Category: Slideshows

Observed by Texas telescope: Light from huge explosion 12 billion years ago reaches Earth

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 3, 2014

Known as a gamma-ray burst, the intense light captured in the night sky resulted from one of the biggest and hottest explosions in the universe, occurring shortly after the Big Bang.

Intense light from the enormous explosion of a star more than 12 billion years ago — shortly after the Big Bang — recently reached Earth and was visible in the sky.

Known as a gamma-ray burst, light from the rare, high-energy explosion traveled for 12.1 billion years before it was detected and observed by a telescope, ROTSE-IIIb, owned by Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

Gamma-ray bursts are believed to be the catastrophic collapse of a star at the end of its life. SMU physicists report that their telescope was the first on the ground to observe the burst and to capture an image, said Farley Ferrante, a graduate student in SMU’s Department of Physics, who monitored the observations along with two astronomers in Turkey and Hawaii.

Recorded as GRB 140419A by NASA’s Gamma-ray Coordinates Network, the burst was spotted at 11 p.m. April 19 by SMU’s robotic telescope at the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains of West Texas.

Gamma-ray burst 1404191 was spotted at 11 p.m. on April 19 by SMU's robotic ROTSE-IIIb telescope at McDonald Observatory, Fort Davis, Texas. — Gamma-ray burst 1404191 was spotted at 11 p.m. April 19 by SMU’s robotic ROTSE-IIIb telescope at McDonald Observatory, Fort Davis, Texas.

Gamma-ray bursts are not well understood by astronomers, but they are considered important, Ferrante said.

“As NASA points out, gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe since the Big Bang,” he said. “These bursts release more energy in 10 seconds than our Earth’s sun during its entire expected lifespan of 10 billion years.”

Some of these gamma-ray bursts appear to be related to supernovae, and correspond to the end-of-life of a massive star, said Robert Kehoe, physics professor and leader of the SMU astronomy team.

“Gamma-ray bursts may be particularly massive cousins to supernovae, or may correspond to cases in which the explosion ejecta are more beamed in our direction. By studying them, we learn about supernovae,” Kehoe said.

Scientists weren’t able to detect optical light from gamma-ray bursts until the late 1990s, when telescope technology improved. Among all lights in the electromagnetic spectrum, gamma rays have the shortest wavelengths and are visible only using special detectors.

Gamma-ray bursts result from hot stars that measure as enormous as 50 solar masses. The explosion occurs when the stars run out of fuel and collapse in on themselves, forming black holes.

The ROTSE-IIIb robotic telescope at McDonald Observatory, Fort Davis, Texas. (Photo: McDonald Observatory)

Outer layers detonate, shooting out material along the rotation axis in powerful, high-energy jets that include gamma radiation.

As the gamma radiation declines, the explosion produces an afterglow of visible optical light. The light, in turn, fades very quickly, said Kehoe. Physicists calculate the distance of the explosion based on the shifting wavelength of the light, or redshift.

“The optical light is visible for anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours,” Kehoe said. “Sometimes optical telescopes can capture the spectra. This allows us to calculate the redshift of the light, which tells us how fast the light is moving away from us. This is an indirect indication of the distance from us.”

Observational data from gamma-ray bursts allows scientists to understand structure of the early universe
To put into context the age of the new gamma-ray burst discoveries, Kehoe and Ferrante point out that the Big Bang occurred 13.81 billion years ago. GRB 140419A is at a red shift of 3.96, Ferrante said.

“That means that GRB 140419A exploded about 12.1 billion years ago,” he said, “which is only about one-and-a-half billion years after the universe began. That is really old.”

Armed with images of the burst, astronomers can analyze the observational data to draw further conclusions about the structure of the early universe.

“At the time of this gamma-ray burst’s explosion, the universe looked vastly different than it does now,” Kehoe said. “It was an early stage of galaxy formation. There weren’t heavy elements to make Earth-like planets. So this is a glimpse at the early universe. Observing gamma-ray bursts is important for gaining information about the early universe.”

GRB 140419A’s brightness, measured by its ability to be seen by someone on Earth, was of the 12th magnitude, Kehoe said, indicating it was only 10 times dimmer than what is visible through binoculars, and only 200 times dimmer than the human eye can see, Kehoe said.

