Webinar: Tiny Fossil Animal Bones as Clues to Early Human Environments
Aired June 17, 2020
Maggy Benson:
Hello, everybody. Welcome, welcome. Thank you for joining us. My name is Maggy Benson, and I'm a museum educator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Before we begin today's program, we want to acknowledge our current events, and let you know that the National Museum of Natural History stands with the Secretary of the Smithsonian, Dr. Lonnie Bunch, and expressing our deepest sympathy to the families and communities impacted by discrimination and violence.
Today we are sharing our secretary's response and a resource and a Q&A developed by our colleagues at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African-American History and Culture, Talking About Race. This is a resource with tools and guidance to empower your journey, and inspire conversations about race. We feel privileged that you've chosen to spend your time here with us today. So thank you.
While our museum has been closed, these webinars have provided a wonderful meeting friends around the country, and even the world, to learn about and discuss natural history science. I love beginning these programs by saying hello. So, please take a moment and use the Q&A to tell us where you're tuning in from. You can find the Q&A probably at the bottom or the top of your screen, depending on what device you are using. Now, you're going to use this Q&A button to answer the questions that we ask you during today's program, but also to send us your questions and comments.
And right next to that Q&A button there is a closed caption button. It has two Cs on it, CC. We have live captions on today's program. And if you want to turn them on or off, you can find the settings in that tiny little arrow that appears next to that closed caption button. All right, so I'm going to take a moment now and welcome some of our friends who are joining the program. If you've just joined us, you can tell us where you're tuning in from in the Q&A.
All right, so Isabel from Edison, New Jersey. Welcome, Isabel. Clara from Bethesda. The Gleason family from Sacramento, California. Hello, Gleason family. Elias from Washington, D.C. Hey, neighbor. All right. Hello Misry, Clara, Grand Junction, Colorado. All right, Anjeanette from Arkansas, welcome. Tino from Seattle. Irene, Preens Village. All right, Sidant from India. Welcome. Brooklyn, happy to have you. Caitlin, North Carolina, Violet and Finn from Baltimore. Awesome. Sophie from Derby. All right, we have Colleen from Glendale. All right. Brea from Maryland, Siana from Arizona. Awesome. We are so happy to have all of you here today. So if you want us to say hello, you can use that Q&A to tell us guess where you're tuning in from.
Now, our program today features Jenny Clark, an expert with the Smithsonian Human Origins Program, who will present to us about her career at the Smithsonian and the work she does in the field. The program will be hosted by another expert in the Human Origins Program, archaeologist Ella Beaudoin. Hi, Jenny and Ella.
Jennifer Clark:
Hi, Maggy. Hi friends, thanks for tuning in.
Maggy Benson:
Yay! Now, before I pass it on to Ella and Jenny, I do want to introduce two other very special Smithsonian experts who have joined us to help answer all of your wonderful questions in that Q&A space, Doctors Rick Potts and Advait Jukar. Hey, Rick, hey, Advait!
Advait Jukar:
Hey, Maggy.
Rick Potts:
Hey, how is everyone?
Maggy Benson:
Great. Rick, can you take a moment and introduce yourself?
Rick Potts:
Sure, I'd be happy to. Hi, and good morning, or whatever time of day it is wherever you are. I am Rick Potts, and I am a, get ready for a long word, I am a paleoanthropologist. Okay, what does that mean? Well, it means that my studies focus on people, and people of the past. In my case, the very, very ancient past, very ancient ancestors of all the people who are alive today. And so, I am a scientist who explores, who investigates how early human ancestors lived.
Sometimes many, many thousands, sometimes even more than 1 million years ago. How they changed, what kinds of tools did they make, what kind of environments they lived in. And I run digs in East Africa and in China, including in a place in East Africa and southern Kenya, the country of Kenya, where Jenny is going to be focusing her talk today.
Maggy Benson:
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Rick. Welcome.
Advait Jukar:
And I'm Dr. Advait Jukar, and I'm a vertebrate paleontology in the Department of Paleobiology. At the Smithsonian. And as a vertebrate paleontologist, I use fossils to ask and answer questions about the ecology and evolution of animals like elephants, and horses, and sometimes even dinosaurs. I like to understand how these animals lived, what they ate, and where they lived back in deep time.
Maggy Benson:
Very cool. So, Advait and Rick will be answering your questions directly via text in that Q&A space. So while you're looking at that Q&A, you should see two tabs at the top. One of them says "All Questions," the other one says "My Questions." Make sure to refer to that space, because Advait and Rick will be responding directly there. All right, I just want to take one moment to welcome a couple more visitors who have come. Hey, David. And we have Jenny from Finland, we have some friends from Charleston, South Carolina, and Luke from Brooklyn. Welcome, welcome. We're so happy to have everybody here with us today. So without further ado, I will be going behind the scenes, and I'm going to pass it off to my wonderful colleagues, Ella Beaudoin and Jenny Clark. Hey, Ella, hey, Jenny.
Ella Beaudoin:
Hey.
Jennifer Clark:
Hi.
Ella Beaudoin:
Now, Jenny, I know, I am so excited to talk to you about this. Mostly because I also miss talking to you in the office. So I'm super excited to learn more about what you do at the Smithsonian.
