CELEBRATE FIVE LEMUR- PALOOZAS AND FIFTY YEARS DUKE OF LEMURS! LEMUR CENTER BY JANICE KALIN, COMMUNITY AND FOUNDATION RELATIONS MANAGER Bring a blanket and join us for a picnic, music, dancing, and loads of lemurs as we celebrate our fi fth Lemurpalooza from 5 to 8pm on Satur- day, June 4th, 2016! This will be a special event to mark 50 years of caring for lemurs at The Duke Lemur Center. Join us for special guests, exciting prizes and lots of learning! Meet the animals featured in our adopt-a-lemur program! Keepers and education docents will be available to answer all your questions about each of the fascinating lemur species up for adoption. MONGOOSE LEMUR When you adopt a lemur, you not only help cover the $7,400 per year cost it takes to care for each animal, but you will also support our work in the U.S., Madagascar and around the world to study and save these endangered animals. Reservations are required as this event sells out quickly! Call to reserve your spot and mark your calendar to meet your new friends at the Duke Lemur Center. Tickets are $50 per car and are fully tax deductible. Your $50 ticket price may be used towards your symbolic adoption of a lemur. Call 919-401-7252 to reserve a spot. 3911919-693600 Duke University Duke Lemur Center 3705 Erwin Road Durham, NC 27705 DISCOVER | ENGAGE | PROTECT lemur.duke.edu MARCH 2016 Cover photos of Morticia, a 27 year old wild caught female aye-aye. B&W image taken shortly after her arrival at DLC in 1991, color image as she is today. David Haring, Editor & Photographer • Design by Hilliker Designs. This publication was printed using 100% pcw recycled paper, processed chlorine free and with soy ink. LEMUR_NEWSLETTER_SPRING2016.indd 1-2 2/23/16 7:21 PM THE DUKE LEMUR CENTER DIVISION OF FOSSIL PRIMatES (DFP) BY GREGG GUNNELL, DIRECTOR DFP TURNSBY ANNE YODER, DIRECTOR 50! With the recent announcement of the upcoming 50th anniversary celebration of the Duke Lemur Center (DLC), Ready, set, CELEBRATE!!! The Duke Lemur Center is Who could have known that the idea hatched by Peter it seems an appropriate time to look back at the history about to enter its prime at the age of 50, and to mark the Klopfer and John-Buettner Janusch, and made reality by of the DLC Fossil Division as well. While the DLC started occasion, we are going to have a scientific symposium the beloved Bill Anlyan more than 50 years ago, would in 1966, it wasn’t until the arrival of Elwyn Simons as the and celebration of our first half century! Twenty-five blossom into the multi-faceted conservation, education, new Director of the Duke Primate Center (now DLC) in speakers from around the country and around the world and research institution that we now know as the Duke 1977 that the Fossil Division came into being. Simons are lined up to provide two days of electrifying talks on Lemur Center? We are very proud of all of our accom- came to Duke from Yale where he had spent 15 years as topics ranging from behavioral ecology to brain sciences, plishments, past and present, and filled with gratitude Curator of Fossil Vertebrates at the Peabody Museum. evolutionary ecology, microbial metagenomics, compara- for the institutional support that we have enjoyed Simons brought with him a deep-rooted interest in the tive genomics, biomechanics, One Health disease dynam- from our great University, and most especially, from all fossil history of primates as well as a desire to better un- ics, aging and demography, biodiversity conservation, of you, our wonderful donors. So please, mark your derstand living primates from a historical perspective. paleontology, climate change, comparative physiology, calendars for September 21st - 23rd and join us as we While at Yale in 1961, Simons initiated field work speciation genetics, sensory biology, and more. Events Discover, Engage, Protect --- and CELEBRATE! in the Western Desert of Egypt at a place called the Fayum will begin on September 21st with a welcome recep- where some of the earliest ancestors of monkeys and tion, followed by two days of talks, posters, and other apes could be found. The Yale Fayum expeditions took presentations, and concluding on September 23rd with place every year through 1967, after which the Six Day a Plenary lecture by Dame Alison Richard and a Gala Cel- War between Israel and Egypt ended field work possibili- ebration that will be THE event of 2016. Please join us. ties. Simons turned his attention to other areas of field It won’t be a party without you! PhD, Director exploration but the Fayum was never far from his mind. But this is about much more than the number 50 --- it When Simons came to Duke he made certain that is about a lot of numbers! 