Burke Blog

SCIENCE!! Comics: Episode 3

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:38:00 +0000

This week! The Elephant's 6th Toe

Learn more!

This week's comic was based on a recent science paper, but has been thoroughly covered in the news (including the New York Times and the BBC News). There's much more to learn about the "toe" - like its similarities to the panda's "thumb" - but I was trying to keep this one short and sweet.

As usual, any mistakes are mine alone. I drew a female Asian elephant (which doesn't have tusks) and should note that apparently the number of toenails they have can vary. Both the elephant and the bones are a bit cartoony and shouldn't be taken as anatomical illustrations.

Posted By: Winifred Kehl, Communications

Volunteer Spotlight: Fish Collections

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:15:00 +0000

I love profiling volunteers at the Burke Museum because it gives me the opportunity to share unique stories and people who work hard and are dedicated to the museum, all without being on salary! These aren’t usually people you will see in the news, but they do a lot of great work at the museum deserving of newsworthy coverage. Today I’d like to introduce you to Saul Rico, a volunteer in the Ichthyology collections.

Jessica: Saul, tell me a little bit about what you do in the Ichthyology collections.

Saul: I process newly acquired specimens, loans and loan returns, enter data, re-label existing specimens, and any other tasks as needed.

Jessica: How did you end up volunteering for the Burke Museum’s Ichthyology collections?

Saul: I recently moved to Seattle and decided the transition would be a good time to make a career shift that aligned better with my interests and passions. I have always been interested in marine biology, particularly marine mammals and fishes, so I decided to quit my job of 10 years to pursue a career in fisheries management/research and perhaps apply to the graduate program at School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. I've been taking classes as a non-matriculated student to boost my knowledge in marine sciences and became aware of the fish collection when I took Ted Pietsch's Biology of Fishes course. He gave us a tour of the facility early in the course and I knew immediately that I wanted to be involved in some capacity. I approached him and asked if I could help and luckily there was some work I could do.

Jessica: What do you like most about volunteering at the Burke?

Saul: I really enjoy learning about the different fishes that inhabit our local waters and getting to see them first hand. I also really enjoy working with the staff and other volunteers in the collection. Not only are they very knowledgeable which presents a learning opportunity for me, but they are fun too.

Jessica: Tell me a funny story that’s happened while working in the fish collections.

Saul: I think seeing school children come through the collection as part of a school field trip presents lots of opportunity for spontaneous fun. Some of the questions are very insightful and well thought out, while others are questions that only a child could come up with. During one particular tour one kid had a question about a half-man, half-alligator that I thought was pretty funny. He really seemed to think that one existed and must have thought that as a scientist, the collections manager should be an authority on the topic and must know something about it.

Jessica: What would surprise people about what you do?

Saul: I think people don't quite grasp what the fish collection is about and why it's important. But when they realize that it truly is just like a library of fishes that other researchers can "check out" to study them more carefully, it becomes clear that I'm a kind of like a librarian. Oh, and some people are surprised that I don't get paid for what I do!

Astroscopus y-graecum specimens. Some of Saul's favorite specimens from the Burke's Icthyology collections, these fish are a shallow water species from the East Coast.

Jessica: Briefly describe your most memorable project.

Saul: I had a nice opportunity to work with another volunteer identifying some fish that had only been identified to the genus level. Many fishes can be easily classified by ichthyologists to the family or even genus level, but once you get to the actual species level, it gets difficult to differentiate them, particularly since some differences between species can be quite subtle. So in order to identify them, we used a dichotomous key to correctly identify their species. A dichotomous key is kind of like a map of fish characteristics. If followed correctly it can help distinguish fish species from one another. I'd never done this before, so it was not only fun but a great learning opportunity for me.

Posted By: Jessica Newkirk, Volunteer Coordinator

Science Behind-the-Scenes: Mammalogy Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:28:00 +0000

In this edition of Science Behind-the-Scenes, meet the Burke's mammal collection and find out why we keep drawers full of flattened animals and their bones!

Mammals on display at Meet the Mammals

Mammalogy is the study of mammals (a mammal is an animal with a backbone that has hair and produces milk for its newborns). Over 5,400 species of mammals live on Earth today and many more species have lived and died since the time of the dinosaurs. That's right—running around the feet of Allosaurus and Stegosaurus were little furry mammals.

Fossil mammals can be found in the paleontology collection. Humans are mammals but anything to do with humans is usually found in the archaeology or ethnology collections. The mammalogy collection houses all the Burke's "recent" (non-fossilized) mammals—bones, skins, whole animals, flattened animals. Mammalogy has everything from exotic animal skins confiscated from smugglers to squirrel skeletons used by scientists to study local squirrel populations.

The Burke Museum's mammal collection has over 50,000 specimens (a specimen can be one animal or part of one animal). We've got everything from wolves to wolverines, bats and flying squirrels, tiny shrews and huge whales. You won't find many of these out on display because there's just not enough room! But you can see a lot of mammals during our annual Meet the Mammals event—and even touch a few.

Even though visitors don't get to see the mammalogy collection often, it's important and gets a lot of use from students and researchers. Collection manager Jeff Bradley keeps all the mammals clean, safe, organized, and available for research. He works with graduate students and volunteers to process new specimens (sometimes that means picking up a dead whale from the beach!) and keeps track of the old ones.

Wolverine bones laid out for study

Graduate students and scientists from the University of Washington and elsewhere use the collection for research. Current research in the collection includes studying how mammals have responded to environment change in the past several million years. This could also tell us how humans have affected other mammal populations.

Paleontologists who study prehistoric mammals also use the mammalogy collection to figure out what extinct mammals may have been like, how they spread across continents, and how they evolved. Stay tuned for more behind-the-scenes news from the mammalogy collection and look for more Science Behind-the-Scenes at the Burke to learn about the bird, fish, and DNA collections!

Posted by: Winifred Kehl, Communications

Encoded in the Weave: Identifying your Relative’s Native American Basket

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:01:00 +0000

Figure 1: Tlingit berry-basket, late 1800s. Courtesy of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. George Emmons Collection, No. 1702.

Amidst the many hours devoted to research papers and projects during my graduate schooling, I became very intrigued with historic photographic images of Native American cultures. As these images filled my moments of contemplation and my laptop’s hard drive, a fire was set alight within me to explore the handicrafts produced by the Native hands depicted in these historical photographs. Each day as I walked through the Burke’s Pacific Voices exhibit en route to class, I became more and more enamored with the beautifully crafted and lustrous twined basketry works on display. But these baskets were completely enigmatic for me…how were they made, and how could one differentiate between the baskets of various Northwest Coast cultures?

In the spirit of tomorrow’s Artifact ID Day here at the Burke (this Saturday, January 7^th from 1-3:30 pm), I would like to shed light on some of the greatest differentiating characteristics between the spruce baskets of two neighboring cultures from the northern Northwest Coast—the Tlingit (pronounced “TLINK-it”) of what is now southeastern Alaska, and the Haida (pronounced “HIGH-dah”) of the Haida Gwaii (or Queen Charlotte Islands) of British Columbia as well as the southernmost portion of Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island (See a map here).

