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17 million-year-old whale fossil provides 1st exact date for East Africa’s puzzling uplift

Uplift and aridification of East Africa causing changes in vegetation has been considered a driver of human evolution. Now a fossil whale stranded far inland in Kenya marks the first time scientists can pinpoint how many millions of years ago the uplift began.

Uplift associated with the Great Rift Valley of East Africa and the environmental changes it produced have puzzled scientists for decades. Timing and starting elevation have been poorly understood.

Now paleontologists have tapped a fossil from the most precisely dated beaked whale in the world to pinpoint for the first time a date when East Africa’s mysterious elevation began. The stranded whale is the only one ever found so far inland on the African continent.

The 17 million-year-old fossil is from the beaked Ziphiidae whale family. It was discovered 740 kilometers inland at a elevation of 620 meters in modern Kenya’s harsh desert region, said vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

At the time the whale was alive, it would have been swimming far inland up a river with a low gradient ranging from 24 to 37 meters over more than 600 to 900 kilometers, said Jacobs, a co-author of the study.

A map of Africa and Kenya showing where a 17-million-year-old whale fossil was found far inland . (Wichura/PNAS)
A map of Africa and Kenya showing where a 17-million-year-old whale fossil was found far inland . (Wichura/PNAS)

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides the first constraint on the start of uplift of East African terrain from near sea level.

“The whale was stranded up river at a time when east Africa was at sea level and was covered with forest and jungle,” Jacobs said. “As that part of the continent rose up, that caused the climate to become drier and drier. So over millions of years, forest gave way to grasslands. Primates evolved to adapt to grasslands and dry country. And that’s when — in human evolution — the primates started to walk upright.”

Identified as a Turkana ziphiid, the whale would have lived in the open ocean, like its modern beaked cousins. Ziphiids, still one of the ocean’s top predators, are the deepest diving air-breathing mammals alive, plunging to nearly 10,000 feet to feed, primarily on squid.

In contrast to most whale fossils, which have been discovered in marine rocks, Kenya’s beached whale was found in river deposits, known as fluvial sediments, said Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences of SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

The whale fossil bones were originally thought to be those of a turtle specimen, as was recorded in the fossil catalogue for the Harvard Loperot Expedition in 1964.
The whale fossil bones were originally thought to be those of a turtle specimen, as was recorded in the fossil catalogue for the Harvard Loperot Expedition in 1964. (Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University.)
SMU, Meltzer, women, body image

The ancient large Anza River flowed in a southeastward direction to the Indian Ocean.

The whale, probably disoriented, swam into the river and could not change its course, continuing well inland.

“You don’t usually find whales so far inland,” Jacobs said. “Many of the known beaked whale fossils are dredged by fishermen from the bottom of the sea.”

Determining ancient land elevation is very difficult, but the whale provides one near sea level.

“It’s rare to get a paleo-elevation,” Jacobs said, noting only one other in East Africa, determined from a lava flow.

Beaked whale fossil surfaced after going missing for more than 30 years
The beaked whale fossil was discovered in 1964 by J.G. Mead in what is now the Turkana region of northwest Kenya.

Mead, an undergraduate student at Yale University at the time, made a career at the Smithsonian Institution, from which he recently retired. Over the years, the Kenya whale fossil went missing in storage. Jacobs, who was at one time head of the Division of Paleontology for the National Museums of Kenya, spent 30 years trying to locate the fossil. His effort paid off in 2011, when he rediscovered it at Harvard University and returned it to the National Museums of Kenya.

The fossil is only a small portion of the whale, which Mead originally estimated was 7 meters long during its life. Mead unearthed the beak portion of the skull, 2.6 feet long and 1.8 feet wide, specifically the maxillae and premaxillae, the bones that form the upper jaw and palate.

The researchers reported their findings in “A 17-My-old whale constrains onset of uplift and climate change in east Africa” online at the PNAS web site.

Modern cases of stranded whales have been recorded in the Thames River in London, swimming up a gradient of 2 meters over 70 kilometers; the Columbia River in Washington state, a gradient of 6 meters over 161 kilometers; the Sacramento River in California, a gradient of 4 meters over 133 kilometers; and the Amazon River in Brazil, a gradient of 1 meter over 1,000 kilometers.

