Video
Behind the Scenes of the Paleo Lab
Transcript
NARRATOR: Alrighty, let's get this tour started NARRATOR: so as you can see it is quite a process to get into the paleo lab. NARRATOR: That first door is the easy door but there is a second door here NARRATOR: that is alarm activated as you can see the sign right there. Warning Alarm is activated NARRATOR: So I"ve got to put in my key right here. Not everyone gets this key really only the scientists here NARRATOR: We don't want just anybody having access to this room, because our fossils are very delicate and super important for research NARRATOR: so we don't want just anybody coming in here you know NARRATOR:but first, for the tour, I would like to introduce you to our very own paleontologist his name is Dr. Herb Meyer NARRATOR: hi Dr. eErb Meyer how are you doing? DR. MEYER: Hey Ricardo, I'm doing well today. NARRATOR: Awesome. NARRATOR: I'm coming in today giving a tour to the folks out in the theater and was gonna see if you can take a few minutes out of your day to give us a behind the scenes look here. DR. MEYER: Sure we can do that. So I've been the paleontologist here for about 23 years and some of those years we've made excavations of the fossils so I can take you in and show you where we keep those DR. MEYER: We also done research on them publish scientific papers, books, DR. MEYER: we also go out into the field every year to look at the fossil sites to see how they are changing, So we have a lot of different things that are going on DR. MEYER: We have a staff of seven people back here in the paleontology division this year, so let's go on back and I'll show you the collections NARRATOR: Great sounds exciting NARRATOR: and as you will see Herb is going to punch in a code to get into the collection roodm another top secret spot in the lab DR. MEYER: So this is where the fossils are kept, we have about 12,000 fossils back here and they are kept in these cabinets you see through the room back here DR. MEYER: and this is one of our paleontology interns this summer and this is Erikka NARRATOR: hi Erikka DR. MEYER: she is taking photographs of some of the fossils we have DR. MEYER: and so they are in these cabinets, the cabinets are full of drawers and the drawers are full of fossils DR. MEYER: you can see some examples in here really quickly, this is the thorn of a rose NARRATOR: Wow very cool DR. MEYER: and this is the leaf of a rose a lot of times we have different parts of the plant that are preserved as fossils here DR. MEYER: this is foliage of Sequoia so this would be the foliage that goes with the large petrified redwood stumps that you see outside DR. MEYER: and then over here we have a cabinet that has the highest security so this is a fire cabinet that would survive a fire for about two hours up to about 2,000 degrees DR. MEYER: and in here are are some of the most impressive, most important of the fossils we have DR. MEYER: so here's an example, this is a flower of Florisantia so it's extinct and its named of course for florissant DR. MEYER: there are a number of insects, this is a katydid, so it's related to grasshoppers, it would be like a giant grasshopper DR. MEYER:this is the famous fossil wasp, NARRATOR: Is this the guy we see at the entrance? DR. MEYER: oh, you see it all over the place around here, the entrance on the signs. so it's a relative of the yellow jackets today. NARRATOR: nice DR. MEYER: and then we also have a few vertebrate fossil and one casmple of those is this bird Dr. MEYER: this was found by an elementary school student, it actually comes from a privaetly own site, so that's why they were able to collect it then it was donated to us DR. MEYER: but it's a bird, you can see the feathers extending out from the wing here, and the head the head's broken but this is the head over here and the neck
Dr. MEYER: so those are a few examples of the kinds of things we have back in here NARRATOR: awesome, well thank you so much for taking the time out of your day Dr. Meyer really appreciate it, you bet
NARRATOR: Okay guys, now we are going to move on into the main room of the paleo lab and I'm gonna introduce you to a couple of the post docs here you can see their library here, they refer to books every now and then NARRATOR:and here we have Dr. Evan Anderson how are you doing today Dr. Anderson DR. ANDERSON: I"m doing pretty well Ricardo NARRATOR: Right on, I was gonna ask if you could share a little bit about what you do here at the Monument to the folks in the theater DR. ANDERSON: Sure, that's not a problem at all, I"m here in the prepartion room right now as you saw back there we have quite a few specimens and occasionally we need to prepare them DR. ANDERSON: or extract a little bit more of the fossils that are presesrved or maybe stabilize them and this is where we keep all of our equipment for that DR. ANDERSON: here's all of our stabilization materials and down here we have our extraction materials mostly very fine needles and synthetic and also porcupine needles have proven to be very useful DR. ANDERSON: for extracting the very fine papershale that the florissant insects and plant are preserved in NARRATOR: that's incredible , neat DR. ANDERSON: and so as we prepare there's usually a litte bit of dust and shale fragments that are kicked up so we recently had a new vacuuming system installed to keep that out of our faces and out of our lungs DR. ANDERSON: we