Category: Science

Sentinels of change: prehistoric penguin species raise conservation conundrum

Fossil hunting along the rugged and beautiful Wairarapa coastline is a dangerous exercise. Prevail against the harsh winds that blow you off your feet and fossil penguins will be your reward – prehistoric nuggets of gold from a lost world that is only now yielding its secrets.

Risking life and limb: At the rugged Te Kaukau Point, bones of prehistoric creatures from a lost world can be found eroding out of the coastal banks. Photo courtesy of Alan Tennyson.

Alan Tennyson and Peter Clayworth are at Te Kaukau Point, looking for bones eroding out of the vertical coastal bank dissected by the 1718-year-old Taupo pumice layer. This line gives a good clue to the relative ages of bones above and below it. The stark, isolated Wairarapa coast is being constantly eaten away by the sea, erasing Aotearoa’s biological heritage. Regular expeditions are the only way to salvage what’s exposed from these rich deposits. Moa and fur seal bones are the most obvious – but there is a wealth of smaller bones that take more careful searching to find and even more patience to identify. Continue reading “Sentinels of change: prehistoric penguin species raise conservation conundrum”

Make taxonomy great again

On a dark and stormy Wellington street, Kerry is head down, bum up, searching for an elusive and rather dull looking snail.

Kerry is one of a new breed of up-and-coming scientists that is taking up the mantle of taxonomy (the science of describing and naming new biodiversity) as members of the old guard get closer to imminent retirement. As one of New Zealand’s foremost experts in terrestrial and marine shells, Kerry is at the forefront of a scientific revolution that, as the whole field becomes more interdisciplinary, is seeing the latest genomic techniques and ancient DNA brought to bear on taxonomy.

Just hours earlier, somewhat inebriated, Kerry had been weaving his way home from a night out when he noticed a weird snail (an LBJ or little brown jobbie as it’s known in the field) and thought nothing of it…until later. Now, it’s a scene eerily reminiscent of Gollum feeling around in the dark of the goblin cave for his precious. He needs to find that LBJ; it may be important. Continue reading “Make taxonomy great again”

Critically endangered but not lost: the fight to save Te Papa’s collections from extinction

In an unassuming building at the top of Tory Street in Wellington lies buried treasure: the remains of a lost world that rivals Smaug’s hoard, but the equivalent of the five armies is closing in.

The proposed restructure of our national museum means we are in danger of losing the key to unlocking the secrets these biological taonga hold.

I meet Alan Tennyson, the Curator of Vertebrates, at Te Papa’s offsite collections facility. This home away from home holds a special place for me as a self-confessed fossil nerd. I owe my career and my lab’s research programme to the treasures housed in its basement and those of other New Zealand museums. I have been visiting Te Papa’s collections for nearly 15 years, working on everything from birds to seals, from cetaceans, (whales and dolphins), and reptiles to frogs, many of which will never be displayed to the public. The success of some of the biggest high-profile fossil bird research projects in recent years, (such as elephant birds and giant penguins), has been down to the perseverance of curators and collection managers at Te Papa. These seminal publications showed kiwi (Apteryx spp.) are most closely related to the extinct giant elephant birds from Madagascar (not a bunch of feathered Aussies) and that New Zealand once had the largest penguins in the world. Continue reading “Critically endangered but not lost: the fight to save Te Papa’s collections from extinction”

Traditional Chinese medicine: Eye of newt and toe of frog

‘Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn, and cauldron bubble’ chant the three witches in the cavern, lightening flashing outside, in Act 4, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It’s images like these, conjured up by the great bard himself, that I associate with traditional Chinese medicines and herbal remedies.

The implied promise that if I take this concoction, my health and life will improve, is a powerful allure to many people, but does this ‘hell-broth’ really contain the ‘eye of newt and toe of frog’ as it promises or is it just fairy dust, or even something much worse? Continue reading “Traditional Chinese medicine: Eye of newt and toe of frog”

‘Honey, I’m related to Genghis Khan’: the hype around ancestral DNA testing

Television documentaries focusing on the use of ancestral DNA to reveal hidden mysteries in family trees are becoming increasingly popular. However, in our house they are known as ‘the time Daddy rants at the TV’.

Quite frequently, you will hear me exclaim to my kids ‘You can’t say that!’ or ‘There’s no evidence to support that’, before I throw my hands up in exasperation. Despite the genomic revolution having swept through science and the popularity of testing for ancestral DNA, there is still a lot of hype and misconception surrounding the field. So, what is the hype and should we be concerned? Continue reading “‘Honey, I’m related to Genghis Khan’: the hype around ancestral DNA testing”