Jennifer Clark:
Thanks, Ella. It's great being here. And I miss you too. It's tough being away from the office and the museum.
Ella Beaudoin:
It's true.
Jennifer Clark:
So, hi everybody. I just want to say thanks so much for joining us today. And I'm excited to share with you why I love studying animals and fossils. I like to start by telling you a little bit about myself, the kind of things I like to do when I was a kid, and how I came to have the job I do now at the National Museum of Natural History. So, let's get started.
This is a photo of me and my dad reading together. As a kid, I loved animals, and I wanted to travel and explore the natural world. I wanted to go camping, hiking, swimming, ride horses, fishing with my grandfathers, and just be outdoors. Funny thing though, neither one of my parents like to do any of these things. They enjoyed having pets, like cats and dogs, but they were not fascinated with all animals like I am.
However, I was very fortunate that even though they might not understand why I wanted to spend so much time outdoors learning about animals, they were always very supportive and encouraged my interests. They let me have all kinds of pets when I was growing up. And these are just some examples.
Ella Beaudoin:
Wait, so you had horses, you had goats?
Jennifer Clark:
Yep.
Ella Beaudoin:
Is that an alligator? You had a pet baby alligator when you were a kid?
Jennifer Clark:
Yes. Yes, I did. My mom and dad brought back a pet alligator from Florida one time when they were on a trip down there. And actually, it's a caiman, which is very similar to an alligator. Yeah, they were crazy and letting me keep all kinds of animals.
Ella Beaudoin:
That's amazing.
Jennifer Clark:
I was very fortunate. However though, there was one animal I was not allowed to have, and that was snakes. My dad was terrified of snakes. He didn't even like for me to have rubber toy snakes in the house. So, no pet snakes for me.
Ella Beaudoin:
Completely fine with alligators, absolutely not fine with snakes.
Jennifer Clark:
Correct. Correct. Go figure. I don't know. So, as a kid you're often asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? I wanted to learn about animals. But I really couldn't think of a lot of jobs where I could do that. Can you name some jobs where you can work with animals?
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay, guys. I think this is open for you guys to start answering. What are some jobs that you can have that you work with animals? Okay, we have a trainer, zoos, zookeeper. These are great.
Jennifer Clark:
Good.
Ella Beaudoin:
Yeah, those are the kind of things that I think I would also guess. Marine biologist, again, we have a lot more zoo, veterinarian. Tons of veterinarians.
Jennifer Clark:
Excellent.
Ella Beaudoin:
Yeah.
Jennifer Clark:
Good.
Ella Beaudoin:
A shelter owner for dogs. Yeah, great. These are amazing.
Jennifer Clark:
Excellent answers. When I was young, we didn't have all the cool shows that you do now, like on Animal Planet and Nat Geo, where you see all kinds of people who have jobs learning about animals. The only jobs I could think of were, you mentioned several of these, veterinarian, now I went with circus animal trainer.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay, okay a trainer, the circus animal trainer. Okay.
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah. And because I lived kind of in a rural area, there was a farmer. I could think about being a farmer.
Ella Beaudoin:
That's fair, yeah.
Jennifer Clark:
Unfortunately, none of these were good choices for me. In middle school and high school I liked biology and art, and I loved drawing. After high school I took a trip to visit Washington, D.C., and like many tourists visited the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Here's a photo of the entrance to the museum. My visit here was so cool, and it was such a great experience that introduced me to natural history museums. In college I continued studying biology and art, and I learned there were artists who specialized in scientific illustration.
Ella Beaudoin:
Oh, cool.
Jennifer Clark:
I was excited that this might be a way to combine my love of science and art. And so, here are some examples of what scientific illustrations can look like.
Ella Beaudoin:
Oh, that's beautiful.
Jennifer Clark:
During college I also became a certified scuba diver, and when not in class I worked as a lab and field assistant to our marine ecologist studying American eels. I graduated from the University of Georgia with a major in science, and an unofficial minor in art. During college I came back to the museum to attend a summer workshop on scientific illustration, and that's when I really fell in love with the museum. This is a photo of inside the rotunda of the museum, one of the first things you see as you come into our building.
There were, of course, fascinating exhibits to learn all about the natural world, but during the workshop I found out there was all this incredible research with amazing collections that goes on behind the scenes. These are just some shots from our collections, some photos of our collection.
Ella Beaudoin:
So much stuff. Wow.
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah. We have a lot. This is just a few images, and there's lots of different areas like this all over the museum. So, after college I came back to the museum to look for a job, and well, I've been here ever since. But before I started working with the Human Origins Program, I had a series of interesting and unusual jobs. I worked with researchers and a photographer studying mangrove and coral reef communities off the coast of Belize. I worked in labs with scientists who studied marine sponges, and for a program studying cancer in fish and reptiles and amphibians. I assisted in numerous project exploring and photographing caves in the U.S. and in Jamaica, and helped to photograph some amazing Mayan artwork found in a cave in Guatemala. And I also worked as an illustrator. Here's an illustration I created for a book.
