TOXIC WASTE THREATENS U.S. WATER p.

32

®
SCIENCE THAT MATTERS
MARCH/APRIL 2022

EXCLUSIVE!

HIDDEN
DINOSAUR
TREASURES
SEE THE WORLD'S
MOST UNUSUAL
FOSSILS p.42

PLUS
DIY SCIENCE: COOL
PROJECTS FOR ALL AGES p.52

WHY HUMANS
NEED HUGS p.14
JOIN A SCIENTIST’S
UNDERSEA ADVENTURE p.22

BONUS
ONLINE
CONTENT
CODE p. 3
Hope has a home:
The University of Michigan
Prechter Bipolar Research Program
What causes bipolar disorder — the dangerous manic highs and devastating lows?
Our scientists and research participants are committed to finding answers and
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CONTENTS
MARCH/APRIL 2022 VOL. 43, NO. 2
26 From Combat to
Conservation
After half a century of
armed conflict, Colombia’s
ex-guerillas have no war
COVER IMAGE: MARK PETERMAN. THIS PAGE FROM TOP: THEBIGMK/SHUTTERSTOCK;
to fight. Their new mission:
preserving biodiversity in
the jungles they occupied
for decades.
ADDISON NUGENT
32 Spilling Over
WILFREDO RODRIGUEZ/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
For decades, Canadian
waterways have carried toxic
mine waste through natural
ecosystems, into tribal lands
and across the U.S. border. A
coalition of Indigenous leaders
and scientists are now calling
for international protection.
STEPHEN ROBERT MILLER
Website access code:
DSD2204
Enter this code at www.
DiscoverMagazine.com/code
to gain access to exclusive
subscriber content.
p. 32
42 Waiting to Hatch
Self-taught fossil specialist
Terry Manning uncovered his
first dinosaur embryo from an
ancient egg in 1993. More than
30 embryos and nearly three
decades later, hardly anyone
has laid eyes or hands on his
rare specimens.
TIMOTHY PRATT
52 Science by the People
Darlene Cavalier has boosted
some of the biggest citizen
science projects in the nation
— and wants everyone to
join in.
JENNIFER WALTER p. 26
MAR/ APR 2 02 2 . D IS C OV ER 3
 CONTENTS

p. 62

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS

6 58
EDITOR’S NOTE HISTORY LESSONS
Science for All An Eye for Ants
Each of us can participate in vital As the Harvard Museum of

FROM TOP: NASA/ESA/Z. LEVAY AND R. VAN DER MAREL/STSCI/T. HALLAS/AND A. MELLINGER; RICK FRIEDMAN/GETTY
research. Comparative Zoology’s ant
collection rapidly grew in the
8 1950s, one woman worked behind
INBOX the scenes with extraordinary
Our readers contemplate memories, speed, accuracy and artistry.
p. 58 music and more. Today’s researchers are still
reaping the benefits.
18 SHOSHANA AKABAS
VITAL SIGNS
Neonatal Nightmare 62
Seizures in infants can signal OUT THERE
serious trouble, but she looked Milky Way’s Crash-Bang
perfectly healthy otherwise. Neighborhood
HOT SCIENCE JULIA MICHIE BRUCKNER The fate of our galaxy — and many
p. 9 others — is played out in a slow but
Learn about mystery
22 surprisingly dramatic cosmic dance.
PLANET EARTH NOLA TAYLOR TILLMAN
desert markings,
In Search of the
cryonically frozen
bodies, the origins
Nudibranch 66
Follow one scientist’s journey to #SCIENCEIRL
of hugging, space
rediscover a mysterious underwater Freshwater Treasure
weather forecasting,
world — and to find an elusive Diving into history in Lake
and more! sea creature. Michigan’s new marine sanctuary.
ANDRIA GREENE TIMOTHY MEINCH
 EDITOR’S NOTE
BY STEPHEN C. GEORGE
®
M AG A ZINE

Science for All STEPHEN C. GEORGE Editorial Director

ELIZABETH M. WEBER Design Director

EDITORIAL
I’m excited for you to meet some TIMOTHY MEINCH Features Editor
ELISA R. NECKAR Production Editor
special people in this issue. For starters, our ALEX ORLANDO Associate Editor
cover story introduces you to a self-taught MOLLY GLICK Assistant Editor
MARISA SLOAN Assistant Editor
fossil specialist who has amassed one of
the most amazing fossil collections that most people Contributing Editors
— including more than a few envious scientists — have BRIDGET ALEX, TIM FOLGER,
JONATHON KEATS, LINDA MARSA,
never seen. But you can, starting on page 42. KENNETH MILLER, STEVE NADIS,
From there, we travel to the Colombian Amazon JULIE REHMEYER,
DARLENE CAVALIER (special projects)
rainforest, where former combatants in a decades-long
guerilla war have forsaken armed conflict in favor of a DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
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new objective: protecting endangered plant and animal species in the jungle that once MONICA CULL Assistant Digital Editor
sheltered them. Flip to page 26 to learn more about their efforts.
Contributors
Meanwhile, in western Canada, Indigenous leaders are fighting for protection of a BRIDGET ALEX, CODY COTTIER,
different kind, as lax mining operations threaten the ecosystems of Native lands in both ERIK KLEMETTI, JOSHUA RAPP LEARN,
British Columbia and some U.S. states. Find out more about their struggle on page 32. SCISTARTER, TOM YULSMAN

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 INBOX

THE SCIENCE OF NDE S

(“Can Science Explain Near-Death Experiences?”, Sept/Oct 2021)
Your recent article opened with an
insightful interview of Dr. Bruce
Greyson, who has spent more than
four decades seeking a deeper scientific
understanding of consciousness through
the lens of near-death experiences
(NDEs). Dr. Greyson and two medical
colleagues spent two years extensively
reviewing the 600-page medical record
of my 2008 illness. They concluded that
my memories during a seven-day coma
could not be construed as hallucina-
tion, dream or delirium because of the
extensive damage to my neocortex.
Two professionals selected [in
the article] to comment on my case
offered no comparable scientific
opinion. Kevin Nelson’s REM intru-
sion hypothesis explaining NDEs as a
dream phenomenon has been broadly
criticized. Given the extensive dam-
age to my neocortex, my medically
documented case is a direct refutation
of Nelson’s arguments.
Philosopher John Martin Fischer was
misguided by the same Esquire journal-
ist’s attempt to discredit a sincere
book that I never expected would
sell millions of copies. Fischer’s book
summarizing his $5M John-Templeton-
funded project studying NDEs made
erroneous conclusions based on
misquoting the Dalai Lama about my
case, all errors sourced from the Esquire
article. True scientific study of NDEs
offers tremendous potential for more
deeply understanding the fundamental
nature of reality.
Eben Alexander III, M.D.

MEMORIES AT
YOUR FINGERTIPS
(“Cinema Amnesia,”
July/Aug 2021)
The “Cinema Amnesia”
article made me think of my
own experience with knit-
ting while watching a movie
or sitting in a meeting.
Several years ago, I started
knitting during church
services, and have noticed
that I remember the sermon
better [when knitting] than
when I don’t knit. I will also
sometimes remember what
project was on my needles
the next time I read that
socks for Mom when
we watched that.” It’s an
unconventional way to
build neural pathways, but
a great argument in favor of
learning to knit.
Gabrielle Hastings
MUSICAL ORIGINS:
SOUND OFF
(“Where Did Music Come
From?”, July/Aug 2021)
In response to “Where
Did Music Come From?”,
I was thinking about this
topic recently when a song
I hadn’t heard in years
(actually, at least a couple of
decades) played on the radio
and I immediately remem-
bered the words to the
song. To my non-scientific
mind, this seems to imply
that there’s a biological
adaptation to music, or even
that music/vibrations are
an essential part of who we
are. I would enjoy hearing
the “auditory cheesecake”
Music Come From?”
reminded me of something
I tell people, whether they
want to hear it or not: A
highly intelligent and
advanced race of extrater-
restrials, after observing
Earth for many decades,
would decide they would
never understand music,
laughter and baseball.
Alan Dyer
In “Where Did Music
Come From?”, there is a
paragraph which states (in
part): “These days music
is a profession, but even
‘ordinary mortals who never
had a music lesson have
implicit knowledge of the
structure of the music of
their culture,’ says Sandra
Trehub, a psychologist at the
University of Toronto. They
may not know an arpeggio
from an interval, but they
can keep a beat, copy a
pitch and move their bodies
it, and who is a hazard to
everyone else on a dance
floor, I take great umbrage
at being excluded from the
class of “ordinary mortals.”
Edwin J. Bailen
IN DEFENSE
OF INTROVERTS
(“Not Set in Stone,”
Sept/Oct 2021)
Author Marta Zaraska
describes a “general pattern
of change [that is] not for the
better” in the personalities
of older adults. Specifically,
she identifies declines in
extroversion, agreeableness,
and conscientiousness.
A decline in agreeable-
ness? Not for the better. A
decline in conscientious-
ness? Also not for the better.
But extroversion? The old
trope that extroversion is
good and introversion is
bad has been thoroughly
debunked, notably by
Susan Cain in her excellent
KELLIE JAEGER/DISCOVER

scripture passage. It works
for movies, too; I will hear
an actor’s voice, and think,
“Oh, she was in such-and-
such; I was making cabled
followers’ response to this
particular phenomenon.
Nancy Dietrich
The article “Where Did
to sound.”
As someone with abso-
lutely no sense of rhythm,
who cannot sing a note on
key if my life depended on
book Quiet: The Power
of Introverts in a World
That Can’t Stop Talking —
suggested reading.
Ann Birner

8 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
 HOT SCIENCE

T H E L AT E S T N E W S A N D NOT E S
CRYONICS 101 • SELF-DRIVING DRONE • ORIGINS OF HUGGING • WEATHER FORECASTS IN SPACE

POLKA-DOTTED DESERT
The origins of this desert grassland phenomenon — equally spaced 10- to-50-foot barren patches called fairy circles —
have long confounded scientists. Millions of these circular spots stretch across the fringes of certain deserts in western
Australia, as well as Namibia (pictured above) and other parts of southern Africa. In 1979, South African botanist G.K.
Theron suggested that dying shrubs may poison the sandy soil and curb grass growth, leaving the circles behind. But
this theory doesn’t hold water, according to researchers from Germany’s University of Göttingen. The team visited
four decomposed shrub locations once observed by Theron and failed to find fairy circles there. A more likely cause?
Certain desert grasses build a perfect circle to maximize their water consumption and stave off competition, the
scientists suggest, in a clever feat of natural engineering. — MOLLY GLICK; IMAGE BY S. GETZIN/UNIVERSITY OF GÖTTINGEN

MAR /APR 2 02 2 . D I S C OV ER 9
 HOT SCIENCE

WILL CRYONICALLY FROZEN BODIES

EVER BE BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE?
CRYONICISTS HOPE THAT MODERN TECHNOLOGY WILL ONE DAY
BRING THEM BACK FROM THE DEAD. BUT HOW REALISTIC IS A
SECOND LIFE AFTER A DEEP FREEZE?