The Woven Worlds of the Tlingit and Haida

The collecting of Native American baskets across America was earnestly advertised during the last decades of the 19^th through the early 20^th century in journals and newspapers alike, with one writer of 1891 calling the accumulating craze “the latest fad among artistic people.”*

Shared Sensibilities
Despite the introduction of new basketry forms and design motifs with the development of a white tourist-fueled industry, the women of both the Tlingit and the Haida—who bore sole responsibility for the gathering of materials and the weaving of basket works—remained faithful to their native weaving techniques and materials. The Tlingit and the Haida shared in their artful manipulation of split root derived from the spruce tree (referred to as “seet” by the Tlingit) to produce exceptionally vocal woven basketry creations. The body of their baskets—most commonly in the form of open, gradually flaring cylindrical berry-picking baskets--were intricately formed by means of twined weaving techniques: fine strands of peeled and split spruce are manipulated, the lustrous outer part of the root utilized for the strands to be visible on the exterior basket (known as wefts) are woven horizontally in a variety of techniques over passive vertical strands derived from the center of the root (known as the warps, and in most cases concealed in totality by the wefts). The most customary twined weaving stitch was the plain (or two-strand) Z-twining stitch, as illustrated in the brief video clip below, producing a striking uniform textured surface of vertical ridges akin to an ear of corn. The “Z-twining” refers to the direction of each stitch’s slant down to the right.

Movie clip from “Baskets of the Northwest People, Gifts from the Grandmothers,” courtesy of YouTube member SwinomishTribalMedia.

Beauty in the Details: Distinguishing Characteristics of Tlingit and Haida Baskets
Overlapping construction techniques and weaving materials can easily mislead one to associate the incorrect culture with a basketry treasure; however, outlined below I detail the greatest idiosyncrasies that can aid in distinguishing between the major basket types of the Tlingit and the Haida.

(1) Visual Materialization of Basket Orientation During Weaving

Favored as the most consistent telltale sign for differentiating a Tlingit basket from a Haida is the point of termination on a basket, which is visually manifested in a vertical band along one point on the basket wall. At this point of termination where the weft strands are connected to each other, a step in the alignment of the vertical ridges occurs. The angle of this step, referred to as a jog, is reflective of orientation of the basket during the weaving process as mandated by cultural customs.

The Tlingit’s jog configuration (Figure 2) shows a “jog down,” where each row is slightly above the previous (row on left side of termination is higher than the row to the right). This “jog down” is the by-product of the Tlingit’s custom of weaving baskets in an upright position (Figure 3).

Figure 2: This close-up view of the termination on a Tlingit basket shows the characteristic “jog down” where each row is slightly above the previous. (Courtesy of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, No. 1-916.)

Figure 3: A photograph taken in the commercial photography studio based out of Skagway, Alaska in the beginning years of the 20^th century documents the way a Tlingit woman would weave her basket in an upright position. (Courtesy of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Case and Draper Collection).

The Haida’s jog configuration (Figure 4), on the other hand, displays a “jog up,” where each row is slightly below the previous (row on left side of termination is lower than the row to the right). This “jog up” is the outgrowth of the Haida’s custom of weaving baskets in an inverted position (Figure 5).

Figure 4: This close-up view of the termination on a Haida basket shows the characteristic “jog up” where each row is slightly below the previous. (Courtesy of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, No. 1-1520.)

Figure 5: This photograph taken in the Haida village of Masset in 1897 by photographer Edward P. Allen for The Field Museum of Chicago suspends for perpetuity the customary way by which a Haida woman would weave her basket in a downward position with the basket wall’s warp strands pointing downward. (Courtesy of the Field Museum, Neg. CSA854)

(2) Culturally Favored Design Techniques

The Tlingit and the Haida each possessed a unique set of cultural beliefs that were encoded within the physical form of their basketry works. Each basket maker revealed her individual artistic sense within an established vocabulary of aesthetics and design elements regulated by her people’s vernacular weaving style. While stylistic exceptions do exist as a result of cross fertilization of ideas and techniques due to intermarriage between tribes, as well as a result of tourist demand (hence the importance of examining the termination point on a basket), the following stylistic generalizations can be helpful in establishing a Tlingit basket from a Haida.

The twined basketry works of the Tlingit are typified by the punctuation of boldly colored and finely integrated geometric forms that mingle with great variety across the outer wall of the basket, typically within the confines of horizontal design bands. Customarily on variations of berry baskets these colorful design motifs were woven over three horizontal bands that encircle the form—two wider and matching bands sandwiching a third smaller “tying band” in the middle—that are bookended by margins along the top rim and base of the basket of non-dyed spruce root (See Figure 1). Many of the design motifs symbolically represent in abstracted form natural subjects, but, after 1880, also were literally transcribed from ornamental blankets and fabrics acquired through trade with white settlers. The Technicolor geometric form decoration was applied by a weaving technique known as false embroidery in which pre-prepared colorfully dyed grass strands or maidenhair fern strands (known for its reddish to blackish purple hue and glossy appearance) are wrapped simultaneously with the horizontal weft strand as it is woven over the vertical warp. The false embroidery never passes to the inside and can only be viewed on the exterior wall of the basket. Noteworthy as well is that the colorful strands of false embroidery slant in the opposite direction of the plain z-twining that structurally defines much of a Tlingit basket (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Up close one can view the Tlingit’s characteristic false embroidery technique. Notice that each stitch of the colored strands slants up to the right—the opposite direction of the natural spruce root plain z-twining (visible at the top of this detail photo) that structurally composes much of a typical Tlingit basket (Courtesy of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, No. 2300.)

Specimens of Haida basketry are markedly more understated than that of the Tlingit in design and color choices. The power of Haida twined creations come from the restrained bands circumventing the basket’s wall, and typically from subtle shifts in weaving techniques that appear in a band along the basket’s rim. The narrow horizontal bands around the basket—which typically are black, green or brown in color, but also occasionally red—are created by dying some of the spruce root weft strands prior to weaving and incorporating them directly into the ‘fabric’ of the basket with plain z-twining (Figure 7). The understated elegance of Haida baskets is also typically typified by a thicker horizontal band of skip-stitch (or twill twining) present along the basket’s rim that produces a raised geometric design, as seen in Figure 4.

Figure 7: An exemplary specimen of Haida twined spruce root basketry. (Courtesy of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, No. 4590.)

Do you have a Native American basket that you would like a specialist from the Burke to help you identify? Or any other artifact you believe to be of Native American, Pacific Island, or Asian origin? A puzzling fossil, rock, mineral or bone? Bring it to the Burke’s Artifact ID Day tomorrow afternoon!

Posted By: Christy Hansen, Ethnology

* Charles E. Holder, “A California Craze; the Latest Fad Among Artistic People: Collections of Indian Baskets,” Placer Herald, July 10, 1891, p7.

To learn more about Tlingit and Haida Spruce Root Baskets, see:

- Sharon Busby, Spruce Root Basketry of the Haida and Tlingit (Seattle: Marquand Books, Inc., in association with University of Washington Press, 2003).

- George T. Emmons, The Basketry of the Tlingit and The Chilkat Blanket, reprint edition (USA: Friends of the Sheldon Jackson Museum, 1993).

- Frances Paul, Spruce Root Basketry of the Alaska Tlingit (United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs—Division of Education, Haskel Press, 1944).

- Erna Gunther, Design Units on Tlingit Baskets (Sitka, Alaska: Sheldon Jackson Museum, 1984).

Forgotten Gold in the Ethnology Archives

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:38:00 +0000

Fig 1. Edward Curtis’ Orotone Legacy: Seattle photographer Edward Curtis’ earliest photographic images of Native Americans were along the shorelines of Seattle, dating from c.1895/96-1898, such as this image titled “Homeward.” This orotone is a particularly superlative example of Curtis’ application of dreamy Pictorialist effects: blanketed in a shimmering golden glow, five Native people are silhouetted against a shadowy sunset sky as they approach the shoreline of Puget Sound in a west coast-style canoe. (Orotone housed in the Burke Ethnology Archives, L-4871/1. Edward S. Curtis, “Homeward,” orotone photograph, 11” x 14,” created circa 1917-1921.)