Besides Jacobs, other authors from SMU are Andrew Lin, Michael J. Polcyn, Dale A. Winkler and Matthew Clemens.

From other institutions, authors are Henry Wichura and Manfred R. Strecker, University of Potsdam, and Fredrick K. Manthi, National Museums of Kenya.

Funding for the research came from SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man and the SMU Engaged Learning program. — Margaret Allen

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

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.

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International Business Times: Angola — Ancient Mystery Mammal Tracks Found in Angolan Diamond Mine

Tracks of an unknown mammal dating to the Early Cretaceous are discovered along with tracks of a crocodile and a dinosaur

The creature was about the size of a raccoon, researchers said. (Photo: Marco Marzola)
The creature was about the size of a raccoon, researchers said. (Photo: Marco Marzola)

The research of an international team co-led by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs is receiving worldwide coverage for discovery of the first dinosaur tracks discovered in Angola, including those of a mysterious mammal from 118 million years ago.

Reporter Hannah Osborne wrote about the discovery Nov. 5 for The International Business Times in the article “Angola: Huge Mystery Mammal Tracks from Early Cretaceous Period Discovered in Catoca Diamond Mine.”

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology announced the discovery in a press release Nov. 5, “African diamond mine reveals dinosaur and large mammal tracks.”

The discovery was made by a Octávio Mateus, a member of Projecto PaleoAngola.

Jacobs, a professor of earth sciences at SMU, is a former president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. His research focus is the interrelationships of biotic and abiotic events through time.

His fieldwork is currently focused through Projecto PaleoAngola on the iconic, puzzle-like fit of Africa and South America, as viewed through the rocks and fossils of coastal Angola.

SMU paleontologist Michael J. Polcyn is also a member of the Projecto PaleoAngola team.

The PaleoAngola researchers have described Angola as a “museum in the ground” for the abundance of fossils there.

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

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.

Polcyn is director of the Visualization Laboratory in SMU’s Department of Earth Sciences and an SMU research associate.

A world-recognized expert on the extinct marine reptile named Mosasaur, Polcyn’s research interests include the early evolution of Mosasauroidea and adaptations in secondarily aquatic tetrapods. Polcyn’s research also includes application of technology to problems in paleontology.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Hannah Osborne
International Business Times

The tracks of a huge mysterious mammal dating to the Early Cretaceous period have been discovered in the world’s fourth-biggest diamond mine in Africa.

Dating to 118 million years ago, researchers discovered the tracks of a crocodile, a dinosaur and a large unknown mammal inside the Catoca Diamond Mine in Angola.

Over 70 tracks were uncovered by researcher from the PaleoAngola Project, a programme that researches vertebrate palaeontology in Angola.

The dinosaur tracks – the first to be found in the African nation – were from a sauropod and were discovered with a preserved skin impression. The crocodile, a crocodilomorph trackmaker, was from a group that includes all modern species.

However, the most important find was that of the large mammal. Researchers believe it was about the size of a raccoon – huge compared to all other mammals at the time, which were mostly no larger than a rat.

Marco Marzola, one of the study authors, told IBTimes UK there is no way of telling to what species the mystery mammal belongs as you cannot identify animals by their tracks – “the most you can say is that the track resembles the anatomy of that animal,” he explained.

“We cannot narrow down to a species but we can say they do belong to – they were made by an exceptionally large mammal – that we can say for sure.”

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

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.

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NatGeo: Shark-like Tails Sped Ancient Sea Monsters Through Oceans

A new study finds that the prehistoric predators of the ocean, mosasaurs, were not as slow as scholars once thought.

The first mosasaur tail on record with a preserved soft tissue outline (top picture). In similarity with whales and ichthyosaurs, Mosasaurs gradually attained a shark-like appearance (bottom picture) Image courtesy NatGeo.
The first mosasaur tail on record with a preserved soft tissue outline (top picture). In similarity with whales and ichthyosaurs, Mosasaurs gradually attained a shark-like appearance (bottom picture) Image courtesy NatGeo.

Science journalist Jane J. Lee with National Geographic reported on the research of SMU Research Associate Michael J. Polcyn, who co-authored a new study that found the ancient sea monsters known as mosasaurs were not as slow as paleontologists once thought, thanks to their shark-like tails.