One of the things that in a stable, preserved state until the

makes us human is our necessary medical technology arrives.
awareness of our own Even to its staunchest adherents, cryon-
mortality. Yet for nearly as ics isn’t a guarantee; Kowalski describes
long as we’ve known that we’ll one day it as “an ambulance ride to a future
die, we’ve wondered about the possibil- hospital that may or may not exist.”
ity of waking back up. Stories about When someone who’s made arrange-
resurrection and immortality are found ments to have their remains cryonically
in countless religions and myths, and preserved is declared dead, a medical
in recent years, many of these stories team cools the body with ice water and
have hinged on the idea of cryonic keeps the body’s tissues oxygenated
preservation: freezing a body and then using CPR and oxygen masks. The ice-
reanimating it in the future. If it worked cold body is put in a hermetically sealed
for Han Solo, Captain America, and container and flown to the cryonics
Fry from Futurama, why can’t it work facility.
for us? There, the team puts the body on a
“[For] most cryonicists, there’s two machine similar to a heart-lung bypass,
things you’ll find: We are sci-fi lovers, circulating the blood and maintaining
obviously. We’re also optimists,” says oxygenation. They pump in a vitrifica-
Dennis Kowalski, the president of the tion solution that works like antifreeze
Cryonics Institute, a non-profit based to keep the body’s tissues from turning
in Michigan and one of a handful of to ice crystals, in hopes of minimizing
companies worldwide offering its line structural damage. Then, they slowly
CRYONICS FACILITIES use
of services. cool the body to minus 320 degrees F
tanks of liquid nitrogen to
That optimism is important, because in a liquid nitrogen vapor chamber. keep bodies in a stable,
cryonic preservation and reanimation Once it’s cold enough, the body is preserved state.
is “100 percent not possible today,” transferred to a Thermos-like tank of
according to Kowalski. But, he says, liquid nitrogen, where it’ll stay for the
“we certainly have more to learn and to foreseeable future.
discover in the future.” The bodies will wait in their second go-round. No one knows
Kowalski, a former these tanks until medical what that technology might look like;
paramedic, cites modern technology (hopefully) Kowalski’s best guess is tissue engineer-
life-saving interventions “[For] most is able to revive them. ing and molecular nanotechnology
like cardiac defibrillation cryonicists, Kowalski says there are that will be able to repair and replace
and CPR as examples of there’s two three challenges for this damaged tissues.
how science can drasti- future tech to overcome: Kowalski and his fellow proponents
things you’ll
DAN/CC BY-SA 4.0/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

cally advance.
Based on that premise
— that someday, science
will find solutions to
biological damage that’s
irreparable by today’s
standards — the aim of
cryonics is to keep bodies
It’ll need to repair the of cryonics recognize that it’s a tall
find: We are damage done by freezing, order. But if you ask most cryobiologists
sci-fi lovers, cure whatever ailment — scientists who study the effects of
obviously. originally killed the freezing temperatures on living tissues
We’re also subject, and reverse the for procedures like organ transplanta-
optimists.” aging process so that tion — about cryonics, they’ll just shake
the subject has a young, their heads.
healthy body to enjoy in “There is absolutely no current way,

10 D I S C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M

no proven scientific way, to actually
freeze a whole human down to that
temperature without obliterating
the tissue,” says Shannon Tessier, a
cryobiologist with Harvard University
and Massachusetts General Hospital.
When scientists attempt to freeze a
sample of living human tissue, like a
slice of liver, “the tissue is completely
obliterated, the cell membrane is
completely destroyed.”
Cryonicists like Kowalski are well
aware of criticisms like these. He
argues that while these problems are
insurmountable to us today, they may
well be solvable in the future. It’s a
point that’s definitionally impossible
to rule out — almost like definitively
proving that there’s no such thing as
unicorns.
“You have nothing to lose, everything
to gain. Other than some life insurance
money,” says Kowalski, who is signed
up for cryonic preservation along with
his wife and sons. “Even if it doesn’t
work, we’re still advancing science,
figuring out what doesn’t work. And if
it does work, we just stumbled across
a cure for death, at least temporarily.”
— KATE GOLEMBIEWSKI
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 HOT SCIENCE

FLYING SOLO
Human drone pilots have always been more efficient than their robotic counterparts — until now. Researchers at
the University of Zurich created an algorithm that finds the quickest path for a drone navigating a 3D racecourse
in an indoor flight arena. The algorithm beat two professional drone pilots’ times, according to a study published in
Science Robotics this past July. And it can replicate that ideal route exactly, which is something humans can’t do.
There’s still one way that we have the upper hand over machines, though: Humans can think on the fly, while the
algorithm currently needs about an hour to calculate its trajectory. But if that problem can be solved, we may one
day see algorithm-controlled drones delivering our packages. — BRIANNA BARBU; IMAGE BY LEONARD BAUERSFELD/
ROBOTICS AND PERCEPTION GROUP, UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH

12 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
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 HOT SCIENCE
Hugging’s Evolutionary Origins
THERE ARE BIOLOGICAL REASONS WE HUG IT OUT.
To hug or not
to hug? That’s
the question
right now.
We’re in a precarious place
in the world of greetings
etiquette. Depending on
where you live, many of us
are vaccinated. But it’s hard
to know for sure before you
embrace whether or not the
person you’re leaning into
has gotten the jab. At the
same time, many of us are
yearning for the warmth of
a hug after long stretches of
social isolation. Humans,
according to experts,
biologically need touch, and
a good long hug is one of the
best ways to get it.
Suzanne Degges-White,
a professor and researcher
focused on social relation-
ships at Northern Illinois
University, says that our
14 D I S C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
need for a hug goes all the
way back to the survival of
our species. When we’re
born, we can’t care for
ourselves and we need to
be comfortable with being
held in order to survive.
We’re rewarded with a rush
of feel-good hormones that
come from a cozy embrace.
“When we hug, our brains
release oxytocin, the
bonding hormone, as well as
serotonin and endorphins,”
says Degges-White.
This bond and sense of
community has an important
evolutionary role because
for humans, the security of
our small groups and later
communities was crucial
to survival. Close contact
helped build civilization. As
a result, our brains need each
other — and when we miss
out, it can have psychological
repercussions. “When we
can’t hug, we don’t get that
jolt of good hormones,” says
Degges-White.
We may not know what
we’re getting from greeting
our friends and family with
a hug; we just enjoy it. It isn’t
until those experiences are
taken away that we feel pain
and sadness. An elbow bump
or air greeting does not
suffice. Research published
in the journal Psychological
Science has shown that
SIX SECONDS:
HOW LONG YOU
SHOULD HOLD A
HUG TO OPTIMIZE
THE RELEASE OF
MOOD-BOOSTING
HORMONES.
hugging has a “stress
buffering” effect that may
even protect us from chronic
illness and infections.
Of course, some people
grow up in more formal
households where hugging
isn’t common. Others may
experience abuse that makes
hugging traumatic. In
both cases, when children
don’t experience healthy
touch, it can impact their
development. Kids who
didn’t grow up being held,
says Degges-White, miss out
on that sense of safety and
protection. They may act out
or isolate from those around
them. In some cases, the
opposite may also be true.
Some children may show too
much affection, craving any
form of positive attention
that they didn’t get at home.
Still, for the past two
years, we’ve been missing
out — and many of us
are in a gray area when it
comes to whether to reach
in for that much-coveted
embrace. But according
to Rajeev Fernando, director
of the Division of Infectious
Diseases at Stony Brook
Southampton Hospital, if
you’re both vaccinated, go
for it; research has shown
that the risk of transmission
is extremely low. And if
you’re vaccinated but you FROM TOP: ARTEVER/SHUTTERSTOCK;; BESTICONPARK/SHUTTERSTOCK
don’t know for sure whether
the person you’re hugging
has also been vaccinated, it’s
still most likely safe. “The
virus can in theory colonize
the nose without causing
clinical disease, but the risk
is low and the chance of a
vaccinated person getting
serious clinical disease
and hospitalized is exceed-
ingly low,” says Fernando.
— SARA NOVAK
THE FIFTH C? Stauer ®

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 HOT SCIENCE
CORONAL MASS
EJECTIONS occur
when energized
particles blow out
from the side of
the Sun.
STORMS FROM
THE SUN
THE NATURE OF SPACE WEATHER HASN’T CHANGED MUCH. BUT SOCIETY
HAS, AND UNDERSTANDING AND PREDICTING THE PHENOMENON IS
MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER.
Space
weather is not
something that
most of us typi-
cally think about on a daily
basis. But the Sun’s charged
particles and magnetic field
are constantly sweeping
through space and collid-
ing with the Earth’s own
magnetic field. Occasionally,
the auroras fill the sky with
light dancing along these
field lines. The most extreme
space weather, however,
happens when the Sun blasts
billions of tons of energized
particles directly towards
the Earth at speeds up to
1,800 miles per second.
16 D I S C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
These explosions, known
as coronal mass ejections
(CMEs), lift off from the
Sun’s outer atmosphere
— the corona — and can
cause intense geomagnetic
storms and negatively affect
astronauts, satellites, and
spacecraft.
SPACE ODDITIES
Geomagnetic storms happen
when the Earth’s magnetic
field is disturbed. The most
extreme geomagnetic storms
are driven by CMEs, which
can actually energize the
Earth’s magnetic field, says
James Spann, a space weather
lead at NASA. “The impact
of a CME on a magnetized
body like the Earth can be
very catastrophic depending
on its size and speed.”
One of the most intense
CMEs, known as the
Carrington Event, is believed
to have taken place on
Sept. 1, 1859, reaching Earth
17.5 hours later and setting
off a large geomagnetic
storm. Auroras, more
commonly a northern
phenomenon, were seen as
far south as the Caribbean
and telegraph lines caught
fire as communications were
disrupted across the world.
More recently, changes
in magnetic fields during
“The number of
systems that
can be affected
by space
weather just
keeps growing.”
geomagnetic storms induce
currents along power lines
that can damage transform-
ers and cause power outages.
The most serious event hap-
pened on March 13, 1989,
and left 6 million people
without power in Québec,
Canada, for nine hours.
The potential impact
on society is far greater
today due to the vast extent
to which we depend on
technology, says Howard
Singer, chief scientist at
the NOAA Space Weather
Prediction Center. “The
number of technological
systems that can be affected
by space weather just keeps
growing.”
CMEs can also pose a risk
to satellites and spacecraft
as charges build up on the
surface and inside electron-
ics. But space weather
forecasters that monitor
the sun for CMEs can help
reduce astronaut exposure
to the radiation that solar
storms can cause. “When
we are thinking of human
exploration of space, we
want to know what we are
getting into,” says Alexa
Halford, a space physics
researcher at NASA. “Just
like if you were packing
NASA/SDO
for a vacation somewhere.”
— THEO NICITOPOULOS
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 VITAL SIGNS
BY JULIA MICHIE BRUCKNER

more like seizures than anything we

pediatricians expect with normal baby
wriggling.
Seizures in infants are often the sign
of something worrisome, including
infection, trauma to the brain, and
abnormalities in salt or sugar levels.
Generally, infants with these problems
look quite ill. They’re often hot with
fever, limp, lethargic, pale and jittery.
Yet baby Sophie looked practically
perfect; she was cooing happily and
breastfeeding vigorously. She had been
born on time without any complica-
tions after a normal pregnancy, and
didn’t have any of the risk factors we
usually see in seizing newborns.
As we prepared to draw some blood
to check for potential causes, Sophie’s
left arm began to twitch. Soon, her
entire body was racked with convul-
sions, her arms and legs shaking, her
eyes rolled back. Her mother stood by
tearfully as we drew up a dose of medi-
cine to stop the seizure. Yet before we
could administer it, Sophie calmed, her
arms and legs relaxing as she regained
consciousness. Her mother scooped
Sophie up to snuggle her.
Sophie’s seizure had thankfully
stopped on its own after less than a
minute. But the search for its cause was
now more urgent than ever.