“The difference in brightness is about the same as between the brightest star you can see in the sky, and the dimmest you can see with the naked eye on a clear, dark night,” Kehoe said. “Considering this thing was at the edge of the visible universe, that’s an extreme explosion. That was something big. Really big.”

SMU telescope responded to NASA satellite’s detection and notification
SMU’s Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) IIIb is a robotic telescope. It is part of a network of ground telescopes responsive to a NASA satellite that is central to the space agency’s Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission. Images of the gamma-ray bursts are at http://bit.ly/1kKZeh5.

When the Swift satellite detects a gamma-ray burst, it instantly relays the location. Telescopes around the world, such as SMU’s ROTSE-IIIb, swing into action to observe the burst’s afterglow and capture images, said Govinda Dhungana, an SMU graduate student who participated in the gamma-ray burst research.

SMU’s ROTSE-IIIb observes optical emission from several gamma-ray bursts each year. It observed GRB 140419A just 55 seconds after the burst was detected by Swift.

Just days later, ROTSE-IIIb observed and reported a second rare and distant gamma-ray burst, GRB 140423A, at 3:30 a.m. April 23. The redshift of that burst corresponds to a look back in time of 11.8 billion years. ROTSE-IIIb observed it 51 seconds after the burst was detected by Swift.

“We have the brightest detection and the earliest response on both of those because our telescope is fully robotic and no human hands were involved,” Ferrante said.

Ferrante, the first to check observations on GRB 140423A, is first-author on that gamma-ray burst. Tolga Guver, associate professor in the Department of Astronomy and Space Sciences at Istanbul University, Turkey, is second author. On GRB 140419A, Guver is first author and Ferrante is second.

The research is funded by the Texas Space Grant Consortium, an affiliate of NASA. — Margaret Allen

Tags Dedman College, Farley Ferrante, Govinda Dhungana, Robert Kehoe, SMU Department of Physics

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SMU contributes fossils, expertise to new Perot Museum in ongoing scientific collaboration

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 3, 2012

From dinosaurs to sea turtles, and from technical assistance to advisory roles, SMU faculty and students, the SMU Shuler Museum, and the SMU Innovation Gymnasium have teamed with the nation’s new premier museum of nature and science in Dallas

Toxochelys, Perot Museum, SMU Shuler Museum of Paleontology

Fossils on loan by SMU to the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science include those of animals from an ancient sea that once covered Dallas.

The fossils represent a slice of SMU’s scientific collaboration with the Perot Museum and its predecessor, the Dallas Museum of Natural History.

Items from SMU’s scientists include a 35-foot skeletal cast of the African dinosaur Malawisaurus standing sentry in the spacious glass lobby of the Perot, which opened Dec. 1 near downtown Dallas.

“The new museum building itself is an icon, but it’s also a statement by the city about taking the advances of science to the public,” said vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, an SMU Earth Sciences professor, who serves on the Perot Museum’s Advisory Board and Collections Committee.

Reidus hilli, John Graf, SMU, coelacanth, Dipluridae,

Jacobs, who was ad interim director of the Dallas Museum of Natural History in 1999, led the team that discovered Malawisaurus in Africa. He provided the cast to the museum.

A 35-foot skeletal cast of the African dinosaur Malawisaurus, discovered by a team led by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, is on display at the Perot Museum. (Image: Rich Tate, Alford Media)

“Here at SMU we train students and create new knowledge. The museum’s mission is to take the stories of science out to the general public so they can be used,” said Jacobs. “Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum Curator of Earth Sciences, is a world-class scientist with whom we work. We have a junction between the mission, training and knowledge we have here, infused into and enhanced by what the museum does. That’s why the museum is important to SMU and that’s why SMU is important to the museum.”

Fossils on loan are from the collection of the Shuler Museum of Paleontology in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences. SMU scientists provided technical expertise for exhibits and serve on the Perot Museum’s advisory committees.

Also on exhibit from SMU is a miniature unmanned autonomous helicopter designed for fighting fires that was built by SMU engineering students.

Herbivorous dinosaur is exhibited with ancient Texas plant fossils
Shuler Museum fossils can be viewed in the T. Boone Pickens Life Then and Now Hall. They include an unnamed 113 million-year-old herbivorous dinosaur discovered in 1985 at Proctor Lake southwest of Stephenville, Texas.

