Priscum NEWSLETTER of the PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY
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Volume 21, issue 1 Winter 2014 Priscum NEWSLETTER OF THE PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY S P E C I A L P O I N T S O F The Paleobiology Database Releases INTEREST: PBDB Navigator New Paleobiology Database Navigator By Shanan E. Peters (University of Wisconsin) doing more to promote the field of paleontolo- Book reviews gy and to expose the fossil record lucidly to Interview with PS For nearly two decades, an international team the public, other geoscientists, and to our own Awardee of more than 150 paleontologists, spearhead- paleontological community. Call for PS nomina- ed technically and intellectually by John Al- tions roy, have devoted considerable time to enter- Thanks to an NSF Geoinformatics grant ini- Social Media Round- ing field- and literature-derived fossil occur- tially awarded to John Alroy in 2010 and im- up rence and taxonomic data into the Paleobiolo- mediately transferred to Shanan Peters, our gy Database (http://paleobiodb.org). The PalSIRP/Sepkoski University of Wisconsin-Madison based PBDB database now contains nearly 300,000 taxo- grant announcement IT team, com- nomic names, PS Medal, Schuchert, posed of Pe- almost a half and Strimple Award- ters, Michael ees million opin- McClennen Thanks to those who ions about the (Chief Infor- have served the classification of Society those names, maticist), John and more than Czaplewski 1.1 million (cartographer globally dis- and User Inter- tributed fossil face develop- INSIDE THIS ISSUE: occurrences er), and Puneet from across the Kishor are entire tree of Social Media Roundup 2 building a tech- life and nical founda- throughout tion that will Estella Leopold Interview 3 most of geolog- give the PBDB ic time. The greater expo- aggregate data have been put to great use by sure and accessibility. The most important Membership Benefits 6 an even larger international community, pro- new change is that we are actively rolling out ducing 194 official peer reviewed publications; an Application Programing Interface for the many more publications make use of the data- Student Grants database, one that will allow third party data- 8 base but are not tallied in the official num- awardees driven application development that we hope bered list. will help grow a more diverse user ecosystem Outreach & Education 9 By all accounts, the Paleobiology Database has around the PBDB. To get things started, the Grants announcement been a tremendous success in doing what da- UW-Madison team have developed and re- tabases are supposed to do, which is to enable leased PBDB Navigator, which is designed to Book reviews 14 new science. However, the database has ma- facilitate the intuitive exploration of the fossil tured to the point where it can and should be P a g e 2 P r i s c u m New Paleobiology Database Navigator 1,401 "likes" on our Facebook page. Our 3 most popular Facebook posts of the last 6 months are: #1 (2,484 people reached)Call for workshop pro- posals! STEPPE is a new office funded by the Geological Society of America, the Society for Sedimentary Geology (SEPM), the Paleontological Society, and the National Science Foundation to facilitate communication and collaboration for researchers and educators studying the deep-time sed- imentary crust and the history of life. The interim website can be viewed at http://steppe.org We are seeking proposals for workshops on deep-time sedimentary crust and fossil record research. record by geologic time, geography, and taxonomy. PBDB Navigator uses the same open API that is available to you, Please submit your proposals by November 15, 2013. Pro- which means that you and your teams can begin developing posal should consist of a one-paragraph summary; a two- novel applications that draw on the rich public PBDB data, page description of the workshop, including the need for which are now released under a Creative Commons CC-BY and timeliness of it; and proposed location and dates, 2.0 International license (http://creativecommons.org/ budget, and plans for acquiring supplemental funding, if licenses/by/4.0/). The iOS application Mancos similarly needed. Proposal should be in PDF format and emailed to makes use of the PBDB API, as well as other open APIs (e.g., [email protected]. Decisions on the proposals will be made http://earth-base.org/geomaps) published by the UW- by December 15, 2013. The workshop should be scheduled Madison IT team. for no later than April 30, 2014. The PBDB has also undergone a recent rebirth in communi- Grants will be $8-10K to help set-up, organize, and fund