Tag: Institute for the Study of Earth and Man

Ancient “Sea Monsters” Reveal How the Ever-Changing Planet Shapes Life, Past and Present

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 4, 2018

Never-Before-Seen Fossils From Angola Bring a Strange Yet Familiar Ocean Into View

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History will open a new exhibition Nov. 9, 2018 revealing how millions of years ago, large-scale natural forces created the conditions for real-life sea monsters to thrive in the South Atlantic Ocean basin shortly after it formed. “Sea Monsters Unearthed: Life in Angola’s Ancient Seas” will offer visitors the opportunity to dive into Cretaceous Angola’s cool coastal waters, examine the fossils of striking marine reptiles that once lived there and learn about the forces that continue to mold life in the ocean and on land.

Over 134 million years ago, the South Atlantic Ocean basin did not yet exist. Africa and South America were one contiguous landmass on the verge of separating. As the two continents drifted apart, an entirely new marine environment — the South Atlantic — emerged in the vast space created between them. This newly formed ocean basin would soon be colonized by a dizzying array of ferocious predators and an abundance of other lifeforms seizing the opportunity presented by a new ocean habitat.

“Because of our planet’s ever-shifting geology, Angola’s coastal cliffs contain the fossil remains of marine creatures from the prehistoric South Atlantic,” said Kirk Johnson, the Sant Director of the museum. “We are honored by the generosity of the Angolan people for sharing a window into this part of the Earth’s unfolding story with our visitors.”

For the first time, Angolan fossils of colossal Cretaceous marine reptiles will be on public display. Through Projecto PaleoAngola — a collaboration between Angolan, American, Portuguese and Dutch researchers focused on Angola’s rich fossil history — paleontologists excavated and studied these fossils, which were then prepared for the exhibition by a team of scientists and students at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas. The exhibition was made possible by the Sant Ocean Hall Endowment Fund.

“Fossils tell us about the life that once lived on Earth, and how the environments that came before us evolve over time,” said Louis Jacobs, professor emeritus of paleontology at SMU and collaborating curator for the exhibition. “Our planet has been running natural experiments on what shapes environments, and thereby life, for millions of years. If it weren’t for the fossil record, we wouldn’t understand what drives the story of life on our planet.”

The exhibition will immerse visitors in this Cretaceous environment with lively animations and vivid paleoart murals of life beneath the waves — courtesy of natural history artist Karen Carr — that bring to life 11 authentic fossils from Angola’s ancient seas, full-size fossil reconstructions of a mosasaur and an ancient sea turtle, as well as 3-D scanned replicas of mosasaur skulls. Photomurals and video vignettes will transport visitors to field sites along Angola’s modern rugged coast, where Projecto PaleoAngola scientists unearth the fossil remains from this lost world.

A Strange but Familiar Ocean
“Sea Monsters Unearthed” paints the picture of a flourishing ocean environment that in some ways will look strange to modern eyes, yet still bears striking similarities to today’s marine ecosystems.

Peculiar plesiosaurs — massive reptiles with long necks, stout bodies and four large flippers — swam alongside 27-foot-long toothy marine lizards called mosasaurs and more familiar creatures like sea turtles. From surprising mosasaur stomach contents to the one of the oldest known sea turtles found in Africa, fossils and reconstructions of these species will offer visitors a fuller picture of their remarkable life histories and the ecosystems they were a part of.

The exhibition will also explore deeper similarities across the ecology and anatomy of ocean animals then and now. After the marine reptiles that dominated these waters went extinct 66 million years ago, modern marine mammals would not only later replace them as top predators in the world’s ocean, but also converge on many of the same body shapes and survival strategies.

The Forces That Shape Life, Then and Now
This unique period in Earth’s history reveals how key geologic and environmental forces contributed to the early establishment and evolution of life in the South Atlantic. As Africa and South America drifted apart and a new ocean basin formed, trade winds blowing along the new Angolan coastline created the conditions for upwelling, an ocean process that drives the circulation of nutrients from the deep ocean to its surface. These nutrients in turn jump-started the food web that attracted the ferocious marine reptile predators featured throughout the exhibition.

Just as tectonic forces helped create this Cretaceous marine environment, they also shaped the arid coastal cliffs where the fossils are found today. Starting 45,000 years ago, a geologic process called uplift caused Earth’s crust to bulge along Angola’s coast, lifting part of the seafloor out of the water — and along with it, the layers upon layers of fossil-filled rocks where Projecto PaleoAngola scientists work.

Though humans do not operate on a tectonic scale, their actions also have major impacts on ocean life. Humans are now the ocean’s top predators, with one-fifth of the world’s population relying on food from upwelling-based ecosystems. Scientists caution that with such great pressure on modern upwelling-based fisheries, overfishing could change the future of life in the ocean by threatening fish populations, marine ecosystems and even human health. — National Museum of Natural History

About the National Museum of Natural History
The National Museum of Natural History is connecting people everywhere with Earth’s unfolding story. The museum is one of the most visited natural history museums in the world with approximately 7 million annual visitors from the U.S. and around the world. Opened in 1910, the museum is dedicated to maintaining and preserving the world’s most extensive collection of natural history specimens and human artifacts. It is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed Dec. 25). Admission is free. For more information, visit the museum on its website and on Facebook and Twitter.

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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Early armored dino from Texas lacked cousin’s club-tail weapon, but had a nose for danger

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date May 23, 2016

Pawpawsaurus’s hearing wasn’t keen, and it lacked the infamous tail club of Ankylosaurus. But first-ever CT scans of Pawpawsaurus’s skull indicate the dino’s saving grace from predators may have been an acute sense of smell.

Well-known armored dinosaur Ankylosaurus is famous for a hard knobby layer of bone across its back and a football-sized club on its tail for wielding against meat-eating enemies.

It’s prehistoric cousin, Pawpawsaurus campbelli, was not so lucky. Pawpawsaurus was an earlier version of armored dinosaurs but not as well equipped to fight off meat-eaters, according to a new study, said vertebrate paleontologist Louis Jacobs, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Jacobs is co-author of a new analysis of Pawpawsaurus based on the first CT scans ever taken of the dinosaur’s skull.

A Texas native, Pawpawsaurus lived 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, making its home along the shores of an inland sea that split North America from Texas northward to the Arctic Sea.

Like Ankylosaurus, Pawpawsaurus had armored plate across its back and on its eyelids. But unlike Ankylosaurus, Pawpawsaurus didn’t have the signature club tail that was capable of knocking the knees out from under a large predator.

