Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

Blogs from our Scientific Researchers

Carnegie Museum of Natural History is home to active research and vast scientific collections. Our scientific researchers regularly contribute to the blog at the museum.

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I love this interspecies friendship!

I confess I am not big on social media, but occasionally I see something that I can’t stop watching. This short clip caught on a wildlife camera in San Jose, California shows a coyote leading a badger though a culvert under a highway. And I am not alone in appreciation as this post has gone viral with millions of views! Simply put, this duo is absurdly cute. I can’t stop watching. While it is well established scientifically that coyotes and badgers hunt together, this video conveys so much more. The way the coyote leaps playfully, tail wagging, beckoning his short-legged little friend to follow conveys friendship. It conveys two buddies out for an adventure. 

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🐾 Our wildlife cameras spotted this coyote and badger traveling together through a culvert (tunnel) under a highway in the South Bay. We believe this is the first observation of its kind documenting these two together. Studies have shown that a badger and coyote hunting together can be beneficial for both species, as they pursue favorite prey such as ground squirrels. Maybe that’s where they’re headed? See what else our wildlife cameras have spotted with the link in our profile or at openspacetrust.org/blog/wildlife. Video: @peninsulaopenspacetrust / @pathways_for_wildlife . . . #Coyote #Badger #Wildlife #BayAreaWildlife #WildlifeCameras #WidlifeMovement #CuteAnimals #Animals #CoyoteAndBadger

A post shared by POST – Open Space For All (@peninsulaopenspacetrust) on

There are so many examples of non-human animals, individuals of the same species and of different species, interacting in complex ways that reveal their unique personalities, friendships, kindness, and dare I say, love. Traits or expressions we tend to confer only to humans for fear of anthropomorphizing, a big no-no in science. (For example, see this national geographic blog about this coyote-badger video). And yet I would argue that the most apt description of these behaviors is to describe them with the same words we would use to describe them in humans. Our brains are similar. These arguments are well developed by ecologist Carl Safina, in his best-selling book Beyond Words, and summarized here in this powerful TEDX talk.

A recent study about African grey parrots also captured the surprise of scientists. African grey parrots were very helpful in sharing tokens to other parrots so that parrot could exchange the token for food. The helping parrots did this without any direct reward for themselves. This type of helping behavior, most simply described as generosity or kindness, is surprising to scientists and many expressed doubt that it is real. Why? Other creatures are our close kin. We share the same nervous systems. It makes sense that we also share feelings and thoughts, emotional and social lives too. I think this is obvious to anyone who has a pet. For this badger and coyote pair, why shouldn’t we all, scientists alike, call it a friendship? Which raises another question: if we start calling these behaviors friendship, without fear of anthropomorphizing, might this help us to better empathize with our fellow animal kin and take better care of them and the Earth?  

I wonder.

Nicole Heller is Curator of the Anthropocene for Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences working at the museum.

This video was captured by Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST), a land trust nonprofit where Heller worked as the Director of Conservation Science prior to joining the museum. POST is doing terrific conservation work to make the busy San Francisco Bay Area safe for wildlife to move around, find habitat, and successfully reproduce in the face of daily human traffic and long-term urban growth and climate change.

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Collected on this Leap Day in 1984

Unnamed, but not forgotten!

Today, we celebrate the 9th birthday of this specimen collected 36 years ago.

This specimen was collected on leap day, February 29, 1984 in Brazil by Keiichi Mizoguchi.

Fun fact: In the Carnegie Museum herbarium, there are 85 specimens collected on leap day, collected between 1872 until 1990.  That’s a lot of leap years!

Aside from it being collected on leap day, the specimen label might seem even more unique.  Where most herbarium specimen labels have the species name, this one is blank.  A big blank spot. The collector did not identify this specimen, nor has anyone else in the past 36 years (yet).  This is an “indetermined” or unidentified specimen.  It is filed in the sunflower family (Asteraceae) based on its flowers, but it is otherwise not identified.

We can’t forget about these unidentified specimens.  Especially those collected on leap day!

Specimens in the herbarium are arranged by plant family, then genus, then geography (where it was collected), and in nearly every genus, at the bottom of all these folders is a black colored folder labelled “undetermined” (also called “indet.”) that includes those specimens that have not yet been identified to species.  Of the over 525,000 specimens in the Carnegie Museum herbarium, about 2% (= 10,588 specimens), are not (yet) identified to species.

This specimen is most likely a member of a species already known to science, but an expert has not yet identified this particular specimen. However, many undetermined specimens may be undescribed (that is, new to science).  The name and description of new species (alpha taxonomy) is a major purpose of herbaria. A study in 2010 estimated that of the estimated 70,0000 species yet to be described, over HALF are lying in herbaria right now! They also found that only 16% of new species descriptions were done within 5 years of specimen collection, and 25% of new species descriptions involved specimens that were more than 50 years old!

