RW Moriarty Science Seminars

R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar Presents: “River Life in Ancient Egypt: The Nile and its Varied Environments”

Speaker: Christine Johnston, Western Washington University.

Ancient Egyptian society developed around and was dependent on the Nile River. It was the physical and cultural heart of the pharaonic state, playing important roles in transportation and trade, agriculture and subsistence, and belief and ideology. The Nile brought bounty to the people of Egypt through both the resources it held and the rich sediments it deposited across the Nile valley during the annual inundation. These sediments supported the production of agricultural products like grain, while the river environment provided fish and fowl and supported the raising of livestock and the cultivation of plants like flax and papyrus used to make linen and paper. Although the Nile represented an important source of life, it could also be dangerous. It was home to creatures like hippopotami and crocodiles and helped to spread water- and insect-borne parasites and illnesses like malaria. Fluctuations in the annual inundation could also have devastating effects on agriculture, while the migration of the river across the valley altered physical and cultural landscapes. This presentation will focus on the regional differences through the Egyptian Nile Valley, the changes that occurred over time, and the impact of the river on the lives and beliefs of the ancient Egyptians.

This free event will take place ONLINE via Zoom on Monday, March 11, 2024 at Noon.

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Click to download the printable program.

Seminar 167

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R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar Presents: “‘Chancing on a Spectacle:’ Co‐occurring Animal Migrations and Interspecific Interactions”

Speaker: Emily Cohen, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

This event will take place Monday, February 12, 2024 at Noon in person at Earth Theater.

Seminar 164

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R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar Presents: “Glow-in-the-Dark Millipedes, Mimicry Rings, and the 1,306-Legged Millipede”

Speaker: Paul Marek, Virginia Tech.

A myriapod is a many-legged arthropod in the subphylum Myriapoda. They include centipedes, millipedes, and the poorly known symphylans and pauropods. They are an ancient group, and
the first evidence of land animals are late Silurian fossil millipedes from 425 million years ago. Among the notable species of myriapods are those that glow in the dark, are walking gardens of mosses and liverworts, and some that roll up into a baseball-sized sphere for defense against predators. Dr. Marek will present highlights of his laboratory’s research on myriapods, which includes studies of bioluminescent millipedes and the animal with the greatest number of legs—a millipede discovered in Australia with 1306 legs. Details will include collaborative projects with graduate students in the lab and colleagues across the world. He hopes to show the significance of myriapods, and the importance of international collaboration and open science.

This event will take place Monday, January 22, 2024 at Noon in person at Earth Theater.

Seminar 164

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R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar Presents: “A Time-Machine to Africa: Revisiting the Collections of the Pulitzer Expedition to Angola at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History”

Speaker: Luis Ceríaco, Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

In 1930, the newspaper mogul Ralph Pulitzer funded an expedition to Angola, southwestern Africa, for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Aimed at getting specimens of the iconic Giant Sable, the expedition was comprised of naturalists who assembled impressive zoological, paleontological and ethnographic collections. These collections are still extant in CMNH and are scientifically relevant to the present day. They served as the basis of the description of new species and are unparalleled testimonies of the Angolan landscape a century ago. While reviewing part of the collections assembled in this expedition, I started to pull a thread that eventually led me to (re)discover a treasure trove of documentation and specimens. In the last 10 years I’ve been doing research in Angola and collecting in the exact same areas covered by the Pulitzer Expedition. This allows us to compare the landscape evolution, the loss of biodiversity and the logistics of an early twentieth century expedition with those of today. This story intertwines history and biodiversity and reinforces the value and scientific importance of CMNH collections. Using the CMNH collections as a time-machine, we will travel back and forth in time and discuss history, science and conservation in one of Africa’s most biodiverse countries.

This event will take place Monday, December 11, 2023 at Noon in person at Earth Theater.

Seminar 163

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R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar Presents: “Impacts of Extreme Warming Events on Early Eocene Mammals and Ecosystems”

Speaker: Abigail Carroll, University of Pittsburgh.

How might animals and ecosystems respond to today’s warming planet? Looking to Earth’s past may help us answer this question. A series of extreme warming events during the early Eocene (beginning 56 million years ago) are analogous in many ways to present-day global warming. Paleontological investigations conducted over the past decade have also uncovered a curious response to these warming events: a brief, but significant, decrease in body size for some mammal groups, including the earliest horses. Furthermore, the extent of body size decrease appears to be related to the magnitude of the warming event. In this talk, we will look at a fossil record of these events from the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming, and consider the mechanism(s) which may have led to the observed body size changes.

This event will take place Monday, November 13, 2023 at Noon in person at Earth Theater and is free to attend.

Click here to download the program.

Seminar 162

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R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar Presents: “Let’s Talk About Climate Change! Outcomes of Climate in Rural Systems Partnership (CRSP)”

Speaker: Nicole Heller and Laurie Giarratani, Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

The Climate and Rural Systems Partnership (CRSP) operates at the intersection of three ideas: 1) museum resources are valuable for understanding environmental change, 2) museums are underserving rural audiences, and 3) complex socio-scientific environmental change topics are deeply connected to social decision making in rural communities. Over the last four years, educators and researchers from Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH) and the University of Pittsburgh have collaborated with community partners in a research practice partnership (RPP) that supports professional networking, reflection and learning. The project is centered at two community hubs – one at Powdermill Nature Reserve and the other at Mercer County Conservation District. Our collective work supports socially safe, science-based discussions about human-caused climate change and is building regional capacity for information exchange across organizations. Through this partnership we seek to improve methodologies and practices for practitioners to effectively address climate change issues with their audiences, including the museum’s work with its audiences. In this talk, we will share background theory and practice that motivated this learning science project, describe how the RPP works, and discuss some of our findings. We will also talk about how this research is informing our vision for the long-term role of the museum in regional climate empowerment.

This event will take place Monday, October 23,2023 at Noon in person in the CMP Board Room and online via Zoom.

Talks are free to attend in person. Registration is required for online access.

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Click here to download the program.

Seminar 160

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