A STURDY FOUNDATION
Our initial tests revealed Sophie’s brain
showed no indications of trauma or
Neonatal Nightmare altered structure. She had no signs of
infection in her urine, blood or spinal
SEIZURES IN INFANTS CAN SIGNAL SERIOUS TROUBLE, fluid. The levels of salt and sugar in her
BUT SHE LOOKED PERFECTLY HEALTHY OTHERWISE. blood were also normal, but another
key electrolyte was off: Sophie had a

T
he tiny and rosy 6-day-old girl moved strangely critically low level of calcium. Calcium
on the bed, like an awkward teen at her first As we prepared is integral to the functioning of nerve,
school dance. Her arms jerked rhythmically, to draw some muscle and cardiac cells. Deficiencies
twisting the soft bunny-and-flower-print blanket blood to check can cause abnormal muscle movements,
surrounding her. for potential problems with bone growth, abnormal
“Sophie has been making these funny movements for a few heart rhythm and pumping and, yes,
days,” her mother told me. Newborns commonly make odd,
causes, seizures. We quickly gave Sophie an IV
Sophie’s left
KELLIE JAEGER/DISCOVER

sudden movements; they usually turn out to be normal startle infusion of calcium before transferring
reflexes or benign sleep behaviors. But this mother had four arm began her to the neonatal intensive care unit
other children, and she was sure none of her other babies had to twitch. for more treatment — and to find out
ever moved like this. She shared several videos of her daughter why this otherwise healthy baby’s
she had recorded at home. All concerned me — they looked calcium was so low.

18 D I S C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
 VITAL SIGNS
The majority of calcium in the human body is
stored in the bones. The amount released into
the bloodstream is tightly regulated by an
intricate dance with other important hor-
mones, such as the parathyroid hormone,
and nutrients like phosphate, magnesium
and vitamin D. Hypocalcemia, or
low levels of calcium, is often due
to altered levels of these other
hormones and nutrients.
Most of an infant’s calcium
stock is provided by the
mother through the
placenta in the last
trimester of pregnancy.
After birth, infants have
a natural drop in their
calcium levels within two
days of age. Their levels
then rise as they begin to
get calcium through their
diet, and their calcium-
regulating hormones begin
to function better. Yet Sophie’s
calcium wasn’t rising as expected.
Causes of newborn hypocalcemia can
have their source in either the mother or the
baby. If the mother has diabetes during pregnancy,
or problems with her own calcium-regulating
hormones, she may not pass along enough calcium
to her fetus. If infants are born prematurely, are
starved of oxygen during the birth process, have
inherited kidney problems, or have DiGeorge
syndrome — a rare genetic illness in which they
cannot make normal levels of parathyroid hor-
mone — their bodies can be deficient in calcium.
When this happens, seizures can occur.
D FOR “DEFICIENCY”
While keeping Sophie seizure-free with regular
doses of calcium and vitamin D, neonatologists
did a barrage of tests to check her kidney function,
bone structure, calcium-regulating hormones and
genes; no culprits were found. They then turned to
her mother for answers.
Sophie’s mother did not have any known
medical problems. Her own kidney and hormone
functions were normal, and she hadn’t had high
blood sugar during pregnancy. Yet the answer did
lie within her blood — Sophie’s mother was found
to have extremely low levels of vitamin D.
We get vitamin D from two main sources: in
the food we eat or supplements we take, as well as
through sun exposure. With the latter, the UV light
20 D I S C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
interacts with a precursor molecule
in our skin to convert it to the
vitamin. A proper supply of vitamin
D is essential to maintaining normal
levels of calcium.
Studies in a variety of countries
show that vitamin D insufficiency
is common in women of childbear-
ing age, yet Sophie’s mother’s was
unusually severe; her vitamin D
level was barely above zero. At that
amount, it would’ve been impossible for
her body to pass along enough calcium to
Sophie during pregnancy or breastfeeding.
More discussion with Sophie’s mother
revealed her strained finances, which made
it hard for her to eat enough fortified milk,
fish and egg yolks. She chose to give those
foods to her growing children, leaving little
of the key sources of vitamin D for herself.
She also had little time or opportunity to be
outside in the sunshine, living in an apartment
in a neighborhood without many parks or safe
outdoor spaces. Plus, while she was pregnant
with Sophie, an unusually cold winter had kept
her inside even more than usual. Sophie’s mother
was left without the proper nutrition and sunlight
needed for adequate vitamin D for both herself and
her in-utero baby.
After Sophie’s birth, her mother was committed
to breastfeeding, not realizing that breast milk
provides ideal nutrition — except for vitamin D.
That’s why pediatricians recommend exclusively
breastfed infants take a vitamin D supplement, but
Sophie was too young to have had her first visit
for this reminder. Thus, Sophie started life with
minimal calcium and was unable to get more from
her diet in those critical first days.
After extensive and complex testing, it turned
out all Sophie and her mother needed were a few
simple vitamins. The hospital’s doctors, nurses
and social workers helped ensure Sophie’s mother
had support to provide food and vitamins for
herself and her daughter. They encouraged mom
to take Sophie on sunny walks as the weather
A proper supply warmed. Sophie no longer moved strangely,
of vitamin D now seizure-free thanks to enough calcium and
vitamin D. She was able to safely return home to
is essential to her siblings, who were eager to get to know their
maintaining
KELLIE JAEGER/DISCOVER
sweet new sister. D
normal levels
of calcium. Julia Michie Bruckner is a pediatrician at Children’s
Hospital Colorado. The cases described in Vital Signs are
real, but names and certain details have been changed.
 PLANET EARTH
BY ANDRIA GREENE
TO FIND THE colorful
nudibranch, our intrepid
scientist (in diving gear)
began her search along
the Monterey Bay coast.
In Search of the
Nudibranch
FOLLOW ONE SCIENTIST’S JOURNEY TO REDISCOVER
A MYSTERIOUS UNDERWATER WORLD — AND TO
FIND AN ELUSIVE SEA CREATURE.
S
lowly and deliberately, I searched shallow, underwater
outcrops covered in colors. Weightless amidst the
invisible push and pull of the current, pink coralline
algae hung closely to rock surfaces or branched sky-
ward against sporadic patches of neon green and glimmering
iridescence. Shades of yellow, brown, white and orange flora
began to appear as I drifted past micro-environments dictated
by sunlight and structure. I allowed my scientific brain to go to
work underwater, relying on one of my first developed senses:
observation.
I had come to this underwater world to seek out a nudi-
branch. I had heard of this elusive marine organism, but until
recently, knew almost nothing about it. My goal at the moment
was just to find one, to examine it with my own eyes.
22 D I S C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: DEEANN CRANSTON/SHUTTERSTOCK; DANAE ABREU/SHUTTERSTOCK; COURTESY OF AUTHOR
Nudibranchs are invertebrates —
backboneless organisms in the kingdom
Animalia — that include 2,000 different
species, many of which are best known
for their wildly diverse and colorful
appearance. But what’s beautiful to
humans is to other animals an apose-
matic signal — a warning not to eat this
creature. Nudibranchs’ bright coloration
I’ve always
is intended to indicate unpalatability,
been drawn to and comes from a diet rich in animals
scuba diving, armed with cnidocytes, the stinging
especially cells common to sponges, anemone, and
since my coral. Not all nudibranchs parade color-
grandfather ful displays; some rely on near-perfect
camouflage to avoid being eaten. But
worked
coloration and camouflage can’t protect
alongside these and other underwater creatures
Jacques from every threat.
Cousteau. As a scientist focused on water-based
ecosystems, I’ve sorted thousands of
invertebrates under the microscope and
 A.
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 PLANET EARTH

know that soft-bodied organisms are among those

most susceptible to chemical and thermal water
pollution. While these stressors can occur natu-
rally, my studies across the river-estuary-ocean
continuum have highlighted a clear relationship
between water pollution and humans, among the
most pressing issues of our time. Despite the scant
nature of nudibranch surveys (in comparison to
other charismatic creatures such as whales and
sea turtles), studies have found these small, fragile
organisms migrating to cooler waters or, in some
cases, disappearing altogether. This troubling
knowledge lent a certain urgency to my journey
into the water.

IMMERSIVE RESEARCH
I have always been drawn to scuba diving,
especially since my grandfather worked alongside
Jacques Cousteau. Graduate school had imposed
a two-year hiatus on diving and forced me into
the category of “drop-out diver” — those certified
but not actively putting that certification to use.
So, I decided against relearning scuba, and instead
focused on shallow water freediving.
The Monterey Bay coastline became a frequent
hour-long drive for me and my husband (my dive
buddy by default) as we logged hours in the Pacific
during the warm months of late summer and early
fall. Between rounds of snorkeling at the surface,
we performed free dives at depths of up to 15 feet
to improve our duck dive, a swift 180-degree
TO OVERCOME
parasites, maneuver used to get underwater headfirst. Most
nudibranchs
evolved the of our time was spent getting comfortable in our
strategy of self- 20-plus pounds of gear: a thick neoprene wetsuit,
decapitation ... boots, hood, and gloves, plus a weighted dive belt,
THE AUTHOR knife, mask, snorkel and fins.
(bottom left) gets Winter brought on larger ocean swells and poor
used to 20 pounds visibility, not ideal for diving, so I spent the season
of gear.
connecting with an online niche of local artists,
photographers, conservationists, and scientists
advocating for Monterey Bay and its inhabitants.
Among the stories and images this group shared,
nudibranch sightings stood out most — like the
radiant purple body lined with a mohawk of grace-
ful but toxic orange horns, or cerata, belonging to

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: SAYAKA MITOH; DEE BROWNING/SHUTTERSTOCK; COURTESY OF AUTHOR

the Spanish shawl (Flabellinopsis iodinea).
I read about the dynamic and cascading effects of
events being studied in real time along the Pacific
coast. For instance, sea star wasting syndrome
has been killing these predators of sea urchins.
The cause of the syndrome isn’t fully understood,

Dynamic and
cascading
events
along the
Pacific coast
include sea
star wasting
syndrome.