Ella Beaudoin:
Jenny, this is amazing. There are so many different things that you can do with just knowing some science. You can do art, you can do photography, you can study ... Oh my goodness, this is amazing.
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah. I had a wonderful time at the museum so far, because I get to do so many different things, and this has been fun. I get to learn a lot. So, now what do I do? Most of the year I work in an office and run our lab. I help staff and visitors using objects in our collections. The image on the right shows some of the storage cabinets in our lab. These cabinets are filled with prehistoric stone tools and casts of early human fossils, as seen in the image on the left.
Also I make sure our team of researchers have space and resources they need to do their work. I contribute to our website and exhibit hall, I take photographs and create graphics and illustrations for lectures and publication, and I study tiny fossil bones and teeth. So, now you know a few things about me, and I've described some of the things I did before my current job. And I get to study the fossil small vertebrate animals now that I really love. And remember, vertebrates are animals that have backbones, or vertebrae. Can you name one of the five major animal groups or classes of vertebrates?
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay, another time to answer in the Q&A. There are five major groups or classes of animal vertebrates. And Jenny, correct me, because I'm learning here as well, okay, what are some of the things ... What are some of them? We have reptiles.
Jennifer Clark:
Good. That's one.
Ella Beaudoin:
We have humans. Mammals just in general, have is that one?
Jennifer Clark:
Mammals. Two.
Ella Beaudoin:
We have a couple. Birds.
Jennifer Clark:
Birds is three.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay, birds is three. We're so close. Amphibians, that we have?
Jennifer Clark:
Yes, four.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay. Oh, now I'm getting too excited. Okay, we have one more answer. Fish?
Jennifer Clark:
Yes. You got it. Yay!
Ella Beaudoin:
Awesome. Okay.
Jennifer Clark:
Okay, great. Five major food ... Five major groups are-
Ella Beaudoin:
Wait a second, well done, team. That's amazing.
Jennifer Clark:
Yes. The five major groups are fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, like us.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay.
Jennifer Clark:
So, why do I want to do this? Well, because these tiny bones and teeth can tell us what the environment was like when the animal was alive, even if they lived thousands of years ago. And I'm interested in knowing what kind of environments our early ancestors lived in, and one way to do that is to identify other animals and plant fossils that are found alongside the early human fossils and the stone tools they made, then investigate what kind of environments those plants and animals like to live in.
Let me give you a quick example. So, here in my hand I'm holding a fossil tooth. I can tell by the shape of the tooth who this tooth belonged to. Can you see the ridge the blue arrow is pointing to? This is a very sharp ridge on the edge of the tooth.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay, I see the ridge, yeah.
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah, you can see it?
Ella Beaudoin:
Yeah.
Jennifer Clark:
This ridge tells me the tooth belonged to a large crocodile.
Ella Beaudoin:
Oh, wow. Okay. So, okay, so we're looking at the bones of animals to try and figure out their environments. So, maybe where do crocodiles live would be the next question I guess? Is that the next question you would ask?
Jennifer Clark:
That's the next question. Thank you, Ella. So, where do crocodiles like to live, and what do you usually see them doing?
Ella Beaudoin:
I think that's, yeah, another-
Jennifer Clark:
Questions for the audience. Yep.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay. Where do crocodiles live, and what do you normally see them doing? Okay, we have near water bodies, and then more specifically we have a river, we have marshes, swamps, swamps, lots of swamp, which is great. Florida. Sun basking, which I wish that I could be doing. Sleeping would be one. Okay.
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah, these are great answers. Thank you, that's exactly wright. They live near water. You usually see them swimming in large rivers, lakes, or streams, and sometimes chomping on things.
Ella Beaudoin:
Yeah, hunting.
Jennifer Clark:
If I find a tooth like this associated with an early human fossil and stone tools, I could predict there were large lakes or rivers where these early humans lived.
Ella Beaudoin:
Oh, okay.
Jennifer Clark:
A quick note here. My pet as a child was an alligator, or caiman to be exact. I did not have a crocodile like this one. Not a good pet. Not a good pet. So, here are some animals that live in East Africa today, and I've identified fossil animals like these from the tiny bones and teeth that I found. Where do I find these tiny fossils? I have to travel to Kenya to find them. So, let me take you on a little trip to one of our research sites in Kenya, to dig for clues for what life was like for our early ancestors, at a place called Olorgesailie, Kenya.
This is Olorgesailie, in East Africa, and every year we go there to excavate fossil bones and stone tools made by early humans. Some of them are as old as 1.2 million years old. It's a very hot, and dry, and dusty place. Twenty to 30 of us camp and work here for one to two months during the summer. This photo gives you a general idea of what our camp looked like. And the tent in the upper right, that's mine. That's my office, that's my bed there on the floor.
So, how do I find these tiny fossils? Well, there are three ways. One is my walking around looking very closely on the ground and on the eroded surfaces of those gullies. You can see there are lots of gullies and lots of places to look for fossils at Olorgesailie. By the way, on the left is Dr. Rahab Kinyanjui. She's looking for the tiny plant fossils she studies at Olorgesailie. She's a Kenyan scientist who works on our team. On the right in the distance is Dr. Rick Potts, leader of the project and answering some of your questions today on Q&A.
