Hi and welcome back to another episode
where you get to know more about
real-life relatable people in STEM. Now
last week we had scientists within the
field of microbiology share their
research with us. This week we are going
back in time millions of years ago to
ancient life on earth, And so I have five
wonderful scientists, palaeontologists, who
will share how their work or research
informs us about early life and the
evolution of life on Earth. Now before
you begin I've put the links to the
Twitter pages of each of the scientists
within this episode in the description
box below. I will also be displaying
their twitter handles while they're
given their response. Make sure you give
them a follow in order to find out more
about what they're working on and also
any cool things that they're up to. Also
don't forget to subscribe to this
channel, like any videos that you've
enjoyed and comment! Let us know in the
comments section what you found
interesting about each episode and if
you've learned something new. Right! Let's
begin. First up we have Sarah Davis.
She is currently working on her PhD at
the University of Texas at Austin in the
Jackson School of Geosciences. Her
interest in palaeontology began with
dinosaurs after seeing their fossils on
display in museums, and that interest
continued to grow over time. This
eventually brought her to the University
of Arizona where she majored in
evolutionary biology. While studying she
also worked as a fossil preparators
spending hours chipping away layers of
rock to expose bone. But her first formal
research experience was in something
completely different! She worked in an
evolutionary biology lab studying how
birds use pigment to create their
brilliant colours (and you'll hear more
about this in a bit). These two
experiences brought her to where she is
today combining colour science with her
love of extinct animals. Let's hear more from Sarah.
Hi I am Sarah and I am a
vertebrate palaeontologist. I study the
evolution of birds which are the only
group
of dinosaurs that survived the mass
extinction that occurred 66 million
years ago and I work on two main areas;
one more focused on living birds and the
other on fossils. So for my first project
I am working on colouration and how the
colours of living birds can help us
figure out the colour of extinct birds
and maybe even non bird dinosaurs. So
when an animal goes through the process
of fossilisation after it's died,
sometimes we get really really lucky and
things like skin and tissues can be
preserved and this is how we know that
some groups of dinosaurs were feathered
while others had bumpy skin. And
sometimes in extremely exceptional cases
that skin or the feather can actually
preserve pigments that can then be
studied and analysed to help figure out
the colour that that animal was.
Unfortunately this only works for
certain types of pigments specifically
the pigments that create black, brown,
grey, and sometimes shiny iridescent
colours. Other pigments that produce
brighter colours or things like yellow
and orange those have not been found in
fossils and those are the kinds of
colours that I am interested in. So I work
on a group of pigments called
carotenoids which are found across
living birds and create yellow, orange,
red, pink, and the skin, and the beak, and
in the feathers of birds. An interesting
thing about carotenoids is that they
cannot be made by birds themselves they
have to be eaten before they can be used.
So other things like plants and insects
are high in carotenoids and have a lot of
carotenoids in them and so when a bird
eats those things it then has these
compounds available to express as
colouration. And the best example of this
in a living bird are flamingos. So they
have that really really bright pink
feather colouration because of
carotenoids in algae and in shrimp that
they eat. And if they didn't eat those
things then they would not be pink.
So you'll see that that colour actually
goes away if they change their diet and
I really want to know if other groups of
dinosaurs could also express these
colours. So could they use carotenoids to
make bright yellow, orange, and red like
living birds? But to figure that out we
need to have a better understanding of
how use of this colour works in living
birds and so that's what I'm working on
right now. So to switch gears my other project
is more fossil based and it's looking at
the diversity of theropod dinosaurs that
were in South America at the end of the
Cretaceous period right before this mass
extinction event. So 66 million years ago
there was a mass extinction that wiped
out some major groups of animals
including all of the non-bird dinosaurs. So
theropods are the group of dinosaurs
that include living birds but also the
really fun pop-culture guys like
Tyrannosaurus Rex. So we have a pretty
good idea of what animals were around in
North America right before the
extinction but we have less clear of a
picture of what was going on in South
America. So I do fieldwork with a
group of people we go to Chilean
Patagonia every year and look for
fossils of dinosaurs and other animals
and plants. And right now what we're doing
is working to piece together these
fossil remains to make a clearer picture
of the environment and the animals that
were around right before this really bad
extinction. And so this work is ongoing
but we will hopefully have some updates
soon.