24 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
 although some evidence points to a full-body
bacterial infection that disturbs the star’s microbi-
ome and results in suffocation. Without sea stars to
prey on sea urchins, urchins have proliferated and
overgrazed, contributing to the collapse of historic
kelp forests that leave behind devoid urchin barrens.
Another source of concern is more frequent
extreme El Niño events, bringing in warm,
nutrient-poor seawater. Such events can amplify
devastation to marine life in the Pacific and have
even been associated with the permanent reloca-
tion of an entire species of nudibranch, the Hilton’s
aeolid (Phidiana hiltoni), which sought shelter in
cooler waters of northern California.
I also studied up on the latest research on
nudibranchs. In the Indo-Pacific in 2021, Sayaka
Mitoh was the first scientist to observe and record
a surprising feat of evolution in nudibranchs: self-
decapitation. To overcome parasites that may infect
the nudibranch’s body, the animal uses autotomy,
or self-amputation, to rid itself of infection. Only
the head, with two sensing horns,
remains. Researchers reported
... growing a that the Elysia marginata
new body in reincarnated its full
three weeks.
body in three short
weeks. I really wanted
to meet this creature
now and couldn’t wait
for spring.
FINDING THE
GODDESS
At the first sign of clear
conditions, we hit the road for
our favorite snorkel cove at the southernmost tip
of Monterey Bay. From our home in Santa Cruz,
we traveled south along Highway 1. We crossed
the single bridge in Moss Landing, at the mouth
of California’s third largest estuary, the Elkhorn
Slough — the site of my graduate studies and home
to a population of federally endangered sea otters.
Research has revealed the sea otter, which was
nearly hunted to extinction during the period
of exploitative colonialism in America, to be a
keystone species that helps protect kelp forests
because of the top-down pressure that the otters
FROM TOP: RON WOLF; SAYAKA MITOH
maintain on the kelp-feeding urchins upon which
they prey. I allowed the first wave of excitement to
settle as I watched the intact dune system between
Marina State Beach and Fort Ord Dunes State Park
flash by, an ecologically important site made rare by
global urbanization of coastlines.
Once in the cold water, I swam through a dense
MEETING A SEA
GODDESS: Tufts
at the back are
gills; at the front
are rhinophores —
sensory horns.
patch of giant kelp. Thirteen feet below, I inspected
all that one breath in my lungs would allow:
orange and purple ochre sea stars; a spent abalone
shell lined with mother of pearl; purple, spiny sea
urchins; and black perch hidden behind rusty-
colored blades of kelp anchored to the seafloor. I
was in a state of blissful sensory overload.
Nothing compared, however, to the moment that
followed as I spotted a bright colored patch while
combing through the shallows. “I found a nudi-
branch! A nudibranch!” I screamed loudly through
my snorkel. Circling with the current, I let go of my
need to know precisely what species I was gazing
at and just mused over what I saw: white feathery
tufts and a pair of horns at opposite ends. A bright
yellow, jellylike living thing roughly textured in
white round spots. A nudibranch, no doubt.
Through the online community of Monterey Bay
enthusiasts, I learned more about my new acquain-
tance, the white-spotted sea goddess (Doriopsilla
albopunctata), which occupies the waters connect-
ing California and Mexico. The tufts at their rear
are gills, and the horns at their front are known as
rhinophores. These sensory horns make up for a
nudi’s inherent blindness, and explained its response
— a quick retraction of its exposed gills — to the
incoming current I generated as I approached.
Finding my first nudibranch didn’t reinforce
my identity as a diver nor as a scientist. Instead,
it reminded me to relish my own successful,
I really wanted evolutionary instincts: inquisitiveness and a desire
to learn. They’re instincts we all possess as Homo
to meet this sapiens, and the sea goddess reminded me to use
creature now them to their fullest. D
and couldn’t
wait for spring. Andria Greene is a scientist who writes about her work on
water-based places following rivers, lakes, estuaries and
oceans.
MAR/ APR 2 02 2 . D IS C OVER 25
 2

1 3

4 5
 COMBAT FROM TO

CONSERVATION After half a century of armed conflict, Colombia’s ex-guerillas

have no war to fight. Their new mission: preserving
biodiversity in the jungles they occupied for decades.
BY ADDISON NUGENT

D
eep in the Colombian Amazon rainforest, rainforest they had occupied for decades, the former
dozens of sweat-soaked men and women guerrilla fighters were suddenly confronted with the
PHOTOS 1, 2, 4, 5: JAIME GONGORA. PHOTO 3: WILFREDO RODRIGUEZ/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

weave through a maze of ceiba and rubber
trees. Armed with machetes, they hack
through vines as thick as saplings. They
move in utter silence, eyes squinting in the dim
light. They approach their mission — cataloging
and protecting endangered species — with intent
focus. A few years ago, these former members of
the guerilla group FARC might have been tracking
enemy soldiers or preparing to kidnap a political
prisoner. Now their targets are far more elusive:
giant river otters, nimble brown spider monkeys,
Dracula orchids with black petals and fanglike
protrusions, the riotously colored Flor de Mayo.
In 2016, after half a century of armed conflict,
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(in Spanish, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de
Colombia, or FARC) signed a peace treaty with
the Colombian government. Emerging from the
1. Socratea exhorriza, or the walking palm, is native to tropical
rainforests in Central and South America. 2. Former combatants
learn how to use camera traps. 3. The brown spider monkey is
one of the world’s rarest primates. 4. Wildlife geneticist Jaime
Gongora shows off an armadillo found during a biodiversity
survey. 5. The charapa, also known as the South American river
turtle, is at risk of extinction from excessive hunting.
question: “What now?” Part of the peace agreement
stipulated that the Colombian government support
the 14,000 ex-FARC members financially for several
years; after that, they must live independently.
So far, former combatants have faced enormous
hardship on the road back to civilian life, and
COVID hasn’t helped. In mid-2020, Colombia’s
urban unemployment rate surged to 15.4 percent.
It’s difficult for anyone to find a job, but for former
guerillas, it’s particularly challenging. Colombian
citizens often still regard them with suspicion, and
many have been out of the workforce for decades.
“It’s hard,” says Hugo Ramirez, who joined
FARC in 2001 at the age of 17. “There is an abysmal
amount of absolute poverty, and we still witness
children dying of starvation.”
But where so many saw a problem, Jaime
Gongora, a wildlife geneticist at the University of
Sydney, saw an opportunity. Colombia is the second
most biodiverse nation on the planet; rainforests
play an integral part in this, with more than
56,000 species that call it home. But, until recently,
researchers haven’t been able to study it in person
due to FARC’s occupation. Teeming with rare
specimens, from the pink river dolphin to the criti-
cally endangered Magdalena River turtle, alongside
countless undiscovered plants, the Colombian

MAR/ APR 2 0 2 2 . D IS C OVER 27

rainforest is a naturalist’s dream. Who better to explore that
terrain than the people who had once lived there?
So, in 2017, Gongora created Peace With Nature, a series of
workshops in the Guaviare region of Colombia to train past
combatants in conservation science. The hope is that they’ll
later apply those skills to ecotourism initiatives, like creating
new nature trails, and become citizen scientists themselves.
The workshops are led by a multidisciplinary team of teach-
ers, including conservationists and biologists. These experts
have guided over 100 former soldiers through brainstorming
sessions on combining their lived knowledge of the jungle with
the rigors of the scientific method. They learn how to take plant
samples, how to handle binoculars and the best techniques for
observing wildlife. For the participants, the program aims to
provide both a new purpose and a promising path forward.
“The idea was to empower these combatants with knowledge
[of] biodiversity,” explains Gongora. “This [work] could be
incorporated into activities that will allow them to incorporate
into society.”
Today, he returns to Colombia between three and four times
a year to hold these sessions, which each last about a week.
The homecomings are a joy for Gongora, who grew up in the
Colombian countryside. He speaks of a youth spent playing in
nature, creating makeshift huts with friends and observing the
jungle’s magnificent wildlife. Gongora carried that passion for
wildlife into adulthood; in 1999, he left Colombia to pursue
a doctorate in animal genetics in Australia. However, the war
continuously loomed in the background of his childhood — a
conflict with a complex history spanning nearly 70 years before
the peace accord.
A PROLONGED CONFLICT
FARC was founded in 1964, six years after Colombia’s bloody
civil war — known as La Violencia — came to a close. The
conflict erupted in 1948, when Jorge Gaitán, a popular presi-
dential candidate for the country’s center-left Liberal party, was
assassinated. His death ignited riots and, eventually, a decade
PARTICIPANTS LEARN HOW TO TAKE PLANT
SAMPLES AND HANDLE BINOCULARS, AND THE
BEST TECHNIQUES FOR OBSERVING WILDLIFE.
of armed conflict between the Liberals and the country’s
Conservative party. After 10 years and 200,000 deaths, the two
parties agreed to the establishment of a bipartisan political
system, known as the National Front, in 1957. Though it put an
end to La Violencia, the system was overwhelmingly bipartisan
and excluded participation by political leaders identified as
heads of guerrilla groups.
One such group was the Colombian Communist Party,
or Partido Comunista Colombiano (PCC). Communists first
became active in Colombia after World War I, a reaction against
the enormous wealth disparities between the working classes
28 D I S C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
1. The brown jacamar perches on exposed branches to catch
its prey. 2. The blooms of the Dracula simia, or the monkey
orchid, look uncannily like a monkey’s face. 3. Former guerrillas
use binoculars to spot birds in the Colombian jungle. 4. Owl
butterflies are known for their huge eyespots, which resemble
an owl’s eyes. 5. Male rhinoceros beetles use their hornlike
projections to drive rival males away during mating rituals.
and large landowners. Many of these individuals established
communes throughout rural Colombia that the government
initially ignored. The guerrillas called for land reform and
better conditions for peasants, and vowed to defend the
defenseless against the government’s intrusions. But in 1964, the
Colombian military began invading and destroying the com-
munes. Members were forced to flee into the jungles, eventually
regrouping to form FARC.
In the decades that followed, FARC’s numbers grew and
shrank before settling at 15,000 members at the dawn of
the 21st century. It was during this period that Ramirez, a
current participant in Gongora’s program, joined FARC. At
the time, FARC was an extremely powerful organization.
The group’s members were still fighting for communist causes,
but the organization was also heavily involved in drug-
trafficking, illegal gold-mining, kidnapping and extortion. The
guerilla fighters caught the attention of other countries whose
political and financial interests the group threatened, including
the U.S. Between 2000 and 2015, the U.S. provided 10 billion
dollars in military aid to help the Colombian government
fight the drug-trafficking and terrorism that were FARC’s
cash cow.
Ramirez’s description of his time living with the guerillas
is two-pronged: a time of learning in the splendor of the
Colombian rainforest, but also a period of profound loss and
trauma. Living under the constant threat of enemy fire takes its
toll, no matter the beauty of one’s surroundings. Ramirez says
he watched friends die in horrific ways, torn apart by aviation
PHOTO 1: CESAR ARREDONDO. PHOTO 2: ALEXANDRE LAPRISE/SHUTTERSTOCK. PHOTOS 3-5: JAIME GONGORA
bombs or shot out of trees by the Colombian army. He was also
taught to kill — an aspect of his time in FARC that he speaks
about only in vague, simple terms.
Still, Ramirez insists that bloodshed composed only a small
fraction of his life in FARC. When not patrolling, he and his
comrades would study the works of communist scholars and
learn new skills like medicine and cartography. In rare, non-
regimented moments, they’d enjoy one another’s company.
Above all, Ramirez remembers the moments that he shared
with local people, including Indigenous communities. Because
his regiment remained constantly on the move to avoid govern-
ment surveillance, he often encountered neglected pockets of
the Colombian diaspora. Ramirez says the guerillas would share
sustainable ways of living with the locals, such as teaching them
medicinal practices, as well as how to live in an ecologically
responsible manner. Many of these practices were taught to the
former FARC members by the Indigenous communities they
encountered, who have a long history of protecting biodiversity
and countering deforestation through traditional, sustainable
farming practices. “The true goal of FARC was to make a posi-
tive social change,” adds Ramirez.
1 2