Another way to find fossils is excavating, or digging them out of the ground. The excavators work very delicately, and sometimes collect small animal fossils during their digging. It's important for me to mention that we record and map the fossils in their positions within the excavation pit, making detailed notes about them, and taking photographs before they're actually removed from the ground. Fossils are then wrapped in tissue to protect them, placed in bags, and labeled with their location information. They're then transported to our camp, then off to the National Museums of Kenya for study. They're permanently stored at the museum for us and other scientists to study in the future. By the way, can you spot the large fossil bones George and Benson are excavating in this photo?
Ella Beaudoin:
I think so.
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah, this is the leg bone, these are leg bones of a fossil lion, and that's the skull.
Ella Beaudoin:
Weight, of a fossil lion?
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah, of a fossil lion. Is that cool or what?
Ella Beaudoin:
That is really, really cool. I've never seen anything like that, especially still in the ground.
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah. I also want to point out that George and Benson, our colleagues here you see in the photo, in our opinion are the most skilled and talented excavators in East Africa. They each have more than 40 years of experience, and they train newer members of our team when they come on board.
Ella Beaudoin:
Wow. Yeah, you have to be very skilled in order to get something like this out of the ground, right? And especially in one piece.
Jennifer Clark:
Right. Without breaking anything. And being sharp, have really sharp eyes trained to identify the fossils. I want to point out something else before moving to the next photo. So, let me see here. You can see this dirt in these metal pans. This is dirt that's excavated from around the fossil bones of the lion, and put into these pans. We're not through with this yet, so hang on.
Ella Beaudoin:
I do want to ask a quick question, Jenny.
Jennifer Clark:
Sure.
Ella Beaudoin:
Because we have ... in the Q&A. It is about how old some of these fossils are. And are there some fossils that are so old that then when they're exposed to air it could damage them, or they could crack or break?
Jennifer Clark:
We have to be very careful when we take them out of the ground. But yes, often times when we find them excavated, just being the weight under the ground, sometimes they're already cracked and broken. And that's part of the job, is putting those pieces back together. But yes, also if we don't wrap them in tissue and protect them on the transport from the field site where they're excavated to camp, and then to the museum, they can be broken in that transport process. Some of them are very, very fragile.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay. And also I just want to say, please keep sending us your questions in the Q&A. Because Jenny and I, I want to hear all your questions, because you're answering a lot of questions I have. So, please keep sending questions to the Q&A.
Jennifer Clark:
Great. So, I mentioned that dirt that you saw in those bowls.
Ella Beaudoin:
Yes.
Jennifer Clark:
A third way we can look for tiny fossils is by sieving the dirt that was excavated. Remember seeing those metal bowls? And at the yellow circle there, one of our team members is bringing the dirt of bowl or sediment that was excavated to a sieving station. The sediment is passed through these large sieves, we see at the top. The sediment's passed through the large sieves, and they have wire mesh screens on the bottom of them that allow the sediment to fall through and collect the fossil fragments.
So next, we take some of that sediment that passes through the sieves back to camp, rinse it with water through even smaller screens, dry it on plastic sheets, then spread it out on the plastic sheets to dry. And then we take that sediment and we'll put it on a plate, like our colleague is using, and slowly pick through it searching for small fossil teeth and bones. Sometimes the fossil preservation is good and the bones are whole, but most of the time they're broken and incomplete, like these tiny pieces here.
Ella Beaudoin:
Yeah. And Jenny, can we just go over what sediment is one more time?
Jennifer Clark:
Yes. That is the dirt that is being excavated from around the other fossils. So, it's dirt that's in the same layer where the fossils are found.
Ella Beaudoin:
Awesome. Thank you. Okay, so we're looking at these tiny pieces of broken bone that you guys are finding after going through all of these different layers of getting all of that extra dirt out of there.
Jennifer Clark:
Right.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay.
Jennifer Clark:
Exactly. So, just to give you an idea of what it liked to look for fossils and finding them, here's an example. Don't worry if you don't see it right away. It takes time to train your eyes to know what to look for. This blob in the center of the photo is a fossil rodent skull. Something, may be about the size of a gerbil. Let me add this photo of a skull to help you see some of the fossil features peeking out of the sediment, this dirt.
Ella Beaudoin:
Oh, wow.
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah. Can you see the outline of the top of a skull? I've got arrows pointing there on the photo of the skull and then the fossil.
Ella Beaudoin:
Yeah, it kind of ... it's round, kind of oblong. I see that it's kind of a similar shape, I think.
Jennifer Clark:
It's hard to see. And the arrows coming and pointing from the top are pointing at where the teeth are. So you can kind of see what those might look like. So, it's all smashed and smudged together. It's rare to find a complete skull that's not broken or have pieces missing. Sometimes I'm lucky and I just get a job with a row of teeth, and I'm very happy with that. Teeth are great clues for identifying animals. For identifying mammals in particular.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay.