For perspective on that exhibit’s paleoenvironment in Texas at the time, SMU paleobotanist Bonnie F. Jacobs provided fossil wood, fossil cones, fossil leaves and images of microscopic pollen grains from the Shuler Museum. The fossils provided information used to create a model of an extinct tree to accompany the exhibit.

Fossil cones and leaves discovered in Hood County are from an extinct ancient tree, says SMU paleobotanist Bonnie F. Jacobs. (Image: SMU)

Plant fossils inform scientists of the ecological setting in which dinosaurs lived and died, said Bonnie Jacobs, an SMU associate professor in the Huffington Department. Her collaboration with the Perot’s Fiorillo, who also is an adjunct research professor of paleoecology in the SMU Earth sciences department, includes fossil plants from Alaska.

“Understanding past climate and climate change will help us understand what may happen in the future,” she said. Bonnie Jacobs is featured in a Perot Museum Career Inspirations video that is part of the permanent exhibit and also advised on the text of some exhibits.

“The world of the past is a test case for global climate models, which are computer driven,” she said. “If we can reconstruct climates of the ancient Earth accurately, then we can create better models of what may happen in the future.”

Understanding paleoclimate through fossil soils is the expertise of Neil Tabor, an SMU associate professor in the Earth Sciences Department whose Perot Museum video discusses ancient soils, environments and the biggest extinction event in Earth’s history.

Fossils date from period when D/FW was covered by ancient sea
The plant fossils are from the geologic period called the Cretaceous, from 146 million years ago to 66 million years ago. They were discovered at the prolific Jones Ranch fossil beds southwest of Fort Worth in Hood County.

At that time, the Jones Ranch — famous as the discovery site of Paluxysaurus jonesi, the state dinosaur of Texas — was not far inland from the muddy coastal shore of a vast shallow sea that a dozen years later would divide North America.

Giant fossil sea turtles were discovered in northeast Texas in 2006 by a 5-year-old girl, Preston Smith. SMU paleontologist Diana Vineyard identified the giant turtles as Toxochelys. (Image: SMU)

Other SMU fossils on loan also date from that period. They include sea turtles, as well as mosasaurs, which were ancient sea lizards that evolved flippers and streamlined bodies for life in the sea.

Stunning examples of fossil sea turtles were discovered in 2006 by a 5 year-old girl, Preston Smith, during a family outing along the North Sulphur River near Ladonia in northeast Texas. The turtles were stacked one on top of the other as if caught in sudden death 80 million years ago.

Diana Vineyard, director of administration and research associate at SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, identified the turtles as Toxochelys while an SMU graduate student.

Also on loan from the Shuler Museum, and also identified by Vineyard, are 110-million-year-old sea turtles from the Early Cretaceous of Texas, discovered near Granbury. They represent early specimens in the transition of turtles from land and shallow marine animals to fully developed sea turtles, Vineyard said.

Exhibit includes mosasaur named for the city of Dallas

A Perot Museum exhibit includes a giant fossil sea turtle discovered in northeast Texas in 2006 by a 5-year-old girl. SMU paleontologist Diana Vineyard identified the giant turtles as Toxochelys. (Image: SMU)

Michael Polcyn, director of SMU’s Digital Earth Sciences Laboratory, put his expertise to work providing technical assistance for the museum’s Ocean Dallas marine reptile exhibit.

An expert in mosasaurs, Polcyn created digital reconstructions of Dallasaurus, named for the city of Dallas, and physically reconstructed the skeletons of Dallasaurus and another mosasaur, Tethysaurus, for the exhibit.

“The Ocean Dallas exhibit was a great opportunity to showcase the extraordinary story that the rocks in the Dallas area tell us about life in the deep past,” said Polcyn, whose mosasaur fieldwork extends from the United States to Angola.

“It was a great experience working with the museum’s creative and technical professionals on this project,” Polcyn said, “but it should be mentioned that many of the fossils in the exhibit were found by interested citizens walking the local creeks and rivers in search of these beasts, and it is they who deserve tremendous credit for bringing these finds to the public.”

Polcyn, who also is featured in a Perot Museum Career Inspirations video, created a skull reconstruction of the Perot Museum’s duck-billed dinosaur Protohadros, named by former SMU doctoral student Jason Head.