Study abstract here: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/51/22169.abstract

Taxonomy (branch of science on classification of organisms) is always changing.  Species names are changed, what was once thought to be one plant species or family is split into many, and what was thought to be several species is lumped into one. And with further information or upon review by experts in particular plant groups, specimens are determined to be a different species than what the original collector called it. Annotation labels are added to specimens all the time – these labels revise the species listed on the original label. A typical annotation label includes the revised species name and details, the name of the person making the annotation, and the date.

Some specimens can have many annotations, which nicely demonstrates the community culture of science as a process with constant revision as we learn more about the world around us.

Find this specimen here. Check back, maybe it’ll have a species name on it by next leap year!

Check back for more! Botanists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History share digital specimens from the herbarium on dates they were collected. They are in the midst of a three-year project to digitize nearly 190,000 plant specimens collected in the region, making images and other data publicly available online. This effort is part of the Mid-Atlantic Megalopolis Project (mamdigitization.org), a network of thirteen herbaria spanning the densely populated urban corridor from Washington, D.C. to New York City to achieve a greater understanding of our urban areas, including the unique industrial and environmental history of the greater Pittsburgh region. This project is made possible by the National Science Foundation under grant no. 1801022.

Mason Heberling is Assistant Curator of Botany at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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The Connemara Marble: A Cross-Atlantic Connection Between Ireland and Pittsburgh

Irish Dippy the dinosaur statue

Fig. 1: Irish Dippy

Each March in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, the full-size dinosaur replica of Dippy (Diplodocus carnegii) that stands guard outside the Carnegie Complex along Forbes Avenue in Oakland, is draped in an iconic Irish scarf (Fig. 1). Inside the classic halls of the Carnegie Complex is a green marble from County Galway, western Ireland. It is called Connemara Marble and is ubiquitous in the museum’s architectural floor designs. Before visiting Ireland for the first time in 2015, my only reference to the green Isle was watching a classic John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara movie, titled, The Quiet Man circa 1952. Much of the movie was filmed amongst the Connemara landscapes and many of the films iconic locations survive to this very day, such as the famous Quiet Man Bridge (Fig. 2).  Moreover, researchers from the Carnegie Museum, National University of Ireland Galway, Connemara Marble Industries Ltd., Moycullen and Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, are investigating the significance of this Irish green marble in the architectural design of the Carnegie Institute Extension built by Alden & Harlow in 1907 (Fig. 3), Kollar et al., 2017; Feely et al., 2019, and Kollar et al., in review.

Fig. 2: Quiet Man bridge

Fig. 3: Connemara Map

The Streamstown Quarry in Western Ireland

A cross-Atlantic research connection between Ireland and Pittsburgh was initiated in the winter of 2015, when I visited Martin Feely at the National University of Ireland, Galway, an expert on the geology of the Connemara Marble, and Ambrose Joyce, owner of the Streamstown quarry. The objective was to determine the provenance and geology of the Carnegie’s Connemara Marble quarry and to compare the varieties of colored marbles used in the Carnegie’s floor tiles against other buildings with Connemara Marble from the Streamstown quarry (Fig. 4).  The Connemara Marble can be found in the twelve public spaces, corridors, and private rooms, including the Hall of Sculptures, Grand Staircase, Green Room, President’s Office, and entrance corridors to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. A unique use of Connemara Marble is as inlays in the design of the Thistle, the Scottish National flower in the Music Hall Foyer walls.

Fig. 4: Connemara Marble at the Carnegie Museum 

The best way to get to the Streamstown Quarry is by car. The 50-mile drive, along the N59 from Galway to Clifden takes about an hour and 15 minutes through quaint villages and along scenic winding roadways. Understandably, it rained that day as it commonly does in County Galway, circa 45 inches per year. In comparison, Pittsburgh receives about 36 inches of rain per year. Like Pittsburgh, Galway has lush green landscapes because of the annual rainfall.  Visible from the road are mountainous outcrops and lakes e.g. the Twelve Bens quartzite mountains formed over millions of years ago. Their present topography resulted from ice-sculpting during the last glacial maximum. The peat bogs in the low-lying regions formed 5,000 years ago. The history of the Streamstown quarry (Fig. 5) was always best recounted by the patriarch of the family Ambrose Joyce Sr., who sadly passed away in 2015 (Fig. 6 a, b). The entrance to the quarry is hidden from the main road and access is through a gate and then along a minor road shared by other land owners – access to the quarry is strictly by permission only, from Ambrose Joyce. The quarry and its buildings are surrounded by stockpiles of large marble blocks (Fig. 7). I walked around the quarry with Ambrose Joyce Jr. to see the old equipment and hear about the marble quarrying operations dating back to its late 19th century active period (Fig. 8). Then we viewed the modern quarry (Fig. 9) as Martin Feely explained the geology of the 650 Ma. pre-Cambrian limestone that would become green marble during the Ordovician Period some 470 million years ago.

