Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

RW Moriarty Science Seminars

by

Moriarty Science Seminar: Who Belongs When No One or Everyone Does? Stewarding Novel Ecosystems in the Anthropocene

R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar Presents: Who Belongs When No One or Everyone Does? Stewarding Novel Ecosystems in the Anthropocene

Speaker: Nicole Heller

Conserving biodiversity is a scientifically and socially challenging enterprise. This is perhaps especially the case in the early twenty-first century when global environmental changes associated with the Anthropocene are impacting local ecosystems everywhere. Many ecosystems are characterized as novel; meaning they have unique assemblages of species and altered processes due to human land-use and behavior. Dr. Nicole Heller’s research explores the challenges inherent in setting conservation goals and finding effective stewardship practices in a world of novel ecosystems and ongoing global environmental and social change. Here Heller explores this research question in the context of stewarding ant communities in the Hawaiian Islands. The island biota evolved without ants, but over the last few hundred years an assemblage of approximately 60 ant species derived from around the world have become established, and the number of new species continues to rise annually.  The ants have major ecological, economic, and social impacts. Determining “what is ‘natural’” and “who belongs” is not easily addressed using standard categories of native versus non-native that often drive conservation decision-making. In this talk, Heller will discuss this general topic area and present some preliminary research findings about this novel ant community and the struggles of people to manage their distribution and impacts.

Register for this Seminar

by

Moriarty Science Seminar: Molecular Paleobiology of Early Life on Earth

R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar Presents: Molecular Paleobiology of Early Life on Earth

Speaker: Betül Kaçar

Only one record of life exists, but what does that tell us about life’s existence elsewhere? Will we recognize “life” when we see it? Are there characteristic chemical properties that would be common to all forms of life, or can they differ substantially? What are the significant historical innovations of life that shaped the life we observe today?

In this lecture we will travel back in time and take a journey across the history of life on Earth from a molecular perspective. Betül Kaçar will discuss the emergence of essential metabolisms, their evolution across billions of years of planetary evolution, and how molecular innovations were impacted by significant changes in the environment, including the Great Oxidation Event.

Register for this Seminar

by

Moriarty Science Seminar: Repatriation Initiated by Whom?

R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar Presents: Repatriation Initiated by Whom?

Speaker: Joe Stahlman

In this talk, Joe will discuss a recent experience where a non-Native community initiated and supported a repatriation into their municipality. Native America usually does not observe this type of engagement from our neighbors. Although a positive step forward in reconciling the past, this endeavor encountered many missteps and educational moments along the way. This talk will focus on that experience and how we can collectively reconcile the past by working with non-Native partners and encouraging community engagement.

Register for this Seminar

Dr. Joe Stahlman is the Director of Seneca Nation’s Seneca-Iroquois National Museum-Onöhsagwë:de’ Culture Center and Seneca Nation’s Tribal Historic Preservation Office. Joe is a scholar and researcher of Tuscarora descent. He has over 20 years of research experience working with First Peoples. His research focuses on culture and history, as well as ongoing socio-economic and health and wellness related endeavors with Native communities. He takes an active role in addressing the space Native peoples occupy in North American archaeology and cultural resource management. He regularly talks on the need to promote equity among all peoples in North American society through a number of reconciliatory processes which are inclusive for all and empowers people to express agency through creative and intellectual endeavors.

by

Moriarty Science Seminar: Preserving Natural History Collections

R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar Presents: Preserving Natural History Collections: One Conservator’s Story

Speaker: Fran Ritchie

What’s it like being one of the few art conservators who focuses on preserving natural science and history materials? This talk will cover the odd situations that arise when treating historic taxidermy (cue the dripping turtle oil and bald eagle toupees), the enriching moments that community engagement provides when treating indigenous materials, and the thrill of protecting T. rex from the dreaded ketchup stain.

Register for this Seminar

by

Moriarty Science Seminar: Natural History & the British Slave Trade

R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar Presents: Natural History & the British Slave Trade

Speaker: Kathleen S. Murphy

We rarely think about the wretched, miserable, and inhuman spaces of slave ships as having anything to do with natural history. Yet hundreds of scientific specimens were gathered by slave traders, slave ship surgeons, and others employed in the British transatlantic slave trade during the eighteenth century. These specimens were transported on the same vessels on which captive Africans endured the horror of the slave trade. Some of these specimens survive in modern natural history collections.

This talk reveals the entwined histories of Enlightenment science and the transatlantic slave trade. It argues that British naturalists exploited the routes and infrastructure of the eighteenth-century transatlantic slave trade in order to acquire specimens that otherwise would have been difficult or impossible for them to collect. Slaving mariners gathered specimens on naturalists’ behalf in each of the regions of the Atlantic World pulled into the orbit of the British slave trade: West Africa, the Caribbean, Spanish America, and British North America. The talk focuses on the example of Dr. John Burnet, a slave ship surgeon who collected specimens first on board the slave ship Wiltshire and subsequently as an employee of a slaving company in Spanish America.

Register for this Seminar