Now I don't know about you but me
personally I find it so cool that by
using the remains of animals and plants
from millions of years ago scientists
can now begin to piece together a
picture of what early life looks like. I
think that's so cool!
Now onto our next palaeontologist. We have
Dr. Dave Hone. After finishing school
dave did a degree in zoology, then a
master's in taxonomy and finally a PhD
in palaeontology. He's had jobs in Munich,
Beijing, and Dublin, and his work has
taken him to Mexico, South Africa, Japan,
and Canada. After working in universities,
museums, and research institutes, Dave is
now a senior lecturer in zoology at
Queen Mary University of London. And this is
actually where I did my bachelors and
PhD! Now let's go to Dave.
Hi my name is Dr. Dave Hone and I'm a palaeontologist at Queen Mary University of London
(in London in the UK). I work on a whole bunch
of extinct animals but in particular
dinosaurs, and pterosaurs (the flying
reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs
that everyone thinks the dinosaurs but
aren't really). The main area that I'm
interested in is trying to work out
their behaviour and their ecology, so
basically how they live their day-to-day
lives; What were they doing? What were
they eating? How were they finding it? How
are they eating it? How did they interact
and live in groups? Did they do things
like migrate? And then a whole bunch of
associated problems with all of this.
So can we work out male and female
dinosaurs and we can we tell them
apart for example. What did their growth
look like? At what point did they become
sexually mature? And you know can we tell
what are juveniles and what are adults
from often limited remains? What does
this mean for all kinds of different
aspects of their behavior and
interactions between different
individuals and then again interactions
between different species? You know
predators will hunt and kill and eat
herbivores, and herbivores don't want
this to happen!
Individuals will fight with each other
members of the same species for access
to things like territory or mates or food.
So there's all these kinds of different
interactions going on between these
animals and that's really what I try and
look at. But I work on some other related
subjects as well so every things like
pterosaurs I actually look at some of
their biomechanics of flight; how these
things get into the air, how they're
flying. Flight for obviously species like
this is critical to almost their entire
biology so understanding better how well
they could fly; Can they deal with things
like winds? Can they travel long
distances? Are they very manoeuvrable? How
are they on landing?
Can they swim? What happens if they hit
the water? Do they drown? Can they take
off again? Can they swim well? Could they
dive to get food? So all of these things
interact with each other and produce the kind
of stuff that I'm interested in. And this
also then leads into potentially some
really weird and interesting areas.
Palaeontology can end up driving research
in all kinds of areas that people
wouldn't normally expect. So work that I
and my colleagues have done on pterosaur
flight for example has been of interest
to various engineering companies who are
trying to make biomimetic materials; so
things that have properties similar to
biological structures. In this case
pterosaur wings are actually really
weirdly constructed but seem to be very
good at doing certain kinds of things in
a way that modern membranes for stuff
like parachutes, hang gliders,
next-generation wingsuits, even drones
would like to be able to do and
currently can't do very well. And another
example I've just had a paper out in the
last couple of days again studying the
differences between male and female
dinosaurs or at least trying to work out
the differences between male and females
and what we use as a model for this is a
giant crocodilian species called the
gharial that lives in India. The gharial
is critically endangered and an animal
we'd like to know a lot more about as it's
been very little studied. And because
me and my co-authors got together a huge
data set of their of these animals based
on their skulls we're actually able to
demonstrate that males and females of
gharials are quite different and that
males actually - particularly very large
males - appear to be doing something
ecologically rather different to their
others. And that's potentially quite
important because again this is a
critically endangered species so working
out that certain animals might be eating
different things and therefore we need
to conserve their food populations in
order to conserve them, you know there's
potentially quite an interesting point
there for their conservation. So
palaeontology can have these weird
knock-on effects and drive research into
other areas and it's not just
discovering and naming new dinosaurs. There are
real-world practical benefits to this stuff as well.
Dave  made some
really excellent and important points
about palaeontology driving research
in different directions and fields.
I can guarantee you that the first two
things that most people would associate
palaeontology with is Ross from the TV show Friends and Jurassic Park!
But I hope that after listening to
Dave's research we can at least now
associate palaeontology with its
applications in for example biomechanics
of flight, ecology, and conservation. Now
up next we have Kimberleigh Tommy.
