Art + Science Mural Goes Up!

Last week, the mural that the DMA/Perot Teen Advisory Council designed earlier this year was installed at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. We'll be having a reception at the next Thursday night Lab at the Perot for the Teen Council members for show off the mural to their families and for us to celebrate their participation in this project!

The mural features photographs the Teen Council members took with microscopes they built themselves. The pics are of Cheetos®, coins, oil paints and other everyday objects.

Science Road Trip

This past week five educators from the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, myself included, hit the road to travel to northwest Arkansas and teach out outreach programming there. We brought with us the Portable Universe (a planetarium dome and project system that can be set-up in classrooms) and our Fire and Ice show about states of matter. We presented these programs in partnership with a local museum, the Amazeum, that is currently being designed and set to open in 2015.

Here are a couple articles from the trip and a photo of the team:

Make the Web!

I'm currently enrolled in a MOOC (massive open online course) called TeachTheWeb about teaching webpage-design, coding, and other skills that can help people contribute to and be the creators of web content (rather than just consumers of it). I signed up hoping it would give me some good ideas for projects to do with students and campers to help them learn these skills. It's been a lot of fun and has given me some great ideas to do with students and even other teachers as professional development.

Here's a meme I made for a friend of mine who is a paleontologist using Mozilla's Webmaker:

Paleoanthropologists Lee Berger in Dallas

Professor Lee Berger, paleoanthropologist from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa will be joining us at the Perot Museum next week on his book tour! He'll be speaking to school groups at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science during the day on Monday, November 12th, and will be giving a talk that open to the public that evening at St. Marks School of Texas. Tickets are free but be sure to RSVP here!

Solar-Powered Q&A

While in the field at Gobero, we were fortunate enough to be able to communicate via email (using at satellite phone connection and a solar-charged computer) with schools in both Dallas and Chicago to answer question about the fieldwork from students. Here's a write-up from the Perot Museum of Nature and Science newsletter about our Q & A with Laureate Preparatory School in Dallas.

Sandscapes

Here's my entry reposted from the Gobero team's expedition blog, which can be found here.

As our Land Rovers rolled to a halt when we reached Gobero and we hopped out to scope out the site, our attention turned immediately to the artifacts and faunal remains visible on the surface of the sand in all directions. You always have to watch your step when walking to dodge the bones of hippopotamus, crocodile, nile perch, and even a species of fresh water blowfish that once lived here.

A red-spotted lizard blends in with the sand. Photo by H. Moots.

While most of the excavations here take place on the raised ‘hills,’ (technically paleodunes that once formed a peninsula in the surrounding Lake Gobero), the lower-elevation areas around the ‘hills’ were once at the bottom of this long-since-dry lake. The faunal remains here provide abundant evidence about which animals lived in this lake and what the ecosystem was like thousands of years ago when the Kiffians and, subsequently the Tenereans inhabited the site.

See the jerboa (Kankaroo mouse) in the upper right hand corner? We came across this jerboa (edaoui, in Tamashek) while surveying the site. Photo by H. Moots.

Over time, the climate at Gobero has dessicated and it is now as dry and sandy as you’d imagine the Sahara to be. But the area is by no means devoid of life. Since arriving, we have seen fennecs (a desert fox a little smaller than a jackal (the word for this animal in Tamashek, a language spoken here and in several neighboring countries, is ezzuguzz); pied crows (arghulga-wan-tuggazie); red spotted lizards (tashamey); jerboa (edaoui); dreaded wind scorpians (aghardum); ants; and beetles.

Plants that live here need tough defenses to protect themselves. Acacia trees (attas), for example, have sharp thorns to protect its leaves from browsers like camel and gazelle. You never want to leave your tent barefooted because you’re bound to encounter their sharp thorns mixed in with the sand – ouch! In addition to the ones I mentioned, there is a multitude of animals and plants here, each with its own adaptations to the desert ecosystem in which they live.

It’s been an extraordinary experience to be part of a vibrant desert ecosystem while piecing together an ancient world.

Back to the...Mid-Holocene!

I'm heading back to Niger to continue excavations at Gobero, an early-mid Holocene habitation and burial site that was on the shore of a lake, that has long since vanished. Follow the team's progress at: Project Exploration's Green Sahara Online Expedition

Below is a photo from the 2006 field expedition to Gobero!