Ankylosaurus lived about 35 million years after Pawpawsaurus, around 66 million years ago toward the end of the Cretaceous. During the course of its evolution, ankylosaurids developed the club tail, and bone structure in its skull that improved its sense of smell and allowed it to hear a broader range of sounds. “Stable gaze” also emerged, which helped Ankylosaurus balance while wielding its clubbed tail.

“CT imaging has allowed us to delve into the intricacies of the brains of extinct animals, especially dinosaurs, to unlock secrets of their ways of life,” said Jacobs, a professor in the SMU Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

While Pawpawsaurus’s sense of smell was inferior to Ankylosaurus, it was still sharper than some primitive dinosaur predators such as Ceratosaurus, said vertebrate paleontologist Ariana Paulina-Carabajal, first author on the study.

“Pawpawsaurus in particular, and the group it belonged to — Nodosauridae — had no flocculus, a structure of the brain involved with motor skills, no club tail, and a reduced nasal cavity and portion of the inner ear when compared with the other family of ankylosaurs,” said Paulina-Carabajal, researcher for the Biodiversity and Environment Research Institute (CONICET-INIBIOMA), San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. “But its sense of smell was very important, as it probably relied on that to look for food, find mates and avoid or flee predators.”

Most dinosaurs don’t have bony ridges in their nasal cavities to guide airflow, but ankylosaurs are unique in that they do.

“We can observe the complete nasal cavity morphology with the CT scans,” Paulina-Carabajal said. “The CT scans revealed an enlarged nasal cavity compared to dinosaurs other than ankylosaurians. That may have helped Pawpawsaurus bellow out a lower range of vocalizations, improved its sense of smell, and cooled the inflow of air to regulate the temperature of blood flowing into the brain.”

First CT scans shed light on Pawpawsaurus’s sensory tools
Pawpawsaurus is more primitive than the younger derived versions of the dinosaur that evolved later, Jacobs said, although both walked on all fours and held their heads low to the ground.

“So we don’t know if their sense of smell also evolved and improved even more,” Jacobs said. “But we do suspect that scenting the environment was useful for a creature’s survival, and the sense of smell is fairly widely distributed among plant eaters and meat eaters alike.”

The team’s measurements and conclusions are reported in the journal PLosONE in the article “Endocranial Morphology of the Primitive Nodosaurid Dinosaur Pawpawsaurus campbelli from the Early Cretaceous of North America.” It is published online at PLosONE.

The skull was identified in 1996 by Yuong-Nam Lee, Seoul National University, Korea, a co-author on the paper, who was then a doctoral student under Jacobs.

The team’s discoveries emerged from Computed Tomography (CT) scans of the braincase of Pawpawsaurus campbelli’s skull. Pawpawsaurus belongs to one of the least explored clades of dinosaurs when it comes to endocranial anatomy — the spaces in the skull housing the brain.

The Pawpawsaurus skull was discovered 24 years ago by 19-year-old Cameron Campbell in the PawPaw Formation of Tarrant County near Dallas. Conventional analysis of the skull was carried out years ago to identify it as a never-before-seen nodosaurid ankylosaur. However, these are the first CT scans of Pawpawsaurus’s skull because it’s only been in recent years that fossils have been widely explored with X-rays.

In humans, a medical CT will scan the body to “see inside” with X-rays and capture a 3-D picture of the bones, blood vessels and soft tissue. In fossils, a much stronger dose of radiation than can be tolerated by humans is applied to fossils to capture 3-D images of the interior structure.

From the scans, paleontologists can then digitally reconstruct the brain and inner ear using special software.

“Once we have the 3D model, we can describe and measure all its different regions,” Paulina-Carabajal said. “We can then compare that to existing reptile brains and their senses of hearing and smell. Hearing, for example, can be determined from the size of the lagena, the region of the inner ear that perceives sounds.”

The size of the lagena in Pawpawsaurus suggests a sense of hearing similar to that of living crocodiles, she said.

Olfactory acuity, the sense of smell, is calculated from the size ratio of the olfactory bulb of the brain and the cerebral hemisphere.

“In Pawpawsaurus, the olfactory ratio is somewhat lower than it is in Ankyloxaurus, although both have high ratios when compared with most carnivorous dinosarus,” Paulina-Carabajal said. “They are exceeded only by carcharodontosaurids and tyrannosaurids. The olfactory ratios of ankylosaurs in general are more or less similar to those calculated by other authors for the living crocodile.”

The research was funded by the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (Argentina), Seoul National University, and SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man. — Margaret Allen, SMU

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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North America’s newest pterosaur is a Texan — and flying reptile’s closest cousin is English

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 7, 2015

Every toothed pterosaur identified from North America’s Cretaceous has been discovered in North Texas. New species marks only the third.

A new species of toothy pterosaur is a native of Texas whose closest relative is from England.

The new 94-million-year-old species, named Cimoliopterus dunni, is strikingly similar to England’s Cimoliopterus cuvieri.

Identification of the new flying reptile links prehistoric Texas to England, says paleontologist Timothy S. Myers, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, who identified the fossil as a new species.

Pterosaur relatives from two continents suggests the prehistoric creatures moved between North America and England earlier in the Cretaceous — despite progressive widening of the North Atlantic Ocean during that time.

The Texas and English Cimoliopterus cousins are different species, so some evolutionary divergence occurred.

That indicates the populations were isolated from one another at 94 million years ago, Myers said.

The similarity between the two species, however, implies minimal divergence time, so gene flow between North American and European populations would have been possible at some point shortly before that date.

“The Atlantic opened the supercontinent Pangea like a zipper, separating continents and leaving animal populations isolated, so gene flow ceased and we start to see evolutionary divergence,” said Myers, a research assistant professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU. “Animals start to look different and you see different species on one continent versus another. Pterosaurs are a little trickier because unlike land animals they can fly and disperse across bodies of water. The later ones are pretty good flyers.”

Based on fossils discovered so far, it’s known that toothed pterosaurs are generally abundant during the Cretaceous in Asia, Europe and South America. But they are rare in North America.

The new Texas native, Cimoliopterus dunni, is only the third pterosaur species with teeth from the Cretaceous of North America. All three of the toothy Cretaceous-era pterosaurs discovered so far from North America are Texans. Nevertheless, Cimoliopterus dunni is most closely related to England’s Cimoliopterus cuvieri, said Myers.

The Cretaceous spanned about 80 million years from 145 million years ago to 66 million years ago.