Lustrous. Precious. Honey-Colored. These adjectives are but a few that may be uttered to describe the novel qualities of an orotone, or goldtone photograph. The orotone is truly a unique creature, transcending the traditional two-dimensional nature of a photograph to take on a full sense of depth with innumerable planes. This unconventional depth is heightened by the orotone’s shimmering metallic gold appearance—an appearance that transforms its depicted subject into an esteemed token of admiration.

Since my first encounter with an orotone in 2008, and my subsequent discovery of the photographic process’ prosperity in my own backyard of Seattle, I have developed a deep fascination (and some might even say obsession) with the orotone, driving me to spend much of my spare time in the last few years engaged in a sleuthing exercise to uncover the hidden history of this early 20^th-century process. One of the first assigned missions I eagerly accepted when commencing my work in the Burke’s Ethnology Archives was to begin cataloguing and conducting in-depth research on the thirteen orotones warehoused at the Burke, the lion’s share depicting Native American cultures.

Before I delve into the phenomenal orotone examples housed at the Burke, one may be wondering, “What exactly is an orotone photograph?”

The foundation of an orotone photograph is most readily comparable to the slender and pocket-side photographic slides of our youth that were intended for projection and collective group enjoyment. Akin to these slides, where a positive photographic image has been developed onto a thin transparent plastic film base, an orotone photograph is printed and developed onto a slim, clear sensitized plate of transparent glass and toned from the typical black to an amber hue. The orotone’s most definitive feature is the brilliancy it receives from the gold-colored varnish that is applied by brush or flowed onto the backside (the emulsion side) of the glass plate after development and toning. The result: a distinctively smoky photograph with a starry golden internal glow. An orotone is a piece of interactive art in its own sense: one may appear upon first inspection from a distance as somber as a tarnished penny, but with a slight step to the left or a slide to the right an orotone will come alive like the prisms of a yellow diamond. (Fig. 2)

Fig. 2 A Close-Up Look: Viewed closely, you can witness the super fine grain of the golden bronzing powders used in the orotone’s backing. Despite persistent claims over the decades that the orotone’s backing is prepared with real powdered gold pigment or gold leaf, scientific analysis has proven otherwise. The gold-colored varnish or veneer consists of bronzing powders mixed with a varnishing liquid—both common and popular industrial products used in the liquid bronzing of house radiators and other metal works in the early decades of the 20^th century.

(Detail of “The Wood Carrier” (Quinault Woman) orotone by A. C. Girard housed in the Burke Ethnology Archives, L-3823/2. A. C. Girard, “The Wood Carrier,” orotone photograph, 5” x 7,” created circa 1920-1945.)

And what of this Seattle-connection, you may ask?

The orotone process possesses deep-seated foundations in the greater-Seattle area of the Pacific Northwest, the seed of the process germinating and reaching an incomparable level of popularity in the bosom of Seattle during the early decades of the 20^thcentury. The orotone process today is in great part synonymous with the renowned Seattle-based photographer Edward S. Curtis and Native American imagery (Fig. 1), but many other lesser-known photographers of the city and region created orotones as well encapsulating not only Native American cultures, but also natural wonders of the Pacific Northwest—particularly of our esteemed Mt. Rainier.

While coveted by collectors in our present day, these Northwest treasures were expensive from their inception: an 11” x 14” orotone by Edward Curtis cost a patron $15 in 1917, a staggering approximated equivalence of $250 in present day amounts—surely no small sum for the turn of the 20^th century! In all their golden sparkle, orotones were unquestionably a symbolic expression of wealth during their heyday from the late 1910s – early 1930s.

The Burke’s Orotone Holdings, and the Suspension of Native American Cultures in Perpetuity

The invitation to explore the Burke’s orotone holdings enticed me to delve deeper into the historical record to consider the crucial environing conditions under which Edward Curtis and other regional photographers—such as A. C. Girard of Aberdeen, WA (Fig. 3) and Frank LaRoche, Sr. of Seattle (Fig. 4) —created their orotone photographs of Native Americans. What phenomena shaped the development of and consumer demand of these metallic images that suspend Native American cultures in perpetuity?

Fig 3. One of my favorite orotone’s housed at the Burke is this evocative and graceful rendering of a young Makah woman and her infant daughter, titled “Rock-A-Bye Baby.” Created by Aberdeen, WA photographer A. C. Girard, the orotone shows the mother seated upon a traditional plaited cedar bark mat delicately rocking her child, held in a suspended cradle of cedar, with her big toe. The infant’s woven cedar bark sunshade is cast onto the floor mat, and an burden basket sits to the mother’s right. (Orotone housed in the Burke Ethnology Archives, L-3823/1. A.C. Girard, “Rock-A-Bye Baby,” orotone photograph, 8” x 10,” created circa 1920-1945.)

Fig 4. “She was painted as [Seattle’s] own Pocahontas…Her bent figure and wrinkled face spoke of the forest and the snows. She was a quaint figure in the city’s history.” These words, penned in 1903 by a young UW scholar, speak of no one other than Keeskeeskiblue, commonly known as Princess or Queen Angeline, Chief Seattle’s eldest daughter. Princess Angeline was one of the most photographed celebrities in Seattle before her death in 1896, and her legacy as an iconic figure continued well into the early decades of the 20^th century. This orotone by Frank LaRoche, Sr., created between 1917 and 1926, is a token of her enduring popularity to Seattlites. (Orotone housed in the Burke Ethnology Archives, Catalog ID: 2.5E1977. Frank LaRoche,Sr., “Queen Angeline,” orotone photograph, 8” x 10” in original pie crust frame, created circa 1917-26. Quote: Frank Carlson A.B. “Chief Stealth,” The Bulletin of the University of Washington, The State University, Series III, no. 2, December 1903, p33.)

The middle- and upper-classes of America were affected by the notion of the Indian race as rapidly melting away with the approach of civilization and the government-enforced assimilation of Native American cultures. In turn, Americans longed for pictorial images that embodied notions of a collective nostalgia for the "vanishing Indian race." In an effort to retain or recapture the vanished past and appeal to the consciousness of consumers, photographers and painters alike ventured to rescue the modes of the supposedly doomed Indian race for perpetuity in visual object form.

The Native American-themed orotone photographs that have trickled into the Burke’s Ethnology Archives over the past nine decades (six alone being gifts of Edward Curtis’ studio!) by Curtis, A. C. Girard, and Frank LaRoche in many ways reinforce these romantic, idealized visions of the American Indian that predominated white American culture of the era. They dance the line between documentation of Native cultures’ way of life and Pictorialism—the artistic philosophy fashionable for the generation and advocated for in several popular photographic trade journals of the Pacific Northwest from 1889 to the commencement of WWI. These orotones, with their warm golden atmosphere and hazy romanticism, stimulate an aesthetic and emotional sensation in the beholder, suggesting (wrong as it is) with their flickering radiance the passing of a culture’s own light. For me, despite criticism that frequently swirls around the works of Edward Curtis and other photographers of his generation for their inauthentic and racial depictions, I accept that these orotones were created “through a veil of cultural preconceptions,”* and believe that they stimulate an appreciation for rich cultures divergent from my own.

Want to learn more about the orotone process' invention, production techniques, and popularity? Check out this virtual exhibition.

Interested in hearing present-day Native Americans views on Edward Curtis’ photographic works? Watch this brief clip from Anne Makepeace’s Coming to Light documentary.

* “Edward Curtis: The North American Indian,” Portland Art Museum, Traditional Fine Art Online, Inc., 1996-1999, http://www.tfaoi.com/newsm1/n1m205.htm, 4 May 2010.

Posted By: Christy Hansen, Ethnology

Happy Holidays from the Burke

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 21:17:00 +0000

On behalf of the Burke Museum, we would like to wish all of our Burke Blog readers a happy holiday season. How do we celebrate the holidays at the Burke? With natural history and cultural themes, of course! Please enjoy these holiday and winter-related mini-posts from some of our writers.