Other SMU fossils include dino footprint, croc egg and giant ammonite

The ammonite Parapuzosia, more than 3 feet in diameter and discovered in Dallas County, is on loan from SMU’s Shuler Museum to the Perot Museum.

SMU vertebrate paleontologist Dale A. Winkler, SMU research professor and director of the Shuler Museum, said other fossils on loan include:

a rare 110 million-year-old crocodile egg discovered with specimens of the crocodile Pachycheilosuchus trinquei west of Glen Rose. Pachycheilosuchus trinquei was named by Jack Rogers, a former SMU student. Rogers also found and identified the egg.
an ammonite, Parapuzosia, more than 3 feet in diameter and discovered in Dallas County.

In 2006, two SMU doctoral students assisted with excavation of the new species of dinosaur named for the museum’s namesakes, Margot and Ross Perot.

The dinosaur, Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum, was discovered by the Perot Museum’s Fiorillo and prepared by Perot Museum researcher Ronald Tykoski.

Using portable 3D laser technology, SMU scientists preserved electronically a rare 110 million-year-old fossilized dinosaur footprint from ichnospecies Eubrontes glenrosensis. The model is on display in the Perot Museum. (Image: SMU)

SMU doctoral student Christopher Strganac and former SMU doctoral student Thomas L. Adams helped dig Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum in Alaska. The only skeletal mount of its kind in the world, the 69 million-year-old skull is on display in the Life Then and Now Hall of the Perot Museum.

Also on view in the museum is a 3D cast of a dinosaur footprint that Adams and Strganac created from the laser scan of a 110 million-year-old fossilized dinosaur footprint, from ichnospecies Eubrontes glenrosensis, that was previously excavated and built into the wall of a bandstand at a Texas courthouse in the 1930s.

Another former SMU doctoral student highlighted among the exhibits is Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, who describes in a video the mentoring he received from the Perot’s Fiorillo while the two worked together in Alaska’s Denali National Park.

SMU’s Shuler Museum is named for Ellis W. Shuler, founder of the University’s geology department. Shuler was a driving force behind the precursor to the Perot Museum, the Dallas Museum of Natural History, established in 1936, said geologist James E. Brooks, SMU professor emeritus and SMU Provost emeritus. Brooks served on the Dallas Museum of Natural History’s board of directors from the 1980s until 2005.

Perot Museum presents a strong scientific face of Dallas
“Any first-rate city needs a strong public scientific face with which it’s identified,” Brooks said. “The Perot Museum is going to be that organization.”

Brooks was instrumental in the negotiations with Egypt that enabled the Dallas Museum of Natural History to bring Ramses the Great, its first major exhibit, to Dallas in 1989.

“Museums, in addition to educating children and the general public, also have the responsibility to generate new knowledge, because that makes the city a more intellectually vibrant place,” he said.

Brooks and Louis Jacobs serve on the Perot Museum’s Collections Committee, which serves in an advisory role to Perot Earth Sciences Curator Fiorillo. He and other SMU faculty and staff collaborate on field expeditions to Alaska and Mongolia.

SMU’s Innovation Gymasium contributes to Perot exhibit

Pegasus, an unmanned autonomous helicopter that can fight fires, was designed and built by Lyle Engineering students under Innovation Gymnasium Director Nathan Huntoon. (Image: SMU)

SMU’s Innovation Gymnasium is featured in an exhibit in the Texas Instruments Engineering and Innovation Hall at the Perot Museum, said Nathan R. Huntoon, director of the Innovation Gymnasium at the SMU Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering.

Central to the Engineering and Innovation Hall exhibit is an unmanned autonomous helicopter that can fight fires, built by SMU engineering students.

The Innovation Gym enables SMU students to hone their engineering and creative skills by working on real world, design challenges. Companies, researchers and non-profits all provide real challenges for the students to develop innovative solutions, often under intense time and financial pressure.

The firefighting helicopter featured in the new museum was the first such project.

Accompanying the helicopter is a video demonstration of the helicopter fighting simulated fires, as well as a touch-screen application with interviews of Huntoon and SMU students discussing engineering and innovation.

Huntoon has been a member of the Technology Committee and the Engineering and Innovation Committee for the Perot Museum.