Each of the Texas pterosaurs was discovered near Dallas.

Pterosaurs can cross marine barriers between emergent landmasses, effectively ‘island hopping’
Besides the new 94-million-year-old Cimoliopterus dunni, Myers in 2010 identified the 96-million-year-old Aetodactylus halli, a close cousin to Cimoliopterus. The third Texas pterosaur, 105-million-year-old Coloborhynchus wadleighi, was identified in 1994 by then-SMU student Yuong-Nam Lee. It too has an English connection: The first Coloborhynchus species ever described is from England.

“Given the small sample size, it’s odd that we have two that are so closely related to the English species,” Myers said. “It’s hard to draw any statistically significant conclusions from that, but it definitely indicates this is not a one-off, and that there was some relatively strong, significant connection. Two means a lot more than one in this case.”

Myers isn’t suggesting a land bridge. But scientists have suggested the sea level of the North Atlantic fluctuated over time.

“Pterosaurs don’t necessarily need land bridges to disperse because they can cross marine barriers between emergent landmasses, effectively ‘island hopping’ from one continental mass to another,” Myers said.

Nevertheless, identification of the new toothy Texas pterosaur deepens a mystery surrounding the flying reptiles: There still is no evidence of close ties between North American and South American pterosaur populations, he said.

“There are toothed pteranodontoids in South America — lots of individuals and lots of different species — but no close relatives to the toothed pteranodontoids in North America,” he said. “That might indicate there was some barrier to dispersal from the south. It’s unusual we don’t see a connection between these pterosaur populations. Maybe we will when we find more of this material.”

Myers reported the new species in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in “First North American occurrence of the toothed pteranodontoid pterosaur Cimoliopterus.”

A long-lived group, whether toothy and small, or toothless and big
As a group, pterosaurs, which lived alongside dinosaurs, were long-lived. They survived about 162 million years, from the Late Triassic, 228 million years ago, through the Cretaceous, 66 million years ago.

Pterosaurs were among the earliest vertebrates to steadily flap their wings to power their flying.

Early forms were toothy and had wingspans similar to a flying fox, while later they were toothless and as large as fighter jets.

Pterosaurs nested on land but their bones are often recovered from shallow marine rocks. Some species have slender, pointed teeth, suitable for a diet of fish.

“This group is very abundant around the world in the middle Cretaceous — except in North America. The only evidence we have of the toothed members comes from Texas,” Myers said. “In general we see a broad trend in pterosaurs away from teeth, so at the end of the Cretaceous all known species are toothless.”

Pterosaur hunted fish offshore from North America’s Interior Seaway
Cimoliopterus dunni likely hunted fish just off shore in the shallow Western Interior Seaway.

The prehistoric Seaway covered the central United States and Canada, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean.

Myers identified the new pterosaur from a partial upper jaw — specifically the tip of the blunt snout, or rostrum. The rostrum has sockets for 13 pair of teeth. Atop the snout is a thin, prominent crest that starts near the front and extends back. The crest is fully fused to the jaw, a good indicator the pterosaur was not a juvenile, Myers said.

“The crest is really striking,” he said. “It’s almost preserved in its entirety.”

Prolific amateur collector Brent Dunn discovered the upper jaw in January 2013 while walking the spillway of Lake Lewisville north of Dallas. The fossil, coated in reddish mud, had weathered out of the ground. The marine shale layer in which it was found is part of the Eagle Ford Group, a rock unit unique to Texas.

The fossil was found alongside ammonites and crustaceans, called index fossils, because they date the shale layer. Ammonites also indicate an open marine environment, with no fresh water influence.

Although Cimoliopterus dunni would have been large, it was mid-sized as pterosaurs go, with a wingspan of about 6 feet.

“It wouldn’t have been small and cute,” Myers said. “You would have thought twice about approaching it.”

It’s fortunate to have the beautifully preserved fossil because the potential for preserving pterosaur bones is low, Myers said. Their bones were light and hollow, filled with vacuities to help them fly, so they tend to crush easily and break into pieces. “So their normal cylindrical bone is pancaked flat,” he said.

Dunn, a long-time member of the Dallas Paleontological Society, donated it to SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology. He died in 2013. Myers named the fossil for Dunn. — Margaret Allen, SMU

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Timothy S. Myers

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Smithsonian: Take a Deep Dive Into The Reasons Land Animals Moved to the Seas

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 16, 2015

Synthesizing decades of discoveries, scientists have revealed links between changing environments and animal movements

Smithsonian magazine online tapped the expertise of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences of SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

Science journalist Alicia Ault interviewed Jacobs on the subject of why land animals moved to the seas over the past 250 million years. The article, “Take a deep dive into the reasons land animals moved to the seas,” delves into a new scientific paper published by two Smithsonian scientists and appearing in the latest issue of the highly ranked prestigious journal Science.

Jacobs is a world-recognized vertebrate paleontologist and has served as president of the international Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. He leads SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Currently his field research is focused on Angola in southwestern Africa. He co-leads Projecto PaleoAngola, a collaborative international scientific research program to understand the effect of the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean on ancient life. In the laboratory, Jacobs’ research utilizes advanced imaging and stable isotope techniques to investigate paleoenvironmental, biogeographic and phylogenetic issues of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras.

Jacobs serves on the National Park Service Science Committee Advisory Board, which recommends National Natural Landmarks to the U.S. Department of the Interior. He has served as president of the international Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, and in 1999 he was director ad interim of the Dallas Museum of Natural History. Before joining SMU, he served as head of the Division of Paleontology at the National Museum of Kenya. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, a Specially Appointed Professor at Hokkaido University, Japan, and a Visiting Professor at Richard Leakey’s Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya.

Jacobs is the author of “Quest for the African Dinosaurs: Ancient Roots of the Modern World” (Villard Books and Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2000); “Lone Star Dinosaurs” (Texas A&M U. Press, 1999), which is the basis of the Texas dinosaur exhibit at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History; “Cretaceous Airport” (ISEM, 1993); and more than 100 scientific papers and edited volumes.

The Smithsonian article published April, 16, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Alicia Ault
Smithsonian.com
The movement of animals from the land into the sea has happened several times over the last 250 million years, and it has been documented in many different and singular ways. But now, for the first time, a team of researchers has created an overview that not only provides insight into evolution, but may also help more accurately assess humans’ impact on the planet.