"The 12 Days of Christmas Island" By Winifred Kehl

On Christmas Day in 1643, the Royal Mary sailed past an uninhabited island near Indonesia. The captain named it Christmas Island - although today, most of its 1,493 residents are Buddhist. Because humans arrived only recently to the island, many endemic plants and animals (plants and animals that are found nowhere else on Earth) survive … making the wildlife of Christmas Island rather unique.

Colored versions to come soon!

On the first day on Christmas Island, I went out and saw... the largest land-living arthropod (alternate lyrics: "a coconut crab in a palm tree")

On the second day on Christmas Island, I went out and saw... 2 endemic bats, and the largest land-living arthropod.

On the third day on Christmas Island, I went out and saw... 3 endemic birds, 2 endemic bats, and the largest land-living arthropod.

On the fourth day on Christmas Island, I went out and saw.... 4 local molluscs, 3 endemic birds, 2 endemic bats, and the largest land-living arthropod.

On the fifh day on Christmas Island, I went out and saw.... 5 whaaaaaaaaaaaale shaaaaaaaaaaaaarks...

On the sixth day on Christmas Island, I went out and saw.... 6 manta rays...

On the seventh day on Christmas Island, I went out and saw.... 7 native reptiles...

On the eighth day on Christmas Island, I went out and saw.... 8
migrating sea birds...

On the nineth day on Christmas Island, I went out and saw.... 9 native butterflies...

On the tenth day on Christmas Island, I went out and saw... 10 coral species...

On the eleventh day on Christmas Island, I went out and saw.... 11
kinds of reef fish

On the twelfth day on Christmas Island, I went out and saw....43.7
million red crabs migrating, 11 kinds of reef fish, 10 coral species, 9 native butterflies, 8 migrating sea birds, 7 native reptiles, 6 manta rays, 5 whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaale shaaaaaaaaaaarks... 4 local molluscs, 3 endemic birds, 2 endemic bats,and the largest land-living arthropoooooooooooooooood

"Pleistocene Epoch Haiku" by Andrea Godinez

Pleistocene Epoch

Glaciers carried loose rocks, soil
Carving Puget Sound

And another one for fun:

Seattle under
Three-thousand feet deep of ice
In the last ice age

Maximum advance of ice into the Pacific Northwest. A lobe of ice has dammed the Glacial Lake Missoula in Montana. Periodically, the ice dam breached, sending the largest floods ever recorded through the channeled scablands of Washington and down through the Columbia Gorge. Image: Ice Age Floods Institute.

"Oh, the weather outside is frightful…" By Christy Hansen

The winter season is surely upon us—besides the immersion of our daily activities amid the twinkling lights of the holiday season, Seattle’s days and nights have now (statistically speaking) dipped into their coldest average temperatures for the year. With our coldest and darkest times of the year upon us, I am finding myself admittedly unprepared to bear the elements as the thermometer begins a slow dive and the chilling winds lash out at my face. Upon flipping through binders containing historic photographs depicting Alaskan Natives in the Ethnology Archives, I marvel at the content and deftness by which the Native people of the Arctic flourished in their daily activities amidst the extreme bitter weather—and immediately I am envious of the lavish and toasty winter gear handcrafted of caribou (or reindeer) and other animal skins donned by the Native Inupiat and Yup’ik peoples. Gaze upon a few choice examples from the Ethnology Archives:

Native Alaskans have been surviving in harsh and severe environments for millennia.

Resourcefulness wasand has been strategic and a light-weight shell or parka constructed

from the intestines of seal or walrus provides a universal waterproof protection against

the elements for all activities. This photograph taken in the commercial photography

studio of the Lomen Brothers of Nome, Alaska documents a Native man—either Yup’ik

or Inupiat—wearing such a parka at some point in the first three decades of the 20^th

century. Gut skin parkas were universal all along the Alaskan coast, and were especially

useful for hunting and fishing out on the water.

(Courtesy of the Ethnology Archives of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, L-3731,

Catalog No. A1.2/27.)

A young Yup’ik woman, captured circa 1917-1936 by the Elite Studio of Juneau, is shown wearing her traditional fur parka made of caribou, seal or other animal. The parkas with the attached hood trimmed with a ruff of Arctic fox tail, wolf or wolverine fur would protect her face from the extreme cold. Some scholars assert that the insulation derived from such time-tested skin clothing is paramount to modernized synthetic materials. (Courtesy of the Ethnology Archives of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Catalog No. A1.2/89.)

Fossils and... LEGOS?

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:37:00 +0000

If you’re like me, you have fond memories of playing with LEGOS as a kid. Hours upon hours spent creating fortresses that kept out monsters or making search and rescue helicopters that helped save your city from the latest natural disaster. These stackable toys are fun, but did you know they also serve an important role at the Burke Museum? Reminiscing aside, LEGOS help our fossil preparators in the Paleontology division make fossil casts.

Part of the lower jaw and canine of a Gorgonopsian. Even though it’s only a part of one section of its jaw, this fossil is pretty big and oddly shaped – a great example of when to use LEGOS.

How do LEGOS help us make fossil casts? The LEGOS work as a border, containing the clay, silicone, and other materials that are used in creating molds (read about the entire cast-making process here). They are especially useful with large or oddly-shaped fossils, since you can use LEGOS to create whatever shape you need. LEGOS also help save clay and are reusable, helping the Burke stay “green.”

Would you like to help the Burke Museum make fossil casts? The large “LEGO DUPLOS” (like the ones in the photos) are the most useful. If you have any extra LEGOS at your house, we accept donations. Then you can say you helped make a cast of a Gorgonopsian’s canine and partial lower jaw for everyone to see, or maybe even help give others a chance to touch an Ammonite cast!

An Ammonite fossil covered in silicone. The silicone is the “mold” plaster is poured into to make the actual cast.

And here is the finished product of the Ammonite fossil cast (right)! The original fossil (left) will stay at the Burke but thanks to LEGOS and the rest of the cast process, the silicone mold can be used several times to create casts that can be shipped to researchers all over the world.

Posted By: Andrea Godinez, Communications

Archaeology at an Insane Asylum

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:42:00 +0000

Imagine the Archaeology Department’s surprise when they got a call from the WA State Archives requesting help with 12 boxes of artifacts from the Insane Asylum of Washington Territory.

Turns out that along with the historic hospital records from what has become Western State Hospital in Lakewood, WA, some artifacts were also transferred to the State Archives. The State Archivist realized these collections belonged in an appropriate repository, and contacted the Burke Museum.

But why are there artifacts coming from the Western State Hospital, the State’s psychiatric hospital? Due to the proposed construction of a new wing in the 1980s, archaeologists from the Office of Public Archaeology on the University of Washington campus were called in to investigate the land that is part of the Fort Steilacoom Historic District.

Archaeologists identified, among other things, remnants of a wooden structure dating to circa 1850-1890 and a privy dating to circa 1850-1920. This site was originally a Steilacoom band winter settlement site. In the 1830s, the site was occupied by Joseph Thomas Heath, who ran a Hudson’s Bay Company farm. It was taken over by the U.S. Army in 1849 when Heath succumbed to measles. The U.S. Army established Fort Steilacoom which housed a military hospital and surgeon’s quarters. The fort was abandoned in the 1868, and was purchased by Washington Territory, in part, to establish a facility for psychiatric patients.

This Fall, a group of UW Museology students from Museum 581: Preservation and Management of Collections, has been working with the Burke Museum's Archaeology department to rehouse and catalog the artifacts found at the site.

