Research & Collections News | Natural History Museum of Los Angeles

Research & Collections News

At the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM), the curatorial staff members are widely-recognized authorities in their fields. They win major grants. They serve as faculty and research associates at universities, museums and other institutions. They publish regularly in journals and magazines. They are engaged in field and onsite research. They even play roles in crime fighting and policy-making. And of course, they preserve and strengthen the Museum’s collections — the platform upon which exhibitions and public programs are built.

Below is a summary of recent activities. For more details on these stories and to learn more about the curatorial staff’s accomplishments, see the archive of the Research and Collections Newsletter, published by the Crustacea Lab's Dr. Jody Martin and Dean Pentcheff.    

DINOSAUR INSTITUTE

In the U.S.
-This summer, the Museum’s in-house Dinosaur Institute (DI) embarked on the Holland Dinosaur Expedition Utah 2010, a month-long field expedition to the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation in Southeastern Utah. The crew included staff, students, and volunteers of the DI, and colleagues and grad students from George Washington University, the Universidad Autonoma of Madrid, Spain, and the Museo Carmen Funes of Argentina. They were joined by two film crews – one shooting footage for the Dinosaur Hall (opening Summer 2011), and the other creating a dinosaur documentary for the BBC. Work focused on a site that last year produced 13 articulated caudal vertebrae of a camarasaur sauropod (long-necked dinosaurs). This year brought a wealth of additional material of the same dinosaur, including limb bones, many more vertebrae, as well as pelvic and shoulder bones. The specimen appears to be largely complete and work will resume next year.

-This past spring, the DI conducted a week-long field expedition to the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. The exposures within the park are mostly of the Late Triassic Chile Formation and contain fossils of giant amphibians called metoposaurs, archosaurian reptiles such as phytosaurs and aetosaurs, as well as fish, invertebrates, and plants. For the past three years the DI has been working with park paleontologists, conducting their first biostratigraphic survey by working within specific areas of the park and reporting all of its findings. During this expedition, they found and collected several important specimens from an area where very little previous work had been done, including a partial phytosaur skull and portion of the armor of the aetosaur Typothorax. This is only the third specimen of this aetosaur to be found in this unit, and it will go on display in the new Dinosaur Hall.

Abroad
-This spring, the Dinosaur Institute returned to Liaoning, northeastern China, to support ongoing research on Mesozoic birds. Curator Dr. Luis Chiappe and Fulbright Scholar Dr. Jesus Marugan-Lobon collected data for research on the 125 to 120 million-year-old confuciusornithids, a group of primitive beaked birds. The team traveled north to the Paleontology Research Institute at Shenyang Normal University and set out on a five-day expedition into rural Liaoning. Their mission was to discover and document as many fossil birds from the region as possible.

Working tirelessly, they added more than 40 specimens from the Shihetun Fossil Bird Park of Beipiao (Yixian Formation, approximately 125 million years ago), the Shangheshon Bird Fossil Geology Park of Chaoyang (Jiufutang Formation, approximately 120 million years ago) and the Yizhou Fossil and Geology Park in Jinzhou City. The team also spent time with some of China’s paleo and museum dignitaries: They had lunch at the home of Mr. Yumin Lee (he discovered Sinosauropteryx prima, the first feathered dinosaur), and enjoyed hot pots and billiards with Dr. Damien Leloup, the director of the Liaoning Museum (China’s first green museum).  

VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY

In the U.S. 
-Vertebrate Paleontology staff Howell Thomas, Sam McLeod, Gary Takeuchi, Xiaoming Wang, and Vanessa Rhue collected a fossil baleen whale skull and jaws from the famous diatomite quarries in Lompoc, California this September. They encased this 10 to 12 million year old specimen in plaster jackets to ensure its safe transport back to the NHM, which has significant collections from this area, including fossils of fishes, birds, and marine mammals.

-The ongoing excavation of Project 23, at the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits (in Hancock park), continues to yield new treasures. It is rare to find associated bones in the asphaltic deposits of Rancho La Brea, but recent Project 23 discoveries include significant portions of skeletons of a giant jaguar (formerly called the American "lion"), a camel, and a baby mastodon.

-The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting was held in Pittsburgh in October. In addition to many presentations from staff, Dr. John Harris received the society’s Honorary Life Membership Award, for “distinguished contributions to the discipline of Vertebrate Paleontology.” He also announced at the Business Meeting that the 73rd annual meeting of the society in 2013 will take place in Los Angeles, and will be hosted by the NHM.

Abroad 
-More than 60 fossil specimens collected during a Tibetan Plateau expedition last summer have arrived in L.A. They’re the result of field work by a group that included NHM Vertebrate Paleontology Curator Dr. Xiaoming Wang, Curatorial Assistant Gary Takeuchi, and graduate student Jack Tseng, who hit the road last summer and spent more than a month on digs in the remote locale. Alongside their Chinese colleagues, the trio spent the first week finding fossils and fighting swarms of mosquitoes in untouched paleontological territories of Qinghai Province. The next stop was the Zhada Basin in western Tibet, where the largest team yet to explore the area set up camp amid wild horses and gazelles.  