4 5
 2

1 3

4 5
 SOLDIERS TO SCIENTISTS
When the fighting finally ceased, Gongora, the wildlife
geneticist at the University of Sydney, was halfway across the
world in Australia. But shortly after the signing of the peace
accord, Federica Di Palma, an evolutionary genomicist at the
University of East Anglia and director of GROW Colombia,
invited him to partner in the program, funded by the U.K.
government, alongside various Colombian research, academic
and government institutions. The initiative fosters bioscience
and biodiversity in Colombia, while a sister organization,
ECOMUN, promotes ecotourism. One of GROW Colombia’s
main goals is establishing a “bioeconomy” for citizens by creat-
ing new businesses involved in monitoring and conserving
local flora and fauna.
Gongora agreed, but identified a missing element: the former
FARC members. The Colombian government’s reincorporation
initiative found that around 40 percent of the former guerillas
had previous experience in environmental conservation.
Gongora believed that this population could be vital to creating
a bioeconomy in Colombia. As a naturalist, he’d long yearned to
study the jungles of his home country. Now, there was a veritable
army of people ready to help.
Peace With Nature gives participants a crash course in an
array of conservation practices. They learn direct observation
techniques, how to conduct indirect surveys and track animals
using footprints and feces, as well as ways to collect specimens
in a non-invasive manner. They’re also taught how to set up and
use tracking cameras and can access taxonomic identification
resources. Many are particularly interested in learning how to
make inventories of plants and animals, says Gongora.
By learning these skills, the former combatants can aid
researchers in their canvassing efforts while brainstorming their
own ecotourism initiatives. In one session, the participants
speculated about how much an avid birdwatcher might pay to
spot one of the Colombian rainforest’s countless rare species. In
another, they identified areas where new nature trails, on which
they could serve as specialized guides, might be created.
PHOTOS 1, 2, 4, 5: JAIME GONGORA. PHOTO 3: CESAR ARREDONDO
And after decades living in the jungle, former FARC
members can share their own knowledge, like how to easily
identify medicinal plants. Take the yoco, for instance, a tropical
vine whose sap can be used against fever, nausea and vomit-
ing. Former FARC members also inform researchers on the
behavior of rarely observed wildlife. “Some of them also learned
animal tracking from Indigenous communities,” says Gongora,
explaining how several participants taught him how to observe
animals undetected.
Building on this already extensive knowledge of the jungle,
Gongora immerses his students in the intricate science of
biodiversity: They learn technical terms and scientific names
1. Known as pusui, this plant is sometimes used to make fences
and animal shelters. 2. A member of the Colombian police
accompanies one of the group’s fieldwork activities. 3. The
Amazonian umbrellabird, named for its umbrella-shaped crest,
can be found foraging in the rainforest canopy. 4. Gongora and
collaborator Jaime Erazo scan their surroundings at a lake near
the Guaviare River. 5. There are more than 60 species of cicada
in the Colombian rainforest.
for the different species they came to know in the wild, while
unraveling the subtle, natural connections integral to keeping
ecosystems alive. In other words, the former guerillas are given
the tools to study and analyze, scientifically, what they simply
observed during the years they spent in the Amazon. “I have
learned to have a deeper understanding,” says Ramirez, “to
value and love [the jungle] more.”
SAVING THE FOREST
With that love, however, comes fear — specifically, of losing the
rainforest they once knew intimately. When FARC occupied
the Colombian Amazon, those areas were still protected from
unsustainable farming practices and recent development initia-
tives like oil drilling and palm oil plantations. “We maintained
the ecosystem with the mentality that the jungle was our house,
our protector,” says Ramirez. If their company had to fell a tree,
they planted 10 more. Beyond that, he says, they responsibly
eradicated all waste, and the bush they camped in was tamed
with machetes as non-invasively as possible.
Today, just four years after the peace treaty, the once-
occupied areas of the jungle have already seen significant
deforestation. FARC’s speedy exit from the area has left a lawless
vacuum in its wake, which the Colombian government has
done little to fill. Loggers cut down trees en masse, while other
areas are razed to make room for unsustainable cattle ranching.
Meanwhile, illegal gold miners ravage once-pristine habitats. In
2017, deforestation in Colombia rose 65 percent compared to
the previous year; by 2018, nearly 500,000 acres of jungle had
disappeared. Previously lush hubs of biodiversity now resemble
ashen planes littered with the skeletal white remains of ancient
trees. Ramirez aptly calls these areas tumbas, or graves.
But Gongora hopes that Peace With Nature’s efforts will help
safeguard the rapidly dwindling Colombian rainforest. For
example, participants can present their ecotourism ideas to
major Colombian research institutions and agencies. At these
forums, the program’s members apply for project funding,
potentially providing them with a new livelihood — and
pathway to reintegrate into society — while identifying which
areas of the increasingly threatened jungle to protect.
In the long term, Gongora aims to expand his program
beyond helping former FARC soldiers get back on their feet.
He hopes participants will also share the techniques they’ve
learned with local communities so that, together, they can
work to protect the at-risk areas they call home —and extend
the efforts of Indigenous groups already fighting to preserve
the Colombian Amazon. “They can use these techniques and
collaborate with local and national institutions in Colombia to
protect biodiversity,” says Gongora.
Participants in Gongora’s program will hopefully go on to
become part of the Amazon’s army of citizen scientists, spread-
ing interest in conservation efforts throughout Colombia and
to visitors through their ecotourism initiatives. For Ramirez,
the only way to save the rainforest is to inspire the same deep
love he feels for it in others. “We need to instill it in people from
childhood,” he says. “That care [and] love that one should have
towards biodiversity.” D
Addison Nugent is a freelance writer based in Paris.
MAR/APR 2 0 2 2 . D IS C OVER 31
 THE ABANDONED Tulsequah Chief ore mine in northwestern British Columbia
operated for less than 10 years before closing in 1957. More than 60 years later, it
still leaks toxins into the Taku River watershed, which flows into southern Alaska
and the Pacific Ocean.

n the bitter cold winter of 2017, British Columbia’s

minister of energy and mines discovered that
someone had staked a mining claim in his actual
backyard. The request had come without notice
or warning. If approved, it would allow the
people behind it to pan for precious minerals in
streambeds on his Cranbrook, B.C., property,
less than 50 miles north of the U.S. border.

“The claim is not going to pay off for
them,” then-Minister Bill Bennet told
The Province at the time; his home sits
high and dry on a forested hill with
no streams to explore. But the people
behind the permit weren’t looking
to strike a claim. They were a group
of First Nations women led by Bev
Sellars, a former chief of the Xat’sull
First Nation, who had purchased the
mining claim from the comfort of
her home hundreds of miles away, for
“Anybody in the world can stake a
claim in B.C., as long as they have the
internet and a credit card,” she says.
In recent years, that lax oversight
has fostered a simmering sense
of unease among people living
around some of the province’s many
abandoned and operating mines, and
the feeling has not been restricted to
Canada. There are at least a dozen
mining projects along nine rivers that
drain out of B.C. and into four U.S.
vulnerable ecosystems. Downstream
of some mines, fish populations have
crashed and water-quality studies have
shown levels of contamination up to THIS PAGE, FROM LEFT: COURTESY OF CHRIS MILLER; GARTH LENZ
85 times what biologists consider safe
for aquatic life. In the U.S., this would
raise alarms and warrant hefty fines,
but B.C.’s mining companies are not
beholden to the EPA.
Now the province is poised to
permit three of the largest mining
PREVIOUS SPREAD: GARTH LENZ.

$129.89 Canadian ($105 USD). Rather
than looking to get rich, Sellars wanted
to make a point: In B.C., mining
permits are too easy to come by, regu-
lations are too weak and the effects are
felt well beyond their source.
states. From fissures in the Canadian
Rockies, these waterways can carry
the residues of mineral extraction
on a circuitous, international route.
They impact First Nations land and
U.S. states, fishing communities and
operations in North America, includ-
ing one along a waterway that begins
near Cranbrook, ends just north of
Portland, Oregon, and already shows
signs of mining contamination. In
response, Indigenous groups have

34 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M

emerged as a driving force behind a
movement of residents, scientists and
U.S. lawmakers who are clamoring for
a higher level of protection for these
shared waters.
MINERAL-RICH WATERS
The Kootenai River (or, north of the
Canada border, “Kootenay River”)
begins in a glacial cirque one ridgeline
over from the famously turquoise
waters of Lake Louise in Banff National
Park. It then flows south into Montana,
swelling to become Lake Koocanusa
MAP: JAY SMITH
at the B.C.-Montana border, bending
like a fishhook into the Idaho pan-
handle and finally returning to B.C.,
THIS MOUNTAINTOP
removal site is one of
five large coal mines
in the Elk Valley of
B.C., just north of
Montana and Idaho.
AB
Banff
National Park
Kootenay River
Elk River
Cranbrook
Lake
where it joins the Columbia CANADA Koocanusa
River. Like other rivers of
U.S.
the Pacific Northwest, the Kalispell
Kootenai once ran thick
with ocean-going salmon and Flathead
steelhead — that is, until dams WA ID
Lake
MT
started impounding upstream
populations in the early 1900s.
There are still some Kokanee, a
landlocked version of sockeye salmon,
and white sturgeon, an ancient fish
listed as endangered in both countries. bark baskets, spoke a language unlike
The first people to settle in the any other and depended on the river
Kootenai Valley likely arrived some that takes their name. Today, they
10,000 years ago. These ancestors of are represented in the bands of the
the Ktunaxa Nation were semino- Ktunaxa First Nation in B.C. to the
madic, slept in teepees, wove pine north, as well as the Kootenai Tribe
MAR /APR 2 0 2 2 . D IS C OVER 35
 Elk Valley Mines
BRITISH