The artifacts include glass bottles and fragments, nails, clay pipes, ceramic sherds, metal buttons, bricks and a favorite here in the Archaeology lab, a leather shoe with shoelaces intact. This project provides a learning experience for Museology students in terms of the depth and breadth of archaeological collections, as well as the practical experience of organizing such a varied collection.

The Waterlines Project Exhibit at Milepost 31

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:08:00 +0000

Last week, the Washington State Department of Transportation opened Milepost 31 (MP31), a new public information center in the heart of Pioneer Square. This center was championed by a group of neighborhood and historic preservation organizations brought together as part of the Section 106 process of the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires that states work to offset potential construction effects in historic places like Pioneer Square. MP31 highlights the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement process and the history of Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood. Several organizations, including the Burke Museum, History Link, the Tulalip Tribes, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, and the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe contributed to the exhibit.

MP31 provides a unique opportunity for visitors to see how geology, archaeology, current events, and cultural heritage inform the history of Puget Sound and the future of our city. While WSDOT conducts environmental and cultural research to comply with federal and state laws for every major construction project, MP31 represents an unprecedented effort to share this invaluable information and engage local Native communities and the general public in our shared heritage.

The Burke Museum’s Waterlines Project team curated the “Moving Land” section of MP31. Our Waterlines team has been working together for almost 8 years and is led by Burke Curator of Archaeology Dr. Peter Lape, Puget Sound River History Project staff member Amir Sheikh and research artist Donald Fels. The team explores Seattle’s history by examining the natural and human impacts on the city’s shorelines, and works to apply this knowledge to urban development decisions today.

As you walk through “Moving Land,” large columns containing soil layers from test drillings envelop you in the space. These columns literally share the history beneath your feet from a layer of peat of a long buried tidal lagoon under present-day Occidental Park to the sawdust from Yesler’s Mill that filled it. Also under your feet is an eye-catching floor map allows you to trace the history of Seattle’s changing shoreline.

Moving Land highlights monumental moments in Seattle’s development, from the Denny Regrade to a severe earthquake that occurred 1,100 years ago and still lives on in local Native American stories.

A video follows the histories of people and communities on Seattle’s transforming shores from the Native village site of Djidjila'letch to the heart of the metropolis we know today.

Over the past week, there has been a lot of public discussion about MP31. The center brings up concerns about tax dollars and the issue of the Viaduct replacement. But it also provides an opportunity for the Burke Museum and our collaborators to share our work with the community outside the museum’s walls and foster public discussion that helps us learn from the past and plan for the future.

SCIENCE!! Comics: Episode Two

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 20:14:00 +0000


Click the picture for a larger (readable) version!

This week! Like water off a butterfly's wing - what do butterflies do when it rains?

Learn more!

This week's comic was based on a press release from the American Institute of Physics, but I didn't even get to the point of their research because I got caught up in the details of how butterfly wings shed water and dirt. The cool thing for us humans is that we might be able to manufacture silicon with texture like butterfly wings so that it will shed water and dirt without needing to be cleaned with detergents.

As usual, any mistakes are mine alone. I should also note that the butterfly mentionedin the press release (mountain swallowtail) is not the same species I drew (blue morpho).

Science Behind-the-Scenes: Paleontology Edition (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 21:57:00 +0000

Do you want to work in the fossil collection of a museum and be surrounded by fossils all day? In this edition of Science Behind-the-Scenes, meet the people who work in the paleontology (fossil) collection, learn about what they study, and meet some of our favorite fossils!

A Leptauchenia skull.

The Burke's paleontology collection houses over 3 millions fossils (as you'll know if you've read Part 1) and quite a few people (live, not fossilized), too!

We've got curators of vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants, a fossil preparator, a handful of graduate students doing research and collection work, a legion of volunteers, scientists from the University of Washington and elsewhere doing research, and one collection manager to rule them all.

There's a lot going on! One of the most important jobs is keeping the fossils safe and organized. With this many fossils, if you put something in the wrong drawer it might be lost for years! (This is no exaggeration!) With good care and attention, the Burke's fossils will be available for research and exhibits forever. That's the goal of paleontology collection manager Ron Eng.

Caroline's favorite fossil: grass silica.

The Burke's curators are scientists and specialists in their field - for example Caroline Strömberg, curator of plant fossils, is a paleobotanist. She studies the evolution of grasslands (technically speaking, grass-dominated vegetation) during the last 70 million years and how it affected animals. Curators help the collection by being experts - they identify fossils, help interpret fossils for exhibits, and help manage the fossil collection. Caroline's favorite fossil? Microscopic minerals left over from prehistoric plants: "My favorite fossil in the Burke collection is early Miocene microscopic silica from grasses that reflect the earliest grasslands that spread in North America."

Fossil preparator Burce Crowley prepares fossils, which means removing them from rock and gluing them if necessary. His job fascinates just about everyone who visits Burke's Behind-the-Scenes tours and really deserves its own blog post (stay tuned!).

Jonathan's favorite: Geomyid skull and skeleton.

Graduate students from the University of Washington help with collection work (like organizing or numbering fossils) and use the collection for research. Graduate student Jonathan Calede from Dr. Greg Wilson's paleontology lab uses fossils in the Burke's collection to study the evolution of mammals. He looks at the teeth of fossil mammals and compares them to the teeth of mammals in the Mammalogy collection to figure out what extinct animals ate. Jonathan's favorite fossil at the Burke is a skeleton of a prehistoric pocket gopher, a Geomyid.

Bradon's favorite: an Antarctic crocodile femur.

Brandon Peecook from Dr. Chris Sidor's paleontology lab recently returned from fossil-hunting trips to Antarctica and Africa. He looks for fossils there to bring back to the Burke. He studies how different groups of animals are related to each other and how they evolved. This helps him understand the diversity of extinct ecosystems that we have no other way of reconstructing: "Currently my favorite fossil at the Burke is the half femur brought back from Antractica that may actually belong to an early relative of crocodilians - something totally unknown from Antarctica before our recovery of the specimen."

Stay tuned for more from Science Behind-the-Scenes! We'll take a look at Bruce Crowley's job and find out how you get fossils from the field (like in Antarctica!) to the museum.

Posted By: Winifred Kehl, Communications

Volunteer Spotlight: Museum Ambassadors

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:44:00 +0000

Last spring the Burke Museum launched a new volunteer opportunity that allows volunteers to interact with visitors in a more casual way than leading a tour. We call them Museum Ambassadors. Ambassadors carry with them a wealth of information about the museum’s exhibits, programs, and history and can be a resource for nearly any inquiry. Their goal is to provide excellent customer service and be the avenue to answering visitors’ burning questions, whether that is where the bathroom is located or a specific question about an object that requires a referral to a Burke collections manager or curator. Today, I would like to introduce you to Emily, an Ambassador who volunteers at least 3 hours per week on top of her high school classes, homework and extracurricular commitments.

Emily hard at work at Meet the Mammals.

Jessica: Hi Emily, tell me a little bit about what you do.

Emily: I walk around the exhibits ready to answer anyone's questions regarding exhibits, memberships, or anything having to do with the museum. I often introduce myself to visitors as they begin their visit so that they know I'm there to help, and it makes them feel more welcome. Making them feel welcome and free to ask questions is an important aspect of what I do, as my main aim is to help create the best experience possible for visitors.

Jessica: What do you do when you’re not at the Burke?

Emily: I'm currently in high school, and have been interested in museums and anthropology for awhile now. This summer I decided to see if there were any opportunities for me to volunteer at the Burke, and there was. I was very excited to be able to work as a Museum Ambassador because I really enjoy sharing my love and knowledge for history and cultures, and I was super excited to be able to work in such a great place as the Burke!

Jessica: What is the funniest thing that has happened while volunteering?

Emily: Once there was a little boy in the Discovery Lab playing with the plastic dinosaurs, most of them being green. He then picked up an orange one and said "Mommy! This dinosaur didn't eat enough greens!"