The oceans are teeming with tetrapods—“four-legged” birds, reptiles, mammals and amphibians—that have repeatedly transitioned from the land to the sea, adapting their legs into fins. The transitions have often been correlated with mass extinctions, but the true reasons are only partly known based on fossils and through study of Earth’s climate, for instance.

Those transitions are considered to be “canonical illustrations” of the evolutionary process and thus ideal for study; living marine tetrapods—such as whales, seals, otters and sea lions—also have a big ecological impact, according to Neil P. Kelley and Nicholas D. Pyenson, the two Smithsonian scientists who compiled the new look at these tetrapods, appearing this week in the journal Science.

Instead of gathering evidence from a single field, the pair pulled together research from many disciplines, including paleontology, molecular biology and conservation ecology, to give a far larger picture of what was happening when animals transitioned from the land to the sea across millennia.

Almost by necessity, scientists tend to work in narrow silos, so this research will help broaden their views and potentially make for quicker progress in understanding evolution. Knowing how these creatures adapted over the last few hundred million years, and especially how they’ve changed in the era since humans appeared, could help us become better stewards of the planet.

“It’s a one-of-a-kind summation of all that’s known about those different groups that evolved to go back to the sea,” says Louis L. Jacobs, a professor of earth sciences and president of the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at Southern Methodist University. The paper lays it all out in a way that allows scientists to make comparisons across species, he adds.

Read the full story.

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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.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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TexasEscapes.com: The Bone Wars

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 21, 2012

Texas author, journalist and historian Clay Coppedge, who writes for the weekly newspaper Country World News, covered the research of SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs and the infamous Bone Wars of the late 1800s.

See an SMU video and press release about the research, “Texas frontier scientists who uncovered state’s fossil history had role in epic Bone Wars.”

The Bone Wars was a flurry of fossil speculation across the American West that escalated into a high-profile national feud. Drawn into the spectacle were two scientists from the Lone Star State, geologist Robert T. Hill, now acclaimed as the Father of Texas Geology, and naturalist Jacob Boll, who made many of the state’s earliest fossil discoveries.

The Coppedge article, “Bone Wars,” was published in a November issue of Country World News, and was published in December online at TexasEscapes.com.

Hill and Boll had supporting roles in the Bone Wars through their work for one of the feud’s antagonists, Edward Drinker Cope, according to Jacobs’ new study.

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

Currently his field projects include work in Mongolia and Angola. His book, “Lone Star Dinosaurs” (1999, Texas A&M University Press) was the basis of an exhibit at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History that traveled the state. He consulted on the new exhibit, Mysteries of the Texas Dinosaurs, which opened in 2009.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Clay Coppedge
Texas Escapes
It’s been pointed out that there were two great revolutions in American life in the 19th Century. One was the Civil War. The other was a scientific revolution. Just as the firing on Fort Sumter was the shot that got the Civil War going, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, published in “Origin of Species” in 1859 created a similar upheaval in the scientific world.

At the same time, scientists, naturalists and other observant types were finding the bones of creatures that roamed the earth millions of years ago that were unlike anything the world had seen or imagined. Some of these creatures were truly gargantuan with neck bones alone measuring three feet across. Even the land where people lived had changed dramatically over the eons; in some cases it hadn’t even been land at all – it was a sea. This was a hard thing for people of the time to grasp.

Europeans never had much luck finding dinosaur bones. Too lush. Too wet. The American West was neither of those things. Striding into that vast and arid land, two scientists led the search for dinosaur bones and new species to name. Their respective and separate searches developed into an intense rivalry between the two bone hunters – Edward Drinker Cope of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and Othenial Charles Marsh with the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale.

Read the full story.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

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, www.smu.edu.

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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EARTH: Long-Lost Letters Shed New Light on 19th-Century Bone Wars

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 18, 2012

Science journalist David B. Williams, who writes for Earth magazine, covered the research of SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs and the infamous Bone Wars of the late 1800s.

See an SMU video and press release about the research, “Texas frontier scientists who uncovered state’s fossil history had role in epic Bone Wars.”

The article, “Long-Lost Letters Shed New Light on 19th-Century Bone Wars,” was published in the January 2013 issue of Earth.

Hill and Boll had supporting roles in the Bone Wars through their work for one of the feud’s antagonists, Edward Drinker Cope, according to Jacobs’ new study.

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By David B. Williams
Earth
In the decades following the Civil War, America became the center of the fossil world through discoveries by paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, one-time friends turned bitter enemies. Out of their nasty, well-financed battle to dominate the world of paleontology came legendary dinosaur finds such as skeletons of Brontosaurus (now known as Apatosaurus), Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and Allosaurus. The finds weren’t just a bone or two of each dinosaur, as had been the case in the early years of dinosaur discoveries in England; rather, these were nearly complete skeletons that for the first time shed light on the incredible diversity of dinosaurs.

The so-called Bone Wars entailed this lifelong race between Marsh and Cope to discover the most new fossils, during which both paleontologists risked their scientific integrity as well as their financial well-being. The field skirmishes between Cope and Marsh mostly occurred in Colorado and Wyoming (and mostly among their hired help), but one of the lesser-known side squabbles took place in Texas. New evidence from recently discovered letters from Cope to field collector Robert T. Hill reveals more about the nature of the conflict and its contributors.

Read the full story.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, John Lewis, Louis L. Jacobs, Pia Vogel, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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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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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

Earth & Climate Fossils & Ruins Learning & Education Researcher news

SMU Professor Louis Jacobs honored with prestigious award from Texas science teachers

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 31, 2012

Science Teachers Association of Texas to present Jacobs with 2012 Skoog Cup for promoting quality science education

LJacobs_SkoogAwardCup — SMU’s Louis L. Jacobs, left, receives the Skoog Award Nov. 9 from Dr. Gerald Skoog and Science Teacher’s Association of Texas Past President Ross Ann Hill on behalf of the science teachers of Texas who recognized him for his significant contributions to K-12 science education. (Photo: Diana Vineyard)

Whether hunting dinosaur bones, examining the science of evolution or mentoring students, SMU Earth Sciences Professor Louis L. Jacobs earns high marks from Texas K-12 science teachers.

The 7,200-member Science Teachers Association of Texas, STAT, is honoring Jacobs for his significant contributions to advance quality science education.

A world-recognized vertebrate paleontologist, Jacobs has been selected to receive the prestigious 2012 Skoog Cup.

Jacobs is a professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences and is president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Recipients are chosen for a sustained record of leadership in science education, advocacy for quality K-12 science education for all students, contributions to professional science organizations, and development of effective programs for pre-service and in-service teachers of science.