James Quick, a professor of Earth sciences, as well as SMU’s associate vice president for research and dean of graduate studies, applauded the establishment of the Perot Museum, the result of decades of work by many people.

“Every great urban center should have an outstanding museum of nature and science to stimulate the imaginations of people of all ages and attract them to science,” Quick said. “The contribution the Perot Museum will make to North Texas cannot be overstated.” — Margaret Allen

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SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

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Tags Anthony Fiorillo, Bonnie F. Jacobs, Christopher Strganac, Dale A. Winkler, Diana Vineyard, Ellis W. Shuler, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, James E. Brooks, Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn, Neil Tabor, Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Shuler Museum of Paleontology, Thomas L. Adams

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100 million-year-old coelacanth discovered in Texas is new fish species from Cretaceous

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 23, 2012

Species is now the youngest coelacanth from Texas; fish jaw and cranial material indicate a new family — Dipluridae — that was evolutionary transition between two previously known families

A new species of coelacanth fish has been discovered in Texas.

Pieces of tiny fossil skull found in Fort Worth have been identified as 100 million-year-old coelacanth bones, according to paleontologist John F. Graf, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

The coelacanth has one of the longest lineages — 400 million years — of any animal. It is the fish most closely related to vertebrates, including humans.

The SMU specimen is the first coelacanth in Texas from the Cretaceous, said Graf, who identified the fossil. The Cretaceous geologic period extended from 146 million years ago to 66 million years ago.

Graf named the new coelacanth species Reidus hilli.

Coelacanths have been found on nearly every continent
Reidus hilli is now the youngest coelacanth identified in the Lone Star State.

Previously the youngest was a 200 million-year-old coelacanth from the Triassic. Reidus hilli is the first coelacanth ever identified from the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Coelacanth fossils have been found on every continent except Antarctica. Few have been found in Texas, Graf said.

The coelacanth fish has eluded extinction for 400 million years. Scientists estimate the coelacanth reached its maximum diversity during the Triassic.

The coelacanth was thought to have gone extinct about 70 million years ago. That changed, however, when the fish rose to fame in 1938 after live specimens were caught off the coast of Africa. Today coelacanths can be found swimming in the depths of the Indian Ocean.

Chart courtesy of the British Geological Survey.

Closest living fish to all vertebrates alive on land
“These animals have one of the longest lineages of any vertebrates that we know,” Graf said.

The SMU specimen demonstrates there was greater diversity among coelacanths during the Cretaceous than previously known.

“What makes the coelacanth interesting is that they are literally the closest living fish to all the vertebrates that are living on land,” he said. “They share the most recent common ancestor with all of terrestrial vertebrates.”

Coelacanths have boney support in their fins, which is the predecessor to true limbs.

John Graf, SMU, coelacanth, Reidus hilli

“Boney support in the fins allows a marine vertebrate to lift itself upright off the sea floor,” Graf said, “which would eventually lead to animals being able to come up on land.”

Texas coelacanth, Reidus hilli, represents a new species and a new family
Graf identified Reidus hilli from a partial skull, including gular plates, which are bones that line the underside of the jaw.

“Coelacanths are not the only fish that have gular plates, but they are one of the few that do,” Graf said. “In fact, the lenticular shape of these gular plates is unique to coelacanths. That was the first indicator that we had a fossil coelacanth.”

Reidus hilli was an adult fish of average size for the time in which it lived, said Graf. While modern coelacanths can grow as large as 3 meters, Reidus hilli was probably no longer than 40 centimeters. Its tiny skull is 45 millimeters long by 26 millimeters wide, or about 1.75 inches long by 1 inch wide.

Reidus hilli’s total body size is typical of the new family of coelacanths, Dipluridae, which Graf describes and names. He chose the name for the least primitive coelacanth in the family, Diplurus, which lived during the Triassic.

“Reidus hilli helped me tie a group of coelacanths together into what I identify as a new family of coelacanths,” he said. “This family represents a transition between the two large groups of youngest living coelacanths from the fossil record, Mawsoniidae and Latimeriidae.”

Diplurid coelacanths are typically smaller than the two families with which they are most closely associated, Mawsoniidae and Latimeriidae. Mawsoniidae and Latimeriidae both have late Cretaceous members reaching large body sizes, ranging from 1 meter to 3 meters in total body length, Graf said.