Jennifer Clark:
So, how to identify these little broken bits of fossil. After the fossils are collected and labeled, they're brought back to the National Museums of Kenya for cleaning and identification. I look at them, sort them into major vertebrate groups. Remember, fish, reptile, amphibian, bird, or mammal. Then I determine if there's enough of a fossil to tell us who it is, meaning what kind of bird, fish, or mammal it might be.
Ella Beaudoin:
Oh, okay.
Jennifer Clark:
To do this, I use bone guides, like these from different groups of animals.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay, so these are all the skeletons of all these different, what a frog, what a bird, what a fish, all these things look like on the inside once all of our skin and flesh is gone.
Jennifer Clark:
Right, exactly. Yeah. Next I use the museum's skeletal collections to help further identify which kind of mammal, reptile, frog, bird, or fish the fossil might be. The skeletons in the museum collection are like a giant library. I pull boxes from the shelves containing modern skeletons and compare the fossils to the bones and teeth. I write descriptions, I make notes of what I see, I take measurements and photographs.
Ella Beaudoin:
Oh my goodness.
Jennifer Clark:
Sorry, you had a question?
Ella Beaudoin:
Oh, I'm just interested. It's all so small, so you're doing really delicate work, right?
Jennifer Clark:
Yes, very delicate. Yep. And here's another example of how small they can get. In this case, I've identified an elephant shrew, or sengi, from this collection of fossil bones. You can see in that blue background area at the top, those are all little pieces of fragmented fossils. And I've circled the fossil jaw of the sengi in yellow. In the dish below are all the bones that make up a sengi's skeleton.
Ella Beaudoin:
Now, that is cute.
Jennifer Clark:
This is a photo of what a sengi looks like, and what a cutie it is indeed.
Ella Beaudoin:
So, it's amazing that you're able ... So, all you have is that little kind of circle of bones, or whatever bones that you find. You must be doing a lot of comparing all the time from that bone to different books, and to different animals. It must be so ... You're doing a lot of comparing, right?
Jennifer Clark:
Yes, yes. It takes a long time. And you get better at it the more you do it, your eyes get trained to recognizing certain shapes and forms of the bone. And I think that's also where my art background comes in, is that I love the shapes. I just fall in love with looking at all these tiny shapes and features. So, that's part of it.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay. It's awesome to know that being an artist is actually really helpful for science.
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah. Yeah. Your observation skills are very important.
Ella Beaudoin:
Yeah. So, we do have a question. This is an animal that lives today, a sengi?
Jennifer Clark:
Yes. Yeah, it's also called an elephant shrew. That's a common name. I know. It's not really an elephant or a shrew, but a small insectivorous mammal. So, insectivorous means that it eats insects. They're native to Africa and they're also known as sengis. So, elephant, why? Look at the nose, what do you see? Kind of long nose. What you can't see is that it's a very flexible nose, and it can wiggle it around, and that's probably why they call it an elephant shrew. The scientific name is Elephantulus.
Once I identify a fossil, I search in guidebooks and scientific papers for information on the where the animals live geographically, what they eat, what kind of environment they prefer, like jungle or desert, grasslands or forest, mountains or flat plains, or a combination of these. Well, you get the idea. Remember that tooth we saw earlier that I was identifying? I don't know if you remember that one that was in that dish my finger was pointing to. Well, that was the tooth of a bat-eared fox, and that's a picture of a bat-eared fox up in the upper left corner. Let me see if I can zoom in. They're also really cute.
Ella Beaudoin:
Oh, they are. Wow.
Jennifer Clark:
Although, that one's got kind of a scary little expression. There we go. So, I'm not an expert in all animals. Sometimes I can recognize what type of animal it is based on a few bones or fragments of teeth. If I can't, I reach out to other experts for their help to take identifications even further. These are just a few of the scientists who help me with fossil identifications. I would also like to point out at the top of the screen scientist in training, Sylvester Mucioka. He assists the Olorgesailie project excavations during the summer months, and works with fossil collections in the National Museums of Kenya the rest of the year, all while taking classes. He's a great student too.
Ella Beaudoin:
Wow, that's really impressive.
Jennifer Clark:
It is. My work is just one of the types of scientific evidence that contributes to understanding what the environments were like for our early ancestors. Our project at Olorgesailie's been going on for more than 30 years, and more than 50 scientists and students have worked on this project. Many are from the Smithsonian and the National Museums of Kenya, and others from around the world. We work together with local Kenyans, many who live near Olorgesailie, to excavate and study fossils and the stone tools made by early humans. All of this teamwork helps us discover the ways early ancestors adapted to ever-changing environments in the past.
One of the things I also treasure about my job is friendships made along the way. I'm friends with many of the team members on our project, and colleagues at the National Museums of Kenya. I also have friends who are part of the Olorgesailie community. This is Nalakiri. She's the wife of Kakai, who excavate with our project. We've known each other for more than 20 years, and even though we don't speak a common language, every summer we sit and visit and enjoy each other's company.
So, I'd like to conclude my presentation with two more images. Here's a photo of a present-day landscape at Olorgesailie. Many scientists have studied the sediments you see here and provided clues for the types of water sources, vegetation, animals that lived in this particular area 320,000 years ago. And here's a ... Go ahead. Sorry. Should I go back?
Ella Beaudoin:
Yeah, can you go back for a second?
