, first as a hobby, then with aspirations for something more significant. In 1 , he wrote in one of his notebooks of his desire to someday have a “fine” natural history museum at Webb. n the first summer trip, Alf met a paleontologist named John Clark from the University of Colorado and ended up taking a sabbatical from Webb to study with Clark and earn a master’s degree.

Alf brought that expertise back to Webb by incorporating paleontology into the curriculum of his biology course and eventually established a permanent museum on campus.

The museum program has expanded over the last twenty years into a four-year curriculum with the junior and senior year focused on original research topics in Advanced Studies in Paleontology (ASIP), a unique course taught by Don Lofgren, Ph.D., the museum’s director, and Andrew Farke, Ph.D., the museum’s Augustyn amily Curator and irector of esearch Collections. “The ASIP class started around 2000, with only two or three students enrolled.

But student research really took off after Andy arke came to Webb in 200 ,” says ofgren.

“With Andy here, we soon had 10 students in ASIP, and now there are 2 .”

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Over 95% of the collection comes from peccary trips with students, and so we’re still adding to the collection. —Don Lofgren

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todayadvanced research program

“I think the most important thing students learn in ASIP is that science is a process, not a set of facts,” says Farke. They also discover that it can be riddled with tedium. “Sometimes you don’t get your glamorous result right away. You might have to do six months or a year of work before you even get your first glimpse of what results might be.” And, there are false starts and dead ends. It’s not straight forward or instantaneous, but it can be extraordinarily rewarding.

“After you’ve worked so hard for so long, finally getting a result that’s new to science—the discovery of a fossil that’s completely new, or finding out that, wow, this fossil I’ve been studying is even more important than we thought—those are the big things.” This kind of work puts the museum and the research generated from its collection in a broader context, raising its national and international profiles.

These are some examples of student projects.

Nathan Paik ’19 works with Farke

on the study of the brain cavity of Hoplophoneus occidentalis—a type of saber tooth “false” cat.

Nathan is creating a 3D model of the brain, called an endocast, using CT scans from the animal’s skull and 3D modelling software.

As he notes, “I’m comparing it to different models that have been studied in the past, describing the brain structure as a reference. I have always had an interest in dinosaurs and fossils since I was a kid. The honors paleontology course during my sophomore year made me a lot more interested in the paleontology field.” Through ASIP, athan has discovered that the most important factor for success in research is managing his time wisely and maintaining his motivation.

“We scaffold the paleontology experience at Webb so students start with big picture stuff and then narrow down in their focus.”

—Andy Farke

The research of Eunice Yip ’19 is centered on the femur (thigh) bone of the duck-billed dinosaur Edmontosaurus, and her results were just published in the peer-reviewed international journal Vertebrate Anatomy Palaeontology Morphology.

As she described her project, “The museum had a fossil of a relatively small Edmontosaurus femur, and I had to determine whether it was the femur of an adult or a baby. I made a lot of measurements and researched the different types of duckbilled dinosaur femurs out there.” It turns out the femur was relatively significant because it was one of the smallest femurs ever found, and the results showed how the shape of the femur of Edmontosaurus changed as it grew to an adult.

Through the process, Yip says, “I learned that it’s okay to not know everything. Even after going through honors paleontology and then starting my ASIP research project, there was still a lot I did not know, and I learned how to ask for help.”

“To find something that’s going to end up in the museum—especially in my senior year—it was exciting.”

—Izzy Gerard The study of very small insectivorous mammals from Pipestone Springs in southwest Montana is Izzy Gerard ‘s ‘19 project. It is the first time these specimens in the museum’s collection have been analyzed for publication. She has been identifying the species represented by each specimen and documenting its history of classification in the scientific literature.

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“There was a field trip where little kids came on campus to visit the museum, and I thought

that was really cool because it was helping other people learn about the museum while we were learning about it ourselves.”

—Eunice Yip ’19 Her research is the first on Pipestone Springs insectivores since the 1 0s. Adding to its significance, Gerard says, is that “particularly for one of these species there has been a tug of war between several paleontologists about their classification.” Her research will be published jointly with the results of projects of other students who are working on lizards, snakes, and other types of mammals found at Pipestone Springs. “ ne of the things I think you learn pretty quickly from research is not to give up,” Gerard says. “If I keep looking, eventually I’ll find the research paper I need that will make things fit together. Having the wherewithal to keep going when things are challenging is something really important to paleontology, and it’s definitely going to help me in the future.” ast year, Ben Martinez ’19 traveled with arke to the Western Association of Vertebrate Paleontologists (WAVP) conference in St. George, Utah, to present the preliminary findings of his research. Martinez worked on a bear track (called Platykopus) found on a peccary trip in the

late 1 0s, and there are 1 slabs, weighing up to 200 pounds.

Martinez says, “it was like a big puzzle but really heavy.

After I finally got everything laid out, I took a few pictures and started working on identifying each footprint and its orientation.” He then read research articles on Platykopus tracks and found that there is almost nothing known about this fossil bear.

As Martinez attended lectures and presented his own research at WAVP, he realized how critically important publishing research is to the protection of the localities where fossils were found, because localities can get destroyed. This revelation changed his perspective on research, “I had been doing paleo just as a hobby. I thought, inosaurs are cool. But after the conference, I realized it does matter more than I realized.”