The National Geographic article, “Shark-like Tails Sped Ancient Sea Monsters Through Oceans,” was published in September.

Polcyn is a vertebrate paleontologist and director of the Visualization Laboratory in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences whose current research interests include the early evolution of Mosasauroidea and adaptations in secondarily aquatic tetrapods. His research involves the application of advanced imaging techniques and other computer-based technology to problems in paleontology. Polcyn’s fieldwork is currently focused in Upper Cretaceous marine deposits of Angola.

Read the National Geographic article.


EXCERPT:

By Jane J. Lee
National Geographic

Sea monsters lying in wait for unsuspecting prey sounds scary enough. But slap on a tail that let them run down their dinner—much like today’s great white sharks—and mosasaurs could truly be considered one of the ancient world’s nightmares.

And that’s exactly what a new study published September 10 in Nature Communications has confirmed.

A 72-million-year-old fossil specimen of Prognathodon—a genus of mosasaur—found in a Jordanian quarry in 2008 revealed fin-like soft-tissue imprints along its tail. Those imprints demonstrate that this group of ancient sea monsters possessed powerful tails similar to ones seen on sharks today, rather than the puny ones on eels or sea snakes.

Mosasaurs were aquatic reptiles that prowled the seas and freshwater streams toward the end of the age of dinosaurs, about 98 to 66 million years ago.

Although they are fairly well represented in the fossil record, finding soft-tissue evidence for shark-like tails on these lizard ancestors isn’t something that study co-author Michael Polcyn, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, expected to come across in his lifetime.

This fossil is so well preserved that researchers can discern the direction of stiffening fibers in the tail, he added.

“You can [also] see the outlines of scales,” said study co-author Johan Lindgren, a vertebrate paleontologist at Lund University in Sweden.

Questioning the Past
For over 200 years, scholars thought mosasaurs sported paddle-shaped tails much like sea snakes, said Lindgren. Since mosasaurs are true lizards, scholars formerly thought that the ancient reptile’s tail should look like those on their living lizard relatives.

But this limited mosasaurs — some of which could grow to over 33 feet (10 meters) long — to short bursts of speed typical of ambush predators.

“It was generally assumed that their swimming speeds were low and at best they could do a quick lunge,” said Bruce Young, a researcher at the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in Missouri who is studying how reptiles move.

Read the National Geographic article.

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.

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Dallas Morning News: Paleontologist puts passion for fossils to use as curator at Perot Museum

Anthony Fiorillo excavates a Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum at a quarry in Alaska. (Credit: Dallas Morning News)


Dallas Morning News reporter Katharina Marino covered the research of Anthony Fiorillo, who is Perot Museum Curator of Earth Sciences at the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Victory Park.

Fiorillo is an adjunct research professor of paleoecology in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College. The article, “Paleontologist puts passion for fossils to use as curator at Perot Museum,” was published in the Dec. 31 issue of the Dallas Morning News.

Michael Polcyn, director of SMU’s Digital Earth Sciences Laboratory, is also quoted in the article. Polcyn 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.

Anthony Fiorillo and Michael Polcyn with the Perot Museum’s mosasaur exhibit. (Credit: Hillsman Jackson, SMU)

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Katharina Marino
Staff Writer

Dallas paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo’s line of work has taken him from Bolivia to Big Bend to northern Alaska.

“I’ve tended to work in places where people hadn’t been,” he said.

But Fiorillo didn’t have to venture far for his latest project: chief curator of earth sciences at the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Victory Park.

Fiorillo became chief paleontologist for the museum’s forerunner in Fair Park in 1995. Launching the museum’s T. Boone Pickens “Life Then and Now” exhibition hall gave him the opportunity to build an exhibit reflecting some of the locations where he’s conducted field work.

“You can see Tony’s influence throughout the Perot Museum,” said Mike Polcyn, director of SMU’s Digital Earth Sciences Laboratory. “He should be very proud of
what he and his team have accomplished.”

As curator of the new exhibit, Fiorillo said he wanted to spark the same enthusiasm and curiosity he has for dinosaurs and science in museum visitors.

“There had to be a reason for people to come here,” he said.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Follow SMUResearch.com on Twitter.

For more information, 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 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.