There is so much science happening right under our noses here in eastern Oklahoma. The OSU Center for Health Sciences is just one example. You’ll find research into biomedical and forensic science, healthcare, medicine, and ,my personal favorite, paleontology.
The cool thing is OSU-CHS has a fantastic resource to help you stay on top of what they’re doing. They call it the Research Spotlight. There are videos and information all on kinds of topics. The video below is one example of the research taking place right here in Tulsa!
Ever wonder what tools paleontologists use for digging up dinos? Wonder no more. Here’s the second video from my trip to the Oklahoma Panhandle. (Here’s the first.) It was part of the ExplorOlogy program sponsored by the Sam Noble Museum. We went to Kenton, OK and Black Mesa. It’s home to a ton of fossils from about 150 million years ago.
If you’ve ever wanted to work with fossils and help paleontologists make new discoveries this is the story for you. The Vertebrate Paleontology lab at the OSU Center for Health Sciences in Tulsa needs volunteers. You don’t need to have any experience, just a love for science. You’ll also get to work with Dr. Anne Weil.
Volunteers work Wednesday-Friday, 9 to 5 sifting through rock and soil looking for fossils.
Dr. Anne Weil is a vertebrate paleontologist at the OSU Center for Health Sciences in Tulsa. Her specialty is looking at a “lost branch of mammalia” called multituberculates. They lived roughly 180 to 30 million years ago. Here’s an example.
She started college wanting to be a novelist but soon found herself taking geology and paleontology courses. Next thing you know she’s paleontologist researching fossilized mammal teeth.
Have you seen the commercial that depicts a little girl growing up, along the way getting more and more discouragement about pursuing science? She’s told not to get her dress dirty or to be careful and let her brother handle a power drill. At the end, it looks like she’s taking notes about a science fair but, really, she’s just putting on lipstick. It packs a powerful message about girls, science, and societal expectations.
The National Science Foundation conducted a study that found girls and boys have the same attitude about science in elementary school. By fourth grade 66% of the girls and 68% of the boys showed an interest in science. But, to me, the telling aspect of the study found that both boys and girls in the second grade draw a scientist as a man, specifically as a white man.
Research done by the National Girls Collaborative Project showed that women are more likely to go into the biological sciences as opposed to computer sciences or engineering. As an example, 44% of the chemists and material scientists in the United States are women but only 4% of the mechanical engineers are women.
So why the discrepancy? Researchers say there are number of factors from cultural norms to ethnicity to economics. I’ve interviewed some very successful female scientists in the past few months. In the video above they explain what they think needs to happen to get more women in science and why we need to take a good long look in the mirror and make some serious societal changes.
(Image credit: Joseph Groenke, Stony Brook University; Sculpture credit: Gary Staab, Staab studios)
A newly discovered fossil has pushed back the age of mammals by about 200-million years.
A newly discovered fossil has pushed back the age of mammals to about 200 million years. (Thanks to Dr. Anne Weil for the correction.)
Mammals and dinosaurs walked the planet at the same time, it’s just that mammals were tiny…like the size of a mouse or shrew. Scientists from Stony Brook University in New York recently made a discovery in Madagascar that not only shows some mammals were bigger than previously thought but that mammals have been around much longer than we realized.
The mammal is called Vintana sertichi. It weighed about 20 pounds and lived around 66-70 million years ago. Tulsa based paleontologist Dr. Anne Weil wrote about the groundhog sized animal for Nature Magazine. (It’s behind a paywall but if you’re so inclined…) She told me the discovery is “supercool”. She says it solves a longstanding mystery about the evolution of mammals and just how long they’ve been on Earth.
Check out the video below Courtesy of Stony Brook University