Video
Dig Up the Latest Science of Agate: K. Watmore & K. LoMedico Marriott
Transcript
Hello! Welcome to the premiere of the first "Dig up the latest science at Agate." My name is Ranger Tera Lynn and I'm standing in front of the mammal fossils in the diorama at the visitor center of Agate Fossil Beds National Monument.
You know, in the 1880s and early 1900s, paleontology was a relatively new field and highly dominated by men. Our visitors often hear about James Cook, Harold Cook, Erwin Barbour, Olaf Peterson. But there was also Eleanor Barbour Cook, Lil Thompson. And who can forget about Margaret, Dorothy, and Winifred, who are Harold's daughters you saw featured in the picture promoting this event.
Today, we are going to hear from two female paleontologists. One, Kristin Watmore, is making strides in her research with an all-female cohort. Go girls! And Kate LoMedico Marriott is making strides, yet definitely feeling resistance along the way.
We are so lucky to have Kristin and Kate present in our live chat today. Please start asking your questions now or anytime in the next 45 minutes. They are ready and willing to answer questions about their journey, as well as their research.
So, let's get started with Kristin who is researching the Stenomylus; like this little skeleton right here behind me with his four bony legs and that long snout. Go ahead Kristin!
[AD: Young, white woman speaks from box in right corner of each slide. White woman with braids and NPS uniform uses ASL from box in opposite corner. Title Kristin L Watmore. Graduate student in Geology. California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Next, two pictures. One: Kristin holds a tool in one hand and a small fossil with teeth in the other. Two: Kristin smiles at us next to a table with several fossil jaws.]
KRISTIN: Hello. My name is Kristin Watmore and I'm a first-year graduate student in geology at Cal Poly Pomona in Southern California. So just a little bit of background about me. Similar to most kids, I loved dinosaurs growing up, and the first job I wanted to have was to be a paleontologist. The only thing was is that I really didn't have any clue on how to get involved in paleontology.
So, I did my Undergrad in Biology and it wasn't until my third year of Undergrad that I noticed the Geology Department was offering a class called "Age of Dinosaurs" instructed by Dr. Don Prothero. So, I took that class. I absolutely loved it, and it became evident that there was a way into paleontology. So, talking to Dr. Prothero from there kind of got me to where I am right now.
These two images show me in the collections. On the left, in the collections of the LA Museum and on the right, in the collections in the New York Museum of Natural History. And in both, I'm measuring some jaws from these Miocene Pronghorns.
[AD: Two pictures. One: Kristin holds a fossil between her thumb and finger while wearing a large, floppy hat outside. Two: She stands next to a concave hill that contains a tan, horizontal piece within a darker section.]
So aside from collections work, there's also field work in paleontology. And I got to do this for the first-time last summer. I went with a group to Utah, and we dug for dinosaur bones. um On the left, I'm holding a little fragment of a dinosaur rib. On the right, I'm gluing some fragments back together from a pretty weathered likely Sauropod bone that was sticking out. um And this is really my favorite part about paleontology, is that you get to blend both geology and biology together, and it just makes an absolutely fascinating subject. And there's never a moment where I'm not learning something.
[AD: Four, young women posed together with an older white male with glasses.]
So, this is an image of me at the 2022 GSA meeting in Denver with most of my research group and our advisor Dr. Prothero. I feel really fortunate to be a part of this group. All of my peers are other females who are just as passionate and excited about paleontology as I am, and they're incredibly supportive and want to see each other succeed. So, it's a really special thing to be part of.
[AD: Title screen: Four, tan four-legged animals with pointy ears long snouts and small tails walk through tall grass. Then, wind blows sand on a dune. Camels obscured by a sandstorm. Last, one furry camel with two large humps on its back.]
So, now I'm going to be talking about a project of mine that I've been working on with my advisor Dr. Prothero. So, it's about the "Stenomylines: The Gazelle-like Camels of Agate Springs, Nebraska." Typically when we think of camels, we picture them coming from an unforgiving terrain like this, or we have this idea that camels are these large, humped animals living in the deserts of Asia or the Middle East. And this assumption is not incorrect. There are two species of camel that do fit this description of having humps in the genus Camelus. But broadly, camels are actually a much more diverse group under the name Camelids.
[AD: Graphic titled, "Camelids of the World" depicts seven camelids of different heights, color, hair length, and number of humps on back. Then, a meme of white llama head turns to us. Speech bubble reads, "What?"]
