MCZ newsletter

Harvard University

Cambridge, Massachusetts Z|
Volume 4, Number 3 \ aes,
Spring, 1975 a”

MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY

Mendoza, Argentina, 1958. (I. to r.) Bryan Patterson, Alfred S..Romer, and Arnold D. Lewis.

Retirements at the MCZ are occasions for looking
back and recalling the highlights of a professor’s
career — so far! They seldom signify any real change
in the professor’s work habits. For Professor Bryan
Patterson, who has been at the MCZ for twenty years,
June 30, 1975 will be the date he officially becomes
Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology, emeritus but he
plans to continue his current work unabated.

Before coming to the MCZ, Pat served for nearly
thirty years at the Field Museum of Natural History,
Chicago, working mainly on South American and
early Tertiary North American fossil mammals. This
pleasant existence was interrupted by World War II,
during which he served with the 120th Regiment, Ist.
Infantry Division. Landing on Omaha Beach (“fortu-
nately,” he says “a day or two after most of the un-

pleasantness there was over’), he went on to Ger-
many, was lightly wounded, captured, escaped twice
and was recaptured twice. ‘After all that it was rather
a relief to return to normal occupation like the study of
taeniodonts and field work on the Mexican border.”
Pat is firm in the belief that enlarging the fossil record
is one of the nobler occupations of mankind, and has
endeavored to do his share. His field expeditions
have taken him over much of the west, to Central
America, Hispaniola, Argentina, East Africa, Ven-
ezuela, Brazil and Peru.

During Pat’s eventful career, he has left an indelible
impression on many people. It seemed fitting at this
time to ask some of his colleagues and students for
their reflections on Pat and his work. The following
are excerpts from some of their responses.

= fi : , “ ; . wat, a
LF st an pet -y
SS Lg wom—™e oy ys
' mea > # Sree J i sé

Getting close to Paleocene mammals. Western Colorado,
1939.

Dr. Paul O. McGrew, now at the University of
Wyoming, recalls: “In the late 1920’s a lanky, 17-
year-old British youth walked into the director’s office
of Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and
announced that he was ready to go to work. He had
just graduated from the English equivalent of our
high school and was ready to set out on his own. It
seems that the director of the Field Museum at that
time, Mr. Davies, was a friend of the youth’s father,
Col. J. H. Patterson of the British Army, who had
provided some man-eating lions for exhibition at the
museum. Some time previously Mr. Davies had inad-
vertently agreed to put the son, Bryan, to work at the
museum if he would come to America. True to his
word, Director Davies placed Pat to work in the De-
partment of Geology where he soon found himself
preparing the skeleton of a curious beast that proved
to be the best known specimen of Homalodatherium.
He marveled at the ability of experienced people to
look at a specimen and to know so many things about
it. For example, one day Pat was laboring over a
specimen when, nearby, the Curator, O. C. Far-
rington, and the Chief Preparator, J. B. Abbott, were
discussing the skull of a fossil marsupial carnivore
that Associate Curator E. S. Riggs had collected in
South America. When the name of the beast, a
Borhyaena, was mentioned, Pat thought, as he later
confessed, ‘My God I'll never be as smart as these
people — not only do they know what kind of an
animal it is just by looking at it, but they even know
it’s sex!’

The library came to hold as much or more fascina-
tion for him than getting stubborn matrix off a fossil
skull. He found himself spending more and more time
over the literature on fossil vertebrates and studying
specimens instead of preparing them. He had a keen
mind, and learned fast, and was soon launched on his
career.”

Former student Dr. Roger C. Wood, now at
Stockton State College, adds: ’Pat’s paleontological
contributions are many, varied, and well known
within the profession. His work on the Cretaceous
mammals of Texas is of fundamental importance. He

has also made significant contributions to our under-
standing of Tertiary mammalian evolution in North
America. Until Pat’s expeditions to northwestern
Kenya started collecting truckloads of bones in the
mid-1960’s, the Pliocene history of Africa was essen-
tially unknown. Happily, this is no longer true. The
MCZ expeditions that Pat led were the vanguard for
many more to the regions surrounding Lake Rudolf
which have resulted in further important and often
well publicized discoveries bearing on the evolution
of the African fauna in general and the evolution of
man in particular. I remember when we found our
first early man remain during the summer of 1965. It
was a rather unprepossessing fragment of a humerus
that Pat picked up while prospecting one hot after-
noon — there wasn’t any other kind —; the full sig-
nificance of the discovery didn’t really hit him until
that evening back in camp. . . . Some of Pat’s earliest
work was on the fossil vertebrate fauna of South
America, and throughout his career he has continued
to produce seminal works on the evolution of South
American vertebrates. He is unquestionably one of
the world’s preeminent authorities on this subject.”
In recognition of Pat’s work in the area, and to house
the many fossils he helped to unearth there, a new
paleontological museum in Estanzuela, Guatamala,
has been named after him.

