Pyenson Lab

Dispatch 3.5: The road to Puerto Aldea -- seagrasses off Chile

Yesterday, we left Santiago mid-morning, and took the Panamerican highway north. We crossed scrubland and farms distributed on the outlying areas of Santiago. Along the road, we picked up some much needed fruit, by the sackful. There's nothing like hucking 20 lbs of citrus into the field truck. And the avocados (palta) are just perfect.

Picking up fruit along the road, CSG and NDP. (Photo JF Parham)

Based on a good tip from lab member Jorge Velez-Juarbe, we decided to take a short detour on our trip north to the small town of Puerto Aldea, about 50 km south of Coquimbo. Being naturalists, we were excited to hear that the Chilean coast, in some isolated pockets, harbors seagrasses. These communities, which are maximally rich in the Gulf of Mexico, are distributed around the world in temperate and tropical latitudes -- but they are nearly absent from the entirety of the Pacific coast of South America. Seagrasses are interesting for a variety of reasons to marine vertebrate enthusiasts (i.e., they are consumed by turtles and sirenians); their fossil record is also notoriously sparse. It is also likely the seagrass communities supported many extinct marine mammals, such as desmostylians and aquatic sloths, the latter of which were recently recovered from the Bahia Inglesa Formation.

Along the road to Puerto Aldera. (Photo JF Parham) 

Over Gchat, Jorge quickly reminded me about the supposed lost seagrass tribe of the Pacific coast of Chile, and after some quick research, we discovered that it wasn't too much of a detour from our planned stop in La Serena. The drive was mostly on dirt road, but the views were spectacular -- completely reminscent of the northern California coast on which Jim and I had spent much of our grad school years. Once we got into the small town (passing by outcrops of the late Miocene Coquimbo Formation, along the way), we flagged down a fisherman -- and to our delight, seagrasses were right on the shore.

A view of the Miocene; seagrasses at Puerto Aldera, Chile. (Photo JF Parham) 

The little we know about these seagrasses here (and also at Concepción, according to the fisherman), suggests that they are a relict from a previous distribution that was much more widespread. We also know that between the end of the Miocene and through the Pliocene, the coast of Chile and Peru was inhabited by several marine herbivores, indicating that the seagrass communities to support them were also around at the time. The current thinking is that the late Neogene shore of Chile and Peru didn't look too different from today (i.e., adjacent to an arid desert). So, it's not too much of a stretch to say that this is a view of the Miocene -- sans the bony-toothed birds and aquatic sloths. 

 Seagrass, roots and all. (Eat your heart out, Jorge). (Photo NDP) 

Dispatch 4: On the road to Caldera, from La Serena

We're on the road from La Serena to Caldera, the latter being our field site. 

Left to right: Jim Parham (driving), Carolina Gutstein, and NDP. (Photo by NDP)

We've transistioned from the matorral, semi-arid vegetation north of Santiago, which looks a lot like Big Sur of California, to the full blown Atacama desert. We should arrive at Caldera this evening, eager to meet up with our colleagues stationed there. 

Programming note: I still need to backdate our sidetrip from yesterday to Puerto Aldea, a rare modern seagrass locality! More on that this evening.

Correction 29 Sept 11: Image reflected from original. NDP was not in the driver's seat at the time; it was a weird Mac-laptop-camera thing.

Dispatch 3: Santiago and onwards to the Atacama

We arrived back at Santiago on Sunday night, pretty beat from the long drive across the continental divide. But we were excited to get back and begin the next stage of our work.

Inside the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, in Quinta Normal, Santiago, Chile. MNHN is currently closed to the public following repairs from the earthquake in 2010 (Photo by JF Parham)

On Monday morning, Jim Parham (University of Alabama Museums), one of my longtime collaborators and one of the project's Co-PIs, arrived from North America. We picked him up from the airport, and started crossing off items from our long to-do list before we leave for the Atacama, where we will begin work on our research project to understand the Bahia Inglesa Formation bonebed, sponsored in part by the National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian Institution. 