Koo
te
nay R
COLUMBIA
Banff National Park

ve ri
A L B E R T A
Fording River
mine
Greenhills
mine

El k River
Line Creek
mine
Kootenay
Lake Elkview
ay Rive r mine
ten
o
Ko

Ktunaxa Coal Mountain

First Nation mine (closed 2018)
Canada

CANADA
UNITED STATES
Lake
Kootenai Tribe Koocanusa
Nor t h

of Idaho
For
k Fl
a th
ea d
Rive
r

M O N T A N A

Flathead

I D A H O
Lake

Confederated Salish
and Kootenai Tribes

of Idaho and the Confederated Salish
and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) in
Montana. The Kootenai River still
anchors them all.
OPPOSITE PAGE: JAY SMITH. THIS PAGE, FROM TOP: COURTESY OF ERIN SEXTON; WEEKEND WARRIOR PHOTOS/SHUTTERSTOCK
“We’re not a major casino tribe,
that’s not our bread and butter,” says
Rich Janssen, head of the Department
of Natural Resources for the CSKT
in Montana. “What is our bread and
butter is our resources.”
From their reservation on the
south bank of Flathead Lake, the
CSKT have made themselves a
bulwark against environmental
degradation in their ancestral terri-
tory. They have built a sound forestry
department to manage their vast
timber stands and have established
herds of Rocky Mountain bighorn
sheep and elk that now migrate
into Idaho. They reintroduced the
seemingly lost trumpeter swan and
reclaimed the National Bison Range,
which has grown to include more
than 400 animals.
Miners first wandered onto
Ktunaxa lands in the 1850s on the
heels of the great gold rushes that set
the tone for modern-day Canada.
These early prospectors tapped into
stone and made camp with little
regard for Indigenous inhabitants
or the local environment. “They
described it like the land of milk and
honey, but they saw it in terms of how
much money they could make. This is
not a new story,” Sellars says.
By the 1960s, fully mature mining
corporations began carving the first
large-scale mines along the Elk River,
a tributary that joins the Kootenai
just north of Lake Koocanusa in B.C.
Today, four active open-pit opera-
tions (plus a closed mine) sprawl
across the Elk Valley, producing
about 21 million tons of coal each
year. Teck Resources Ltd., which
owns them all, is one of the largest
hard-rock-mining companies in B.C.
— and all of Canada.
Mines in B.C. produce more copper
and coal (for steelmaking) than
any other Canadian province, plus
tons of silver and all the country’s
molybdenum, a silvery metal used for
making steel and lubricants. In 2017,
ERIN SEXTON collects
water samples from
the Elk River, where
contaminants have
been traced 60-plus
miles downstream of
mines in the Columbia
River Basin.
the mining industry there generated
$11.7 billion Canadian ($9.3 billion
USD) and directly employed more
than 10,000 people, according to
the Mining Association of British
Columbia. The industry’s economic
benefits have helped locals —
including many Indigenous employees
— but these gains have come with a
cost, both local and far afield.
In the early 2000s, proposals to
develop mineral deposits upstream
of lakes Koocanusa and Flathead
loomed over the CSKT’s hard-won
environmental accomplishments, and
MAR/ APR 2 0 2 2 . D IS C OVER 37
GARTH LENZ has spent 25
years photographing the impact
of industrial sites on natural
landscapes, such as this tailings
pond at Red Chris mine in
northwest B.C. See more of his
work at www.garthlenz.com.
the tribes sought to weigh in on the
permitting process. “We’re not against
all mining. We’re against the mining
that pollutes our natural resources in
our Aboriginal territories,” Janssen
says. “We’re looked at as leaders in
Indian Country; we don’t sit back idly
and wait for something to happen.”
38 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
SOUTH OF THE BORDER
In 2013, the Ministry of Mines
granted Teck permission to expand
its Line Creek mine in the Elk Valley,
advancing a goal of opening eight
new mines and expanding nine others
by 2015. Even then, though, studies
showed levels of contamination
downstream of mines in the Elk River
that were significantly higher than
what occurs naturally.
“From a science and data perspec-
tive, none of those mines should even
be considered right now,” says Erin
Sexton, a biologist at the Flathead
Lake Biological Station in Montana
who works on behalf of the CSKT.
Knowing that any substantive case
against upstream development would
have to be rooted in a scientific
understanding of the impacts, the
confederation set about collecting its
own data. Armed with that informa-
tion, the tribes can establish a baseline
for water quality in the Kootenai and
set their own limits, or standards, that
they hope B.C. will honor under the
Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909.
Sexton, who has worked along the
Flathead for 14 years, began by com-
paring two rivers: the heavily mined
Elk and the so-far unmined Flathead,
just one watershed to the east. “It’s a
perfect study of what happens to a
Rocky Mountain rivershed when you
mine it,” she says. She collected water
WIRESTOCK CREATORS/SHUTTERSTOCK
samples and bugs, comparing popula-
tion diversity and abundance in the
separate waterways. In the process,
“we’ve discovered that contaminants
go farther down the watershed than
we ever thought they would,” she says.
“And they can have impacts on every
aspect of life in that river community.”
 In the Elk River, Sexton
found three contaminants
that exceeded healthy
thresholds. One in particular,
a natural element called
selenium that leaches from
rocks exposed to weathering,
is considered especially
problematic. It biomagnifies,
or increases in potency, as
it filters through the food
chain, and recent studies have found
it can threaten life in lake water at
levels as subtle as 0.8 milligram per
liter. Fish with unhealthy levels of
selenium may be born without gill
plates and with other deformities. It
can also lead to deformed eggs and
reproductive failure.
Digging deep into the ecological
minutia, Sexton discovered 72 species
of algae in the unmined Flathead
waters, but only 12 in the Elk.
“That’s what drives all the life in the
river,” she says. Perhaps as a result,
biological diversity on the Elk appears
to have been significantly impacted.
Compared to the Flathead, the Elk
harbored far fewer stoneflies and
caddisflies, while mayflies, which
thrive in disturbed environments,
were doing better than the others.
Once they knew what to look for,
biologists noticed selenium signals
flickering throughout the Kootenai
system, in Lake Koocanusa and even
60-plus miles downstream where the
Kootenai Tribe of Idaho has been
battling to recover dwindling white
sturgeon. So far, contamination that
far down has not been deadly, and the
CSKT aim to keep it that way.
“At this point, I’m not sure anyone
would argue that there’s not a
selenium pollution problem in the
Elk River,” Sexton says.
In 2014, the province approved
Teck’s Elk Valley Water Quality Plan,
which established water quality
targets for selenium and other mine-
related contaminants. The company
MATT JEPPSON/SHUTTERSTOCK
has since spent more than $1 billion
(Canadian) implementing it, accord-
ing to Dale Steeves, Teck’s director
of stakeholder relations. “Our plan is
working,” he added.
But in 2019, with the company
CUTTHROAT TROUT numbers dropped
93 percent from 2017 to 2019, according
to studies in the Elk Valley, near Banff
National Park and four active mines.
looking to expand its Fording River
project into the largest coal mine in
North America, studies showed that
the downstream western cutthroat
trout population had plummeted by
93 percent since 2017.
Teck now operates two water treat-
ment facilities, with more planned
or under construction,
and expects to be able to
treat more than 14 million
gallons of water per day —
nearly three times the 2020
capacity — later this year,
Steeves said. The invest-
ment is proof of how much
there is to gain and lose in
the valley.
“The Elk River is the
worst-case scenario you can find,”
Sexton says. “I didn’t always think this
way, but I’ve come to think of it as a
case study for B.C.’s broken mining
policy.”
CONFLICTING INTEREST
When it comes to mining regulation
in B.C., only a thin veneer separates
church and state. Both enforcement
of environmental protections and the
promotion of the mining sector falls
under the authority of the Ministry
of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon
Innovation. (The department’s name
was changed in November of 2020 to
replace “Petroleum Resources” with
“Low Carbon Innovation.”) In a 2016
report, the province’s own auditor
general found those two roles to be
“diametrically opposed,” noting that
operating under the same roof “creates
an irreconcilable conflict,” the result
of which has been quick permitting,
infrequent inspections and
weak enforcement.
“We found almost every
one of our expectations for
a robust compliance and
enforcement program within
the Ministry of Mines and the
Ministry of Energy were not
met,” the report concluded.
In the years since, the
ministry has taken substantial
action to improve mining oversight,
says Meghan McRae, the ministry’s
communications director, and has
beefed up enforcement. But critics
contend that, with 13 active mines
and hundreds of permanently or
temporarily closed mines that have the
potential to leak harmful chemicals,
there are too many risks to monitor.
“There’s a lack of boots on the
ground. It comes down to the
“THEY DESCRIBED IT LIKE THE LAND OF MILK
AND HONEY, BUT THEY SAW IT IN TERMS OF
HOW MUCH MONEY THEY COULD MAKE. THIS
IS NOT A NEW STORY.” — BEV SELLARS
fact that the government has no
money for this,” says Nikki Skuce,
co-founder of the B.C. Mining Law
Reform Network, which advocates for
stricter mining regulations. Setting
out to create a map of the province’s
abandoned mining sites, Skuce
quickly found that the information
was not readily available through the
government. Her group, in partner-
ship with a trust, spent around
$20,000 Canadian ($16,000 USD)
pulling it all together.
The Kootenai tribes ran into similar
setbacks when trying to understand
what threat the Elk Valley mines
might pose to their waters. The lion’s
share of water quality and ecological
data is collected by mining companies
that report their findings to the
province. Sometimes it takes years for
that information to become public.
“In the U.S., agencies are work-
ing together to get a picture of
MAR /APR 2 02 2 . D I S C OV ER 39
TRANSIENT GLACIAL
sediment, seen here
downstream of Red
Chris mine along
the Iskut River in
B.C., is vulnerable
to upstream spills.
contamination, but if we want to look
over the border for a picture of what’s
happening there, Teck holds the data,”
Sexton says. This has left communities
from Montana to Alaska wondering
what might be floating downriver.
“The way that these mines are built
and regulated, it’s really not an ‘if ’
hypothetical question, it’s a ‘when’
problem,” says Amelia Marchand,
environmental trust manager for the
Confederated Tribes of the Colville in
Washington State, about the risk of an
accidental disaster. Noting a lack of
consultation from B.C.’s government,
she worries that in the event of an
accident at the large copper mine
expansion being planned upstream
on the Similkameen River, the
Colville wouldn’t find out until it’s
too late.
On Aug. 4, 2014, those fears
became all too real for some when the
dam holding back a lake of gold and
copper tailings breached at the Mount
Polley mine in central B.C. The
accident, caused by faulty engineer-
ing that didn’t account for erosion,
40 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
BEV SELLARS, former chief of the
Xat’sull First Nation, with her husband,
Hereditary Chief Bill Wilson.
spewed about 30 million cubic yards
of waste slurry into Quesnel Lake.
“We had been worried about
Mount Polley, but we didn’t think
what happened would happen,” says
Sellars, who lives in nearby Williams
Lake. “I was just in shock; I didn’t
believe it.”
It was the largest environmental
mining disaster in Canadian history,
and, three years later, the province
missed a deadline to pursue charges
under both the Environmental
Management Act and Mines Act. As
of this writing, Canadian citizens
OPPOSITE PAGE, FROM TOP: CHRIS BLAKE/QUESNEL RIVER WATERSHED ALLIANCE; COURTESY OF MININGWATCH CANADA
have paid some $40 million Canadian
($32 million USD) to cover cleanup,
because B.C. does not require, as the
EPA does, that mining companies put
up the costs of cleanup and mitigation
as bonds before receiving a permit.
Mining reformers like Skuce have
been calling for a robust financial
assurance system, similar to what
Quebec has instituted, to ensure
that taxpayers aren’t on the hook in
THIS PAGE, FROM TOP: GARTH LENZ; COURTESY OF BEV SELLARS.
the event of a disaster or a mining
company going bankrupt before
cleaning up a site. The province is only
starting to put this system in place.
According to the auditor general, the
estimated total liability for all mines
is more than $2.1 billion Canadian
($1.7 billion USD), while the ministry
has obtained financial securities for
less than half of that.
When the province does act on
violations, critics say it does so
halfheartedly. In March, for instance,
B.C. ordered Teck to pay $60 million
Canadian ($48 million USD) for not
adequately treating water downstream
of its existing Fording River coal
operations. Although the company
was found to be out of compliance
during each year between 2012 and
2019, the fine was issued only for 2012.
Sexton would like to believe this his-
tory of noncompliance would quash
Teck’s request to expand its Fording
River mine, but the project appears to
be moving forward anyway.
REFORMS UNDERWAY
Far to the northwest of the Kootenai
watershed, Toronto-based Seabridge
Gold is pursuing one of the world’s
largest copper and gold mines in the
salmon-rich headwaters of the Unuk
River, which enters the Pacific Ocean
near Ketchikan, Alaska. Seabridge has
undergone a six-year environmental
review, monitored water quality along
the Unuk since 2007 and proposed to
build a state-of-the-art water treat-
ment plant. The KSM mine would also
dig one of the largest human-made
holes on Earth, erect one of the highest
dams in North America, and require
wastewater treatment for 200 years
after its closure.
For opponents of the project, the
failure of the Mount Polley dam and
persistent elevated selenium levels
below the Elk Valley are proof that
industry assurances are not enough
to wager the most pristine Chinook
salmon habitat remaining on Earth.
After years of grassroots efforts
from people like Sellars, U.S. agen-
cies in Alaska, Montana and nearby
THE MOUNT POLLEY dam breach in 2014 carved a destructive path through
the B.C. landscape before dumping more than 6 billion gallons of mining
contaminants into Quesnel Lake and nearby waterways.
states are responding. Since 2017, decades. It has also invested
they have spent more than $7 million $20 million Canadian ($16 million
(USD) monitoring and documenting USD) over three years to hire 65
contaminants in transboundary safety and enforcement officials,
rivers, with the hope of swaying B.C.’s and increased its limitation period
pro-mining agenda. In the Gem State, for action under the Mines Act and
where the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho has the Environmental Management Act
been trying to save the endangered from three to five years.
white sturgeon, new
selenium standards went
into place in 2018. In 2020,
Montana’s Department of FEARS BECAME ALL TOO REAL WHEN THE
Environmental Quality DAM HOLDING BACK A LAKE OF GOLD AND
capped a six-year effort, COPPER TAILINGS BREACHED AT THE MOUNT
championed by the
Kootenai tribes, to bang
POLLEY MINE IN CENTRAL B.C.
out new water-quality
standards for the Kootenai
River and Lake Koocanusa.
And in Washington state, where the With these and other changes,
Confederated Tribes of the Colville officials intend to clean up B.C.’s
are collaborating with upstream First image while continuing to churn up
Nations on their own water quality precious metals that combine into
standards, 25 state legislators recently steel, produce renewable energy
penned a letter calling on B.C. Premier and power the province’s continued
John Horgan to better regulate economic prosperity. But to Sellars,
transboundary mines. who doesn’t call for an outright end to
For its part, the Ministry of Energy, mining, the updates are yet another
Mines and Low Carbon Innovation chapter in a story that’s been play-
has shown a willingness to adapt. ing out since the Gold Rush: “Most
Following the auditor general’s government people look at the world
recommendations, it created a Mine like it’s a triangle with people at the
Investigation Unit to enforce regula- top. Indigenous people look at it like a
tions — though still under the min- circle with everything connected.”
istry’s umbrella — and brought the Asked if mining can be done
first successful prosecutions in two responsibly in B.C., Sellars says,
“Nobody’s ever really tried it.” D
CONCERNED CANADIANS at a B.C.
courthouse present a petition with
25,000 signatures, seeking legal action Stephen Robert Miller is an environmental
after the Mount Polley mining disaster. journalist based in Colorado.
MAR/ APR 2 02 2 . D IS C OV ER 41
 EXCLUSIVE!