Reidus hilli provides clues to missing coelacanth history
Reidus hilli is named, in part, for the amateur collector who discovered the fish, Robert R. Reid.

A Fort Worth resident, Reid has collected fossils for decades. He found the fossil specimen while walking some land that had been prepared for construction of new homes. Reid noticed the fossil lying loose on the ground in a washed out gully created by run-off.

Following Graf’s analysis, Reid was surprised to learn he’d collected a coelacanth — and a new species.

“When I found it, I could tell it was a bone but I didn’t think it was anything special,” said Reid, recalling the discovery. “I certainly didn’t think it was a coelacanth.”

At the time, SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs recommended to Reid that he donate the fossil and have it scientifically identified. Reid gave the fossil to SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

“It is astounding what can be learned from the discoveries that people like Rob Reid make in their own backyards,” said Jacobs, an SMU professor of earth sciences and president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man. “The discovery of living coelacanths in the Indian Ocean after being presumed extinct for 70 million years highlights one of the great mysteries of ocean life. Where were they all that time? The new fossil from Texas is a step toward understanding this fascinating history.”

Reidus hilli is the latest of many fossils Reid has discovered. Others also have been named for him.

Reidus hilli discovered in Duck Creek Formation of North Texas
Reidus hilli came from the fossil-rich Duck Creek Formation, which is a layer-cake band of limestone and shale about 40 feet thick.

The fossil was found in marine sediments, Graf said. It is one of many marine fossils found in the North Texas area, which 100 million years ago was covered by the Western Interior Seaway that divided North America from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean.

“That is unique to younger coelacanths,” Graf said. “The oldest coelacanths were usually found in freshwater deposits and it wasn’t until the Cretaceous that we start seeing this transition into a more marine environment.”

Fossil also named for Robert T. Hill, “Father of Texas Geology”
Graf also named the fossil for Robert T. Hill, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who led surveys of Texas during the 1800s. Hill described much of the geology of Texas, including the Duck Creek Formation. Hill is acclaimed as the “Father of Texas Geology.”

Identification of Reidus hilli brings the number of coelacanth species worldwide to 81, including two that are alive today. Sources report that 229 living coelacanths have been caught since 1938.

Graf reported his findings in “A new Early Cretaceous coelacanth from Texas,” published in Historical Biology: An International Journal of Paleobiology. Graf is a paleontology graduate student in SMU’s Huffington Department of Earth Sciences. — Margaret Allen

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For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

Tags Dedman College, John F. Graf, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Shuler Museum of Paleontology

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New study on kingship and sainthood in Islam offers a striking new historical perspective

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date September 14, 2012

Field-changing book: New study is a work of history richly informed by the anthropology of religion and art

In a new and potentially field-changing study, A. Azfar Moin explores why Muslim sovereigns in the early modern era began to imitate the exalted nature of Sufi saints.

Uncovering a startling but widespread phenomenon, Moin shows how the charismatic pull of sainthood (wilayat) — rather than the draw of religious law (sharia) or holy war (jihad) —inspired a new style of sovereignty in Islam.

Moin’s research is published in his new book, The Millennial Sovereign (Columbia University Press, 2012).

At the end of the sixteenth century and the turn of the first Islamic millennium, the powerful Mughal emperor Akbar declared himself the most sacred being on earth.

The holiest of all saints and above the distinctions of religion, he styled himself as the messiah reborn. Yet the Mughal emperor was not alone in doing so.

The title of the book reflects the Mughal emperors’ messianic and Sufi beliefs, which also led these Muslim rulers to explore European Christianity, says Moin.

“The Mughal emperors of sixteenth and seventeenth century India — of Taj Mahal fame — were also avid collectors of Christian art. They even invited Jesuit missionaries to discuss the Bible. At first the Catholic priests were delighted that such powerful Muslim kings were attracted to Christianity, but they eventually realized that their hosts were more interested in the millennium,” Moin says.

“The first millennium of Islam occurred at the end of the sixteenth century,” he says. “The Mughals used this religiously charged moment to style themselves as saintly and messianic sovereigns. They called their queens ‘The Mary of the Age’ and ‘Of the Stature of Mary.’ This didn’t mean that they had turned Christian, but that they were Jesus-like in their sacredness.”