It is in the field that Pat has had many of his finest
hours. Former student, Dr. Anna K. Behrensmeyer,
now at Berkeley, remarks: “I will always regret not
having experienced field work with Pat, as it was in
the field that he was reputed to be at his best.”
Another student, Dr. Keith S. Thomson, now at Yale,
was more fortunate and here are some of his com-
ments:“’. . .he has been an indefatigable field paleon-
tologist and the results of expeditions under his lead-
ership have been to provide the grist, from fishes to
primates, for many a paleontological mill. His vast
enthusiasm for the whole of natural science has al-
ways meant that Pat explored every part of the field
subject — as a member of Pat’s first Kenyan expedi-
tion (1963) I remember spending a lot of time collect-
ing basalt samples and sacks of freshwater clams.
Field work with Pat is field science — very thorough
and enjoyable. . . . Two last things, Inever met aman
who was so completely lethal when left unsupervised
in charge of machinery. In Africa it once took us
nearly an hour to get his foot out of a tire pump. And,
of course, if Pat were not to have enlivened the scene
at the MCZ, there would have been no Bea, either.”

Another mishap to a lower extremity led to Pat’s
most notorious creation. According to Roger Wood,
“During the summer of 1966, out in the Kenya desert,
Pat stubbed a toe which shortly thereafter gave birth
to the famous ‘dancing worm’ of Turkana. (How Pat
got his stubbed toe is another story.) Pat has the only
procreative big toe that I’ve ever heard of. Subsequent
to its stubbing, an infection set into Pat’s toe and he
was laid up in camp for a couple of weeks, barely able
to hobble around. During that time the mail arrived,
which included a letter from Tilly Edinger to Pat with
a clipping about the discovery by one of his former

Zo ead D. LEWIS TAKES SMITHSONIAN POST

Arnold D. Lewis. The caricature behind him is of his close
friend, Jim Jensen, now at Brigham Young University,
Utah.

After twenty-three years at the MCZ, Chief Pre-
parator Arnold D. Lewis of the Department of Verte-
brate Paleontology is leaving to join the staff of the
U.S. National Museum in Washington. There he will
assume responsibility for the extensive fossil verte-
brate laboratories, and will supervise both prepara-
tion and exhibit activities.

Arnie has spent an average of three months out of
every year in the field since he arrived here from the
Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He has
collected fossil vertebrates in many parts of the United
States as well as in Argentina, Egypt, Africa, and
Venezuela, and has contributed significantly to the

colleagues at the Field Museum of Natural History in
Chicago of a worm-like fossil that was totally unlike
anything previously known to science. Pat used Til-
ly’s clipping as a springboard for one of the most
successful scientific hoaxes that I know of. He in-
vented several fictional characters — a retired British
colonel living in Kenya, an avaricious Indian trader,
an African school teacher, and his grade-school pupil
— and wrote letters on their behalf to the Field
Museum. These he had different members of the field
party copy in their various handwritings, and even-
tually they were posted from addresses scattered
across Kenya, some by surface and others by airmail.
The gist of all their letters was that a creature very like
the fossil, known in the local dialect as the dancing
worm, was alive and well in the remote swamps of
Turkana. Over a period of many months these letters
one by one reached their destination and had the
cumulative effect (reinforced by expert opinions —
including that of Pat, who happened to be passing
through Chicago — as to the authenticity of the let-
ters) of leading to serious consideration of an expedi-
tion to collect ‘dancing worms’. These plans were

field and laboratory research of Professors A. S.
Romer and B. Patterson.

Among his most recent contributions have been his
participation in Romer’s Chanares project which
yielded one of the best known faunas of Triassic age
from South America. He was also a member of Patter-
son’s East African expeditions, and in 1967 he discov-
ered a mandibular fragment of Australopithecus, a
probable ancestor of modern man. “I just looked
down and saw it lying by my foot,”’ he says. Although
Professor Patterson and the rest of the party scoured
the area thoroughly, this specimen was the only
hominid found that year.