Photo courtesy of Kerry Dahlen.

Jessica: What would surprise people about what you do?

Emily: I think it would surprise people just how fun things can get at the Burke. Most people would see a museum as dull, but there is more than just walking around the exhibits. There are always activities and events where you can interact with amazing people and all sorts of things from fossils to bugs!

Jessica: Briefly describe a memorable day or project.

Emily: I was helping out at the ¡Carnaval! Masquerade. This was a really fun evening, and it was awesome seeing so many people dressed up in costumes and masks! The museum really came alive with music, pictures, and lots of people! When I'm volunteering during my regular weekend days there aren't that many people in the museum so it was a great time seeing a different vibe of the Burke.

Jessica: Do you have anything else to add?

Emily: I've experienced a lot of things that I have been dreaming of ever since I started volunteering. One example is when I got to go behind the scenes into the Mammology and Ornithology departments – it was pretty cool being up close and personal with all of the great specimens and fossils!

Posted By: Jessica Newkirk, Volunteer Coordinator

SCIENCE!! Comics - Episode One

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:53:00 +0000

Click here for a larger image!

Learn more!

The Moorea barrier reef was able to recover thanks partly to its population of fish.

Some reefs - like those in the Caribbean - are over fished and do not recover well.

All reefs are threatened by global climate change and ocean acidification.

Moorea Reef Research

Moorea Reef Education

NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program

This comic was based on a press release from UC Santa Barbara,

but any mistakes are mine, not theirs! (Including anatomical mistakes in my cartoon animals.)

A Kwakiutl House Post’s Journey

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 23:27:00 +0000

I personally have grown deeply appreciative of, and immensely fascinated by, Seattle-based photographer Edward S. Curtis’ photographic- and life- endeavors over the past few years in connection with my thesis work. Tucked away in the Burke’s Ethnology Archives is a little-known treasure trove of material related to Curtis’ 1914 ethnographic melodrama In the Land of the Head-Hunters—the first ethnographic “documentary” motion picture of its kind, depicting a romanticized pre-contact view of the Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) culture of British Columbia, Canada.

Figure 1 The hand-painted artist’s mock-up housed in the Burke’s Ethnology Archives displays the development of one of the promotional posters created to advertise Edward S. Curtis’ 1914 ethnographic melodrama In the Land of the Head-Hunters. (Image courtesy of The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, ‘In the Land of the War Canoes’ Collection, Ethnology Archives).

Upon my first encounter with the Burke’s archival collection associated with the film, I was instantly struck by a vibrant hand-painted artist’s mock-up, or prototype, for a promotional poster to advertise Curtis’ film (Figure 1). Not only was this mock-up a visual spectacle—a poster child (pun intended) for the Arts and Crafts style with its simplified forms, bold abstraction of color and angular lines, but also an enigma. What was the history behind this poster, and particularly, what was the story of the polychrome carved cedar grizzly bear so boldly illustrated?

The Burke’s prototype, dating from early- to mid-1914, was eventually produced as an official lithography poster by the H. C. Minor Litho Co. advertising the December 7, 1914 premiere of Head-Hunters in New York at the Casino Theatre (Figure 2). The carved grizzly bear depicted holds a dynamic real-life social biography of its own right: metamorphosing from an element of a traditional and culturally-valuable potlatch symbol, to an idealized symbol of “nativeness” as a stage prop, to a constituent in an decontextualized tourist attraction, and finally to a hidden gem within a museum’s storage.

Figure 2 The official 1914 poster exhibiting the film’s iconic carved grizzly bear. While the official poster is markedly more simplistic in its final rendition than the mock-up, the final poster would have still appealed greatly to the middle- and upper-classes of America at the time who would have been spellbound by this vibrant and unbridled expression of the then-believed “vanishing” Native cultures of the Northwest coast. (Image courtesy of Bill Utley Collection)

The grizzly is in fact part of a two-figured Thunderbird house post, one of set, carved initially between 1900 and 1910 by the renowned Kwakwaka’wakw carver Charlie James for Chief Tsa-wee-nok of Gway'i (Kingcome Inlet) as visual public displays of his family crests. According to a ledger record penned by George Hunt, Curtis’ invaluable Tlingit and Kwakwaka’wakw informant and assistant for the motion picture, it appears that the two poles were purchased in the summer of 1913 to be utilized extensively as stage props within the film (markedly the first appearance of totem poles in moving picture history!), each being transformed with physical augmentations to signal distinctive structures within the film (Figures 3 & 4). In 1927, the two house posts were erected within an educationally-intended outdoor totem park, purchased and erected by the Art, Historical, and Scientific Association of Vancouver (AHSAV) in Stanley Park. While both posts were in subsequent decades replicated, the originals being placed in safekeeping within the Museum of Vancouver (an institution created by AHSAV), the house posts have become one of the most popular tourist attractions in British Columbia (Figure 5).

Figure 3 The thunderbird and grizzly house posts are shown here in a still from Curtis’ film, representing the house of Waket in the tale, the house of the heroine’s father. (Image from Edward Curtis’ 1915 book In the Land of the Head-Hunters).

Figure 4 With the simple accessory of carved figures of Dzoonokwa, the man-eating giantess, over the grizzly bears’ bellies and the elimination of the thunderbirds’ expansive wings, the house posts are transformed into the setting of the ruthless villain, Yaklus’, house. (Image by Edmund S. Schwinke, originally housed in the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture)

Figure 5 The Kwakwaka’wakw house posts as seen erected in Stanley Park, sans wings, via a tourist postcard from the late 1920s. Shortly after the poles were raised by the Art, Historical, and Scientific Association of Vancouver, the organization’s promotional pamphlet for the park stated, “The proposed village, and the totems already erected, will represent the work of the Kwakiutl Indians in particular, and the Coast Indians in general. The totem is an indication of an old and wide culture. It points to the past. The past illuminates the present.” (Image courtesy of eBay member lusitania-postcard. Quote from John C. Goodfellow, The Totem Poles in Stanley Park (Vancouver, B.C.: The Art, Historical, and Scientific Association of Vancouver, B.C., [unspecified date]), 15.)

Watch a brief clip from Curtis’ film yourself that showcases Kwakwaka’wakw performers involved in a dance festival. Notice the thunderbird and grizzly bear house posts prominently displayed in the background.

Posted By: Christy Hansen, Ethnology division

My deepest gratitude goes to Aaron Glass, Assistant Professor of Native Peoples of the Northwest Coast, Museums and Anthropology, at the Bard Graduate Center, for his informative personal correspondence regarding In the Land of the Head-Hunters and the poster art associated with the film.

Read more about the complicated history of the Curtis film in:
Holm, Bill and George I. Quimby. Edward S. Curtis in the Land of the War Canoes. UW Press 1980.
See also: http://www.curtisfilm.rutgers.edu/

Science Illuminated: Run, T. Rex, run!

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:05:00 +0000

Tyrannosaurs may have been faster than previously thought... or slower, depending on who you ask.

Dinosaur paleontologists seem to love arguing over how fast Tyrannosaurs could run.

In the 70's, R. McNeill Alexander came up with a formula to estimate speeds by measuring the size and spacing of fossilized footprints. Alexander acknowledged its limitations: he made the formula by observing living mammals (like horses). Tyrannosaurs probably didn't run the same way a horse runs. Alexander's formula gives a rough estimate for Tyrannosaurs' speed at around 9 miles per hour (MPH).

You can also look at bones to figure out how an animal moved and how fast it could run. This is called biomechanics. It's a bit like looking at car parts and figuring out how they work together.

