(This article originally appeared in the Newsletter of the Palaeontological Association)
It's not difficult to engage people
with palaeontology. Fossils are fascinating to young and old. The
real challenge is to engage with people meaningfully, to develop more
than just a superficial interest, to make them actually think about
palaeontology as a science, rather than simply a bit of
object-collecting fun.
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| Palaeontological outreach. One small wave for a man, one giant leap for fossilkind. |
As I discussed in the last Palaeontological Association newsletter,
this is particularly important for school pupils. Fossils should be
fun, wherever possible, but they should be educational too. If we
want to attract the best young scientists to our field, we have to
capture their imagination early and keep it captured.
To this effect, the Association council
has been giving this topic some careful thought over the last year or
two. It might be an academic organization aiming to publish the
highest-quality palaeontological research, but it's also a charity
charged with promoting palaeontology. Our strategy is still a work in
progress (and we're always keen for input from the membership), but
the main idea is to encourage a greater deal of outreach and
education activities, and to use our reserves to support such things.
There are plenty of people out there
with great ideas, so deciding which to support won't be easy. My
feeling at the moment, though, is that we should be encouraging
novelty. There's nothing wrong with giving talks in lecture theatres
or showing off trays of fossils to school groups in marquees, but we
should also be a bit more ambitious. At the moment, in many cases,
we're simply preaching to the converted, which is a pity. For true
outreach we must truly reach out: outwith the usual media, beyond the
usual demographic, out of the fossil box.
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| The fossil box. |
As our painter-in-residence, James McKay, demonstrated so elegantly at this year's Lyme Regis Fossil Festival, art and science can unite to startling effect. Bewitch a
child by bringing their fossil creation to life right in front of
them and not only do you give them something unforgettable, but you
can also sneak a fair amount of real science into the time they're
with you. They might not even realize the indoctrination that's
taking place. It's a pleasure for all involved.
Inspired by such success, the
Association has taken part in two recent events that have taken
something of a similar line. The first was a new format at a familiar
event, whilst the second was – to steal a line from those Flying
Circus chaps – time for something completely different. Both
involved models, but perhaps not the models you might be thinking of.
The Association has organized thematic
sessions at the British Science Festival for a good many years. This
year's festival was in Newcastle, and we chose 'Bodies of Evidence'
as the topic. The idea was to explore new palaeontological evidence
on the early evolution of animals. However, rather than just have a
line-up of talks, we decided to go a bit more interactive.
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| Fossils in close-up |
In a day-long event at the Great North
(Hancock) Museum, we were able to bring together the key fossils, the
techniques used to analyse them, and the reconstructions. Durham
University looked at the Cambrian Explosion of animal life through
the lens of Greenland and its Sirius Passet fauna. The University of
Leicester showed off its 'Rotten Fish and Fossils', revealing the
challenges of unravelling the origins of vertebrates, and Leiden
University and the University of Bristol delved into the evolution of
teeth and jaws.
In themselves, the displays were
fascinating, but we wanted to go a step further. It was fantastic,
therefore, to be able to get scientific model-maker Esben Horn of 10Tons in Copenhagen to come along too. For many years, Esben has been
working with universities and museums across the world, collaborating
with scientists to turn lithified, monochromatic fossils into
gloriously colourful three-dimensional specimens.
Esben had a series of Cambrian models
to go with the Sirius Passet fossils, from the familiar trilobites to
the rather more enigmatic halkieriids and wiwaxiids (or is it
halwaxiids now?). Sculptures at various stages of size, detail and
completeness showed off his process of reconstruction, which he
happily explained in more detail to visitors.
For the origins of jaws and teeth,
Martin RΓΌcklin
(Leiden/Bristol) used posters, computers and iPads to explain how to
Synchrotron a placoderm. He also had a table-top Dunkleosteus
that he and Esben had collaborated to build off the back of that
research. It wasn't quite life-sized but it still grabbed the
attention of countless customers. For good measure, Esben brought
some of his 'Heavy Metal and Punk Fossils' from a recent exhibition
at the Geomuseum in Faxe, Denmark, including a Silurian polychaete
worm named after Lemmy from the rock band Motorhead.