WAITING TO

SELF-TAUGHT FOSSIL SPECIALIST TERRY

MANNING UNCOVERED HIS FIRST DINOSAUR
EMBRYO FROM AN ANCIENT EGG IN 1993. MORE
THAN 30 EMBRYOS AND NEARLY THREE DECADES
LATER, HARDLY ANYONE HAS LAID EYES OR
HANDS ON HIS RARE SPECIMENS.
BY TIMOTHY PRATT • PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK PETERMAN
INSIDE HIS
home and garage
in Tucson, Arizona,
Terry Manning
keeps dinosaur
eggs by the box full.
This clutch from a
therizinosaurus is
roughly 70 million
years old.
 HIS DAYS WOULD start promptly, like a banker’s — except he
also worked weekends. At 8:30 each morning, Terry Manning
would step outside his two-story brick house on Gipsy Lane in
Leicester, England, walk through the yard, let himself in the house
next door, climb the stairs and take a seat at his workbench, with
a view onto the garden out back.
There he sat for the next nine hours or so, sur-
rounded by dozens of sand-colored eggs ranging in
size from 1½ to 20 inches long. Soaking in plastic
bowls of acid, these eggs were originally laid some
75 million to 85 million years ago by dinosaurs living
in what is now China. Manning would break from his
station around 5:30 p.m., head downstairs, watch the
THE PROCESS news and eat, maybe take a nap. Then he’d trudge back
of meticulously
dissolving up the steps for a few more hours at the microscope.
fossilized Finally, around 9:30 p.m., it was off for a pint and glass
eggshell while of tequila at the local pub, Swan & Rushes.
preserving
the embryo This routine defined Manning’s life for the better
within requires part of a decade, starting in 1993. Along the way, he
specialized sorted through at least 3,100 eggs from the Henan
tools and
extraordinary province of China, sold most of them to fund his
patience. ongoing work, and kept about a third, guessing they
44 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
might contain what he was really after: dinosaur
embryos. At the end of it all, the self-taught fossil
technician had developed his own technique for
uncovering embryos, using acetic acid, resin, wax
and other materials. He now claims an unrivaled
collection of nearly three dozen eggs revealing unborn
dinosaurs, which is unique in its own right and even
more remarkable given his lack of scientific training
or any institutional oversight. “Basically,” Manning
says, “everything I’ve learned was from books.”
When his first specimens surfaced in the early
’90s, they were “revolutionary,” says Jeff Liston,
president of the European Association of Vertebrate
Palaeontologists. Manning had revealed dinosaur
embryo skeletons and what may be soft tissues such
as cartilage, both of which are exceedingly rare in
paleontological research. Yet nearly 30 years later, only
about half of Manning’s collection has ever appeared
in public, at a single exhibit in 1995. Beyond that, just
a few scientists have been able to publish research on
some of the eggs — producing novel findings.
“[It’s] almost like a legend or a myth,” Liston says
of Manning’s work. A unique series of circumstances
THIS PAGE, TOP RIGHT: CINDY HOWELLS
have barred the specimens from wider research,
public viewing and recognition. This includes
international laws and politics, academic suspicions
about outsiders in science and the multimillion-dollar
price tags Manning has placed on his eggs, according
to scientists and museum officials who have followed
his work for decades.
None of that changes the potential answers
MANNING OPTS
for off-the-grid
living on his ranch
in Tucson, forgoing
regular internet
use and a personal
cellphone.
MANNING they hold for the field of paleontology. Renowned laid in areas with shallow, mineral-rich groundwater,
maintains a paleontologist Luis Chiappe, who works as the head the calcite in the water would have helped preserve
humble work
station at his of research and collections at the Natural History the bones of the embryos.” All he had to do was find
home, where Museum of Los Angeles County, says that if the col- the right eggs and dissolve enough shell and sur-
he processes lection were made public, it would be “like discover- rounding material without destroying the embryos
fossils for
museum ing five new paintings by Leonardo da Vinci in a false — something no one else had done before.
projects. wall in a house somewhere in Europe.” But since 2010, Manning put the word out to fossil dealers. But it
33 of Manning’s best specimens of dinosaur eggs wasn’t until 1992 that he got a call from Peter Woo, a
and embryos have been locked in a safe on a retired business partner in prior deals. “I got a batch of eggs,”
banker’s country estate in Sussex, England. Woo said. Just before the new year, Manning flew
from Manchester to San Francisco to see what Woo
DISSOLVING THE PAST had brought back from a recent trip to China’s Henan
Growing up in Plymouth, England, Manning kept to province. It didn’t take him long to conclude that
himself and read prodigiously. “I was a loner. I never his partner was onto something. Manning sent Woo
had friends,” he says. “I could recite the Encyclopaedia back to Henan to buy what he could. The dinosaur
Britannica from back to front.” egg fossils were so plentiful that farmers there treated
By the time he reached age 12, he says, he was them as rocks, using them in their stone walls. Over
correcting the teachers; and at 17, he donned a kilt the course of almost a year, Woo bought 3,100.
and set off to hitchhike across Europe, a defining step Back in Leicester, Manning began what would
in his unconventional life to come. Over the next become his decade-long routine in his workshop on
few decades, Manning made jewelry and bought and Gipsy Lane, refining his technique on whatever Woo
sold gems, minerals and fossils, mostly in England, could find. Scientists had used acetic acid to dissolve
Germany, Russia and the U.S. rock surrounding vertebrate fossils since
In 1985, he was working at a the 1930s. So Manning experimented
museum in Moscow when with various concentrations and
he encountered a group of other materials to slowly dis-
dinosaur eggs that had been solve enough of the dinosaur
dug up in Mongolia. He eggshells to see inside — at
peered through the cracks a mind-numbing rate
in one shell, and had a of about 1/2000 of an
vision. “Through the inch per day. If the eggs
hole, inside the egg, I saw appeared to contain
calcite,” he says. He knew promise, he would
the mineral came from dissolve the silt and stone
hard water, and that it covering the delicate
attaches itself to bones and bones of the embryos. On
preserves them: “If I could a good day, he could remove
find dinosaur eggs that were 1 teaspoon of silt from around