So, Camelus, as you can see, come in a variety. And, of course, it includes the camels; but, it also includes alpacas, llamas, guanacos, and vicunas. And so, note here that over half of them do not have humps. So, humps are not actually the defining characteristic, even though that's what we associate camels with. And so similarly, the evolutionary history of camels is going to continue to contradict this idea of humps. And if you feel like this right now, I did too the first time I heard about all this.
[AD: Graphic titled "Evolution of the Camels" shows names of species on individual leaves connected by a single semi-vertical line of the Cenozoic epoch. Seven camels are shown on graph with different shades of brown skin tone, short hair, and different size necks.]
So, here we see a tree of camel evolution spanning back to some of the earliest camels that we know about. And here I want to point out two things: we see that none of them have humps, and also we see that they trace their evolutionary history to North America. It's only relatively recently in geologic time that they migrated to where we know camels exist today. But our research is actually focused on this particular group called the Stenomyelines.
[AD: Animal has four, long bony legs; tan, short-haired skin; upright, tubular neck; pointy ears; large eyes; and a long snout. Next, three skeleton models of camel mounted inside. Last, Kristin's head is level with top of skeleton's back as she crouches near ground with a measuring tape.]
So, this is a lifelike reconstruction of what some Stenomylines, particularly the in the genus Stenomylus would have looked like. They had a very wide range. They've been found in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and, of course, this Stenomylus is actually found in Agate. And these are the fossils of what the previous reconstruction was based on. And then this is just a size comparison that I want you to be able to reference.
So, this is me measuring a Stenomyline at the Los Angeles Museum, and I'm about five foot four. So, you can really see I have to crouch down to measure its rib bone. So, this is a tiny, little camel.
[AD: Graphic titled, "Our Methods" show six pictures of one tooth, numbered 0 to 6. 0 shows the tooth as a pointed mound, and ranges to number 6, which is almost flat. Then, sketch called Hypsodont, another called Brachydont. Former is a long, rectangular tooth with a small, boxy section labeled, "visible crown." Latter is one-third the size, roundish, and visible section labeled, "crown" is almost half its length.]
So, for the purposes of our project, our methods included taking a mesowear score, which is a scale that describes how worn out the tooth cusps are based on their shape. And then a hypsodonty index, which is a measurement of how high-crowned the cheek teeth are, which are...refer to the molars. This image down here shows how high-crowned a horse's tooth is compared to a human tooth. And we think of horses as being these grazers that gradually wear down their teeth over time.
So, it makes sense to have really high-crowned teeth if you're chewing food that is going to wear down your teeth. And so for us, this type of data is going to be really helpful in understanding what kind of potential dietary strategies um these Stenomylines took on. And then we also want to consider what the climate is doing at this time because that would have a direct impact on the vegetation available to these animals. So, generally there's some things that scoring these teeth can tell us about what the animal ate. So, when we're going to talk about the mesowear scores; if it's a low score, that's indicated by a sharp or pointy look to the tooth, which indicates a less abrasive diet because there was less grinding away of that tooth.
Whereas, a high score is seen as more of a blunt or flattened look to the tooth, which indicates more grinding, more abrasive diet. And then hypsodonty, um again, is thought to be a proposed response to having a highly abrasive diet. And then, we have different strategies used by different herbivores. So, we have browsing, grazing, or mixed feeders to do a little bit of both, or dirty browsers who get more grit in their diet which grinds down their teeth.
[AD: Sketches, then actual pictures, labeled, "Stenomylus," "Blickomylus," and "Rakomylus." Lower jawbones depict a row of flat-edged, narrow teeth along lip, then a gap, then five flat-edged wide teeth in center, and last, a three-ridged molar that extends to bottom of jaw near the back.]
So, these are some original drawings by Frick & Taylor in a publication on the Stenomylines. Note, on the top left is a Stenomylus from Agate. And it's striking to see these third molars in the top and the bottom that are extremely deep rooted and high-crowned. And these are actual images of a Blickomylus and Rakomylus, which are too genre within the Stenomylines, and they just have ridiculously high-crowned teeth.
You might notice that Blickomylus is particularly striking with almost the entire back end of the lower jaw being comprised of that third molar. And this is something we typically associate with animals like horses, but not camels. We think of horses being the ones with the really high-crowned teeth.
[AD: Scatter plot titled, "Discussion of current results." x-axis is height index 0-7, and y-axis is mesowear index 0-7. Five camels are represented by different shapes. Blickomylus' six out of 11 plots are number 4 on mesowear and range between 2 and 6 on height.]