STAT presents the Skoog Cup annually to a deserving faculty or staff member at a Texas college or university.

Jacobs was nominated by Texas science teachers, including leaders of the Texas Earth Science Teachers Association, TESTA, which is a subgroup of STAT.

“Dr. Jacobs has been a stalwart supporter of TESTA and Earth science education,” said Alexia Hueske Bieniek, president of TESTA. “He has been our strongest link between Earth science in the classroom and Earth science in the research world. If TESTA needs a speaker, a field-based workshop or field trip, we can rely on Dr. Jacobs to be there no matter where ‘there’ might be.”

Jacobs began working with TESTA in 1997 when he partnered with the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History to launch the Lone Star Dinosaur Field Institute for Teachers. The teachers recovered a dinosaur from the hard sandstone of central Texas, then turned the experience into classroom activities. The massive dinosaur was later named Paluxysaurus jonesi, and the full skeletal mount is on display at the museum.

“Dr. Jacobs is truly committed to helping teachers and their students embrace the importance of scientific thinking and the value of field work in the Earth, life and environmental sciences,” said Linda Knight, past president of TESTA, past president of the National Earth Science Teachers Association and past president of STAT.

Jacobs dedicated to sharing knowledge and talents as leading scientist
Jacobs has consistently given his time, talents and knowledge to TESTA over the years, said Kathryn A. Barclay, TESTA Board of Directors.

“Dr. Jacobs models and exemplifies the collaboration between the K-12 science education community and the post-secondary University science level that is necessary to advance scientific knowledge and opportunities in Texas for our students,” Barclay said. “His dedication to sharing his knowledge and talents as a leading scientist in the field of vertebrate paleontology makes him our ‘Indiana Jones’ to Texas’ teachers and students.”

In addition to the Skoog Cup, the association also recognized Outstanding Science Teacher of the Year and Administrator of the Year.

“The honored educators and administrators embody the devotion to their calling that all our members share,” said Chuck Hempstead, executive director of the association, acknowledging Jacobs and the others. “As Texas public education continues to face the specter of budget cuts and outdated textbooks, we can take pride in these honorees’ dedication to tomorrow’s scientific leaders.”

Jacobs and the other award winners will be honored during the association’s annual Conference for the Advancement of Science Teaching, Nov. 8-10 in Corpus Christi. The Skoog Cup is named for the first award recipient, Dr. Gerald Skoog, professor emeritus, College of Education, Texas Tech University.

Science education and respect for learning benefit all
Jacobs, who has taught at SMU since 1983, recognizes his subject as a gateway to introduce science and math. “Paleontology is CSI investigation of very cold cases using the most up-to-date technology in a multidisciplinary approach.”

“The measure of good science is that it can be understood,” Jacobs said. “That dictum applies at all levels — from researchers to K-12 — among those who create new knowledge, those who deliver it and those who receive it. Everyone everywhere deserves to understand science for their own good and that of others. That is the importance of science education.”

Jacobs’ scientific passion is evolution, which he describes as “the unifying concept that links disparate facts about life into a coherent whole. It is the basis for understanding the interrelationships of life and planet Earth. More than that, life makes every topic more interesting, such as exploration of space and the search for life beyond the bounds of Earth.”

“The evolution of life on Earth ultimately leads to us and to all other species living here and now,” Jacobs said. “Our understanding of the relationships between Earth and the life it bears is fundamentally important to our future. Think of the Earth as performing experiments in climate change, and the fossil record explaining their effects on life. Now fast forward climate change to the future and see what we can expect.”

Breadth of teaching and research marks a lifetime of service
A mentor to students, Jacobs has conducted extensive field research worldwide. He has provided specimens to the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. That includes the skeleton of Malawisaurus on display in the lobby, which he and his colleagues named and provided to the museum.

Jacobs’ field research is now focused on Angola in southwestern Africa. He co-leads Projecto PaleoAngola, a collaborative international scientific research program to understand the effect of the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean on ancient life.

In the laboratory, Jacobs’ research utilizes advanced imaging and stable isotope techniques to investigate paleoenvironmental, biogeographic and phylogenetic issues of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras.

As president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Jacobs has launched a project with students and faculty for the Dedman College Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Teaching to identify and evaluate four sites in Texas for potential designation as National Natural Landmarks of the National Park Service.

STAT was founded in 1957. It is a non-profit organization of elementary, middle and high school teachers, college educators and supervisors of science.

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

Culture, Society & Family Fossils & Ruins Researcher news SMU In The News

Discover blog “80 beats”: Newly Unearthed Papers From Fossil Hunters Include An Ode to Bones

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 5, 2012

The science magazine Discover has covered the research of SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs and the infamous Bone Wars of the late 1800s.

In a post on Discover’s “80 beats” blog, the magazine reprinted the translation of a poem written by frontier naturalist and fossil hunter Jacob Boll.

Jacobs came across the poem at the American Museum of Natural History on a label on the back of Eryops specimen No. AMNH 4183.

SMU biology professor Pia Vogel translated the poem. Vogel and Jacobs worked with SMU English professor John M. Lewis to retain the essence of the poem in English.

The Bone Wars was a flurry of fossil speculation across the American West that escalated into a high-profile national feud. Drawn into the spectacle were two scientists from the Lone Star State, geologist Robert T. Hill, now acclaimed as the Father of Texas Geology, and Boll, who made many of the state’s earliest fossil discoveries.

Hill and Boll had supporting roles in the Bone Wars through their work for one of the feud’s antagonists, Edward Drinker Cope, according to Jacobs’ new study.

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

Discover
This poem in praise of the Permian amphibian Eryops was scrawled on the back of a label now in the American Museum of Natural History by Jacob Boll, a Swiss-German fossil hunter involved in a tumultuous 19th-century paleontology feud.

Graduate students and post-docs do a lot of important work in science these days, in the names of their more eminent supervisors, and there was a similar set-up in the early days of American paleontology. Many of the fossils named by and attributed to E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh, archenemies and the era’s most prominent paleontologists, were collected in the field by hired hunters like Boll and his contemporary Robert T. Hill, who both worked for Cope.

Paleontologists sifting through papers in the library of Southern Methodist University recently came across letters between Hill and Cope and, while examining specimens at AMNH, happened on Boll’s little poem.

