Yale Peabody Museum Part 2! A.E. Verrill, Cambrian Invertebrates, and mmm..Waffles!

(Division of Invertebrate Paleontology, YPM # 220638, Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven CT, USA)

And now the conclusion of my travel to Yale's world famous Peabody Museum in New Haven, CT where I was visiting the Department of Invertebrate Zoology and the adjacent Dept. of Invertebrate Paleontology!

I stayed at a local hotel which included waffles made with a waffle-making-machine which was part of their complimentary "continental breakfast" offerings!
MMMmmmm...waffles!
This and a cup of coffee later..I'm off to the museum!

After a search through the collection and working on their newly collected specimens from deep-sea Seamount expeditions and other exotic locales, I proceeded to review the older parts of their collection, and many interesting historical items presented themselves!

This dried and brilliantly painted asteroid, Dermasterias imbricata
Also came upon a very amazingly dissected Aristotle's "Lantern" in the collection.. Really hard to find one that is quite so well prepared...
I was also able to delve more deeply into the historical artifacts and lore of the Yale Peabody Invertebrate collections!

Here, Collections Manager Eric Lazo-Wasem showcases a portrait of the noted Harvard biologist and naturalist, Louis Agassiz
And one closer...
I was also got a full dose of the history of famous American zoologist Addison Emery Verrill, whose full bio can be found here.

An incredible painting of Verrill can be found in the Invertebrate Zoology offices...
Here is a photo of Verrill for comparison..
What did A. E. Verrill do for us?

Well, in his day, (roughly the 1860s to the early 1900s) Verrill was one of the most prolific and pre-eminent invertebrate zoologists in the United States. He described over 1200 taxonomic names of various marine species, including corals and worms!! (although to be fair-not all of them remain valid, but still...) Approximately 290 of these names were starfish....

If you work on the Pacific Northwest coast, here are a couple of Verrill's starfish names that have remained "good species" in spite of taxonomic changes over the last 100 years or so...

Solaster dawsoni was described by Verrill in 1880!!
and the North Pacific coral and sea pen predator Hippasteria spinosa which was described by Verrill in 1909.

(image from the OR Dept. of Fish & Wildlife website)

and there are many more...

Shifting Gears-A Visit to Invertebrate Paleontology!

So, during this visit, I also took some time to visit the equally world famous Invertebrate Paleontology department at the Peabody Museum to examine starfish fossils.. (which for various reasons I won't be showing you here...)

But here is an excellent shot of a nicely preserved Paleozoic crinoid, Seirocrinus subangulatus YPM specimen 210116. A species that some people think was pelagic...(click here)

(Division of Invertebrate Paleontology, YPM # 210116, Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven CT, USA)

The Yale/Peabody museum is home to the Lab of Dr. Derek Briggs, an expert on Cambrian invertebrate forms, especially those associated with the Cambrian Explosion.

As a result, there are some awesome models representing the living interpretations of various Paleozoic invertebrates that were in the Paleo department collections! Many of these were made by the masterful artist George S. Rennie III who produced models for many different departments in the Peabody Museum.

Here is a good-sized model of the Cambrian predator Anomolocaris nathorsti..Wiki on Anomalocaris is here. (Note that All images below are courtesy of the Division of Invertebrate Paleontology, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, CT, specimen YPM 203911)
View from the perspective of potential food!
And a dorsal view...
Here is model of the Cambrian Priapulid worm, Ottoia prolifica (wiki article is here), which could get to up to 80 CENTIMETERS in length!! (All images below are courtesy of the Division of Invertebrate Paleontology, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, CT.specimen YPM 203912)
So, with me there for scale, we see that this model was actually close to life sized!

Now THAT is a big worm.

Another cool giant Paleozoic invertebrate-A huge stylonurid!! Based on an actual head-shield, making this model a reconstruction of a LIFE SIZED individual!! (All images below are courtesy of the Division of Invertebrate Paleontology, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, CT.specimen YPM 220638, )
Stylonurids were related to eurypterids-Giant predatory "sea scorpions" that swam through the shallow seas on the Paleozoic.
Here is a schematic from one of the hallway displays showing how big some sea scorpions (not stylonurids but related to) got relative to humans..
Yet, another reminder of how, if you find yourself in the Paleozoic, you should NEVER go into the water!

And here is a model of the Paleozoic worm Plumulites which is thought to have been ancestral to modern polychaetes. (gratefully, this was not life sized! )
And here we have some hallway displays of more giant Paleozoic arthropods, such as this eurypterid!
A close up of this mean beast!
and finally a Trilobite display!
I had a very productive trip to Yale and was enthusiastically recieved/hosted by Yale's friendly and gracious staff! In Invertebrate Zoology: Collection Manager Eric Lazo Wasem and museum assistants, Lourdes Rojas and Daniel Drew and in Invertebrate Paleontology: Collection Manager Susan Butts and museum assistant Jessicz Bazeley!

Pt. 1 "How I became an echinoderm scientist" Geology-University of Illinois Edition!

Today. Something a little different.

Within the echinoderm research community, there has for many years, existed The Echinoderm Newsletter, a way for echinoderm scientists around the world, to stay in touch and communicate needs and information. The modern online "Echinoderm Newsletter" is here. The Older "Virtual Echinoderm Newsletter" is here.