Among the most outstanding discoveries of the expedition: the first fossil squirrel remains in Tibet (belonging to the extinct genus Aepyosciurus); the first fossil gerbil on the Tibetan Plateau; and the first fox, weasel, and badger remains, with the latter discoveries doubling the number of fossil carnivores known from western Tibet. But the expedition’s rarest find was a carpometacarpus (wing bone) of a fossil bird — its identification is pending preparation and study, which Vertebrate Paleontology staff began in October. The materials in L.A. represent a small portion of the more than 400 specimens collected during the expedition.

-Over the last few years, Page Museum paleontologists assisted excavation projects in Venezuela, Ecuador and Azerbaijan, making recommendations about how to set up appropriate preparation and collection facilities for asphaltic fossils. Most recently, Aisling Farrell (Page Museum Curatorial Assistant) and Carrie Howard (lead excavator) and Christina Lutz (excavator) from Project 23 have visited westernmost Ecuador to assist with the excavation of ground sloth skeletons by a UC Berkeley graduate student Emily Lindsey.

Collections News 
-Five placoderm fish skulls and armors from the Middle-Late Devonian of Morocco were purchased from a fossil dealer for Museum collections by Mark Pankowski of Washington, D.C. Most represent new species or genera and will be described and named by Dr. John Long, VP of the Museum’s Research and Collections, and colleagues. The specimens are three-dimensionally preserved and will be acid prepared out of the rock just like the Gogo fishes Dr. Long has been working on in Australia.

ICHTHYOLOGY

-When an oarfish washed up on the Malibu shore in late November, NHM ichthyologists took custody of the specimen. The creatures have washed up on California shores only a few times. Oarfish sightings have been documented as early as 1808, when a 56-foot serpent-like creature washed ashore in Scotland. In 1901, a 22-foot oarfish drifted onto the sand in Newport Beach, stoking years of sea monster tales. The recent Malibu specimen is now being housed in an NHM freezer as it awaits testing. Eventually, it will join three other oarfish and an oarfish larva in the Museum's collection. One of the NHM's existing specimens, a 14-foot oarfish recovered from Santa Catalina Island in 2006, is well-known to visitors. It is suspended in alcohol in a giant case in the foyer.

-Research Associate Margaret Neighbors and Collections Manager Rick Feeney worked with Algalita Marine Research Foundation biologists to help with the identification of fish collected in the Western Atlantic Ocean. The specimens’ stomachs were then examined for plastic debris. Algalita Marine Research Foundation (algalita.org) helps investigate the effects of plastics on ecosystems in the open ocean.

MINERAL SCIENCES

At the 20th General Meeting of the International Mineralogical Association in Budapest, Hungary, Mineral Sciences Curator Dr. Tony Kampf presented the keynote paper for the session on mineral museums and historical mineralogy. The paper, “CSI Mineralogy: Fakes, Frauds and Shoddy Science,” stressed that it is the responsibility of museum curators to uncover mineral fakery, fraud and shoddy scientific practice in order to maintain the integrity, authenticity and scientific reliability of their collections.

Tony also led a Gem and Mineral Council field trip to the Stewart Mine (formally Stewart-Lithia mine) in the Pala pegmatite district in San Diego County. Twenty members participated in the event, which included collecting and an extensive tour of the mine tunnels from owner Blue Sheppard. At the turn of the last century the Stewart mine was the largest lithium mine in the U.S. Since the late 1960s it has predominantly been a gem mine, known for vivid pink elbaite (tourmaline) as well as the lithium-rich purple mica called lepidolite.

POLYCHAETE WORMS

In August Dr. Milton Love (UCSB), also known as “Dr. Rockfish,” dropped by the Polychaete Department for a chat with collections manager Leslie Harris. He and various colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been sending Leslie worms taken from deep-sea corals and their environs for identification. Among the most recent shipment was an undescribed species of spaghetti worm (family Terebellidae) with a novel method of food gathering. Called “Radio Tower Worms” by the NOAA personnel who collected it, the animal uses sand grains and glass sponge spicules to build tubes with a framework of projecting rays, then attaches mucus webbing to the rays to catch drifting particles of food. Other animals like ophiuroids take advantage of these tubes to climb above the sea floor and possibly to steal food from the worms. Leslie is describing the worm with her Brazilian colleague Dr. Joao Nogueira (Universidad Sao Paulo).

Dr. Patricia Salazar-Silva (from Ciencias del Mar, Nayarit, Mexico) enjoyed a two-week visit to the NHM Polychaete Collection this summer. She is reviewing the scaleworms (family Polynoidae) of the Mexican Pacific. Among the Museum’s numerous specimens, Paty found several new species, which she will describe in a series of upcoming papers.

ENTOMOLOGY

Eight forest entomologists from Shandong Province, China (plus a translator and a driver) visited the NHM’s Entomology Department. Los Angeles was their first stop on an 18-day U.S. tour to study the Fall Webworm (Hyphantria cunea), one of the few North American tiger-moths considered a pest, particularly when the larvae feed on ornamental trees. Curiously, the Fall Webworm doesn’t occur in Southern California (it’s much more abundant in the East). For many years the Fall Webworm has been a pest in Europe, but recently it has also become a pest in Shandong Province, and the visitors were here to become familiar with the biology and ecology of the moth in its native land.