Kimberleigh is currently a PhD candidate in
biological anthropology and this she
does at the University of Witwatersrand
in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Kimberleigh began her STEM journey wanting
to become a medical doctor but was
introduced to the world of primate
locomotion in her third year of studies.
She then combined her love for
locomotion with her passion for the past
and therefore pursued a degree in
palaeontology. She then completed her
master's in palaeontology specialising in
paleoanthropology,
and afterwards went on to work as a
professional science communicator before
returning to pursue her PhD. Kimberleigh
has now branched out into anatomical
sciences so that she can improve her
understanding of the human body and
human variation, and apply her work to
not only understanding the past but
contributing to the present. There are
very few women, especially women of colour
and Africans, involved in paleo sciences
although Africa is very rich in fossil
heritage. And so Kimberleigh is very
passionate about changing this. Now let's
hear more about Kimberleigh's research.
My name is Kimberly Tommy and I am a
biological anthropologist and I study
the evolution of upright or bipedal
walking in our species Homo sapiens. So
walking on two legs is actually a
defining characteristic of our species
as well as of our fossil hominid
ancestors that aren't alive today and
this characteristic evolved even before
our big brains did. But if you had to
google human evolution today something
that might pop up is known as the march
of progress or the march of man which
depicts our evolution as some kind of
linear progression from a chimpanzee
like ancestors that bent over
with a bent knee posture and slowly transitioning
standing upright, and eventually looking
like modern humans today. But this image
is flawed for a number of reasons and
firstly because it's simplified our
evolution when actually it's really
complex.
So today palaeoanthropologists realise
that it is not a straight line it's not
even a branching tree but it's described
as more of a braided stream and this is
because of all of this hybridization and
mixing of our hominid ancestors. Another
reason why this image is flawed is
because it depicts the evolution of our
locomotion as something that is linear
as well but what we know from studying
fossil hominids is that this evolution
actually involves quite a lot of
experimentation on the part of hominids.
So hominin morphology is often described
as mosaic meaning that it's a mixture of some features that we'd expect
to see in humans and some features that
we'd expect to see in non-human primates.
And this complex morphology reflects their
lifestyle and a lot of variation within
the fossil record. So some hominids were
really well adapted to climbing trees
and were comfortable in arboreal
lifestyle, while others were fully
bipedal but could have possibly been
climbing more when they were children. So
there's a lot of variation within these
extinct hominins that we are only fully
beginning to understand now and
reconstructing this behavior is an
ongoing process. But studying the bones
of these hominids and this important
transition helps us to not only better
understand our own bodies and to
appreciate our bodies but to also
understand our complex African origins.
What an interesting research topic! I for
one hope that were able to scrap that
whole linear march of man image that Kimberleigh was referring to, and I do hope
that one day soon we do get an image of
human evolution that shows this
mixing of our different common ancestors
and sort of alludes to this complexity
of upright or
bipedal walking. Now on to our fourth
palaeontologist
we have Yara Haridy. Yara is a PhD
student at the Natural History Museum in
Berlin, Germany. As a kid
Yara was always fascinated by the
natural world but did not know that
there could be careers in the field. So
she studied general biology as an
undergrad at the University of Toronto
in Canada where she got to indulge her
love for Natural Science on her way to
studying for medical school. Now in order
to set apart her medical school
application from the rest she
volunteered in an anatomy lab, and the
only one on campus that she knew of was
a palaeontology lab! This is when she fell
in love with the field. She then did a
master's in the evolution of reptile
teeth and this sparked her curiosity for
evolution through deep time, eventually
leading her to her current PhD. Now let's
hear more about Yara's research. Hi
everyone I'm Yara Haridy and I'm a
palaeontologist at the Museum for Natural
History in Berlin. I'm a PhD student here
and what I study is bone evolution. So
when you ask me what can we learn from
early life or what we know about early
life we actually know quite a bit
especially in the areas that I'm
interested in which are the evolution of
bone. So basically what can we know about
why our bones today are the way they are,
how they've changed through time and how
they got the abilities they have today.
And I do this by studying modern animals
and comparing them to long extinct
animals. And I specifically compare their
bone. So for example here's a little fox
skull and it's shaped exactly for that animal
and it changes throughout its life. While
I don't study foxes in particular I
study in general just bone tissues in
several mammals and and other animals
and then compare
what makes their bones - what makes
fossil bones. And I can do this through
histology so I basically slice up
fossils and look at the cell structures.
