Interview: Gettin' Zeigy With It

*Because any post that starts with a Will Smith reference is gonna be awesome.

This October Amy sat down with her mentor, professional geologist Dr. Kate Zeigler. Yes, that means this interview contains everything from A to Z. Also Z to A, since Kate was the one actually being interviewed. Kate is the sole owner of Zeigler Geologic Consulting and adjunct faculty at New Mexico Highlands University in Albuquerque, a kick-ass rock-climber, and she likes finding out which direction minerals in rocks point (which is a lot more important than you might think). 

Poor/Lucky Kate was assigned to work together with Amy as a mentor/mentee pair through the Huffington Post's Girls in STEM blog where they both write about their experiences as female paleontologists, both student and professional. Amy and Kate met up this year at the annual Geological Society of America's (GSA) meeting in Denver, CO. Below is the result: a glimpse into Kate Zeigler's life as a badass-mofo lady paleontologist (Slow Loris Rarely Included). 

Many imaginary friends including Meaghan and Mary Anning made guest appearances in the following interview with Dr. Kate Zeigler

Awesome Dead Shit: Prototaxites

When Amy has nightmares, they take one of two general forms: either all prosimians go extinct (OH GOD NO!) or it somehow involves giant mushrooms, of which she is irrationally opposed. So today to be an asshole, Meaghan is going to tell you all a lot about Prototaxites, the giant mushroom!

Prototaxites: Nature's threatening fungus-dildo

Paleontologists Give the Best Presents

Last year, Meaghan made epic personalized nerd mugs and fake tattoos for her lab mates. It was a great Christmas - she got to not be poor AND be smug, which is a difficult combination to come by. Naturally this year, she wanted to outdo her previous year's efforts and come up with something crafty and sciencey that could solidify her position as the Martha Stewart of Science. Fortunately for Meaghan, there exists such a thing as "Non-Toxic Food-Grade Silicone Paste."

This is a little different from the typical casting supplies that paleontologists work with, in that it is meant for eating and is incredibly easy to use. Select or make the item you would like to mold, mix equal qualities of blue and white, and smoosh the mixture all over the item for about an hour. Boom. Silicon molds. 

Initially Meaghan had grand plans of using the new 3D printer at University of Oregon to print out mini replicas, but they have some daft rule about "academic intentions" and she couldn't figure out how to bullshit her way through it. Instead Meaghan made small sculpey clay replicas of an oreodont skull, and a flat medallion of a Dunkleosteus head, and a flat giant ground sloth. She also grabbed a bear skull that was just lying around (long story).

Support Meaghan & Amy's Beer Fund!

Wanna purchase a sweet Christmas gift AND support a good cause at the same time? Well, look no further than the fantastic science gifts at Borealisbones and our CafePress stores! All the money made through these fantastic venues will go directly into the Vengeance Team beer fund, aka magic "write more dumb stuff on our blog" juice. 

See, while Amy was being job-blocked by the government shutdown she started making really incredible earrings out of caribou antlers. All the antlers were naturally shed and collected by Amy outside of the park's boundaries, so have no fear: Alaskan, but still legal for sure. 

AND GORGEOUS

Awesome Dead Shit: Squaloraja

Yes, that is a fossil not a sedimentary rorschach diagram - in fact, it is a cartilaginous fish. Our very own patron saint of paleontology Mary Anning found this bad boy in the early 1880's. Mary Anning sold the fossil to John Nash Sanders, but either she hadn't found the tail at the time that she prepared the fossil, or simply hadn't finished prepping it, but either way Squaloraja polyspondyla was originally described sans its tail, and sketched by Mary Anning as follows:

The body and tail were never reunited. Sad times... except that the body got asploded during the Bristol Blitz, and so the tail was the only part that survived (being housed elsewhere at the time). So yay?

Different Squaloraja, not exploded

So why was Squaloraja such an important find? Mary noted that the specimen shared characteristics of both living sharks and rays, causing general confusion. Remember how everyone thought nothing went extinct back then? Now we know that it is a member of the Order Chimaera (ratfish), one of the oldest and most diverse family of cartilaginous fishes. The closest living relatives of Chimaera are ratfish, though cartilaginous fish  split nearly 400 million years ago. Squaloraja showed up around about 200 million years ago, and it should not be too surprising that, considering its ancestry, it looks like a shark/ray hybrid critter. While epic in appearance, the Squaloraja lifestyle was pretty tame; it was a bottom feeder that lived in shallow marine settings.

Squaloraja is at the bottom

The Vengeance Team shares a little place in their hearts for cartilaginous fishes, especially since their Vertebrate Paleontology class. While studying the evolutionary history of fishes (fascinating mmhmm zzzzzz) they realized something, cartilaginous fish had bones, but then they lost them! Sharks and chimaera stem from bony fish ancestors (see shark family tree below) and some of these guys had bones. This means sharks and rays secondarily lost bones in favor of cartilage, oh snap.

Ray Troll beautifully illustrates the evolutionary tree of fish. Squaloraja would fit in up by the Chimaeras.


http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=oxwrAAAAYAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA386&dq=squaloraja&ots=GFfdeitjry&sig=xQGXm8OtdEjEw2dm4dJsyIxaS7s#v=onepage&q=squaloraja&f=false