Fig. 5: Streamstown Quarry

Fig. 6 a: Ambrose Joyce, Sr. 

Fig. 6 b: Ambrose Joyce, Sr. and Albert Kollar

Fig. 7: Streamstown Quarry setting

Fig. 8: Streamstown Quarry history

Fig. 9: Albert Kollar, Martin Feely, Ambrose Joyce Jr.

We returned to Galway via the Connemara Marble Industries Ltd., Moycullen, County Galway to meet with the Joyce family (Fig. 10). At the Connemara Marble Industries Ltd., Moycullen marble souvenirs and jewelry are produced for the tourist trade using the marble extracted from Streamstown quarry (Fig. 11, 12, 13).  Today, the ongoing global demand for Connemara Marble, for use in interior decoration projects, is supplied by the Italian company Antonlini. They source the marble from another Connemara marble quarry located several miles to the east of the Streamstown quarry.

Fig. 11: Christmas ornaments

Fig. 12: Coaster and Cube Shamrock

Fig. 13: Kennedy, Joyce, and rosary shamrock

Global Heritage Stone Resource

In 2019, the Connemara Marble was proposed as a Global Heritage Stone Resource with a citation to the Connemara Marble used in the Carnegie Museum (Wyle Jackson et al. 2020)  This Irish Heritage Stone was a much sought-after green marble for use in architecture, buildings and sculptures in Ireland, England, and the United States from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century including the Carnegie’s Hall of Sculpture (Fig. 14 a) and the Founder’s Room (Fig. 14 b) floor designs.

Figs. 14 a and b: Floor tiles

Have a Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Albert D. Kollar is the Collection Manager in the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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MESOZOIC MONTHLY: LEDUMAHADI

January brings with it a new year and a new installment of Mesozoic Monthly! At the start of a new decade, perhaps the perfect prehistoric creature to honor this month is the dinosaur Ledumahadi mafube, the “giant thunderclap at dawn.”

Ledumahadi was an early sauropodomorph, a group of herbivorous dinosaurs that ultimately produced the famous sauropods. Sauropods such as Brachiosaurus or Diplodocus are popular dinosaurs because of their often monstrous sizes, long necks, and lengthy, sometimes whip-like tails. One of the traits that paleontologists believe helped sauropods get so big was their pillar-like legs. Their legs were straight, like stilts, and heavily constructed so that they could support the weight of the animal. Modern elephants also have columnar legs, similar to those of sauropods, because this style of limb is so efficient for big animals. Non-sauropod sauropodomorphs tended to be smaller than their sauropod cousins, and could walk on either two legs or four. Quadrupedal early sauropodomorphs such as Ledumahadi did not have the columnar legs of sauropods, but instead walked with their forelimbs partially bent.

Life reconstruction of Ledumahadi by Nobu Tamura with a human silhouette for scale. This was a big beast! Note how, unlike its sauropod kin, this early sauropodomorph walked with its forelimbs flexed at the elbow. Read the 2018 scientific paper that described it (for free) here.

The largest known dinosaur of its kind, Ledumahadi weighed over 13 tons (12 metric tons), and reconstructions estimate that it grew over 30 feet (9 meters) long! This size is noteworthy, because it shows that it was possible for sauropodomorphs to reach gigantic sizes without columnar legs. This demonstrates that terrestrial animals can get big due to a variety of adaptations. In this case, the tremendous size of both sauropods and Ledumahadi is an example of convergent evolution, a process in which unrelated animals can evolve similar features. One classic example of convergent evolution is wings. Birds, bats, and pterosaurs are unrelated, yet all evolved similar structures that increase surface area for flying. But they all did it in different ways: birds have feathers anchored to the forearm and a fused hand, bats have skin stretched across five fingers, and pterosaurs had skin stretched along one long finger. Although we may not definitively know how Ledumahadi achieved its status as a “great thunderclap,” we do know that it did so along a different evolutionary pathway than its sauropod relatives.

The name Ledumahadi mafube means “great thunderclap at dawn,” referring to the massive size of the animal and its early place in the rock record. Unlike many dinosaur names, it is not derived from Latin or Greek; instead, it is from Southern Sotho, one of the languages spoken in South Africa, where the creature’s fossils were discovered.

Not many well-known animals lived in the Early Jurassic of southern Africa alongside Ledumahadi; the most famous dinosaurs are other sauropodomorphs such as Massospondylus, the small bipedal herbivores Heterodontosaurus and Lesothosaurus, and the small carnivore Coelophysis (formerly called Syntarsus) rhodesiensis. They all lived in an arid floodplain that was crisscrossed by meandering streams. Every so often, after a long period of stability, these water channels would flood, depositing new soil and nutrients and rejuvenating the ecosystem. A great deal of plant growth occurs after floodplains drain, reflecting a cycle of renewal that is familiar to us during each and every new year.