So, this is a plot of our data that we collected on the Stenomylines. So, what you can see here is that it's showing high index which is hypsodonty, versus the mesowear index for the mesowear scores. So, I want to point out here particularly. We're getting Blickomylus and Rakomylus, so the blue diamonds and the orange square, which are representative of the jaws that I showed you on the last slide. They have such high-crowned teeth and they have a moderate mesowear score.
[AD: A bar graph and scatter plot uses color and shapes to indicate average mesowear score and crown height index of different horse species. The Hypsodont Equinae shown as circles reach the peak hypsodonty in the red zone which is the late Miocene and Pliocene.]
So, there's an important comparison that can be made here. This plot comes from a publication by Mihlbachler at where the evolutionary story of how horses got so high- crowned is displayed. And so this red zone up here is what I want to point out as the point where they, where horses started getting really highly hypsodont. However, Stenomylines and, particularly uh Blickomylus, got high-crowned before horses. They got high-crowned around 22 million years ago.
So, it begs the question, why were these camels getting so high-crowned and why did they do so before the horses, who are the true grazers? And not only are the Stenomylines, particularly Blickomylus, getting more high-crowned um before horses do so, this is actually happening before the C4 grasses are even, and the grasslands of North America, have even been established. And we tend to associate these C4 grasses and plants in general with abrasion because they have phytoliths, which are a little, salacious elements in in the plant cell that grind down teeth, as well, they're more abrasive. But these weren't even around when the Stenomylines were getting high-crowned. So, it's another weird, unanswered question that we have here.
And this plot is also from the Mihlbachler paper. And it's showing the, the change into hypsodonty that horses went through. And up at this top here of the plot, we see that horses hit a 6 in in their mesowear ... their hypsodonty index. However, Blickomylus actually rivals this number. But, they're not even grazers.
[AD: Scatter plot titled, "Early Miocene" depicts Leaf Browsers and Mixed Feeders. x-axis is average scratches 0 to 40, and y-axis is average pits 0-100. The four leaf browsers plots are between 8 scratches and 60 to 80 pits.]
And to support the idea that these Stenomyline camels were not grazers despite having really hypsodont teeth is this plot from a paper by Semprebon & Rivals which shows microwear measurements, and microwave being microscopic indications of abrasion on the tooth, which show how they fall, the camels fall into a morphospace of a browser not a grazer. So, like that Semprebond & Rivals paper, that would be our next step in our project.
We would like to do some microwear peels to look at the, the pitting and scratching on the teeth that we're looking at to see what indications of abrasion we can get on those. And, then, compare that microwear to, of our camels, to the microwear of similar animals. So, for the big conclusions, the big takeaways, that I want you to get from this talk are: that first of all humps are not the norm in Camelids past or present; and that a camel evolutionary history is based in North America; and then, specifically for our project on the Stenomylines, they're a unique group of Miocene camels with really strikingly hypsodont teeth and a moderate amount of mesowear.
And it's just so strange to see such hypsodont teeth happening before horses, and happening before what we think of as the diet of of an animal that would need to have hypsodont teeth. So, as you can probably see, there's some big questions left from other papers on this topic, and from this paper.
So, I'll leave you with these questions to think about. Why were extremely high-crowned teeth selected for the Stenomylines from the early Miocene if the modern grassland vegetation known from even places like Agate did not yet exist when they were getting high-crowned? So, why were the camels evolving to be so high-crowned, while the horses of similar regions and time were still low-crowned, even though we think of horses today as a high-crowned? And then, what was the diet of these camels? What's the relation to them being so hypsodont and their diet?
So, big thank you to everybody for listening. I hope you enjoyed it and maybe learned something. And uh also big thank you to Dr. Prothero and my research group and everybody at Agate Fossil Beds for letting me share this all with you today. And also have a very happy International Women in Science Day. Take care.
[AD: List of 12 links to slide images used in presentation. Available upon request.]
TERA LYNN: Thanks Kristin! We're looking forward to hearing the answers to your great questions. Next, we'll hear from Kate LoMedico Marriott from the Brooklyn College of Earth and Environmental Sciences. She shares her loves for ammonites.
The photo of the geographic layers behind me proves that there's a lot more to Agate than just the famous bone bed. Ammonites and other early sea creatures were here at Agate along the Western Interior Seaway. Let's listen to her talk about "Womaning in Paleontology: Not for the Faint of Heart."
Go ahead, Kate.