Read the full story.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, John Lewis, Louis L. Jacobs, Pia Vogel, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, SMU Department of Biological Sciences, SMU Department of English

Culture, Society & Family Fossils & Ruins Researcher news SMU In The News

Wired: Bone Wars — The Texas Connection

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 5, 2012

Science journalist Brian Switek, who blogs for Wired magazine, covered the research of SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs and the infamous Bone Wars of the late 1800s.

Hill and Boll had supporting roles in the Bone Wars through their work for one of the feud’s antagonists, Edward Drinker Cope, according to Jacobs’ new study.

See an SMU video and press release about the research, “Texas frontier scientists who uncovered state’s fossil history had role in epic Bone Wars.”

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Brian Switek
Wired
No episode in the history of American paleontology has been as discussed, and celebrated, as the Bone Wars of the late 19th century. This contentious scientific showdown, played out during the days of the Wild West, set the foundation for fossil studies in North America, and introduced naturalists and the public alike to magnificent creatures such as Diplodocus, Uintatherium, and Dimetrodon (to pick just three of dozens).

The main figures during this controversial episode were friends-turned-rivals E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh. Both were experienced in the field, but, especially as they cemented their credentials as America’s leading paleontologists, both men increasingly relied on field assistants and a network of scientific connections to keep fossils flowing to their east coast labs.

Read the full story.

Tags Dedman, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, John Lewis, Louis L. Jacobs, Pia Vogel, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

Earth & Climate Fossils & Ruins Researcher news SMU In The News

Frontburner: Texas’ Bone Wars Studied by SMU Professor

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date September 10, 2012

Jason Heid, an editor with D Magazine’s popular Frontburner blog, covered the research of SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs and the infamous Bone Wars of the late 1800s.

The Bone Wars refers to a flurry of fossil speculation across the American West that escalated into a high-profile national feud. Drawn into the spectacle were two scientists from the Lone Star State, geologist Robert T. Hill, now acclaimed as the Father of Texas Geology, and naturalist Jacob Boll, who made many of the state’s earliest fossil discoveries.

Hill and Boll had supporting roles in the Bone Wars through their work for one of the feud’s antagonists, Edward Drinker Cope, according to Jacobs’ new study.

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

Jacobs co-leads Projecto PaleoAngola, a collaborative international scientific research program focused on the ancient life of Angola.

Besides the discovery of the first dinosaur of Angola, the team has uncovered mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, turtles and other Cretaceous marine animals, but the aim is also to create a strong and lasting institutional and scientific collaboration that has a multiplier effect in Angolan academia.

Jacobs is featured by National Geographic on its Explorers web site, which acknowledges the work of the world’s scientists whose research is made possible in part through funding from National Geographic.

Read the full blog entry.

EXCERPT:

By Jason Heid
Frontburner
SMU paleontologist Louis Jacobs has been studying the role of two Texas fossil collectors in the 19th century Bone Wars, which played out across the American frontier as rivals competed fiercely to uncover new fossils (and thus discover new extinct species.) In doing so he found a poem written by one of the men, Dallas naturalist Jacob Boll, whose Swiss family was among those that founded the utopian La Reunion colony here.

During a break in his field labors, Boll’s fascination with ancient bones prompted him to write in his native German an ode to fossils. Jacobs found the poem in the American Museum of Natural History on a label on the back of Eryops specimen No. AMNH 4183.

SMU biology professor Pia Vogel translated the poem. Vogel and Jacobs worked with SMU English professor John M. Lewis to retain the essence of the poem in English.

Read the full blog entry.

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, John Lewis, Louis L. Jacobs, Pia Vogel, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, SMU Department of Biological Sciences, SMU Department of English

Earth & Climate Fossils & Ruins Videos

Texas frontier scientists who uncovered state’s fossil history had role in epic Bone Wars

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date September 5, 2012

Follow @smuresearch

Treasure trove of archived letters discovered at SMU; Permian hunter’s German ode to a fossil is translated into English

In the late 1800s, a flurry of fossil speculation across the American West escalated into a high-profile national feud called the Bone Wars.

Drawn into the spectacle were two scientists from the Lone Star State, geologist Robert T. Hill, now acclaimed as the Father of Texas Geology, and naturalist Jacob Boll, who made many of the state’s earliest fossil discoveries.

Hill and Boll had supporting roles in the Bone Wars through their work for one of the feud’s antagonists, Edward Drinker Cope, according to a new study by vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

The study by Jacobs expands knowledge about Cope’s work with Hill and Boll.

It also unveils new details about the Bone Wars in Texas that Jacobs deciphered from 13 letters written by Cope to Hill. Jacobs discovered the letters in an archive of Hill’s papers at SMU’s DeGolyer Library. The letters span seven years, from 1887 to 1894.

Hill, who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, not only provided Cope with fossils of interest but also shared geological information about fossil locales.

Boll, who was a paid collector for Cope — as was the practice at the time — supplied the well-known paleontologist with many fossils from Texas. More than 30 of the taxa ultimately named by Cope were fossils collected by Boll.

“Fossils collected by Boll and studied by Cope have become some of the most significant icons in paleontology,” said Jacobs, an SMU professor of earth sciences and president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Robert T. Hill USGS survey party — The survey party of USGS geologist Robert T. Hill explored Texas during the 1800s to report on the geology and resources to open the West to agriculture. (Credit: USGS)

Jacobs’ study, “Jacob Boll, Robert T. Hill, and the Early History of Vertebrate Paleontology in Texas,” is published in the journal Historical Biology as part of the conference volume of the 12th International Symposium on Early Vertebrates/Lower Vertebrates.

Rush to find fossils explodes during opening of the American West
Jacobs describes the late 1800s as a period of intense fossil collecting. The Bone Wars were financed and driven by Cope and his archenemy, Othniel Charles Marsh. The two were giants of paleontology whose public feud brought the discovery of dinosaur fossils to the forefront of the American psyche.

Cope, from Philadelphia, and Marsh, from Yale University, began their scientific quests as a friendly endeavor to discover fossils. They each prospected the American frontier and also hired collectors to supply them with specimens. Cope and Marsh identified and named hundreds of discoveries, publishing their results in scientific journals.

Over the course of nearly three decades, however, their competition evolved into a costly, self-destructive, vicious all-out war to see who could outdo the other. Despite their aggressive and sometimes unethical tactics to outwit one another and steal each other’s hired collectors, Cope and Marsh made major contributions to the field of paleontology, Jacobs said.