Lindsay Kastroll is a volunteer and paleontology student working in the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Collected on this Day in 2012: Wintercreeper

This specimen of wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei) was collected on January 31, 2012 along the Monongahela River in Fayette County, PA by Alison Cusick.  Alison Cusick is a current Research Associate in the Section of Botany at the museum.  He can be frequently found in the Carnegie Museum herbarium.  He has a unique wealth of knowledge on plants, herbaria, botanical history, and more.  He authored three books and more than 50 scientific papers on the flora of eastern North America. Before retiring, he was the Chief Botanist for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.  He continues to collect today, and many thousands of his specimens can found at herbaria across the country.  

Note the label on this specimen reads “Cusick, A.W.   37174”  The number following a collectors name is known as the…you guessed it… collector number (surprise!).  The collector number is the number assigned to a specimen by the collector.  It is common for several specimens to have the same collector number, if they are from the same individual or species in the same location on the same day (“duplicate specimens”).  Unfortunately, there are no universal rules on how collector numbers are used or assigned.  Collector numbers primary use is so the collector and/or others using the specimen can go back to the collector’s field notebook for additional information on the specimen.  Collector numbers are different from specimen numbers (which are assigned by the herbarium, such that every specimen has a unique ID for reference).  Most collectors number their specimens chronologically in order they were collected (but not always), but some collector numbers consist of dashes and/or letters, too.  

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that this specimen (Cusick 37174) suggests Alison has collected AT LEAST over 37,000 specimens.  The number is actually higher than that, with duplicates and an additional 8 years of collecting.  Not that numbers are everything, but Alison’s contribution to the herbarium record is clearly impressive and impactful.

Ok, now back to the plant!  Winter creeper (Euonymus fortunei), native to Asia, is commonly planted in Pennsylvania and many other places, and unfortunately has also spread to become invasive.  It is still commonly planted.  It is a woody vine that climbs trees, but also is a thick ground cover.  It has leaves that persist through the winter, with attractive fruits.  Despite those advantages, it can impact native species and habitats as an invasive species, and therefore, should not be planted.

Find this specimen and more here: http://midatlanticherbaria.org/portal/collections/individual/index.php?occid=12134036&clid=0

Check back for more! Botanists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History share digital specimens from the herbarium on dates they were collected. They are in the midst of a three-year project to digitize nearly 190,000 plant specimens collected in the region, making images and other data publicly available online. This effort is part of the Mid-Atlantic Megalopolis Project (mamdigitization.org), a network of thirteen herbaria spanning the densely populated urban corridor from Washington, D.C. to New York City to achieve a greater understanding of our urban areas, including the unique industrial and environmental history of the greater Pittsburgh region. This project is made possible by the National Science Foundation under grant no. 1801022.

Mason Heberling is Assistant Curator of Botany at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Land Snail Webbhelix multilineata Rediscovered Living in Pennsylvania After 72 Years

Imagine the excitement of finding an organism that was presumed extinct. Until 2019, the handsome land snail Webbhelix multilineata had not been documented anywhere in Pennsylvania since 18 May 1947 so it was presumed locally extinct (it does still survive elsewhere in the Mid-West). Finding a living individual of that species in Pennsylvania this year is cause for excitement.

Webbhelix multilineata has never been an abundant snail in Pennsylvania. Of 10 museum records of that species in PA, all but one is in western Pennsylvania from 1898 to 1947. The one record from eastern Pennsylvania, in Berks County, was collected about 1938.

Fig. 1. Webbhelix multilineata juvenile found in York County in 2019 (photo: Kerry Givens).

Photographs of an immature Webbhelix multilineata in Hellam Hills Natural Area in York County, Pennsylvania were sent to me on 2 Jun 2019 (Fig. 1). I recognized the species by the reddish spiral lines on the shell and by the relatively large, reddish body tubercles. This sighting is the first record in 72 years of Webbhelix multilineata anywhere in Pennsylvania, and it represents a new county record as well.

Curiously, this snail was seen in the relatively dry habitat of a mature deciduous forest, at least 150 m from the nearest stream. Five scientific publications indicate its habitat to be low, moist areas including floodplains, marshes, and swamps. I wonder why the York County snail is from such a different habitat.

Because this snail is now known to be living in Pennsylvania, it can no longer be considered locally extinct, so conservation organizations such as the Natural Heritage Program will monitor it. Although there is no evidence that the snail population recovered (as opposed to just being overlooked), I like to think that conservation efforts have played a role in improving conditions for this snail.

I am grateful to Kerry Givens for noticing and photographing the snail, and for alerting me to its existence.

Timothy A. Pearce, PhD, is the head of the mollusks section at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.