haven't used it yet but are looking forward to the opportunity now as you'll notice there's not anywhere to prepare anything here, there's normally a microscope here NARRATOR: yes it looks quite empty, where is the microscope DR. ANDERSON: so we had that moved next to my little lab space to help with some of the other projects I'm working on which mostly involves the fossil insects which are quite small and you really can't appreciate all the detail they have just by looking at them with the naked eye NARRATOR: can you show us a little bit of that DR. ANDERSON: sure sure be happy to DR. ANDERSON: so over here we have the micrsocope and my work station this summer one of the projects I'm working on is a quality assessment project that I satrted with another research over in California in the Los Angeles area
DR. ANDERSON: what I'm doing is comparing the quality of the scores of the march flies that we have here at the Florissant formation giving them quality scores based on their various body parts like wings and legs and that sort of thing DR. ANDERSON: and then we'll compare it to the march flies in different formations NARRATOR: is that what we have here a march fly? DR. ANDERSON: yes,yes, they are pretty common at Florissant actually this is one of the better one's we have NARRATOR: wow, that's real neat stuff
DR. ANDERSON: yeah, yeah, it's like I said you can't quite appreciate all of the details so just by looking at it so we have a microscope here to help out and we also have a monitor to show other people and to help take pictures with NARRATOR: is this the same guy under the microscope? DR. ANDERSON: yes, this is the exact same thing. NARRATOR: that is incredible DR. ANDERSON: this is 20 times magnification DR. ANDERSON: and you can see most of the wing veins are essentially complete here that would receive a high score DR. ANDERSON: the abdomen has lots of little tiny hairs on it so that would receive a high score too and the legs have quite a bit of detail as well NARRATOR: wow that is awesome very cool DR. ANDERSON: yeah, so I've been going through and we have over 100 of them and then I've just been compiling all the scores and then we'll get some statistical test going on later in the summer and fall DR. ANDERSON: but I have been looking at more than just the march flies I've been looking at all the different insect orders and we're trying to get our internal collections database online for the public to be able to see and Dr. Allen will tell you a little more about that.
NARRATOR: HI Dr. Sarah Allen how are you? DR. ALLEN: Good how are you Ricardo NARRATOR: Great, I was going to see if you could take a few minutes out of your day and tell us what you do here at the Monument DR. ALLEN: Sure I'd be happy to, so as Dr. Anderson said we have an internal database here at the Monument with all of our specimens we can use it to locate our specimens in our collection it also has photographs it has the name of the specimen that it's been identified too
DR. ALLEN: it has information about the locality and who identified it, it's really useful and we're using that internal databse to select specimens DR. ALLEN: Dr. Anderson is working on the insects I'm working on the plants and writing descriptions to put on that museum.nps.gov website
DR. ALLEN: so this is an ongoing project within the Park Service including working with Florissant,
DR. ALLEN: and here is the homepage of that website, I would encourage everyone to go visit it's museum.nps.gov and once you are on the home page you can navigate too where it says parks on the top menu
DR. ALLEN: and it lists all the parks that currently have content on the website DR. ALLEN: you can select a park that looks interesting to you for example here is Dinosaur National Monument
DR. ALLEN: and if you navigate to the lower right it says browse their collection and for example being that this is Dinosaur it has a bunch of the specimens that are behind the scenes at Dinosuar National Monument DR. ALLEN: so just like you saw the specimens behind the scenes with Dr. Meyer here are some specimens at Dinosaur
DR. ALLEN: and you can click on one of those specimens and get more information so it has a bunch of photos it has a description so we are doing this with Florissant specimens DR. ALLEN: So this is one of the many projects I'm working on, I'm also creating a geologic time trail side exhibit DR. ALLEN: and a common fossil plant guide that you did this afternoon, saw this afternoon at the quarry I created that earlier this summer
DR. ALLEN: and I'm also working on a paleo climate project with fellow intern Alex Lowe here at the Monument this is called digital leaf physiognomy NARRATOR: hi Alex!, INTERN ALEX: hello DR. ALLEN: and with this we're using leaf fossils to estimate paleo cliamte so as you can see there are many research at the Monument, there's always an exciting project going on and we appreciate that you took the time to visit the Monument NARRATOR: awesome thanks to you and I appreciate everyone here taking time out of their day to show us what they do here as you can see everyone works really really hard but now this concludes our paleo lab tour
Description
Join Intern Ricardo for a behind the scenes look at the paleontology lab at Florissant Fossil Beds
Duration
10 minutes, 44 seconds
Credit
National Park Service
Date Created
10/10/2020
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