Innovative contribution to our understanding of Mughal history
“This is a brilliant book,” said South Asia expert Francis Robinson, a professor at Royal Holloway, University of London. “It is the most innovative contribution to our understanding of Mughal history of my time. As a work of the first importance, and a step change in our knowledge of sixteenth-century India, it must be read by anyone interested in the fields of Islamic kingship, millenarianism and astrology in the Muslim world, and in the early modern world in general.”

A work of history richly informed by the anthropology of religion and art, The Millennial Sovereign traces how royal dynastic cults and shrine-centered Sufism came together in the imperial cultures of Timurid Central Asia, Safavid Iran and Mughal India. By juxtaposing imperial chronicles, paintings and architecture with theories of sainthood, apocalyptic treatises and manuals on astrology and magic, Moin uncovers a pattern of Islamic politics shaped by Sufi and millennial motifs.

He shows how alchemical symbols and astrological rituals enveloped the body of the monarch, casting him as both spiritual guide and material lord.

Ultimately, Moin offers a striking new perspective on the history of Islam and the religious and political developments that linked South Asia and Iran in early modern times.

Moin is assistant professor in the Clements Department of History at Southern Methodist University. His research and writing focuses on early-modern South Asia and the Islamic world. — Columbia University Press

Tags A. Azfar Moin, Clements Department of History, Dedman College

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Ancient tree-ring records from southwest U.S. suggest today’s megafires are truly unusual

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date May 15, 2012

Unprecedented study relies on more than 1,500 years of tree-ring data and hundreds of years of fire-scar records gathered from Ponderosa Pine forests

Today’s mega forest fires of the southwestern U.S. are truly unusual and exceptional in the long-term record, suggests a new study that examined hundreds of years of ancient tree ring and fire data from two distinct climate periods.

Researchers constructed and analyzed a statistical model that encompassed 1,500 years of climate and fire patterns to test, in part, whether today’s dry, hot climate alone is causing the megafires that routinely destroy millions of acres of forest, according to study co-author and fire anthropologist Christopher I. Roos, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

The researchers found that even when ancient climates varied from each other — one hotter and drier and the other cooler and wetter — the frequencies of year-to-year weather patterns that drive fire activity were similar.

The findings suggest that today’s megafires, at least in the southwestern U.S., are atypical, according to Roos and co-author Thomas W. Swetnam, the University of Arizona. Furthermore, the findings implicate as the cause not only modern climate change, but also human activity over the last century, the researchers said.

“The U.S. would not be experiencing massive large-canopy-killing crown fires today if human activities had not begun to suppress the low-severity surface fires that were so common more than a century ago,” said Roos, an assistant professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology.

Today’s extreme droughts caused by climate change probably would not cause megafires if not for a century of livestock grazing and firefighting, which have combined to create more dense forests with accumulated logs and other fuels that now make them more vulnerable than ever to extreme droughts. One answer to today’s megafires might be changes in fire management.

“If anything, what climate change reminds us is that it’s pretty urgent that we deal with the structural problems in the forests. The forests may be equipped to handle the climate change, but not in the condition that they’re currently in. They haven’t been in that condition before,” Roos said.

Roos and Swetnam, director of the University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, published their findings in the scientific journal The Holocene.

Study combines fire-scar records and tree-ring data of U.S. southwest
This new study is based on a first-of-its-kind analysis that combined fire-scar records and tree-ring data for Ponderosa Pine forests in the southwest United States.

Earlier research by other scientists has looked at forest fire records spanning the years from 1600 to the mid-1800s — a climate period known as the Little Ice Age — to understand current forest fire behavior. Those studies have found that fires during the Little Ice Age occurred frequently in the grasses and downed needles on the surface of the forest floor, but stayed on the floor and didn’t burn into the canopies.

Critics dispute the relevance of the Little Ice Age, however, saying the climate then was cooler and wetter than the climate now. They say a better comparison is A.D. 800 to 1300, known as the Medieval Warm Period, when the climate was hotter and drier, like today’s.

Scientists who favor that comparison hypothesize that forest fires during the Medieval Warm Period probably were similar to today’s megafires and probably more destructive than during the Little Ice Age.