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah, no problem.
Ella Beaudoin:
I want to talk about what it looks like right now. It's all flat, it's really, it doesn't seem to have a ton of different vegetation.
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay. Lots of hills and valleys. Okay.
Jennifer Clark:
Very dry, yep.
Ella Beaudoin:
Very dry, okay. So, this is not what it looked like in the past?
Jennifer Clark:
Not quite.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay.
Jennifer Clark:
So, here's an illustration that I created to show what the environment might've looked like at that time, 320,000 years ago. It's based on scientific information gathered by our team, and includes information that I've contributed to.
Ella Beaudoin:
So, you made this image, and then all of your work identifying all of these little fossils was helping you to put trees and water in this drawing, right?
Jennifer Clark:
Right. All those scientists that you saw in some of those earlier photos helped identify some of the larger animals, the geologists, they studied what kind of water sources and things were available there, what kind of trees. Unfortunately, the tiny animals that I showed are probably too tiny to put in this illustration. So, I mostly just focusing on the larger animal. And I do want to point out, back here in the back, we see some of our early human ancestors there on the landscape as well.
Ella Beaudoin:
Oh my goodness. It is so cool to see how tiny fossils, and art, and tons of teamwork can come together to tell us a story of an ecosystem millions of years old.
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah. Yep.
Ella Beaudoin:
That's amazing.
Jennifer Clark:
It's a lot of fun. And it changed a lot of different times during the time span that we study at Olorgesailie. So, a lot of change.
Ella Beaudoin:
Oh, wow. That's really cool. So, I know you're not done, because we actually have a ton of questions, and definitely-
Jennifer Clark:
Yes.
Ella Beaudoin:
Asking them in the Q&A. Don't forget to type in your question, anything about the presentation, or anything you want Jenny to answer. But, we can start maybe with some questions that we already have. Are you ready for that?
Jennifer Clark:
I am. I would just quickly like to thank National Museums of Kenya colleagues, Maasai communities of Olorgesailie, Rick Potts, Advait Jukar for answering some of your questions that I'm about to answer also, and members of the Human Origins Team, Briana Pobiner, for inviting me and participating in the webinar, and Ella for hosting, and of course to Maggy. I'm happy to answer questions now, so let's get ... I didn't want to forget that at the end. That's all.
Ella Beaudoin:
Very understandable. It's important to really acknowledge that a lot of science is mostly about teamwork, and coming together and working together to create these stories of the past that we now can understand. So I guess, something that I was really curious about, and a couple of people have asked in the Q&A, your fossils are so tiny. What happens if a big wind comes, do they get blown away? How do you make sure that your tiny, tiny fossils don't get scattered everywhere?
Jennifer Clark:
That's a big problem. I have to work ... if you saw that picture of me sitting at the desk outside in the sun and using the light from the sun to look through a microscope, or a dissecting scope to look at it, I have to have boxes that have lids on everything. We have a lot of wind and dust flowing through. And so again, another reason to wrap things up in tissues, store them in plastic bags. Or, I have little tiny plastic boxes that are clear, that I can see the fossils inside that are protected. And that keeps them from being blown away. And yes, unfortunately there have been times where I've been looking at something and I dropped it, and it's on the ground. You don't want to do that too often, because sometimes you lose it. Or a wind comes by and ... It is a problem, it's a possibility, and I have to constantly be aware of that.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay.
Jennifer Clark:
So, good question.
Ella Beaudoin:
Yeah, that was a good question. Because I was wondering about it too. So, on the topic of fossils, do people find fossils on accident? And what kind of landscape do people normally, especially where you're working, find fossils?
Jennifer Clark:
Yes, they do. And sometimes you might recognize that it's a fossil, or you just think it's an odd-looking rock. And so, in that particular area what we do is, not only for the small fossils but for the big fossils, is that we start walking up and down those gullies and those ravines, and we look for areas where they've eroded out from the surface, where they've been washed out by water or wind and/or laying on the ground. And so, when we find and identify, visually say, "Oh, this is a fossil," then we try to figure out where it came from on that hillside. And that will tell us a good place to start digging to look for more fossils.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay. So, we have another question, if you find an unidentifiable fossil, how do you label that? How do you work with something that is potentially unidentifiable?
Jennifer Clark:
I label it, I can't ID it. But we keep it there. Because like I said, I don't know all the animals. I can't recognize all of them. And so, even if I might get it in an animal group, one of those major groups, I will still go to another expert in those particular animals, a bird expert, and they might be able to tell me more about it, they might be able to identify it. So, there's some pieces, like I showed you in that dish, that were just little bits of broken bone, we're not going to be able to identify them.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay.
Jennifer Clark:
But it's still helpful to keep. Because there might be some sort of work that could be done in the future. Maybe the bone chemistry, or looking at ways of sampling things from fossils that you don't want to damage, but you have some information there that could still be helpful in identifying what that environment was like. So, we do keep it. They're stored in boxes that say they're not identified, or they're just fragments. But yeah.
Ella Beaudoin:
Yeah. Speaking of keeping these fossils and making sure that they're all labeled, where do these fossils that you find and can you go? Do they come back to the Smithsonian, or do they stay in Kenya?