[AD: Female off-screen voices for the following slides on screen while white female and NPS uniform uses ASL in the bottom right corner. A white female with long blonde hair stands in front of a wall covered in colorful drawings of tentacled creatures with soft heads protruding out of spiraled shells, identified from now on as "live ammonites." She holds a plush ammonite. Quote reads, "You can't just overlay the Fibonacci spiral on whatever you feel like."]
KATE: Hi everybody! Thank you so much to Tera and Mattison and the other organizers of this amazing event. My name is Kate and I'm a paleontologist, as well as a woman. I'm an adjunct at Brooklyn College, Brooklyn College Academy, and the CUNY STEM Research Academy. I work primarily on ammonites when I'm doing research, and my research career began with ammonites from the Pierre Shale. The Pierre Shale is near Agate Springs. It's below you guys stratigraphically and it's above you very, very close by to the north of you.
And ammonites that come from this locality include things like Hoploscaphites, Didymoceras, and a few other things like Baculites, lots of stuff like that. [AD: Several live ammonites drawn in water on a book cover titled, "Evolution of the Ammonoids" by Kate LoMedico Marriott, Donald R. Prothero, and Alex J. Bartholomew, CRC Press.] In addition to science, I'm also a Paleoartist, and I've done quite a few projects for other paleontologists, and I've had my work exhibited all over the world. I currently have this book coming out, "Evolution of the Ammonoids."
[AD: Kate as a toddler stands on a beach in a bathing suit and sunglasses and stares at water. Text: I was the traditional Lisa Frank and mermaids 90's kid and I wanted to be a marine biologist. Next, several drawings of pale, yellow live ammonites with long, wavy tentacles attached to their head swim near the sea floor.]
Though I didn't actually start out knowing that I would become a paleontologist. I was very interested in marine biology growing up, which I think is a somewhat common story for some people from my generation.
However, as a teenager getting ready to make college decisions, I really lack the self-esteem and the confidence to pursue science and I think that this is a somewhat universal experience that women and other marginalized groups tend to face; where we don't know that science is for us. We sometimes tend to think it's for others and not for us. So, I ended up pursuing an art degree, but eventually I came back to geology thinking it could get me into my oceanographic interests. And paleo sort of just fell into my lap one day, um through a professor substituting for another professor. And I ended up asking myself, "Wow, people actually do that?"
[AD: Title, "Girl Meets Whorl." Kate as a college student holds a fossil of a dark spiral shell between her thumb and finger and close to her eye. Next, a drawing of a live ammonite with three tubular coils at its tail which leads to a straight shell, then tentacles, that reach for a crustacean at the bottom of the sea.]
So, I ended up taking paleo and a bunch of related classes at SUNY New Paltz with Dr Alex Bartholomew. And this was a life-changing experience for me because Dr. B encouraged me to combine my interests in art and science, um and it really made me feel like there was a place for me in the science world, which I hadn't felt before. um Dr B really, you know, was emotionally intelligent enough to make me feel comfortable in science by helping me to build a place for myself from where I was already comfortable as an art student.
But because of that incredible support from Dr Bartholomew and also because of my art background in general, I was really easily able to build a niche for myself during college reconstructing heteromorph ammonites. And heteromorphs like Didymoceras, Aculites, Hoploscaphites, have all been reconstructed many times before. But they hadn't been reconstructed taking specific biology of individual species into account. So, I was looking at the type of environment they were from, their beak shape, all of that jazz. And I have a paper on how to reconstruct an individual ammonite species coming up in the Cobban Volume, that's currently in press. Instead of basically just putting a squid face in a shell, I lay out the specifics that you would want to do in order to make sure your ammonite is as accurate as possible depending on the species.
[AD: Two live ammonites drawn next to an outline of Alaska. One has a long, purple corkscrew shell with equidistant rings creating rims around its back, and six loose spirals towards its tail. A soft spotted head with tentacles protrudes at the top. Second live ammonite has a redhead and a yellow shell shaped like a knot with a single hook on the end. Next, 10 Illustrated live ammonites with a pink shell and purple head line up from the back left corner to the front right corner. Each grows in size from a small, straight, tubular animal with tentacles direct from its shell to a large, spiral, tubular animal with a large head and tentacles.]
So, I've gotten some notoriety from this. I was second in the world in the International Award on Scientific Illustration in 2018 for this type of work. uh This is just an image of the life cycle of Didymoceras nebrascense which is from the Pierre Shale. And uh this is both in my book and my Cabbon Volume paper.