2,273 lemurs (and counting) the DLC received official designation by the Federal Gov- have been born at the DLC over the past 50 years. That ernment as an accredited institution for collection and is more than 2,000 lemurs that would never have existed storage of fossil specimens from the USA and elsewhere – ELWYN SIMONS were it not for the work that we do. A total of 39 spe- THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO DLC a procedure which, for all intents and purposes, created cies of endangered primates have been housed at the 50TH ANNIVERSARY EVENTS! the Division of Fossil Primates. The timing could hardly DLC over the past 50 years. Many of those species still have been better for Fayum field work because in early the last DFP expedition was in 2012. We are in constant have a toehold on this rapidly changing and challenging 1977, then President Jimmy Carter had reinitiated Middle contact with our Egyptian colleagues, and we hope to planet thanks to the work that we do. As of this writing, Welcome Reception: East peace talks between Egypt and Israel. These talks reinitiate field work in the Fayum as soon as possible. 1,055 peer-reviewed publications have been logged in Wednesday, 9/21/16, 6:00pm-9:00pm resulted in the signing of the Camp David Accords by Despite the heavy collecting schedule in Egypt our database, no doubt an underestimate over our long Symposium Session I: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister each fall, Simons initiated an additional field program history. That is more than 1,055 novel insights into the Thursday, 9/22/16, 9:00am-5:30pm Menachem Begin and ultimately led to the Egypt-Israel in Madagascar beginning in 1983. Between 1983 and workings of the biological world that would never have 2008, Simons led fifteen trips to Madagascar in search Poster Session and Reception: Thursday, 9/22/16, Peace Treaty of 1979. been glimpsed were it not for the research programs sup- of subfossils, mostly from caves and sinkholes in the 6:30pm to 9:00pm (at Duke Lemur Center) Simons was ready to move as soon as it was pos- ported by the DLC over the past 50 years. And 35 is the sible to return to Egypt, and he led his first Duke expedi- southwest and the north. Over the course of those number of years that the DLC has been involved with on- Symposium Session II: tion to the Fayum in the fall of 1977. This initiated a field expeditions Simons and his crews collected nearly 5000 the-ground conservation work in Madagascar. Working Friday, 9/23/16, 9:00am-5:00pm program that spanned the next 34 years and resulted cataloged subfossils (specimens ranging in age from with our Malagasy partners, lemur populations and the 50th Anniversary Gala Dinner and Dancing: in the accumulation of an iconic and virtually unique 500 to 5000 years old) as well as large lots of unsorted forests that they inhabit are better protected, thanks to Friday, 9/23/16 collection of fossil vertebrates from a critical interval of material. the work that we do together. And though we only have time spanning the origin and diversification of higher Finally, when he had the time and resources Cocktails and Dinner with Alison Richards, precise numbers for the past five years, during just that primates. During those field seasons over 160 students Simons also led field expeditions to Wyoming during Plenary Speaker: 6:00pm-8:30pm small fraction of the DLC’s history, more than 400 stu- and colleagues accompanied Simons to the Fayum and the summer. All told, over the course of 35 years Elwyn dents from 98 institutions have engaged in research and/ Dancing with Malagasy superstar, Razia these expeditions took on a legendary aura. Those who Simons and his trusted field manager Prithijit Chatrath, or training activities at the Center, and in Madagascar. Said: 10:00pm -12:00am never had the opportunity to go to the Fayum clamored led expeditions that amassed over 35,000 fossil verte- Some simple arithmetic tells us therefore that thousands All events, unless otherwise noted, at Washington for the chance, and those who returned over and over brates that are now housed at DFP. This is a legacy that of students (including yours truly, many years ago) have Duke Inn & Golf Club, Durham, NC. again could never get enough. All told over 20,000 fossil we are carrying forward as we plan for new expeditions been inspired and enriched by the lemurs and programs vertebrates from the Fayum have been cataloged into the in Madagascar, Wyoming and Indonesia. Collection- of the Duke Lemur Center. For more information and registration options, collections at the DFP as a result of these field seasons.