David with holotype skeleton of Pelagornis chilensis (Photo by NGM)

One of the more important items was checking in with MNHN in Quinta Normal, a short drive away from Nunoa, where we are staying. At MNHN, we met with the Director, Claudio Gomez, and reacquainted ourselves with the paleontological collections, which house a significant portion of the fossil material from the Bahia Inglesa Formation near Caldera. One of the more significant fossils housed at MNHN is the holotype of Pelagornis chilensis, which holds the distinction among flying birds as having the largest wingspan. Gerald Mayr and project Co-PI David Rubilar-Rogers described this taxon in 2010 (publication here), and it was featured on the journal's cover. Its completeness and preservation are taphonomically unusual features for a fossil recovered from the surface of a hardground surface. Check out more pictures of P. chilensis here.

NDP holding the holotype rostrum of Pelagornis chilensis, teeth up, next to Carlos Anzures' reconstructions in David's office at MNHN (Photo by JF Parham)

Tomorrow we head north. More from the road. (We will have WiFi with us).

Blog: SEAinc

While some of us are way down south working on fossils, others are offshore.

Risso's dolphin, or Grampus griseus (Photo: A. Friedlander, taken under NMFS permit #14534)

Jeremy Goldbogen, longtime friend of the show, is aboard R/V Truth off the coast of southern California, tagging cetaceans as part of his research on the kinematics and ecology of wild cetaceans for his postdoctoral work with Cascadia Research Collective. 

Read more about it on the SEA, Inc. blog.

Dispatch 2: Over the Andes, to Argentina, and then back.

Whew.

I arrived in Santiago Monday morning, and spent the day getting catching up with my colleagues Carolina Gutstein, David Rubilar-Rogers, and Roberto E. Yury Yáñez. It was a national holiday in Chile, and we spent most of the day eating BBQ meat and crowd-watching at a big city park downtown. Our 4x4 rental worked nicely, for the most part (see below, though).

The next day we took off early in the morning for San Juan, Argentina, which requires making a high-elevation pass over the Andes, crossing into Argentina. After getting mired in some rush hour madness and last minute errands, we managed to escape the city limits, and start the picturesque, winding path to the border. Our truck carried 5 people to San Juan: Carolina, David, Anita Valenzuela and Constaza Figueroa Bravo, the latter two being Carolina's undergraduate students. The route was beautiful and a bit a challenging: it's mostly 2-lane highway shared with trucks carrying goods from one side of South America to the other because this is the only road across for a large part of the continent. Towards the border, we meandered 23 switchbacks uphill, each turn more eye-popping than the other. Good thing the geology was distracting.

The Andes are younger that their counterparts in North America, which in part explains the sharpness of their relief. The tremendous uplift in this area, driven by plate tectonics, has also brought terrestrial rock sequences to a high elevation: we saw clear fluvial redbeds just at the foot of Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Americas.

The Andes, big trucks and hairpin roads. (Photo NDP)

We were held up at the Chile-Argentina border for an hour because of 1 missing document (not our fault; the 4X4 rental company gave us a facsimile, but not the original of it); eventually, the border guards relented, and we were back on track for San Juan. As jagged peaks gave way to canyons and streambeds, we saw condors, aspens and a lot of great scenery.

David, Anita, Coni and Carolina, at the base of Aconcagua, Argentina (Photo NDP)

 San Juan is a dry, dusty desert town, but the meeting has been great: reconnecting with colleagues from North America as well as meeting new ones from all parts of Gondwana. Chile was well represented, although it the meeting was mostly dominated by Brasilian and Argentine paleontologists. For my part, it's been really nice to see Peruvians colleagues, and coordinate large meals for F2M2s (Friends of Fossil Marine Mammals). The food, service and coffees in San Juan has been terrific, and the evening social hours at the museum have been great fun. There's nothing like free Argentine wine and dancing until 5 am.

Paleocetological workers always hang out in pods. NDP, Monica Buono (Ph.D. student, CENPAT-CONICET) and Carolina at the IV CLVP banquet (Photo MR Buono)

Now we've said our goodbyes, and this morning we're packing up to return to Santiago to plan the next phases of our trip.

After another long border wait at the roof of the Andes, we were ready to get back on the road, in our beastly Dimax diesel. (Photo NDP)

 

Looking towards the Pacific, heading back to Santiago, along snow covered roads. (Photo NDP)

Update 27 Sept 11: links, photos and a few details added. 

