Pyenson Lab

Cerro Ballena in this month's Smithsonian magazine

Shifting gears from anatomical fieldwork in Iceland to paleontological fieldwork in Chile: this month's Smithsonian magazine features a terrific article by Abigail Tucker in the "Around the Mall" section about our work with the laser cowboys at Cerro Ballena. To the cetologically inclined, Abby's title in the print and eMag version (below) has multiple meanings: from "save the whales," a 1970's era bumper sticker-ready slogan; and whalebone is the 19th century term for the keratinous baleen plates that hang from the roof of the mouth in mysticetes. It also refers, plainly, to the bones belonging to fossil whales that Adam Metallo and Vince Rossi (the laser cowboys from Smithsonian's 3D Digitization Program) scanned in the Atacama desert. Read the article to find out more, and then dig deeper in this blog's archives on our work at Cerro Ballena.

 

Atacama whales on the iPad. (Photo: J. A. Goldbogen)

Found artifact: Cerro Ballena luggage tag

Discovered today, as part of the scan-a-thon in Paleobiology. Curious readers can decode the relevance of this artifact, using airport codes and the travel dates. A little bit of 2011 nostalgia from a successful field expedition. 

Scanning the walrus whale

This week, the laser scanning cowboys from Smithsonian's 3D Digitization Program Office are in the Department of Paleobiology at NMNH to scan the type specimen of Odobenocetops -- the walrus whale -- as part of a pilot initiative to generate 3D datasets of iconic Smithsonian objects. Using the same equipment we brought to scan the whale skeletons at Cerro Ballena in Chile (with Atacama dust still covering the equipment cases), Vince and Adam have returned to the exact same spot where I first met them some 6 months ago. More soon.

A glimpse of what we're up to with the type specimen of Odobenocetops. The specimen is safely located on sandbags; the close up shows the business end of the FaroArm, in Vince's hand, with a on-the-fly rendering on the laptop in the background. (Photo: @sarahtsulick)

 

Part of the SI 3D Digi guys' bag of tricks. With a painted cast of the specimen standing in, Adam set up LED lighting for evenly lighted 2D digitial images, which will be used for photogrammetry later. (Photo: NDP using HDR Android app).

Media: Ballenas en el camino

I'm happy to share a wonderful promotional video, made by one of our NGS team collaborators, Rodrigo Terreros, and his videography team in the Atacama Region of Chile. The video features the work our team did last fall at the Cerro Ballena site, as part of an initiative to garner further support from Chile's cultural ministry. Spanish language only (no English subtitles; sorry, gringos, but the title of the short is, appropriately, "Whales in the road").

We hope to roll out more video and media later this year, as some of the findings from our work get published. Until then, this is one of the teaser trailers!

 

Just in time for the holidays...

Fossil baleen whale skeletons, from Cerro Ballena, printed at ~1/16th scale. These print versions of the 3D digital data, with the 2D photo information mapped on top. Many thanks to the laser cowboys over at OCIO's 3D Digitization Program Office. (Thanks for running them over from Landover, Adam).

I wish I could say "collect all 6," but they're not on sale at the NMNH gift store (yet). Stay tuned, we hope to print a few more Cerro Ballena skeletons in miniature, in the future. It is immensely satisfying to see the arc of our work from planning and logistics, to execution in the field with data collection, to a proof-of-concept with post-processing. 

Specimen field number B31, from Cerro Ballena, Adam Metallo's hand for scale. Note the 30 cm scale bars and color swatch. (Photo: A. Metallo).

Specimen field number B34, from Cerro Ballena, Adam Metallo's hand for scale. Note the 30 cm scale bars. (Photo: A. Metallo).

Media: Cerro Ballena gallery on National Geographic News

Just out today is a wonderful gallery of images posted on NG News, with short bits of descriptive text written by Angela Botzer. 

Check out the images (some of which appeared first on this blog) at National Geographic's Daily News.

Media: more Cerro Ballena in the news

A screen cap from publicity in a recent issue of Der Spiegel, Germany's top newspaper:

Return to Chile: More time-lapse releases today!

Today we're coordinating a special release of two more of Adam's amazing time-lapses, but this time we're doing it internationally. In this morning's Zoology class at the University of Guelph, Professor Douglas S. Fudge will share these time-lapses with his class; we will then make them publicly available on Youtube afterwards.

Check back! I'll post them on the lab blog once the class ends, early this afternoon! (Teaser image below):

Update 12:35 pm: Videos are now public! See below.

The missing third time-lapse from our first first four time-lapse videos:

 

And a gorgeous day-night-day time-lapse of the entire site. 

Media: Cerro Ballena in the news

If you're reading this blog, chances are that you were sent here by one of the many news articles about our collaborative work at the Cerro Ballena site in Chile. Last week, both Science and Nature reported on our work in their respective online news editions, with interviews live from the field. These articles complemented AP's excellent reporting on the site by Ian James, picked by venues such as the New York Times, NPR, and The Atlantic (which also featured one of Adam Metallo's snazzy time-lapse videos).

Today,  Nature's printed edition featured an action shot of team member Vincent Rossi (Smithsonian 3D Digitization Program staff member) scanning one of the more complete fossil baleen whales from Cerro Ballena, featured extensively on this blog (and in the media) last week. Congratulations, Vince! Getting your name printed in Nature is a rare thing; getting your mug there -- sublime!

Return to Chile: Dispatch 10

It is our last day at the field site, and we depart today to return home -- for those of us who aren't local, that includes Santiago and Washington, D.C. We've collected some terrific data, and will continue to post more videos and photos as they are available. Please check back soon -- we will be uploading more time-lapse videos very soon.

Our whole team wishes to express sincere thanks to the people and city of Caldera. Lastly, we are indebted to all of the staff (John, Sergio, Sebastian, William) who work at the site under the direction of Mario Suarez at the Museo Paleontologico de Caldera -- their efforts and skills were indispensible to the success of this research. 

This email was sent from the Copiapo Airport, where we were fortunate to meet Rodrigo Villaciencio P., the Governor of Chañaral, the neighboring province to Caldera. Over some well deserved beverages and sandwiches, we showed him video, photos and news links from our work at Cerro Ballena. We're sad to go, but feel confident that we've collected the basic data to form the foundation for much more exciting work in the future. 

The 2011 Cerro Ballena field team. Left to right: Juan Carlos (site guard); Mario Suarez (MPC); Vincent Rossi (SI 3D Digitization); Rodrigo Terrenos (cinematographer); Adam Metallo (SI 3D Digitization); John Vega (MPC); Carolina Gutstein (SI, NMHH & Universidad de Chile); David Rubilar Rogers (MNHN Chile); Nick Pyenson (SI, NMNH). (Photo by Jorge Arevalo)