Arnie’s expert fossil preparation is well known to
vertebrate paleontologists. In 1956 he received wide
public acclaim for his mounting of Kronosaurus, the
giant plesiosaur, earlier collected by William E.
Schevillin Australia. Under Arnie’s leadership, many
major projects have been completed including, re-
cently, the reconstruction and mounting of an eight
foot turtle carapace from the Pliocene of South Ameri-
ca, the largest ever found. His mounts also are exhib-
ited in other natural history museums, such as those
at Cleveland, Princeton and Pittsburgh.

Arnie started working with fossils in high school.
“The Carnegie Museum started a fossil quarry on the
ranch where I lived in Utah” he explains. ‘I started
working for them summers while I was in high school
and after the war I went directly to the Carnegie
Museum and got training there as a technician.”

At a farewell party on April 30, Professor Farish A.
Jenkins, Jr. and Carol Campbell, Exhibits Director/
Designer, presented Arnie with tokens of the staff’s
affection and gratitude for his many productive years
at the MCZ. He will be missed.

eventually quietly laid aside, however, when a
Christmas card from Kenya reached the Field
Museum. On its cover was a photograph of a dour-
looking individual (Pat), safari hat pulled over his
eyes so that he couldn’t be clearly identified, standing
ankle deep in a Swamp with a shotgun slung over one
arm, distastefully viewing what was clearly a recently
killed dancing worm (a papier-mache model made by
Vince Maglio). Inside the card were Christmas greet-
ings followed by the signatures of the various fictional
letter writers.”

As Kay Behrensmeyer puts it:”. . . Pat has quite his
own style and people generally have to learn to in-
teract with him on his own terms — delightful terms,
at that. He was very much a part of the best Harvard
parties that I can remember. When everyone had had
a few, or more, he often became one of the most
enthusiastic dancers. Parties were easy to enjoy with
Pat and Bea as part of the company, as no doubt they
still are!”’

Undoubtedly, Pat will continue to be an integral
part of the MCZ scientific and social scene for a long
time to come.

ee

Dr. Ruth D. Turner climbing into ALVIN to go down to the Tongue of the Ocean, a deep ridge in the Bahamas, January,

1974.

ROWERS! DON’T DROP THAT OAR!

To visit Dr. Ruth D. Turner’s third floor MCZ lab
office (if one is lucky enough to catch her when she’s
not at the bottom of the ocean!) is to be carried off to
the deep sea world where, among the many strange
phenomena that occur there, minute molluscs bore
into and feed on the wood which becomes their home.
The world’s most extensive collection of these wood-
boring bivalves, mostly collected by Dr. Turner her-
self, inhabit the crowded drawers, samples of infested
wood recovered after different intervals of deep-sea
immersion hang on the walls along with photos of
ALVIN (Wood’s Hole’s deep submergence research
vessel) and relief maps of the ocean floor. The lab
bench is scattered with specimens, microscopes,
chemicals, correspondence from all over the world,
and other evidences of the busy life of the occupant.
With all her constant activity, Dr. Turner is always
ready to stop and explain her work, amplified by
slides, to the curious visitor. The story that emerges
has kept the Navy interested enough to support her
research for the last twelve years because these
“shipworms”, as they are commonly (and inaccurate-
y) called, are among the major biological pests of the
world, primarily as destroyers of docks, piers, and
ships themselves.

Dr. Turner’s well-known work is based on the con-

viction that practical problems cannot be solved in a
state of biological ignorance; her two book-length

fs
a ‘
ee

A deep sea wood-boring bivalve, newly metamorphosed,
taken on the scanning electronmicroscope at 300x.

monographs on the Teredinidae and Pholadidae are
the definitive works of these groups. She has become
the acknowledged world’s expert in this area and has
served as advisor to the governments of the United
States, Australia, and India, on problems of ship-
worm destruction.

Recently Dr. Turner has discovered, through ob-
serving the ravages on sample panels of wood pushed
into the bottom sediment 1830 meters down for three
months that these wood-borers are the first known
case of “opportunistic” species of the deep sea. The
deep sea, with its constant environments, is generally
thought to be the ideal site for a large variety of ani-
mals which adapt to the predictable, stable environ-
ment. However, while the arrival of wood “‘islands’”’
on the ocean bottom, washed in in great quantities
during the tropical rainy season and high latitude
Spring run-off, is predictable, the exact point of arriv-
al is not and it is this factor that has led shipworms
to become ‘opportunistic’, a characteristic more
common of forms living in the fluctuating environ-
ments of shallow water.