One of the GREAT parts of this newsletter was a section called "How I became an echinoderm scientist" in which various professional scientists and students wrote short essays on HOW they came to study echinoderms. Some were paleontologists, others were deep-sea biologists, coral-reef ecologists and MANY more. These were interesting-as people who study echinoderms often require...how shall we say, a unique perspective!

I have REVIVED the "How I became an echinoderm scientist" feature HERE. And will be reprinting these for everyone to enjoy. Later this week-biologists but today some Echinoderm PALEONTOLOGY!

Why? The aspiration of these is to provide INSIGHT but also to INSPIRE new generations of echinoderm biologists!

TODAY. We start with "How I became an echinoderm scientist"-Three stories from alumni/echinoderm scientists from THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN!
How does a Big 10, MIDWESTERN University end up contributing so much to Echinoderm Biology?? Through the long Paleontological legacy at the University of Illinois-GEOLOGY department! Many paleontogists worked on smaller echinoderm stratigraphy type projects during the era when the department's primary expertise was in carbonate (i.e., limestone) and oil geology.

Among them was my advisor...

Daniel Blake, emeritus Professor in Paleontology-Dept. of Geology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

(photo by Hugo Gonzalez)

"I liked both biology and geology from childhood, and paleontology was a good way to combine the two, and so I majored in geology at the University of Illinois. The midcontinent of North America is a setting of Paleozoic rocks, but for graduate school, I decided to see mountains, oceans, and younger fossils, and so I migrated to the University of California at Berkeley and J. Wyatt Durham’s laboratory. I intended to work on mollusks, but at that time Wyatt was working on Helicoplacus and the echinoid Treatise and I got caught up in all of that. As to asteroids, on my first field trip at Cal, one of the students picked up a fossil “blob," Wyatt looked at it and said “It is a starfish," and something as simple as that started me on the way. (The fossil proved to be an arm fragment of Luidia)."

Some Recent Papers: 1. Blake 2009, 2. Blake & Portell 2009, 3. Blake 2009, 4. Blake & Ettensohn, 2009

William I. Ausich, Professor of Earth Sciences and Director, Orton Geological Museum, The Ohio State University

(picture from the Cincinnati Museum "Researcher in the House" feature)

"My maternal grandfather polished rocks, in retirement. As a teenager, I was fascinated by these attractive stones, which included specimens called “pudding stone”, “petosky stone”, and “alphabet rock”. Alphabet rock was a crinoidal limestone, white crinoid columnals in a dark-colored matrix. Crinoid columnals were cut at all angles yielding the O, C, U, C, B, I, etc. shapes, hence the alphabet rock. This alphabet rock was most intriguing. My grandfather and I did conclude that the “letters” in the alphabet rock were crinoids by consultation with Fenton and Fenton’s The Fossil Book. Although I did not pursue rock or fossil collection or rock polishing as a teenager, I did enter the University of Illinois as an undergraduate major in Geology. At Illinois, Dan Blake was studying fossil asteroids, and two of his graduate students, Dennis Kolata and Frank Ettensohn, were studying crinoids (and other echinoderms). The seed of interest planted unknowingly by my grandfather took firm root. By the beginning of my junior year, I had decided to study crinoids. I entered graduate school at Indiana University specifically to study fossil crinoids under the direction of Gary Lane. "
Bill Ausich Ohio State website: http://www.geology.ohio-state.edu/~ausich/
Some recent publications: http://www.geology.ohio-state.edu/~ausich/Publications.html

Chris Mah, Research Collaborator Dept. of Invertebrate Zoology, NMNH

"I grew up in SF, a city blessed with museums, aquariums, parks, and easily accessible intertidal and marine habitats. I spent many afternoons digging up insects, looking at fish, and trying to catch planarians and crayfish from the lakes in the park. At the same time, when I wasn't working at family pharmacy-I was at home enjoying Saturday afternoon monster matinees. Weird stuff, science and science fiction fascinated me as a kid. I used to spend hours going through my Dad's first edition of John Buchsbaum's textbook invertebrate text "Animals without Backbones". I was a hardcore volunteer/visitor at the California Academy of Science's Steinhart Aquarium.

I went to Humboldt State University to decide on what I would do with my life and was told that marine biology would probably not be fruitful. But I was stuck on working on invertebrates and nearly decided on a career of either Entomology or Parasitology. I had an internship working at Monterey Bay Aquarium in the Interpretive Programs Office. During the program I was introduced to many species of sea stars (aka starfish or asteroids) that I had never seen before. Pteraster tesselatus! Poraniopsis! Hippasteria! Brisingids!! Strange beasts! Living Monsters! Aliens among us!

My interest continued onto grad school at San Francisco State University and research at the California Academy of Sciences, followed by my PhD at the very distant University of Illinois in Champaign-Illinois, where I got a degree in GEOLOGY of all things! I studied marine animals far away from my ocean!
Since I started my degree I've seen fantastic things from submersibles at the bottom of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, from ships in the Antarctic and secrets of starfishes from deep vaults in the museums of Paris. As a student, I could never have believed I would ever be studying starfishes at the Smithsonian. I've had no regrets since....."

Chris Mah's website: http://invertebrates.si.edu/mah.htm

NEXT UP! MARINE BIOLOGISTS!!