Hill first to identify and map the Cretaceous geology in North Texas
Born in 1858, Hill was a teenager when he left Tennessee as an orphan and arrived on the Texas frontier in 1874, says Jacobs’ study. Hill settled in Comanche, southwest of Fort Worth, where he went to work for his brother’s newspaper, the Chief. After earning a Bachelor of Science in geology from Cornell, Hill was hired as a field geologist for the USGS.

Hill is noted for being the first to identify and map the distinct rock formations in North Texas that correspond to the Earth’s Cretaceous geologic period from 146 million years ago to 65 million years ago, Jacobs said. For much of the Cretaceous, a shallow sea cut North America in half from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico. Dinosaurs roamed the coastal shoreline and huge reptiles swam the waters, an environment that preserved plants and animals as fossils for posterity millions of years later.

Through his reading of the letters, Jacobs found that Cope disagreed with the way Hill named the Cretaceous rock units, and told him so. Cope counseled Hill: “You mustn’t mind criticism. We all get it and get used to it; but it isn’t comfortable at first.”

In subsequent letters, said Jacobs, it’s apparent Hill had changed his approach, for which Cope offered him high praise: “I wish to say definitely that your discovery of the lower Cretaceous series in this country is the most important addition to our geology that has been heard for a long time.”

Hill contributed one of 1,000 species of backboned animals named by Cope
Jacobs’ research found that numerous letters reveal that Cope was persistent in trying to buy a Cretaceous fish fossil that Hill had collected. In various letters, Cope expresses a desire to view the fossil, each time stating his request in a different way. Hill ultimately sold Cope the fossil for $15. Cope named the specimen Macrepistius arenatus. It is housed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Hill’s fish specimen was one of 1,000 species of backboned animals, from fish to dinosaurs, that Cope described and named in his lifetime.

Also evident in the correspondence is a glimpse into the battle intrigue between Cope and Marsh, Jacobs said. In one letter, Cope angles to learn from Hill details about a new director of the USGS, to judge whether “our ? friend O.C.M.” would have an advantage.

Cope wrote to Hill, “Possibly you can find out how the land lies?”

Cope’s other Texas connection was through Jacob Boll
Boll was a much larger supplier to Cope and ultimately made significant contributions to the field of paleontology. Boll “is mentioned, usually in passing, in virtually every history of the subject,” according to Jacobs.

Born in 1828 in Switzerland, Boll was the first to discover vertebrate fossils in the Permian red beds along the drainages of the Wichita and Red rivers and their tributaries.

“The discoveries opened up an entirely new chapter in vertebrate evolution some 280 million years old,” Jacobs said. “Boll’s finds include some of the oldest close relatives of mammals whose evolution eventually led to humans.”

Boll belonged to one of the Swiss families that founded the mid-19th century utopian society La Reunion in Dallas, Jacobs said. Boll made Dallas his home sometime after 1874. He died in the field in the Permian red beds in 1880 from a snake bite.

At least one scholar has asserted that Cope — to keep the identity of his collectors secret from Marsh — never credited Boll for the Texan’s many fossil discoveries. Jacobs, however, found evidence that in 1878 Cope, in fact, did acknowledge Boll’s contribution, at least for the big-headed, semi-acquatic amphibian Eryops. Cope wrote that the fossil was “found … by my friend Jacob Boll.”

Boll’s fossil fascination erupted into a poem for Eryops
During a break in his field labors, Boll’s fascination with ancient bones prompted him to write in his native German an ode to fossils. Jacobs came across the poem in the American Museum of Natural History on a label on the back of Eryops specimen No. AMNH 4183.

SMU biology professor Pia Vogel translated the poem. Vogel and Jacobs worked with SMU English professor John M. Lewis to retain the essence of the poem in English.

“Now you will with some few others
Trek to the professor’s seat.
Awakened through his careful thought,
Be reassembled from your fragments,
To tell to others yet to come
From the sculpting of your teeth
How you lived and disappeared,
Name you he will, and what he found.”

While Hill and Boll were linked by their relationship to Cope, it isn’t known whether the two of them ever met, according to Jacobs.

”Hill and Boll both made major contributions to frontier science at an important time in American history,” Jacobs said. “They may have been nearly forgotten, but their lives have influenced much that came later.” — Margaret Allen

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, John Lewis, Louis L. Jacobs, Pia Vogel, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, SMU Department of Biological Sciences, SMU Department of English

Earth & Climate Fossils & Ruins Plants & Animals Researcher news SMU In The News

National Geographic: Texas pterosaur Aetodactylus Halli in the spotlight after 95 million years

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date May 10, 2010

National Geographic News interviewed SMU postdoctoral researcher Timothy S. Myers about the new species and genus of pterosaur he identified and named, Aetodactylus Halli.

In the April 28 article “Toothy Texas Pterosaur Found; Soared Over Dallas” reporter John Roach talked to Myers about the 95 million-year-old jaw that was discovered by Lake Worth resident Lance Hall.

The pterosaur flew over the ancient sea that used to cover much of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. A rare species of pterosaur in North America, Myers named the new flying reptile after Hall.

Others who wrote about Myers’ Aetodactylus Halli research include:

The Christian Science Monitor with “Aetodactylus halli fossil: a clue in North American mystery”
CBS 11 with “Texas Man Makes Fossil Find While Out Walking”
Fort Worth Star-Telegram with “New Honor For Ancient Find”
Dallas Observer with “95 Million Reasons Why Unfair Park Needs More Dallas Dinosaur News”
Discovery News with “Texas Has A New Toothy Pterosaur.”

Others who published a story about the find were: American Scientist, MSNBC, FOX News, the San Diego Tribune and many others.

EXCERPT:

By John Roach
National Geographic News
Long before six flags flew over Texas, a newfound species of winged reptile
with an exceptionally toothy grin owned the skies over what is now the Lone
Star State.

The recently discovered pterosaur, dubbed Aetodactylus halli, was identified based on a 95-million-year-old lower jawbone found outside of Dallas by amateur fossil hunter Lance Hall.

The pterosaur had a relatively slender jaw filled with thin, needlelike teeth, which might have helped the creature pluck fish from the shallow sea that once covered the region, a new study says.

“It was hanging out near the ocean, and that is probably where it derived its food from,” said study leader Timothy Myers, a paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

By comparing the jawbone to more complete pterosaur fossils, Myers and his team think A. halli was a medium-size animal with a nine-foot (three-meter) wingspan and a short tail.

Texas’s Toothy Pterosaur a Rare Find
Pterosaurs ruled the skies from the late Triassic period, more than 200 million years ago, until dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous, about 65 million years ago.