A comparison of running speeds (cc Wikimedia)

A 2007 paper by University of Manchester scientists used biomechanics to clock Tyrannosaurs at around 18 MPH max.**

A new paper suggests that Tyrannosaurs may have "power walked" faster by using their large butt muscles to power short, fast strides.*** Paleontologist Heinrich Mallison from the Museum of Natural History in Berlin wrote the paper, which will be published in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Heinrich isn't the first person to suggest Tyrannosaurs' butt muscles made it fast. A 2010 paper by a University of Alberta paleontologist looked at Tyrannosaurus's bones and concluded that they could probably outrun every other dinosaur at the time.****

The long and the short of it is: Tyrannosaurs weren't horses or giant chickens (although they're related) - or even ostriches, the fastest critter on 2 legs today. So we don't have an instruction manual to tell us how they worked and how fast they could run. The best we can do is find better analogies and make better estimates.

* Dinosaur Biomechanics. R. McNeill Alexander. Proceedings: Biological Sciences , Vol. 273, No. 1596 (Aug. 7, 2006), pp. 1849-1855

** doi: 10.1098/rspb.2007.0846 Proc. R. Soc. B. 7 November 2007 vol. 274
*** http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111107/full/news.2011.631.html

**** http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.21290/full
cc: Images adapted from M. Martyniuk and Wikimedia

Posted by: Winifred Kehl, Communications

Meet the Squirrels! (And other mammals, too)

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:07:00 +0000

Squirrels – you probably see them every day in the Seattle area and may even overlook their presence, but these common creatures have an interesting history. The University of Washington Daily's "Double Shot" sought to find out more about the squirrels on UW's campus. They came to the Burke's mammalogy collection to speak with Collection Manager Jeff Bradley and talk about changes in the local squirrel populations over time. Watch the video to find out more!

You can see some of the Burke Museum's squirrel specimens and hundreds of other specimens for yourself at Meet the Mammals on Saturday, November 12, 10 am – 4 pm.

Our Favorite Fossils - Anatotitan

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 20:02:00 +0000

My left hand compared to Anatotitan's left foot.

It's true that ugly fossils are important, but that doesn't make giant duck feet any less interesting!

Anatotitan means "large duck" but the critter in question was actually a duck-billed dinosaur (a hadrosaurid). They grew up to 39 feet long - 6 feet short of your average school bus. At that size, it's no wonder his (or her!) foot dwarfs my hand. My palm is about the size of one of his (or her!) toe bones.

Anatotitan lived during the Late Cretaceous - 68 to 65.5 million years ago - at the same time as Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptor, pterosaurs, small mammals like Eomaia, marine reptiles and birds. The Cretaceous ended with one of the largest mass extinctions in Earth's history.

Montana (starred) during the Late Cretaceous. (Dr. R. B.)

This fossil was found in the Hell Creek formation in Montana in 1987. University of Washington's Dr. Greg Wilson and his lab dig for fossils and what they find ends up here at the Burke!

You can see this very Anatotitan fossil at the Burke's Dino Day (and you might notice that it's featured on the Anatotitan's Wikipedia page!)

Posted By: Winifred Kehl, Communications

Science Behind-the-Scenes: Paleontology Edition (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 21:30:00 +0000

Oligocene fossils fill this cabinet.

Have you ever been to the Burke and wondered what's in the rest of the building? Behind the exhibits (actually, under them, around them, and above them!) are offices, the exhibit workshop, and enough cabinets full of wonder to make Indiana Jones jealous.

In this edition of the new feature Science Behind-the-Scenes, meet the Burke's fossil collection and find out the secret of our ugly fossils!


Our gorgeous Xiphactinus guards the ugly palm.

As a paleontologist (someone who studies dinosaurs and other prehistoric life), my favorite cabinets are, of course, the ones filled with fossils. And the Burke has a lot of fossils – over 3 million – including plants, animals, invertebrates (like snails), and even fossilized pollen. Only a few of the Burke's fossils are on display because there's just not enough room to show them all. You can visit dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts in the Life and Times exhibit or see fossilized plants and pollen in the Estella Leopold display under the giant Xiphactinus.

The Ugly Palm

One secret about the fossils that you do get to see on display – they're usually the pretty ones, but not necessarily the most important. Many of the fossils in the cabinets are pretty ugly – but ugly fossils are important! It's not common for living things to fossilize when they die – conditions have to be just right – and every fossil can tell us something about the past.

A great example of this is the fossilized palm plant in the Estella Leopold display. The palm looks like a dark brown bug splat on a grey rock, and it's covered in glue and surrounded by plaster. But this is the first and only palm fossil from the area it was found and it tells us a lot about what that area was like millions of years ago because palm plants need a warm and wet environment to live. Without this ugly fossil, we might not know as much as we do about how the climate in North American has changed over millions of years.

A drawer full of oreodont teeth.

Another fossil treasure that might look like trash is this drawer full of teeth. What good is a drawer full of teeth if you don't have the skull that goes with them? As it turns out, teeth – even without the rest of their bodies – are great for paleontologists to study. Teeth are really hard and preserve better in the fossil record than other bones. Teeth can even tell us whose skull they came from. A mammal paleontologist can tell the teeth of different mammals apart just by looking at them (and maybe using a few reference books). So a drawer full of teeth can tell us what kinds of animals lived in an area and how many of them there were.

And that can tell us all sorts of other things, like how animal communities change, so stay tuned for the Paleoecology edition of Science Behind-the-Scenes! And look for more Science Behind-the-Scenes at the Burke to learn about the mammal, bird, fish, and DNA collections, the collection managers who make research at the Burke possible, and the scientists who use the collections – and what they've discovered.

Posted by: Winifred Kehl, Communications

Natural History Riddles

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 23:12:00 +0000

Happy Friday! Celebrate the weekend with another fun round of…

(October edition)

How to play: Read the three riddles below and see if you can guess which Washington State person, place, cultural object, or living thing we are referring to in the riddle. Post your guesses in the comments and check back on Monday to see the answers!

Update: The answers have been posted! Scroll down to see them.

Question #1:
My young are the size of a grain of rice, but we can reach 600 pounds!
A mantle of redd-ish brown color but can change with the blink of an eye;
You can find me under the rolling waves of Puget Sound.

What am I?

Question 2:
One of the oldest tools discovered on this continent
Shares its name with early peoples of North America
Has been found with the remains of ice age animals

What am I?

Question #3:
A transportation hub
A 12,000 year old giant sloth laid beneath its grounds

Where am I?

Answers below:

Answer #1: Giant Pacific Octopus

Photo courtesy of Bachrach44.

Answer #2: Clovis Point

Photo courtesy of Andrew Waits.

Answer #3: Seatac International Airport

Photo courtesy of Jelson25 from Wikimedia Commons

Posted by: Andrea Godinez, Communications

Research in the Jungles of Costa Rica

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:57:00 +0000

Museum collections come from a variety of different sources. Sometimes they are donated by individuals and families, other times they are donated by other museums, cultural organizations or state agencies, and often, volunteers, researchers, and employees of the museum go out and collect themselves. These trips can take you down the street or around the world.

Regan Dunn, a UW graduate student who works in Burke Curator of Paleobotany Dr. Caroline Strömberg's lab, was in Costa Rica this summer conducting original research in the field. By looking at the shape of plant cells (phytoliths) and amount of sunlight those plants receives, Regan is trying to determine if there is a correlation between the two. By analyzing current ecological environments, Regan hopes to reconstruct and better understand past environments.

While Regan was in Costa Rica, Dr. Strömberg and Regan worked with the Burke Museum’s “Girls in Science” summer camp. Specifically, the girls examined phytoliths, learned about Paleoecology, and even conducted research on Tiger Mountain that replicated Regan’s field work. At the end of the day on the mountain, the girls came back to the Burke and talked with Regan about her research via Skype. They talked about what life in the field is like and even compared findings. Watch the video below to find out more – those rubber boots would work great for Seattle-based field work, too!