It is at the larval stage that the wood-borers enter
the wood. Once they settle and metamorphose into
the adult form, they are incapable of moving to
another piece of wood. The wood provides for all their
needs — home and food. If the wood disintegrates,
they die. It is postulated, on the basis of observed
results, that either the larvae have the ability to delay
metamorphosis, to detect wood at a considerable dis-
tance, and actively swim towards it or the larvae are

produced in great abundance, are carried by bottom
currents, have the ability to delay metamorphosis,
and settle when chance encounter brings them in
contact with wood. Either way, these opportunistic
strategies for survival have enabled them to destroy
wood with remarkable efficiency.

She has also postulated that wood is an important
source of enrichment in the deep sea. Apparently the
borers convert woody plant material into an available
food source for other animals. She has just returned
from another ALVIN dive to 2042 meters in the
Tongue of the Ocean, Bahama Islands where she
examined and picked up wood put down a year ago.
What she saw adds support to her hypothesis.
Around the panels there were more crustacea than she
had seen elsewhere on the bottom and there was a
concentration of Galatheid crabs on the boards. Most
of them fell off when the panels were pulled out of the
mud but some had entered the mesh bags covering
the panels and had grown so large they couldn’t get
out. They were obviously getting enough food from
the animals in the severely bored wood to grow to
fully adult size. She also found that the fecal pellets in
the burrows of dead Xylophaga were full of worms
which were undoubtedly feeding on this material.
Whether the crabs were feeding on the worms or on
the wood borers will have to await examination of the
gut contents of the crabs brought up with the wood.
However, it looks as though wood is the basis of a
food chain with the borers being the primary convert-
ers.

A board after 104 days immersion showing the effects of borer infestation.

MINA BRAND
RETIRES

Mina Brand’s long years of intel-
ligently dedicated library service
to all the MCZ staff and students
was gratefully acknowledged at a
reception in her honor on February
7. The Romer Library was an ap-
propriate setting for the festivities
since Mina will continue serving
as librarian, on a part-time basis,
for this newly-renovated library.

Mina has spent her whole life
with books. Before coming to the
MCZ in 1967, she and her late hus-
band worked at Schoenhof’s
Foreign Books for 25 years and be-
fore emigrating to the United
States in 1940, they were bibliog-
raphers of rare books in Vienna.

As is usually the case, the entire
MCZ community’s high regard for ‘ | a)
Mina is fully reciprocated. She
says she has greatly enjoyed work-

=

ing here and that helping staff and —s
Professor Stephen J. Gould (assisted by his son Jesse) expresses everyone's
gratitude to Mina Brand (right) while Librarian Ruth E. Hill, Library Assistant
Kathleen A. Guilday, and Cataloguer Anne Kern look on.

students gives her great satisfac-
tion. “I have found the staff and
the books to be most congenial !’’

Moret

TWO VISITING ALEXANDER AGASSIZ LECTURERS

The MCZ’s corridors have their welcome Spring

leavening of foreign accents again this year thanks to
the foresight of Alexander Agassiz who provided for
Visiting Lectureships to insure a lively interchange
with other institutions. Professor Anthony Hallam
from Oxford University and Professor Luitfried V.
Salvini-Plawen from the University of Vienna are
bringing new perspectives to the MCZ’s formal and
informal gatherings.

Professor Anthony Hallam

Professor Hallam’s work has focussed on the in-
terpretation of the environment of the Jurassic period
(200-130 million years ago). ‘The climate was far more
equable” he points out. Much of the world was like
the Bahamas is today. Those huge reptiles couldn’t
have survived today’s temperature extremes. Their
fossil remains are found even at the poles.”

Professor Hallam gave three lectures on “Investiga-
tion into the ecology and evolution of Jurassic marine
invertebrate faunas” which included a talk on ‘The
Evolution of Gryphaea’’. How this Jurassic oyster
evolved, now the accepted view, was one of Professor
Hallam’s early contributions. His continuing interest
on the history of continental drift (the subject of an
article he authored in February’s Scientific American)
and his work on the geographic distribution of fossils

relation to migrating continents are well known

and widely respected.

Professor Luitfried Salvini-Plawen

Professor Salvini-Plawen acknowledges that study-
ing marine invertebrates in coast-less Austria might
appear to present difficulties. However, he is fortu-
nately able to combine his research in the Adriatic and
Tyrrhenic Seas with vacations — the ideal of every
field biologist!

