The enduring popularity of Discovery’s Shark Week programs, which had their 25th anniversary this year, shows us that we remain both horrified and fascinated by these marine predators. Young enthusiasts who aren’t quite ready to go cage-diving to study sharks can still contribute to our understanding of them by participating in the PaleoQuest Shark Finder program.
As part of a classroom-sourcing science program led by Jason Osborne and Aaron Alford, Shark Finder participants can receive a fossil kit with material that is 19 million years old. Sampled from the lowest portion of the Popes Creek Sands in Maryland, the material could have teeny shark, skate and ray fossils that need to be separated from grains of sand, bits of clay, and shell fragments. The kit includes tweezers, a small magnifying glass, and a tube for retaining the separated material. Once sorted, the entire kit can be mailed back to the researchers in Virginia. The fossil record will contribute to our understanding of the evolution of life on the Atlantic coastal plain.
For more information, contact either Jason or Aaron here.
Photo by Gerald Schömbs on Unsplash
Thanks a ton for the blog post and promoting citizen science! If you wish to learn a little more about the efforts of Paleo Quest please visit our site http://www.paleoquest.org and read the brief description below.
Our country is in need of science literacy and its folks like the Citizen Science Center that will be the promoters of getting the public engaged. Keep up the great work!
Paleo Quest, the elevator speech….
ORGANIZATIONAL CAPABILITIES
Paleo Quest members include professional paleontologists, stratigraphers and curators as well as professional-amateurs. Our team has successfully completed hundreds of fossil recoveries both on land and under water. Dr. Robert Weems (Paleo Quest board of directors and ex-USGS paleontologist) is a paleo-herpetologist and will provide scientific guidance on the recovery and disposition of the turtle remains that we are proposing to quarry.
The proposed field team for this project has many decades of experience recovering specimens from Atlantic Coastal Plain formations. In particular, John Nance has successfully quarried specimens ranging from complete Miocene whale skeletons to miniscule and delicate crab exoskeletons. Our team will rely on his expertise to ensure that we successfully recover the specimen in question while minimizing the environmental impact.
ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY
Paleo Quest is a volunteer-based, non-profit LLC whose mission is to advance the science of paleontology through material contributions to museum collections, field exploration, publication and the advancement of science education in primary and secondary schools.
Several factors have limited the growth of the paleontological record in the Atlantic Coastal Plain. Many of the most informative sedimentary strata only occur underwater or are completely devoid of fossils when they occur above the average water table. Thus these strata have not received as much attention as sediments that occur frequently above the water line. Just as importantly, Atlantic Coastal Plain rivers are notorious for their ‘blackwater’, water that is so stained by tannins and laden with sediment that it is nearly impossible to see when submersed.
Over the past 5 years, we have pioneered under water stratigraphy and stratigraphically targeted exploration in precisely these conditions. Often, we carry out sensitive paleontological endeavors under water, with almost no visibility and currents above 5 knots. Though challenging and dangerous, these efforts have resulted in important contributions to the sciences of stratigraphy and paleontology. Recently, we published a paper with the USGS, highlighting the first known protocetid in Virginia.
Paleo Quest scientists Jason Osborne and Aaron Alford are the creators of the SharkFinder™ program. SharkFinder™, true to its name, is a STEM education program aimed at finding fossil elasmobranch (shark, skates and ray) remains in the Atlantic coastal plain of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and South Carolina. To date, elasmobranches from this region have been poorly characterized despite the fact that shark fossils from this region have been a favorite of collectors and paleontologists for more than a century. SharkFinder™ allows classrooms and citizen scientist the opportunity to search through highly concentrated fossil-bearing media to find and report shark fossils.
Paleo Quest is working with leading curricula developers to provide an interactive, web-supported STEM curricula portal for SharkFinder™ and other similar modules. These curricular modules allow students and citizen scientist to view and participate in all phases of professional scientific endeavors. They will also provide examples of the sample collection process to highlight how Jason E. Osborne and Aaron A. Alford use science in the field in order to collect and prepare the fossil media for SharkFinder™.