Posted by: Andrea Barber, Communications

Student Work at the Burke

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 21:46:00 +0000

It’s the start of a new school year, and we’re excited to see the campus and the museum full of students again! How could you be anything but excited? At the Burke Museum, students are at the heart of our work. They assist and lead in research, volunteer in collections and provide valuable work through internships and practicums.

Arryn Davis and Mary Jane Ides, University of Washington students who are also a part of the Burke education staff, spent part of their summer working on amazing costumes for our ¡Carnaval! exhibit. In this video, Arryn describes some of the pieces she worked on that represent Carnival costumes from communities around the world. You can try on their creations yourself by visiting the exhibit – and if you’re a UW student you get in for FREE with your UW ID!

Posted by: Andrea Barber, Communications

Moving Giants

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:06:00 +0000

Sometimes at the Burke Museum, we move giant things. From whale skeletons to dinosaur bones, our collections vary and all require some expert moving skills. So how do you move an art piece that is really tall—as in over 15 feet tall? And not only one piece, but two?

The Burke’s exhibit team was given this unique challenge with two giant parade dolls for our newest exhibit ¡Carnaval! They mirror the style of the giant dolls (or boneco gigante in Portuguese) from the Olinda, Brazil Carnival and were made by local artists as part of a collaboration between the Burke Museum and the Brazil Center.

So how do you move them? The team put the “Midnight Man” and the “Woman of the Day” dolls on a wheeled platform to maneuver them. Dipping is an important skill to learn, not just for dancing, but for getting the dolls through a door frame that’s a few feet too short.

Once through the doorways, the dolls take a quick trip in the Burke’s famous elevator up to the special exhibits gallery that will be their home for the next few months.

The dolls are then taken off of the wheeled platforms and lifted to their mounts. A scissor lift helped steady the “Woman of the Day” doll, which had the higher mount.

Clamps are put in place to temporarily stabilize the dolls, which are then drilled securely into place. And voila! The dolls are ready for their costumes and final touch ups.

You can see these amazing giant dolls yourself in the Burke’s newest exhibit ¡Carnaval! On October 1, come celebrate with the dolls during our ¡Carnaval! Opening Celebration!

Posted By: Andrea Barber, Communications

What should I do if I see a bear?

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 23:04:00 +0000

To enjoy the last bit of nice weather before the winter, you may be heading for the hills. While camping, hiking, or doing other nature activities, remember that other animals are around. Sightings of bears in particular go up during the warmer months.

What should I do if I see a bear?
The Burke Museum partnered with the Grizzly Bear Outreach Project to answer this question.

There are two species of bear you could you see—brown and black bears—in Washington State. Black bears are much more common while brown bears (also called Grizzly bears) are rare. For the first time in 15 years, a brown bear was spotted in the North Cascades. So if you see a bear, it is most likely a black bear. To learn how to tell the difference between the two species, click here.

Black bear. Photo courtesy of Phil Myers, Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan.

How far away you are from a bear can dictate how you react. If you spot a bear from a distance, do not proceed and be sure to leave a clear pathway for the bear to exit. If the bear sticks around, the most important thing is to distinguish whether you are dealing with a predatory or a defensive situation.

You are most likely to find yourself in a defensive situation when the bear is surprised by your arrival—by the time the bear knows you are there, you are already "too close.”

These situations seldom lead to an attack, but here are some general safety tips to diffuse the situation:
• Talking, clapping hands, or wearing bells while hiking can help let bears know you’re approaching, giving them time to move away
• Don’t run, remain calm and keep your eye on the bear at all times
• Speak in a low voice so the bear can identify you as a human
• If the bear does make contact, play dead. Leave your backpack on if wearing one, lay on your stomach, and clasp your hands over your neck
• Stay quiet and don’t move until the bear is gone

Once a bear doesn’t view you as a threat, it will stop attacking.
Although rare, predatory attacks do occur. If a bear attacks you in a tent or approaches you in a campsite:
• Look as big as you can; be intimidating
• Be aggressive—throw rocks, sticks and yell. Be prepared to fight back if it makes contact
• Use bear spray if you have it when the bear is at least 25 feet away from you so it has time to retreat when charging
• If a bear is following you, place a pack and other items down to distract it
• Climbing a tree may work if a bear is following you but is not guarantee of safety

Bear attacks from both black and brown bears are very rare, even though humans live and play in bear country. These animals disperse seeds from the fruits they eat and help control insect populations, making them important contributors to our ecosystems.

For more complete safety information, go to http://www.bearinfo.org./

Many thanks to the Grizzly Bear Outreach Project for contributing to this Burke Blog post.

My Favorite Style of Doll

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:40:00 +0000

The Ethnology Department houses a collection of dolls that originated among the Alaska Native Cultures. These dolls have been gifted or traded to the museum over the last several decades, and includes dolls recently received in 2010. I was fortunate to be involved with a recent donation of Alaskan Arctic dolls by Dr. Jonathan and Mrs. Ellyn A. Ostrow, which included one of my favorites - a doll with a very expressive leather face.

Untitled, this doll (2010-166/25) was made by Rose Ann Kanrilak of Chevak, probably between 1970 and 1995. This doll has a seal skin face with appliqué nose and eyes and teeth of small beads and I noticed that it is similar to some of the other dolls from Alaska. Arctic dolls can be separated into nine distinct regional doll types according to author Suzi Jones. Included as one of the nine types is the leather-faced doll that is found all over Alaska, but it turns out there is a localized type of leather-faced doll with expressive, whimsical, sometimes funny, features. These dolls come from the community of Chevak.

Inspired by the success of Chevak doll maker Rosalie Paniyak, there are many artists in this village making dolls with sealskin faces, dressed in traditional clothing and engaged in humorous or traditional activities. The Burke Museum has four other dolls from Chevak in its collections by doll makers Rosalie Paniyak (2010-166/20), Ursula Paniyak (1999-37/2 and 2010-166/14) and Annie Hurlbut (2008-85/1). As a group, these dolls are delightful to look, whether carrying a child, nursing a pregnant woman, gathering eggs or just gazing back at the viewer, and they always seem to evoke a smile.

Posted By: Rebecca Andrews, Ethnology

Lee, Molly, ed. 'Not Just a Pretty Face'. 2nd edition. University of Alaska Press. 2006.
Jones, Suzi, ed. 'Eskimo Dolls'. Alaska State Council on the Arts. 1982.

A Thrinaxodon Encounter

noreply@blogger.com (Burke Museum) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:54:00 +0000

Whenever possible, I love to get out of my basement office and spend time in the Burke’s galleries. There are so many different things to see, and my curiosity still gets sparked from time to time. A couple of weeks ago, I was in the Burke lobby for our monthly Free First Thursday and talked with some of our docents about this interesting little creature.

This is a skull cast of Thrinaxodon liorhinus, a mammal-like reptile from the early Triassic (about 245 million years ago). Believed to be a “missing link” to mammals, this Therapsid was about the size of a cat. It was warm-blooded and had whiskers (if you look closely in the photo below, you can see holes in the skull where they would grow). Scientists also believe it had fur.

Although Thrinaxodons had mammal-like features and kind of resembles a beefed-up weasel, it also laid eggs and had scales.

So there you have it, another fascinating encounter with natural history. On the first Thursday of every month the Burke Museum is open until 8 pm and there are extra activities with Burke docents all day. If you come this Thursday, September 1st, you can see the Wolves and Wild Lands in the 21st Century exhibits before it closes on Labor Day, and perhaps you’ll have a Thrinaxodon moment too.

Posted By: Andrea Barber, Communications