ty governance. The Executive Committee, currently led by participation—particularly by students and post-docs—in Chair Mark Uhen and Secretary Jocelyn Sessa, and the Advi- the workshop. sory Board have started a new push in several different areas of research and outreach. One of the main goals right now is For more information, please contact Dr. Judy Parrish, to learn what you would like the PBDB to do for you and STEPPE Executive Director, at [email protected] how the PBDB could benefit from your own paleontological #2 (979 people reached) Congratulations to all of the PS expertise. Contacting the Executive Committee (http:// award winners at last night's award dinner at GSA: Check paleobiodb.org/#/contact) is a great way to start to get in- out the 2013 PS awardees here! http://t.co/jK3vFBcbbe volved and to offer suggestions for the future improvement of this valuable resource, which should be one prominent #3 (778 people reached) http:// expression of the paleontological community and a strength phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/14/ of our discipline. historical-fossils-may-be-lost-at-auction/ Send your comments about the planned auction directly to Social Media Roundup San Diego Nat Hist Museum here: http:// www.sdnhm.org/about-us/our-museum/contact-us/ Follow us on Twitter (@Paleo_Society, https:// twitter.com/Paleo_Society). As of February 6th, 2014, we have 199 followers. Check out the Paleontological Society on Facebook (www.facebook.com/PaleoSoc). As of Jan 8th, 2014, we have P r i s c u m P a g e 3 Interview with PS Medalist Estella Leopold Estella Leopold is the recipient of the 2013 can take the press to the field, and show them Paleontological Society medal, the most pres- what’s what. And in addition one can of tigious honor bestowed by the Society. It is course use radio or TV to get attention. awarded to a person whose eminence is based on advancement of knowledge in paleontolo- Q: Do you find that the mood has gy. changed with regard to how citizens can effect change about conservation The Priscum editor spoke with Dr. Leopold in issues, in comparison to when you January, 2014. were first starting out? Q: I noticed in your biography that you A: I’m sure it’s more complex now, for so many reasons. I lived longer in Seattle than anywhere else. What’s think the worst problem is that the issues are so much larg- the best part of living there? er now and there are so many of them now. It used to be we only had a few things come to us at a time, and now it’s A: Well, I was very fond of Colorado, and I bought some just an incredible list of conservation problems. And so it’s land there and had a cabin and stuff. It was good because it hard to get anybody’s attention. And that’s why these out- gave me easy access to New Mexico, where my mother’s reach tools, I think, are especially important. family lived, and I have many cousins there. But I like very much being in the Northwest. It’s politically liberal, it’s got Q: In your professional career, is there one partic- a nice summer climate, and, particularly, its diversity: access ular thing of which you’re most proud? for field trips to an active volcano, the rainforest, the desert, a rich conifer forest. It’s very diverse, and all within a day’s A: Yes, I’m most proud of my study of the Miocene Eniwe- drive. That was a real plus, as a teacher and as a botanist. tok atoll, published as a professional paper back in 1980 or so. These were cores that our government drilled some- Q: I thought you were going to say the coffee! As a time before they set off the bomb on Bikini. So we worked botanist, why do you think most of our drinks are up the fossil pollen in my lab, and we were able to identify, plant-based? I mean, it’s not like I woke up to a cup in the sediments, a whole bevy of pollen and algae that of hot beef broth this morning. Is there a reason for pointed squarely to a fossil mangrove swamp deposit, now that? about 2000 feet below the present sea level. Clearly the atoll had sunk considerably since deposition. This meant A: An interesting thought. Well, I guess plants are easier to that my pollen work corroborated Darwin’s idea that a Ha- access. I don’t know. waiian-type volcano sank below the sea, and that a ring of Q: Maybe this isn’t a cutting edge area of research. coral in the shallow water grew upward to make an atoll. Interestingly, the mangrove composition and diversity was A: Well, think about it: tea, coffee, chocolate. similar to today’s mangrove association in Micronesia! That was a fun study. Q: You helped pressure the U.S. Congress into cre- ating the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monu- Leopold, E.B.