Video
Dig Up! The Latest Research at Agate: 2024: Daniella Balassa
Transcript
Daniella’s Transcript
Audio Description #1
Background picture of backhoes digging large holes next to a wooden fence within a valley surrounded by mountains. Text reads: Daniela Balassa Graduate Student in Geology, California State University of Long Beach. Daniela speaks from a box in the corner of the PowerPoint. She is a woman with light skin complexion and long dark brown hair.
Slide #1
Hi there. My name is Daniela Balassa. I'm a graduate student at Cal State Long Beach in Southern California.
Audio Description #2
Three vertical pictures fill the screen. First, Daniela wears a face mask and points to a projector screen on a wall indoors. Second, Daniela wears a hard hat with word Psomas on the front near a mound of dirt and construction trucks. Third, she holds a fossil jaw indoors in front of several shelves of fossils. Text: Grad Student, Instructor, Paleontological Resources Specialist, Researcher.
Slide #2
Just a brief background about myself. Growing up I always knew I wanted to become a scientist. I just wasn't quite sure what kind of scientist till I got into Community College. And it was in Community College when I really discovered my passion for geology and paleontology. And so I decided to pursue it and so fast forward many years later I am now a grad student doing my Master's thesis at Cal State Long Beach. As previously mentioned here, I also instruct. So you can see here me on the left hand image. And I also dabble in research along with many, many, many female co-authors, uh where we've done several publications in the past with my advisor, Donald Prothero. So here I am on the right hand side dabbling in the collections of UC Berkeley and I believe I'm holding a bear sample. And at the same time I am also working for a company called Psomas where I monitor construction. So I am a Paleontological Resources Specialist where I try and look for fossils.
Audio Description #3
Two pictures fill screen with text: Rewarding Profession. Left: two long bone fragments rest on a surface next to a ruler labeled GSA. Right: a cylindrical bone covered in dirt rest on clumps of dirt next to another GSA ruler.
Slide #3
And so my profession can be very rewarding. For example, just last month we've found these specimens that you see here on the image belonging to some unknown mammal and because California has a strict guideline protecting its resources, it's very important for me to watch any excavation or construction in Southern California to make sure we don't come across samples and destroy them. So, I have to immediately bag it, tag it, and keep it safe until the end of the project.
Audio Description #4
Stock image of fingers pointing at a female who is looking down and covering her ears. Title: Pressures of Harassment: My Experiences in College. Then, two pictures next to a list that Daniella reads. First, three adults and Daniela wear safety vests and sit together at a table outside near a body of water. Second, two women and Daniella stand with a man in a suit and tie indoors.
Slide #4 & 5
Now my struggles as a female scientist have not always been easy. um For example, going into my master's program, I've experienced harassment and I'm pretty sure many people can say that we've all dated the wrong person. Well, this individual when I met, uh I knew immediately we were not right for each other. I saw the red flags and when I wanted to break things off, well he would not take no for an answer. So things escalated very quickly into stalking, uh series of text messages and phone calls non-stop, and also hacking. And I think it's important to raise awareness especially for people who work in a very male dominated industry such as geology and construction.
um For females, but not just females any demographic, it's important for, for them to protect themselves and know their rights and laws. So the things I've learned is to speak up, do not be scared to ask for help. People will always be there for you. Know your rights and laws. So that not only in college, like for me, you're protected but in any areas of life you're always protected. And so therapy also does not make you look weak. uh It, in fact, makes you stronger and you'd be surprised many people do therapy on a daily basis. So luckily I had a very great supporting system. My adviser was the one who filed for the harassment, who you see here on the bottom image, along with my female co-authors who were also very supporting in my difficult um time. And just continue to work hard, do not let anything get in the way of your goals and achievement. That was also very important for me to uh emphasize. So in my job, I'm very fortunate to have extremely respectful and professional people. So the image you see above are my current co-workers at Laguna Project, and, and this is just, you know, like a very small size of the crew. Everyone is extremely wonderful. um But do surround yourself with amazing people.