Professor Salvini-Plawen is studying the
phylogeny and morphology of invertebrates and is
particularly concerned with a very primitive group of
shell-less molluscs and their relationship to other in-
vertebrate groups. During his MCZ stay he is working
with Professor Ernst Mayr whom he met at a sym-
posium in Monaco.

He gave two lectures, one on primary shell-less
molluscs and the other on the evolution of eyes in
molluscs, as well as lectures to Professor Woollacott’s
Bio. 123 ‘Comparative Analysis of Invertebrate De-
velopment”, a lecture at the Marine Science Institute
of Northeastern University at Nahant, and a talk at
Wood’s Hole.

Anthony Hallam Luitfried Salvini-Plawen

BIRD WATCHING IS EASY AT THE MCZ

These four birds, which are among the exhibits on the third

floor, are:

a) Bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), United States,
Canada

b) Scarlet ibis (Eudocimus ruber), Northeastern South
America

c) Ross’ gull (Rhodostethia rosea), Northeast Siberia and
Plum Island

d) Australian spoonbill (Platibis flavipes), Australia

d Photos by George S. Sheng

The MCZ Newsletter is published three times a year by the
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Ox-
ford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138; A. W.

Crompton, Director.
Editor: Gabrielle Dundon
Photographers: A. H. Coleman
Paula Chandoha

FROM THE
FIELD STATION

By William K. Newbury

Where do my dues go? We all ask that question
about every organization we join. What about the
MCZ? With a million dollar budget what difference
does my $25 make?

Last Fall the Friends of the MCZ allocated $1000 to
help support activities at the Field Station. We de-
cided to use portions of this total in each of three
areas. Immediately we were able to publish three of
the Field Station’s Guides to Resources: List of Mam-
mals of Eastern Massachusetts, Introductory Notes,
and Solitary Wasps of the Concord Field Station Area.
These reports which sat completed but unpublished
for several months are now eagerly used by students
and amateur naturalists working in the Woods.

A major frustration has been our inability to pro-
vide accurate meteorological data on the conditions

FRIEND-LY NEWS

Nature Preserved Course Well Received

A group of thirteen curious people learned a con-
siderable amount about how the MCZ’s departments
collect, prepare, preserve, catalog, and store speci-
mens on seven Saturday mornings this Spring. Mem-
bers of the Departments of Birds, Vertebrate Paleon-
tology, Mollusks, Fish, Reptiles and Amphibians, In-
sects, Mammals, and Invertebrates participated in
this new course which is part of the Friends Public
Programs — designed to make parts of the MCZ more
accessible to interested amateurs.

Trip Committee Formed and Functioning

The first meeting of the Friends Trip Committee on
April 3 resulted in the formation of several sub-
groups which will research various future Friends
trips. Inspired by Professor Edward O. Wilson and
the allure of inexpensive accessibility to a host of
natural history, the Florida Keys contingent got off to
a Vigorous start. Other current considerations are the
Galapagos, East Africa, Colombia and fossil hunting
in the western United States. The next trip will be
announced as soon as the results are in.

The Friends 1976 Baja boat is filling up and the trip
promises to defy the platitude that it is impossible to
repeat such a good thing.

right at the Field Station. The Friends’ funds enabled
us to purchase a seven-day temperature recorder and
a rain gauge. With these instruments in hand we were
able to cajole the Audubon Society into loaning us one
of their instrument shelters. Thus, future research will
have the added benefit of precise microclimatic ob-
servations.

With the remainder of the funds we have been able
to construct a 100 meter grid system throughout the
Estabrook Woods. This system will help researchers
identify and establish uniform study areas and insure
that they will be able to return to those exact plots.
With the help of two local residents we were able to
lay out the 300 stake grid during February. Though at
times the working conditions were severe, we were
compensated by the opportunity to watch a por-
cupine debark a towering white pine or see a goshawk
sweep in front of the transit while trying to line up the
next mark.

Though the $1000 seemed to disappear quickly, this
investment will have an important multiplier effect
for teaching and research. In coming years students
and faculty working at the Field Station will have
more complete background information, better
weather data and more accurate study plots than their
predecessors had. Your continued support will make
it even better in the future.

lurid Holldobler and her exhibit of ants and other drawings and paintings transformed the Agassiz Room following Bert
Holldobler's lecture, ‘The Language of Ants’ to the Friends of the MCZ on April 3. The exhibit remained open to the

public for another week.