Tree rings and fire scars provide the evidence for moisture, drought and burn activity
Scientists rely on tree rings not only to calculate a tree’s age, but also to determine wet and dry weather patterns of moisture and drought. Similarly, scientists’ best evidence for fire activity is the scarring on tree rings that dates the occurrence of fires. While tree-ring data for climate are available for long time periods, annual forest fire records don’t yet exist for the Medieval Warm Period.

In response to the need for data, Roos and Swetnam tested the Medieval Warm Period hypothesis by calibrating a statistical model that combined 200 years of Little Ice Age fire-scar data and nearly 1,500 years of climate data derived from existing tree rings. With that they were able to predict what the annual fire activity would have been almost 1,500 years ago.

They discovered that the Medieval Warm Period was no different from the Little Ice Age in terms of what drives frequent low-severity surface fires: year-to-year moisture patterns.

“It’s true that global warming is increasing the magnitude of the droughts we’re facing, but droughts were even more severe during the Medieval Warm Period,” Roos said. “It turns out that what’s driving the frequency of surface fires is having a couple wet years that allow grasses to grow continuously across the forest floor and then a dry year in which they can burn. We found a really strong statistical relationship between two or more wet years followed by a dry year, which produced lots of fires.”

Modeling of tree-ring and fire-scar data can be applied to any locale
The research, “A 1416-year reconstruction of annual, multidecadal, and centennial variability in area burned for ponderosa pine forests of the southern Colorado Plateau region, Southwest USA,” was funded by the International Arid Lands Consortium.

“The best way to look at how fires may have varied — if climate were the only driver — is to do this type of modeling,” Roos said. “Our study is the first in the world to go this far back using this methodology. But this method can be used anyplace for which there is a fire-scar record.”

The study’s tree-ring-derived climate data are from the southern Colorado Plateau, a region that includes the world’s largest continuous stand of Ponderosa Pine stretching from Flagstaff, Ariz., into New Mexico. Large Ponderosa Pine forests have existed in the area for more than 10,000 years.

Fire-scar data for the region go back as far as the 1500s, but are most prevalent during the Little Ice Age period. Fire scientists have analyzed fire-scars from hundreds of trees from more than 100 locations across the Southwest. All fire-scar data are publically available through the International Multiproxy Paleofire Database, maintained by the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s paleoclimatology program.

Ancient fires were frequent, but didn’t burn the forest canopy
Fire scientists know that in ancient forests, frequent fires swept the forest floor, often sparked by lightning. Many of the fires were small, less than a few dozen acres. Other fires may have been quite large, covering tens of thousands of acres before being extinguished naturally. Fuel for the fires included grass, small trees, brush, bark, pine needles and fallen limbs on the ground.

“The fires cleaned up the understory, kept it very open, and made it resilient to climate changes because even if there was a really severe drought, there weren’t the big explosive fires that burn through the canopy because there were no fuels to take it up there,” Roos said. “The trees had adapted to frequent surface fires, and adult trees didn’t die from massive fire events because the fires burned on the surface and not in the canopy.”

Today’s huge canopy fires are the cumulative result of human activity
The ancient pattern of generally small, frequent fires changed by the late 1800s. The transcontinental railroad had pushed West, bringing farmers, ranchers, cattle and sheep. Those animals grazed the forest floor, consuming the grasses that fueled small fires but leaving small saplings and brush, which then grew up into dense, mature bushes and trees. In addition, the U.S. began to restrict the traditional land use of the region’s Native American communities, including confining them to reservations. This removed another source for frequent surface fires in the forests — burning by Native Americans for horticulture and hunting.

By the early 20th century, the U.S. Forest Service had been established, and fighting fires was a key part of the agency’s mission. Without continuous fuel, fires on the forest floor ceased.

“Many of our modern forests in central Arizona and New Mexico haven’t had a fire of any kind on them in 130 or 140 years,” Roos said. “That’s very different from the records of the ancient forests. The longest they would have gone without fires was 40 or 50 years, and even that length of time would have been exceptional.”

The research reported in The Holocene is the basis for a new four-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation in which Roos and Swetnam are co-principal investigators. That project will examine how human activities have changed forests and forest fires over the past 1,000 years of Native American occupation, as well as the influence of droughts during the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in New Mexico’s Jemez Mountains. — Margaret Allen

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smuresearch.com.

Tags Christopher I. Roos, Dedman College, SMU Department of Anthropology

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