[AD: Title, "Hear me roar...only not." Illustrated live ammonite on a white background. The gold stripe shell tightly coils on top of itself becoming thinner as it nears its pointed tail. The spotted green face spits out thick tentacles with rows of suction cups on the underside. Next, a comparison of an illustrated live ammonite on a white background with a movie illustration of a littered shoreline of live ammonites. The former's rings on its one-spiraled shell display different shades of red. Its long tentacles mirror the striped colors. The latter's rings of its one-spiraled shell display different shades of red. Its head and tentacles are blue.]
This ammonite is Didymoceras stevensoni. And it's the best ammonite in my expert opinion, just because... look at it. Unfortunately, I've had some setbacks due to being a woman in a male dominated field. um I lost my very first paleo-art gig in 2017 because I didn't do what somebody wanted me to do. And I was told that it was my fault for reporting it rather than the person's fault for doing what they did. I also tend to get my artwork ripped off a lot by male colleagues, in paleo-art in particular, because, whether they realize it or not, they are assumed to know what they're talking about much more than I am just because I am a female.
And the most recent example of this was in Prehistoric Planet. So, the person who did this actually denies doing it, but you can see here that the color of the shells used in Prehistoric Planets are similar to the color that I use to reconstruct Hoploscaphite. And this is a person I actually knew so, I'm pretty sure that they accidentally plagiarized me.
And then when they were called out for it, they became defensive, and sort of they, and others, painted me as a sort of hysterical woman. um So, this person actually looked at two other paleo-artists work, as well, and got permission from them to inspire their work in Prehistoric Planet. um I'm the only one of the paleo-artists whose work clearly inspired these ammonites, but I'm also the only woman. I'm the only one who's worked with, I was not asked permission, I should say and I'm the only woman. um
So, I kind of expect to face the whole, "did you get this color scheme from Prehistoric Planet' thing for the rest of my career; which really sucks because these guys are on the cover of my book. And um, when in fact I've been the person using the color scheme for years before Prehistoric Planet came out.
[AD: Title, Research. Two illustrations display an identical pattern of curvy lobes resembling oak leaves and create three distinct horizontal groupings within the pattern. The top graphic outlines the entire drawing in different colors from left to right and draws a red line labeled L Max connecting both edges. The bottom graphic outlines only the center grouping of lobes and draws a red line labeled L Max connecting that grouping's opposite corners.]
In 2021, I did my Master's thesis on what we call the LLS method, which is the method I created to increase accessibility to ammonite sutures by measuring the complexity of just a portion of the suture which we call the LLS segment, rather than the entire suture. So the image on the right, the top right, shows us the traditional way to measure complexity. The bottom right shows us the LLS method. So, this has a lot of implications for accessibility, and it can make research in ammonites easier.
[AD: A photograph of a tightly coiled, one-layered brown ammonite shell without a head or tentacles, identified from now on as a "fossil ammonite" next to a sketch of the circular middle section of the photograph's coil. Next, a closer view of the sketch reveals many curvy lobes that resemble oak leaves. Last, a table lists 15 genre of ammonites and their matching conversion value.]
Because we just use the part of the suture that's visible in profile, so you can trace it from a photo. And it allows you to use broken specimens, and it allows you also to trace their sequence even when the shell grows over itself in a coil. This also led to some interesting insights in taxonomy related to suture geometry. So, basically when you do the traditional method of measuring a suture's complexity, you would measure the whole thing, and then you do a very simple division problem to get the complexity value, which we call the fractal dimension. um
But if you only measure part of the suture, you have an extra division step. It's just a very, one, very simple, extra division step. But it gives you the expected dimension for the whole suture when you only have part of that suture available to you. And these, these extra division factors that you need, which we call conversion values, are consistent at the genus level, which is where some of these taxonomic things are coming up.
[AD: Title, "These Two Dudes." Two, Illustrated, live ammonites. First one has a redhead and long flat and red shell which ends in tight, four coils and a hook. Second one has a purple head and even longer corkscrew, purple shell which ends in tight three coils and a hook. Next, outline map of North America overlaid with land masses in only the far western, northern, and eastern sections. A bent arrow points north then west through the empty spaces of the Midwest and Canada.]
So, the taxonomic questions and evolutionary development questions brought on by isolating the lateral lobe like that lead me to these two dudes and a project that I currently have in revision. Didymoceras awajense and Pravitoceras sigmoidale. So, Didymoceras is a genus that originated in the Western Interior Seaway, and it eventually moved northward up the WIS and then across the Bering Strait into Hokkaido.
