News Release

Mammals Recover Quickly

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Mt. Lassen eruption, May 31, 1915

William S. Valentine Lantern Slide Collection

News Release Date: April 14, 2020
Contact: Dr. Nicholas Famoso

Kimberly, Oregon: For the first time, the ways in which communities of mammals recover after volcanoes erupt have been quantified. As reported in the journal Mammalian Biology, Dr. Nicholas Famoso, John Day Fossil Beds National Monument chief paleontologist, used the historic record of mammals found within online museum collections to investigate changes after the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens in Washington and the 1914 to 1916 eruption of Mount Lassen in California.

The bigger the eruption, the longer it takes mammal communities to recover. It took three to five years for the community of mammals around Mount Saint Helens to recover, while it took almost no time for the community around Mount Lassen to recover. A great deal was learned from these two eruptions, but there are many more and larger eruptions that have happened throughout Earth’s history. Dr. Famoso next plans to investigate how mammal communities recovered from volcanic activity preserved within the rocks of John Day Fossil Beds; some eruptions were thousands of times larger than Mount Saint Helens.

This research would not have been possible were it not for the collections of thousands of museums being made available online. Dr. Famoso downloaded the information from over 3,000 mammal specimens spread across 18 North American museums.  

“It’s important to keep and add to museum collections because you never know what new research questions can be answered with them,” said Superintendent Patrick Gamman.

The new study, “Mammalian community response to historic volcanic eruptions,” can be found online in Mammalian Biology: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42991-020-00022-0. A read-only version of the paper can be found online at: https://t.co/RXJysprtMt. 


 

Tags: science

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