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah, they're treasures of the National Museums of Kenya, and the country of Kenya. And so, there are laws that prevent people from taking fossils out of the country. Everything gets stored there. And it's for everyone else to be able to come there and study.
Ella Beaudoin:
Yes.
Jennifer Clark:
So they're kept, they're protected, but people, scientists from around the world go there and study them. Yeah, I'm hoping I'm answering your question correctly. But yes, they stay at the National Museums of Kenya. Occasionally, if there's some sort of scientific investigation or study that we need to do on a particular fossil that can't actually be done in Nairobi or in the National Museums, they don't have the technical equipment there that's available, sometimes scientists will get special permission to borrow it and take it to another institution to study it, and then they bring it back to the National Museums of Kenya.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay. That's an important distinction, it's only on loan to us, because it belongs to Kenya.
Jennifer Clark:
Exactly.
Ella Beaudoin:
Awesome. So, I think this is great, people asking tons of questions. So, let's get to some may be ... it's not about a fossil, but you talked about you owned an alligator, but we were looking at a crocodile tooth. What is the difference between an alligator and a crocodile? And this one I don't know.
Jennifer Clark:
Well, most alligators live in the Americas, and North and South America.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay.
Jennifer Clark:
Crocodiles can live all over. There are different kinds of crocodiles. But they live in salt water as well. But yeah, they're closely related, but their distribution around the world is a little bit different too. So, people can look at the shape of the snout, they can look at the teeth where they come up, in terms of whether they have an under bite or an overbite. There are all kinds of different alligators and crocodiles. But yeah, I hope that kind of answers your question. Actually, Advait might be better at answering that than I am.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay. That's really interesting. Okay. So, yeah, we have several more ... Oh my goodness. This is great for me too, because I'm reading a lot of questions, and I'm curious about them too. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about your illustration. So, you had trees in that illustration. What kind of trees, what kind of vegetation were you drawing in there?
Jennifer Clark:
There's acacia trees, which are native to East Africa. And you see them on the landscape today. But, there's fossil pollen and fossil plants that are showing where there is a natural spring, so there might be some taller weeds or grasses along part of that area. I hope that answers some of the questions. But yeah, some of the bushes. I didn't put all of the plants that we see in there.
But like I said, also there are times where the environment changes at different time periods. And so, there might be older landscapes where you might see palm trees, or palms, or other things that you wouldn't see there today at all in terms of that environment. They used to be a big lake there. Not in the particular scene that I drew, but we know there was a giant lake there in the area that attracted lots of animals. And probably contributed to the number of fossils that we're able to find there.
Ella Beaudoin:
Oh, wow. Okay. So, speaking of animals, what's your favorite animal?
Jennifer Clark:
Oh, there's so many.
Ella Beaudoin:
Because I think mine might now be a sengi. I think that might be my favorite animal. But, I'd love to hear what yours is.
Jennifer Clark:
I was going to say, that is one of my favorites right now also. I also like, there were a couple other animals that were in that compilation. There was a little tiny, tiny antelope that's called a dik-dik, that is just adorable. And it's about the size of a really small dog. We actually see them near our camp sometimes. They also have a really long nose that kind of wiggles around. I don't know, maybe I'm just attracted to things with long noses that wiggle.
Ella Beaudoin:
I love it. I think that makes them extra cute, so I very much understand.
Jennifer Clark:
Yeah.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay, so what are some other places that you've ... You kind of mentioned, you do so many different kinds of scientific research, and you have over your career. Are there any other places that you've looked for fossils?
Jennifer Clark:
I've been to China a couple of times now, where we've looked at stone tools that are found there. And sometimes there are fossils in caves that we get to see. Our Chinese colleagues are investigating, so we're looking and comparing similar time periods to some of the fossils in East Africa. So, those are some of the places that I've been able, been fortunate enough to visit there. In North America I've seen fossils in some of the caves that we've explored. And those are much more recent fossils.
Ella Beaudoin:
Okay. That's fabulous. And then, I guess speaking about fossils, and all the things that we have in our museum, there was a question about, are the things that you showed in the picture of the office, are those real? Are those real bones there?
Jennifer Clark:
The real fossils stay in the country where they're found, of early human fossils. And so, what we do is, there are ways of making casts. So, it's an exact scientific replica that people can use. And so at the museum, we use those for education purposes and teaching purposes. We have them on display in our halls. They're the exact same dimensions, and shape, and size, and often painted to look like the same kind of color of the fossils, the staining of the fossil bones, to look exactly like the original fossil.
And so, we use those. That way, it helps so that the original fossils are not handled quite so much, and there's not ... It limits the chance of them being broken or damaged, or they're not being shipped around different places. And they're protected in their home institutions, their home museums. So yeah, a lot of those are replicas. We do have actual stone tools that are on display.
And not in that room, but on display in our museum hall are the fossils of Neanderthal skeleton, and those are also real. They were part of an arrangement with the antiquities department in Iraq, many years ago with a joint project that was with the Smithsonian and the Iraqi government. And so, they know that we have this Neanderthal fossil skeleton, we have permission from them to have it, and an agreement. And so, we have it on display. So, when our museum's back open, you can come and look at a real Neanderthal.