Audio Description #5
Slide title: What is a Giraffe-like Camel?: A Taxonomic Revision of the Miocene Camel Oxydactylus. Presented by Daniela Balassa. Co-author Donald Prothero. Text sits in front of a simple camel sketch. Then, text title: Background, with a list of three items Daniela reads. Geologic time scale from Eocene to Pleistocene listed vertically. A single line follows this scale with the names of various camels listed as leaves off the main line. Oxydactylus is the third from the top in the Miocene section.
Slide #6 & 7
So one of those goals that I never wanted to give up was getting my Master's degree. And so my project that I am actually working on is a giraffe-like camel named Oxydactylus. And so this is a taxonomic revision of this Miocene camel that my adviser and I are currently working on. And just to give you a little brief background, uh most people think of camels as two humps, but this is actually misconception because it's a specialization you see in Asian and African camels today. uh however we like to think and we assume that most camels did not have humps. So origination of camels began around the Eocene which was 40 million years ago. And they quickly dispersed uh to Eurasia during the late Miocene and then to South America during the Pliocene. So in South America, we are very familiar with them today as llamas, alpacas, guanacos, and vicunas. But the little critter that I'll be focusing on is Oxydactylus, as I mentioned. And here I highlighted it in red for you of when they began to originate.
Audio Description #6
Daniela holds a skull next to closed lockers indoors. Caption reads Oxydactylus compestris. Title: What is Oxydactylus? with a list of five items Daniela reads. Then, a camel stares at us from the back of a pickup truck on a road through a sandy desert. Three question marks appear above the camel's head. Titles: The Problem and Importance read by Daniela.
Slide #8 & 9
So as I mentioned, Oxydactylus is the critter I'm working on and it began appearing right around early Miocene. So, Peterson um was the one to first describe this creature in 1904 which is a while back. And they collected a lot of their samples from the Running Water, Upper Harrison, Anderson Ranch formation equivalent to the Agate formation of Western Nebraska, South Dakota, and Eastern Wyoming. So Oxydactylus is very recognized by its slender appearance, long snout, long legs, long necks, hence the giraffe-like name. And so prior to this study, there were eight named species referred to as Oxydactylus which is a taxonomic waste basket. And so let's dive into why that is.
So camel evolution, camel systematics is actually terribly outdated, As you see Peterson described Oxydactylus in 1904 and during this time paleontology was still very dubious. So for example, just to give you um an idea, when early paleontologists discovered a sample, they did not account for sexual dimorphism such as differences between males and females, juveniles, or even if the sample was crushed, uh due to terribly, terrible fossilization process. So everything was named a new species as they found them. And systematics is so crucial and fundamental for any an analysis of diversity change, extinction, or origination rates.
Audio Description #7
A four-legged animal skeleton with a long neck and small narrow head is propped up by vertical bars inside. Label reads: Oxydactylus holotype from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh. Title: Brief Overview and Goals of the Project. Daniela reads her first and second phases of the project.
Slide #10
And so my project is to redetermine if the names are still valid within Oxydactylus. And I do this by using, using modern statistics which is the first phase of my project. The second phase of my project, I will not be discussing today for the sake of time. And I just will quickly, briefly mention that I also uh looked at recent wild vacunas and guanacos and compared them to Oxydactylus.
Audio Description #8
Slide title: Methods. List of Museum collections on chart are: a Frick collection of Department Paleontology and the Department of Mammology at American Museum of Natural History in New York; the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County; Museum of Paleontology at University of California, Berkeley; South Dakota School of Mines; Beneski Museum of Natural History at Amherst College; Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh; Smithonian Institution at the National Museum of Natural History. Then, slide title: Measured Components with Digital Caliper. A small metal tool with an attached ruler and a digital screen is pictured next to a skull drawn from three different perspectives.
Slide #11 & 12
So I visited many Museum collections, like for example, the very famous one, the American Museum of Natural History in New York. This collection where an entire floor is just dedicated to North American camels. And so I measured many components of fossils and recent camels with a digital caliper. I measured height, width, length of skull, diastema, molars, premolar, canines and so on.