Dispatch 1: Walking on diatoms, eating Cuban food, at MIA

Previously, I had mentioned in a fall teaser that the Pyenson Lab is off to South America this fall. (Well, NDP is; Jorge has plenty to do in DC).

I'm sitting in the Miami Int'l Airport, connecting to Santiago, Chile, where we'll be starting this trip. First, we'll pack up and go to San Juan, Argentina, for the Latin American vertebrate paleontology congress. Then, we'll return over the Andes, regroup in Santiago, and drive north to Caldera, the town that sits in the middle of our fieldwork area. With funding from the National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian Institution, we're investigating the taphonomy and formation of the Bahia Inglesa bonebed, which is preserved in ~late Miocene marine rocks around Caldera. We're especially interested in what this bonebed tells us about marine communities from this time, and it compares with the rich diversity of marine vertebrates that thrive in the Humboldt Current today.

But, here in MIA, I'm reconnecting with a veritable institution: La Carreta, an amazing Cuban restaurant that serves empanadas non-pareil and El Presidente beer. Consider both the fuel for paleontologists. (Especially in the Carribean...baiting Jorge). Of course, it's only really relevant because the hallway floors in the D terminal are adorned with large-scale bronze microscopy sections of diatoms (see below).

Links to follow once I'm in Santiago.

 Correction 19 Sep 11: Title and links updated, and image rotated.

 

Publication: Uhen et al. 2011

Today, we announce on Smithsonian's Ocean Portal the publication of the oldest fossil whales from South America, published in the September issue of the Journal of Paleontology. This publication represents the result of several years of work with collaborators in Peru and the United States, including researchers at the  Berkeley Geochronology Center and the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

Read more on my Ocean Portal blog, and be sure at catch the gorgeous custom artwork by Carl Buell, featured below.

Eocene whales and penguins off the coast of Peru; artwork by Carl Buell.

Top to bottom: Icadyptes salasiPerudyptes devriesi, named after our collaborator Thomas DeVries; an unnamed protocetid; Ocucajea picklingi; and Supayacetus muizoni. 

Correction 15 Sept 2011: We erred in our original identification of the stem penguin flying alongside our charismatic Peruvian archaeocetes. Friend of the show Dan Ksepka, over at March of the Fossil Penguins, noted to me that

"...the species in the artwork appears to be Icadyptes, not Perudyptes based on the size and the color patterns (which of course we don't know, but Kristin [Lamm] chose the reddish collar for Icadyptes and greenish epaulets for Perudyptes).  It doesn't bother me, but I thought I'd let you know just in case."

Consider your pinguinos vindicated, Dan!

Repost: Scientists from Puerto Rico

Jorge's certainly in the news these days. Reportedly much to his surprise, El Nuevo Periodico de Caguas is running a profile of Jorge ("Scientists here"). Credit for the story goes to the good folks at CiencaPR, an organization supporting scientists from and in Puerto Rico.

Check it out here (may take time to load). 

Of hurricanes, fossils and seagrasses

I encourage readers of this blog to go over to Caribbean Paleobiology, a blog run by lab member Jorge Velez-Juarbe. His most recent post describes returning to his native Puerto Rico, prospecting for fossils in the mysterious Oligocene, and a brief dip in a seagrass bed.

 

Top, a seagrass bed (dominated by Thalassia); below, bone from the early Oligocene San Sebastian Formation, both from Puerto Rico (Photos JVJ, arr. NDP)

 I hope that next time we get to hear more about what seagrass rhizomes taste like -- if only manatees could talk. Did I mention that he was doing fieldwork when Irene was just a tropical storm? Dedication.

Congratulations Jorge!

A herd of Hydrodamalis cuestae amidst late Miocene kelp forests (Painting by Wm. Stout, courtesy of SDNHM Fossil Mysteries exhibit)

A big, bristly applause for Jorge Velez-Juarbe (lab member, NMNH Research Student and Ph. D. Candidate at Howard University). He is the recipient of a prestigious and highly competitive NMNH predoctoral fellowship, which officially starts today! Jorge's fellowship will assist him with the final phases of his dissertation, which focuses on the evolution of sirenians in the West Atlantic and Caribbean over the past ~30 million years.