Ella Beaudoin:
Amazing. Definitely my favorite thing in our collections. Okay, so we have kind of time frame may be one probably, or two more questions. And so, we have one, it's a little bit more specific. So it's, are you able to identify the micro-mammalian post-crania, which is just for everyone else, it's everything except for the head. The crania is the head, right?
Jennifer Clark:
Right.
Ella Beaudoin:
Or is the focus mainly on the head? Which is easier to identify, post-crania or the head?
Jennifer Clark:
That's a great question. Especially for mammals, the teeth are most helpful in identifying what kind of mammal it might be. But when you get down to a particular species, or a genus, getting close to animals that look very much like each other and do the same kinds of activities, you can look at the post-crania. You can look at the hips, you can look at the shape of the bones that make up the hips and the shoulders, and tell what kind of locomotive patterns they might have.
For example with frogs, I can look at the shoulders of some frogs that can tell me that they would dig in the dirt. And they would burrow down into the soil. And what they do is, this helps me understand that there were seasons going on. And so if there's a rainy season, the frog comes out, they party, they get together with their friends, they eat, they have a great time. It gets really dry, they dig a hole and they burrow down, and they stay there. It's called estivating, and they stay there during the dry period, and they only come out when there's enough water for them to be a frog.
So, one of the things that you can tell about the shoulders is that this is a frog that digs. You can look at the hind legs of other frogs, you can tell that they're strong swimmers. Or you can tell maybe they're little peepers, and they hang on to the stems and reeds, they spend most of their time hanging onto reeds by the lake. So again, all of those kinds of things, even just from a few frogs looking at the post-crania bones, can tell us what the environment was like. Even if I can't identify maybe which frog it is, I can at least tell what they did. And that's helpful to me.
Ella Beaudoin:
That is so cool. Your research is so interesting. You're able to create this picture both physically, because you're an artist, and from the other elements of science that you do. That's amazing.
Jennifer Clark:
Thanks. Thanks. I have a good time. I have fun.
Ella Beaudoin:
Well, that's awesome. I think that we are kind of closing up soon, and I think Maggy might pop on to say our goodbyes. But you are amazing. This is so interesting, and I can't wait to bother you back in the office and ask to look at tiny bones now. Now that I know that you research them, I'm going to ask you to show some to me.
Jennifer Clark:
Yep, come bug me. Come bug me. You can tell me more and teach me about stone tools, so that would be great. Well, thank you. These were great questions, everybody. I really appreciate it, and it's fun. It's fun.
Maggy Benson:
That was awesome. And I think I'm going to be coming to both of your offices, Ella and Jenny, so that I can have a lot of laughs. I've been laughing all the way along through this presentation. Aunt Jenny, it's been so wonderful learning about how all of your different science and art experiences have come together for this amazing Human Origins research. So, thank you so much for sharing that with us.
Jennifer Clark:
Oh, thanks, Maggy and Ella for hosting. This was great. I've had so much fun.
Maggy Benson:
And I also want to thank Rick and Advait, who have been busy answering questions behind the scenes. Thank you so much Rick, thank you so much Advait. It was great to have your help answering those questions.
Advait Jukar:
This was so much fun. This was awesome.
Rick Potts:
Thanks, Jenny. Thanks, Ella.
Advait Jukar:
Thanks, Rick.
Maggy Benson:
Oh, Rick, we can't hear you.
Rick Potts:
I was giggling all the way through the presentation too. It was a lot of fun for us.
Maggy Benson:
Yeah, that was lovely. And all of our viewers, I can see you're all still with us. Thank you so much for tuning in today for this great program. I see your wonderful comments that this was fun. And Jenny, some people want you to do this program again.
Jennifer Clark:
Okay.
Maggy Benson:
They really enjoyed it. So, thank you all so much for sticking with us. Now, my colleague Carolyn has put some links in that Q&A to learn more about Olorgesailie, the field site that Jenny talked about today, and other resources from the Human Origins Program. So, while we're closing up here, you can take a moment to look to the Q&A to see some links that Carolyn has shared, along with Rick and Advait, in response to some of those questions posted throughout today's program.
And while I still have folks here, I do want to mention that our frequency of programming will be coming down a little bit with live video webinars. But we will be offering Human Origins programming throughout the [inaudible 00:50:34]. So, keep an eye on our National History Museum website. And you can see a full schedule of programs there. So [inaudible 00:50:45] topics, programs.
And let's see here. The other thing I did want to mention is that we have Summer Explorations that are going to be happening. Those are for students rising in grades three through eight. Those are week-long summer explorations. Not quite camp, but they will have live video webinar programs and activities to do throughout the day in the summer. We will have three weeks of those, and they are free. So, you can also find those on our Natural History Museum website. And after this program is over, we would appreciate a response in our survey, so we can understand what went well for you, and how we could continue offering programs that fits your needs. So, thank you all so much for joining us today. Thank you again to all of our wonderful experts. It's been fabulous learning more about your work in Human Origins. All right. Thanks everyone. We'll see you next time.