I can do this by making me really thin
sections and putting them under a
microscope, and there are cell spaces
that actually fossilise and from there
you can tell cell density and you can
tell how the cells communicated with
each other how the animal grew and even
sometimes how it healed. And we can do
this by finding fossils with fractures
or pathologies and from that we actually
learn quite a bit about how ancient
animals healed, how ancient bone works,
and this informs how our own bones came
to be the way they are today.
Palaeontology at the cellular level. How
awesome is that! And it all connects:
cellular interactions to tissue
structure to organ morphology and
characteristics to biological function
to whole animal behavior which is often
influenced by the environment.
There's a story to be told here and
palaeontologists like Yara are striving
to piece it all together! Last but not
least we have Ashley Hall. Ashley is a
marketing coordinator at the Nature
Center at Shaker Lakes Ashley is a
dynamic palaeontologist, science
communicator, naturalist, and science
educator. After attending Indiana
University Bloomington where she
received her BA in anthropology and
animal behaviour, Ashley has spent a
decade working as a science educator for
various educational institutions.
Passionate about educating the public
about Natural History, Ashley is a
phenomenal public speaker and has
designed and given thousands of museum
tours, programs, and classes for visitors
of all ages. Lets hear more from Ashley.
Hi
everyone my name is Ashley Hall and I am
a palaeontologist. Palaeontology is the
study of ancient life and for most of my
research I have looked at sauropod dinosaurs.
Sauropod dinosaurs are known as the long
necked dinosaurs. You've probably seen
something like Brachiosaurus or
Brontosaurus before, Camarasaurus and
specifically we've been looking at their
feet. So on this little model it's
actually not a bad depiction of sauropod
feet they have very long claws on their
back feet and very short if any claws on
their front feet so our big question was
what are they doing with their feet. As
it turns out they are actually probably
excavating nests. Now this is not a
sauropod baby this is actually a little
duck-billed dinosaur that I've had since
I was four years old since I got
interested in palaeontology, but basically
when you look at sauropod nests they
have this very long kind of trough like
shape to them and we think that what
they were doing with their back feet is
taking their feet and kind of excavating
a nest very similar to what turtles do
today if you've ever watched a turtle dig a
nest. You've probably all seen sea turtle
nest digging videos where they take
their back feet and excavate like a nest.
So sauropods were digging these nests,
they're laying massive amounts of eggs,
and then walking away. They're not the
best parents! So anyway if you want to
read more about my research and my
husband's research it's in dinosaur
tracks next steps by IU press it's a
really awesome book. And then also in my
career I've been an educator at several
museums including the Los Angeles County
Museum,
La Brea Tar Pits and the
Raymond M. Alf Museum. I'm a huge proponent of
STEM and women in STEM and this is an
amazing book that touches on the
inequalities of women in the geosciences
called "The bearded lady project". And this
is an excellent excellent book. It is
basically a take on people would take me
more seriously if I had a beard because
traditionally men in the sciences are
depicted as
white male they have beards they're sort
of rugged looking and so women wearing
makeup and fashionable clothing has not
really been looked at as you know being
taken seriously as a scientist. So this
book touches on the stories and
struggles of women in the geosciences. So
if you're interested in palaeontology you
can follow me on my Twitter, on my
Instagram, and on our facebook page
"Palaeontology education" Facebook page. And
my handle on my own channels is @LadyNaturalist. So thank you guys for
watching and I'll see you online! Science
really surprises me every day. I had
naively thought that dinosaurs use their
feet solely for walking but apparently
they could have also been using their
feet to excavate nests like turtles and
if you have seen Turtles excavate it is
honestly (well arguably) one of the cutest
things you could possibly see. So Ashley
has definitely, at least for me, given me
a new perspective on dinosaurs! So that
concludes this episode where I have
asked palaeontologists to tell us about
their work and how it may answer
questions about early life and the
evolution of life on Earth. I really hope
you've enjoyed this episode if you have
any questions feel free to get in touch
with these experts. I'm sure they'd be
happy to answer any questions. Please
remember to subscribe to this channel
for more content, like any videos that
you've enjoyed, and let us know in the
comments section what you found
interesting. I'll see you soon. Bye!