The Leicester team, meanwhile, not only
had models of early vertebrates to inspect, some time-lapse taphonomy
videos and a magnetic phylogenetic tree, but also a series of sensory
interactive activities. Being able to handle vacuum-packed specimens
of partially rotted chordates was one thing, but giving the pungent
aromas a sniff quite another. Not many were brave enough to try!
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| What do you mean you don't want to sniff my hagfish? |
Across the day, something like 750 visitors came in to see us, and many of them did so accidentally. This could be seen as a failure of publicity on our part, but last year's BSF event was held in a university lecture theatre and got an audience of about 50. Plenty of this year's crowd weren't at the museum for palaeontological reasons, just for general interest, and they suddenly found themselves coming face to face with fossils. A fifteen-fold increase in visitors sounds like an outreach success to me, especially given how many of those who were lured in were under 16.
If we'd had a PalaeoPop-star in
attendance, though, it might have been considerably greater. Lucky
then that, together with her 9 year-old niece Taylor, performance
artist Bryony Kimmings has decided this is exactly what the world
needs.
Aimed at convincing children,
particularly girls, that a career in science is both worthwhile and
achievable, Bryony and Taylor have launched the Credible Likeable
Superstar Role Model project, led by a character called Catherine Bennett.
Catherine is a bicycle-riding, tuna pasta-eating palaeontologist,
played by Bryony, and the aim is for her to become famous for the
right (rather than Rihanna-esque) reasons.
Videos for three songs – Apathy,
Animal Kingdom, and The Future – have been produced already, and if
you like short, catchy pop, check out the project website, as they're
really rather good. A live stage show of the project began in London
recently
and that august periodical Metro has described it as ‘bold,
unflinching, wryly funny...[and] full of warmth’.
Taylor's plan is for Catherine to get 1 million YouTube video hits,
build a Facebook and Twitter army, and appear on the Ellen Degeneres
show. No pressure then!
Importantly, since Catherine is
supposed to be an expert on fossils but Bryony is not, the
association (along with ScienceGrrl and TrowelBlazers, two projects
also working to promote women in science) was asked to help out with
the filming of a new video called 'Palaeontology Rocks!'
As a consequence, eight
palaeontologists (six female, two male) from across the UK convened
in Crystal Palace, south London, on a (fairly) sunny autumn day. With
special permission, we were allowed on to the hallowed dinosaur
island in the middle of the park, where Catherine and her film crew
were waiting for us.
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| Catherine Bennett (right), the palaeontologists and an erroneous Iguanodon. |
Most of us were a bit more sceptical
about the filming, but it was actually pretty painless. The only
difficulty came when we were asked to tell fossiliferous jokes. The
format was for each of us to be interviewed by Catherine Bennett,
explaining what we did as palaeontologists and answering questions
put forward by schoolchildren. Susannah Maidment explained her
lifelong love of dinosaurs, Anjali Goswami how she'd wanted to be a
tiger biologist, Lucy McCobb her museum work on trilobites, and David
Legg his spider harassment activities.
As to what sorts of things you'd best
be interested in if you want to follow our career paths, Xiaoya Ma
said animals, Victoria Herridge suggested discovering the answers to
mysteries, I proposed digging around on beaches, and Fiona Gill
served up the best line of the entire shoot: “If you like poo, then
you'll like my job.”. If that doesn't attract a new generation of
coprologists, I don't know what will (sorry Fiona!).
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| The Lloyd's Bank coprolite, York. |
The finished video can be found here and will be shown off by Catherine as she goes off to tour
schools and attend other events. I'm hopeful we might be able to
persuade her to come along to some of next year's festivals – Lyme
Regis is running again, the British Science Festival will be in
Birmingham, and plans are afoot for something new in the north of
England. No-one could claim that the project is flawless, but the
idea is a great one and its ambitions are laudible.
So if a PalaeoPop-star can be made,
whatever next? How are you going to communicate palaeontology in a
new way to a new audience? Subway graffiti artists imagining the
fossils of the Yorkshire Coast? A virtual museum you can actually
visit? A marine palaeoenvironmental reconstruction you're able to
swim through? Everyone driving round on Electrobites?
Get your thinking hats on! The funding
system isn't quite in place yet, but it won't be long. And though I
can't promise that the association will fund every proposal we
receive, we'd love to hear your ideas. In 1851, ingenuity, science
and imagination built the dinosaurs of Crystal Palace. 160 years on,
perhaps the same principles can build the Crystal PalAss.
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