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Tags Bonnie F. Jacobs, Dedman College, Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn, Timothy S. Myers

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Texas discovery: Rare 95 million-year-old flying reptile Aetodactylus halli is new genus, species of pterosaur

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 26, 2010

A 95 million-year-old fossilized jaw discovered in Texas has been identified as a new genus and species of flying reptile, Aetodactylus halli.

Aetodactylus halli is a pterosaur, a group of flying reptiles commonly referred to as pterodactyls.

The rare pterosaur — literally winged lizard — is one of the youngest members in the world of the pterosaur family Ornithocheiridae, says paleontologist Timothy S. Myers, who identified and named Aetodactylus halli.

The newly identified reptile is only the second ornithocheirid ever documented in North America, Myers says. He is a postdoctoral fellow in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Aetodactylus halli would have soared over what is now the Dallas-Fort Worth area during the Cretaceous Period when much of the Lone Star state was under water, covered by a vast ancient sea.

Click here to view larger image of Aetodactylus halli

While rare in North America, toothed pterosaurs belonging to the Ornithocheiridae are a major component of Cretaceous pterosaur faunas elsewhere in the world, Myers says. The Texas specimen — a nearly complete mandible with most of its 54 teeth missing — is definitively younger than most other ornithocheirid specimens from Brazil, England and China, he says. It is five million years younger than the only other known North American ornithocheirid.

Myers describes the new species in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Myers named the pterosaur Aetodactylus halli after Lance Hall, a member of the Dallas Paleontological Society who hunts fossils for a hobby. Hall found the specimen in 2006 in North Texas. It was embedded in a soft, powdery shale exposed by excavation of a hillside next to a highway. The site was near the city of Mansfield, southwest of Dallas and west of Joe Pool Lake. Hall donated the specimen to SMU.

Pterosaurs ruled the skies from the late Triassic, more than 200 million years ago, to the end of the Cretaceous, about 65 million years ago, when they went extinct. They represent the earliest vertebrates capable of flying.

Fossil hunter saw long row of teeth sockets
The Aetodactylus halli jaw was discovered in the geologic unit known as the Eagle Ford Group, which comprises sediments deposited in a shallow sea, Myers says. Outcrop of the Eagle Ford Group extends northward from southwestern Texas into southern Oklahoma and southwestern Arkansas.

“I was scanning the exposure and noticed what at first I thought was a piece of oyster shell spanning across a small erosion valley,” Hall recalls of the discovery. “Only about an inch or two was exposed. I almost passed it up thinking it was oyster, but realized it was more tan-colored like bone. I started uncovering it and realized it was the jaw to something — but I had no idea what. It was upside down and when I turned over the snout portion it was nothing but a long row of teeth sockets, which was very exciting.”

SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a dinosaur expert internationally recognized for his fossil discoveries in Texas and Africa, and SMU paleontologist Michael J. Polcyn, recognized for his expertise on the extinct marine reptiles called mosasaurs, both told Hall it was a pterosaur and an important find.

Unique jaw differs from others
The 38.4-centimeter Aetodactylus jaw originally contained 54 slender, pointed teeth, but only two remain in their sockets, Myers says. The lower teeth were evenly spaced and extended far back along the jaw, covering nearly three quarters of the length of the mandible. The upper and lower teeth interlaced when the jaws were closed.

In Aetodactylus, changes in tooth size along the jaw follow a similar pattern to those of other ornithocheirids. However, Aetodactylus differs from all other ornithocheirids in that its jaws were thin and delicate, with a maximum thickness not much greater than 1 centimeter, Myers says. But the specimen does compare favorably with Boreopterus, a related pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous of China, in terms of the number of teeth present in the lower jaw, he says.

Myers has estimated the wingspan around roughly 3 meters, or about 9 feet, indicating Aetodactylus would have been a “medium-sized” pterosaur, he says. While it’s not known how Aetodactylus died, at the time of death the reptile was flying over the sea and fell into the water, perhaps while fishing, Jacobs says.

Find hints at new diversity of pterosaurs
North American pterosaurs that date from the Cretaceous are all toothless, except for Aetodactylus and Coloborhynchus, Myers says. The thinness of the jaws, upward angle of the back half of the mandible and the lack of a pronounced expansion of the jaw tips indicate that Aetodactylus is different from other ornithocheirids and represents a new genus and species of pterosaur.

“Discovery of another ornithocheirid species in Texas hints at a diversity of pterosaurs in the Cretaceous of North America that wasn’t previously realized,” Myers says. “Aetodactylus also represents one of the final occurrences of ornithocheirids prior to the Late Cretaceous transition to pterosaur faunas that were dominated by the edentulous, or toothless, species.”

Texas now claims the only two of their kind
Hall on April 14 was presented with the Dallas Paleontological Society’s highest honor, the Lloyd Hill award. The award is named for the late Lloyd Hill, an amateur fossil hunter and longtime member of the Dallas Paleontological Society. Hill wrote the well-regarded novel The Village of Bom Jesus.

Much of Texas was once submerged under the Western Interior Seaway. The massive sea split North America from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean.

On shore, the terrain was flat and flowering plants were already dominating flora communities in this part of North America, according to paleobotanist Bonnie Jacobs, associate professor of Earth Sciences at SMU.

“There were still conifers and ferns as well, but mostly of the sort that had tiny needle leaves, like junipers,” says Bonnie Jacobs. “Sycamores and their relatives would have been among the flowering plants.”

The first ornithocheirid remains from North America, discovered in Fort Worth, were described by former SMU student Young-Nam Lee and donated by amateur collector Chris Wadleigh, says SMU’s Louis Jacobs.

“The ancient sea that covered Dallas provided the right conditions to preserve marine reptiles and other denizens of the deep, as well as the delicate bones of flying reptiles that fell from their flight to the water below,” says Louis Jacobs, a professor in SMU’s Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

“The rocks and fossils here record a time not well represented elsewhere in North America,” says Louis Jacobs. “That’s why two species of ornithocheirids have been found here but nowhere else, and that’s why discoveries of other new fossils are sure to be made by Lance Hall and other fossil lovers.”

Myers’ article in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology is titled “A new ornithocheirid pterosaur from the Upper Cretaceous (Cenomanian-Turonian) Eagle Ford Group of Texas.”

The research was funded by SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences and SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Tags Bonnie F. Jacobs, Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn, Timothy S. Myers

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