And as it did this, it had small, punctuated changes occurring, um specifically to the sutures. The lobes of the sutures became wider, and the shells became more of a tight squished coil, as we're going to see until they flattened out. So, that magenta arrow shows you the gradual yeeting of Didymoceras.
[AD: a vertical line of sketches of four, curvy lobes resembling oak leaves with distinct sections. Each sketch shows the oak leaf progressively wider from one inch in sketch A, to two inches in sketch D. Next, line graph shows the gradual widening of ammonite sutures with x-axis equals age between 72.5 and 76 million years ago. y-axis equals the ratio of length to width from 0.6 to 2.0. The earliest ammonite is a ratio of 1.2 at 72.5 million years old. The latest ammonite is at 1.0 at 76 million years old.]
So, this shows you the gradual widening of Didymoceras. So, A, B, and C are all Didymoceras sutures, and you can see that the lateral lobe has widened quite a bit until we get to D, which is Pravitoceras, and we see that it's a much wider lateral lobe. And we can graph that, and it's pretty much entirely linear.
[AD: A photo of dark gray, fossil ammonite about nine centimeters in circumference. Text describes it as a squished pupper. Photos courtesy of Satoshi Utsunomiya. Next, a photo of five dark gray to black fossil ammonites arranged in a row on a wooden surface. The first one is closely coiled with a large depth. The remaining gradually increase in tightness and decrease in depth.]
So, these ammonites follow each other in stratigraphic sequence and the very last Didymoceras, Didymoceras awajiense, and this is the ammonite in the photo here. It's almost completely flat. um So, what's interesting about this is Didymoceras awajiense is known for sometimes having epizoa which are really harmful to ammonites. They're barnacles and other encrusters that will just build their shell right on the ammonite shell. This can really hurt the ammonite's ability to move and be balanced. So, Didymoceras awajiense, which is mostly flat, started to see some of these, um these encrusters.
And then, by the time we get to Pravitoceras, which is directly above awajiense in sequence, the ammonite is totally flat, and we know that it was probably a vertical migrant. So, these guys who were flat and were vertical migrants were actually frequently plagued by epizoa.
So, it would appear that this gradual widening of the suture, this gradual flattening of the shell, were all responses trying to escape from harmful epizoa. um These photos were taken by one of my co-authors on this project, uh Kristen, who's presenting today is also a co-author on this project. She's incredibly versatile. um So, from left to right we have Didymoceras morozumii which is the second to last Didymoceras. Then, the third... a second and third shells here are both Didymoceras awajiense. And then the fourth and fifth shells here are Pravitoceras sigmoidale, which you can see is pretty much totally flat.
And then another project that is very near and dear to my heart as a woman in this field and somebody who's faced barriers to access in this field is Ammodata, which is a database that I created. So, if you go to our website, um we have quite a few different spreadsheets, that have grown quite a bit in the past few months, where you can download any sort of open data related to ammonoid morphology.
So, there are several paleontological databases that deal with ammonoids, but none of them have a ton of info on morphology. And there's enough measurement data here, physical measurement data, in this database that you can actually do projects just from the database and not have to leave your home or leave your, your university.
And this is really important to me because um various students who are unable to travel due to either financial difficulties or disabilities or other types of barriers, um will be able to study ammonites now.
[AD: Collage of photos of Kate posing with fossil ammonites, a sketch of the paperclip-shaped ammonite silhouette next to a mermaid, and a large furry black tarantula.]
So, that's my whole presentation. Thank you so much for listening. I hope it wasn't too long and please ask me any questions that you have. Thank you so much to Tera and Mattison again.
TERA LYNN: Thanks Kate. Your paleo-art is amazing! And we look forward to your new book. We at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument hope you enjoyed getting to know our paleontologists Kristin and Kate today for the International Women and Girls in Science Day.
Until next time, keep checking in on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to dig up more science at Agate.
Description
This was a live YouTube Premiere on the International Women & Girls in Science Day, Feb 11, 2023. Paleontologists Kristin I. Watmore and Kate LoMedico Marriott talk about their current research with animals found in our near Agate Fossil Beds. Ms. Watmore studies Stenomylines from Agate and Ms. LoMedico Marriott studies ammonites from the Pierre Shale (just north of Agate).
Chat is available on our YouTube channel. Video is closed captioned, audio described, and interpreted in ASL.
Duration
33 minutes, 8 seconds
Credit
NPS/ T.Gray
Date Created
02/11/2023
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