Audio Description #9
Daniela reads the information list on the slide titled Coefficient of variation. Then, slide title: Results for Phase 1 Oxydactylus. Two pictures labeled A and B of the upper cranium of an animal with a wide distance between ears and a narrow snout. Two pictures labeled C and D of the lower jaw of the same animal. Corresponding graphs display the mean standard deviation and coefficient of the variation.
Slide #13 & 14
And once I gathered all my data, I put the raw data into excel and then calculated for the mean standard deviation and coefficient variation. Which is ...the coefficient variation is just a common method for detecting multiple species within a population. So if my results yield less than 10, then it suggests that it's a single species. However if it's greater than 10, then it might mean I have more than one species. So here's some of the samples of my results that I got for Oxydactylus. So both the upper cranium and lower jaw show that I have coefficient of variation greater and less than 10. So, what is happening here? What could be the reason?
Audio Description #10
Scatter plot graph title: Skulls. Five shapes indicate five different camel species. The Oxydactylus shape appears the most within the larger cluster on the graph. Then, second scatter plot graph of skull length, on the bottom, versus canine size, along the side, the Oxydactylus shape again dominates and spreads in vertical lines across the whole graph.
Slide #15 & 16
So, we decided to plot this in a plot where we looked a premolar 2 to 4 versus molars 1 to 3. And when we plotted them, we got a big cluster, jumbled cluster which you cannot separate into groups. So, this is a cloud of continuous variation and there are no grounds for objectively separating them by size. uh We also looked at some other results. We looked at the skull length versus canine size, which typically tells you sexual dimorphism, whether if they're male, male, or female and again it's the same thing. There is no correlation. You can't separate them into groupings; everything is just a big cluster.
Audio Description #11
Slide title: Why the high CV? List of animals grouped together on a family tree that starts from the same point. Even-toed ungulates on the tree are hippos, whales, ruminants, pigs and camels. The odd-toed ungulates of rhinos and horses are on the bottom. Daniela reads list titled "High CV among Artiodactylus" and "Causes."
Slide #17
So now why the high CV? What is going on? Lucky for us, there's a recent research done by Davis in 2018 where they looked at Artiodactyls with unusually high coefficient of variation and it turns out they're just extremely variable. And as I previously mentioned, I have done a second phase of my project. Well, I looked at recent wild camelids, did some measurements and calculations. And it turns out it coincides with Davis's findings; it is that camels are just highly variable. So what is the cause of this? Well, it could be sexual dimorphism or it could also be the crushing of skulls where they just didn't all fossilize well. But we can't rule this because we have looked at the recent camelids, which are perfectly preserved, and you could see that they're just extremely variable when comparing them to Oxydactylus. But the variation can also be due to age-related wear on the teeth perhaps. So,
Audio Description #12
Slide title: Conclusion. Daniela stands near the head of an animal skeleton on display indoors. Her eyes focus on the head, as she holds a measuring tape near its teeth. Caption reads Oxydactylus longipes. She reads from a list on the screen. Then, slide title: Thank You. Stock image of a headshot of two llamas with lots of long fur, with colorful pink and purple pom poms and hearts on the harnesses over their long snouts.
Slides #18 & 19
As conclusion, just to restate everything I said. Everything is one continuous cluster. And so there is no evidence that size range is due to sexual dimorphism since canine size does not correlate with skull size. So, then what happens? Well, we find that the only valid species of genus are then the six junior synonyms which are Oxydactylus benadentatus, campestris, lacota, exilis, lulli, and wyomingensis. Thank you for listening.
Description
It's International Day of Women & Girls in Science! Daniella is one of four female paleontologists who virtually shared her latest paleontological research at Agate Fossil Beds and Badlands National Park. She studies the Oxydactylus, an ancient camel. This video is captioned, audio described, and interpreted into ASL. Check out our YouTube Channel to read the questions & answers that occurred live during the program. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMOSbTgDZ-o)
Duration
17 minutes, 53 seconds
Date Created
02/12/2024
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