46 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
 the embryo he was working on. He created a Rube
Goldberg-esque setup, with bowls for the eggs, tubes
running from water faucets and airbrushes spraying
stabilizing solutions on the bones.
Decades later, speaking on the phone from his
current home in Tucson, Arizona, he says, “I loved it.
The only time I stopped [working] was about half past
5:00.” It took about four months of this daily routine
in Leicester for Manning to uncover his first embryo.
S. ABRAMOWICZ/DINOSAUR INSTITUTE/NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY
PRAISE AND PURGATORY
The big reveal of Manning’s work, at the Cambridge
University Museum of Zoology, earned a review in
the March 24, 1995, issue of the journal Science. The
writer called the exhibition “stunning,” and reported
that it was “leaving many paleontologists breathless
with excitement.”
Manning had produced nearly two dozen speci-
mens and the enthusiastic support of a small group of
paleontologists — enough to launch the event, with a
booklet titled “The Dinosaur Egg & Embryo Project.”
The Science article notes that the 20 specimens
included an egg containing “the most complete set
of bones” ever seen of a therizinosaur, a little-known
group of dinosaurs, and a pond tortoise embryo that
appeared to push back the dating of this species from
40 million to at least 65 million years ago.
Along with praise, the article also forecast what
would become decades of barriers blocking Manning’s DO YOU SEE
work from greater exposure. The second paragraph the baby
dinosaur face?
grimly notes that the “academic excitement” was Manning
“tempered with concern.” The list of concerns: revealed
Manning and his partners were private collectors this skull of
a sauropod
and had bought the eggs without the documentation embryo in a
of a scientific expedition or collection site. They fossilized egg.
were also using the exhibition to attract a potential
private buyer, one they hoped would donate the
IF THE COLLECTION WERE MADE PUBLIC, IT WOULD
BE “LIKE DISCOVERING FIVE NEW PAINTINGS BY
LEONARDO DA VINCI.” — LUIS CHIAPPE, PALEONTOLOGIST
specimens to a public museum. The price tag was
$6 million, enough to acquire the specimens and pay
for Manning’s continued work on additional dinosaur
eggs, according to the article. “Such a deal might ‘lend
scientific credibility to what is essentially a commer-
cial exercise,’ ” paleobiologist David Unwin, then at
the University of Bristol, told the Science reporter.
These concerns about muddying science’s intel-
lectual purity due to commercial interests stalled
M AR/ APR 2 0 2 2 . D IS C OV ER 47
THESE GRAY legitimate research on the eggs and embryos. That’s
slabs in because when museums don’t accept and catalog
Manning’s
workshop specimens with what’s known as an accession
hold fossils of number, they cannot be used for scientific research
keichousaurus in reviewed and respected journals. So, in Manning’s
marine reptiles,
which lived in case, keeping the collection in his hands would
the Triassic block any credible discoveries. Nonetheless, another
period, more geologist told the reporter, “there’s no question of the
than 200 million
years ago.
fantastic scientific importance of these embryos …
[but] my personal attitude is, ‘don’t touch them with
a bargepole.’ ”
Liston, an early supporter of Manning’s work,
would go on to write a paper published in 2013 about
another obstacle facing the eggs and embryos. Before
the exhibition, the Chinese government passed a
law reclassifying dinosaur eggs from “trace fossils”
to “vertebrate fossils.” This means they went from
bearing “evidence of an animal … [to] the animal
itself — a major reclassification,” according to John
Nudds, one of the few scientists to publish research on
Manning’s work. This distinction essentially made it
illegal to remove dinosaur eggs from the country.
Even though all 3,100 of the eggs that Manning
evaluated left China before this law was passed, the
possibility of what Liston called “forced repatriation”
cast another shadow over the work, making it even
less likely that any museum or other public institution
would acquire and display the specimens. The end
result, wrote Liston: “This fantastic research resource
was in academic limbo — the paleontological equiva-
lent of film projects lost in Hollywood’s ‘development
48 D I S C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
hell’: Everybody knew they were there, but nobody
could publish on them.”
Despite these shadows, the 1995 exhibition proved
so popular that Cambridge extended the originally
scheduled one-month run to nine months. After it
closed, the “Dinosaur Egg & Embryo Project” would
never again be seen in public.
EMBRYOS FOR SALE
Amidst this controversy, in 1998, Manning met the
scientist who would become his unbending ally.
“[Manning] rang me at work,” recalls Nudds, referring
to the Manchester University Museum, where he was
keeper of geology for 15 years. The museum had just
received 20 million British pounds from the U.K.
National Lottery. Manning knew this and hoped the
museum would be interested in buying the eggs.
The paleontologist drove 1½ hours to Leicester,
where the local museum was storing the eggs in the
basement as a favor. Manning took out a dozen of his
best specimens and spread them on a table. “They
were absolutely stunning,” Nudds says. “I had never
seen anything like it.”
The only problem, recalls the paleontologist, was that
his museum’s director was “very anti- the idea,” seeing
it as unethical. Nonetheless, Nudds promised Manning
he would do everything in his power to make sure his
work received the scientific recognition it deserved.
Over the next decade-plus, Nudds went with
Manning to China three times, attempting to sell the
collection and land the eggs in a public museum. In
late 2004, the two traveled to Beijing, where they gave
a presentation to the National Geological Museum’s
director and his staff. Things were going so well that
Nudds remembers texting his wife back in England:
“We’ve sold the embryos.” The asking price, Nudds says,
was $3 million.
Several months later, in January 2005, the deal still not
settled, a delegation from the museum traveled to a hotel
in Leicester. Manning and Nudds rented a room and
arranged a private showing of the eggs, nearly as com-
plete as the Cambridge exhibition a decade earlier. “They
were very impressed,” Nudds says. But then the delega-
tion met with other scientists in London. To this day,
Nudds doesn’t know what was said at the meeting. But
he insists that scientists frowned upon Manning for not
having academic credentials and soured the delegation
on the deal. Ultimately, the purchase fell through. “We
kept emailing them, and never got a reply,” he says. “The
secretary eventually said the deal was off.”
Manning’s outsider status likely has inhibited the
reception of his work, according to Unwin, the geolo-
gist who was quoted in the 1995 Science story. Unwin
now teaches in the School of Museum Studies at the
University of Leicester, not far from where Manning
labored for years.
“One of the issues is that Terry Manning has been
seen as outside the discipline,” Unwin says today. “It’s
a huge issue, an elitist attitude. We do tend to be an
exclusive club, and that’s a problem.”

SAFEKEEPING
A couple years after the $3 million deal fell through,
Manning and Nudds met with Ji Qiang at the Chinese
Academy of Geological Sciences. He agreed to give
temporary access numbers to the best specimens. This
allowed one scientific paper to publish findings in 2008,
before the access number expired.
Shortly after that, Manning decided to lock away the
collection in England, where most of the specimens
remain today. The caretaker is a former client who once
bought fossils. “I trusted him because he was a banker,”
Manning says. In 2012, another Chinese delegation
funded by private investors visited the Sussex estate
and offered about $100,000, Nudds says. “We said it
wasn’t sufficient.”
Two papers have been published from Manning’s
work, despite the controversy. They both include
Manning and Nudds as co-authors, as well as Slovak
scientist Martin Kundrát. The first, published in Acta
Zoologica in 2008, brought insight into the development
of “therizinosauroids ... one of the rarest and most
enigmatic groups of theropod [two-footed] dinosaurs.”
The paper called Manning’s work “the most valuable
specimens of dinosaur embryos ever found.” It looked at
some of Manning’s eggs that are stored in England, and
took years of groundwork, stage-setting and the fierce
advocacy of Nudds to make it happen.
 ARGENTINA RECLAIMS
ITS SAUROPOD
The second study was published
in Current Biology in 2020, after
Manning decided to repatriate a
similar specimen unrelated to his
collection from China. This egg,
which came from Argentina, held
a sauropod, a group that includes
the largest dinosaurs to walk the
land — widely recognizable as the
long-necked brontosauruses towering
above trees in Jurassic Park. Similar
controversy surrounded the embryo, and
no museum would admit it into collections,
preventing scientific research and public viewing.
In February 2020, nearly four decades after Manning
bought the egg from an oil prospector in Patagonia, he
handed it over to Argentine paleontologist Chiappe, director
of the Dinosaur Institute of the Natural History Museum of
Los Angeles County. The transaction included a ceremony
with a bit of pomp at the Tucson Gem, Mineral and Fossil
Show. Manning stands out in photos from the event, flanked
by the scientists, Nudds and Chiappe; he’s the one with his
shirt untucked, looking off camera under a rumpled hat.
Chiappe was supposed to take the egg on a plane to
Buenos Aires on March 6, 2020. The coronavirus pandemic
cancelled that flight, quarantining the prized specimen
in Chiappe’s Los Angeles office for nearly two years. But,
finally, a coveted accession number accompanied it, which
made the Current Biology paper possible.
The paper’s discoveries about the embryonic skulls of
sauropods made news in The New York Times, Smithsonian,
New Scientist and other outlets. Findings included that the
sauropod embryo’s eyes faced forward. It also had a tiny
horn on the tip of its nose; as far as scientists had known,
“WE’RE DUE A FAIRLY MAJOR REEVALUATION OF HOW
THIS SCIENTIFIC SUBCULTURE ACTUALLY DEALS
WITH THESE ITEMS.” — DAVID UNWIN, PALEOBIOLOGIST
these dinosaurs, which grew 120-feet-long from snout
to tail, had eyes facing sideways, and lacked horns when
fully grown. Scientists consulted by journalists called the
discoveries, and the specimen itself, “amazing,” “astonish-
ing” and “unique.”
Most of the scientists interviewed for this story expressed
hope that a similar deal could be worked out with China,
returning some of Manning’s eggs to the land where they
were found. Several suggested this might lead to exhibi-
tions on loan to major museums in the West. Manning
says he wants that, too, but insists on payment for the
50 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
FROM LEFT: John Nudds, Terry Manning
and Luis Chiappe.
work — naming figures of $1
million and $3 million in various
conversations.
AN EXPERIMENT
IN SCIENCE
On a recent call from
Manchester, Nudds revealed
just how off-the-grid and isolated
Manning, now 77, has become. The
paleontologist had been trying to contact
his friend for days with no luck. Finally,
he had another friend in the Southwest call the
Tucson sheriff ’s office to check in on Manning. Everything
was fine. Manning was just living without internet, and
hadn’t seen Nudds’ emails.
When the study on his Argentine specimen published
in 2020, he was completely unaware of the international
media coverage it received. Manning doesn’t even own a
cellphone; when needed, he borrows one from his wife,
Claudeen Chisholm, and on a recent call asked how to turn
up the volume. He spends his days working on contracted
projects, like preparing Triassic lizard fossils for exhibition
in a museum, and managing the rhythms of desert life, such
as the recent killing of his two geese by a mountain lion.
But neither remoteness nor elapsed time has dimin-
ished the scientific relevance of his specimens, insists
Nudds.“There are no embryos like this collection — the style
of preparation, the quality of preservation,” he says. Multiple
scientists consulted for this story said that the findings
revealed in the Argentine sauropod embryo demonstrate
the potential research value held in Manning’s collection of
rare Chinese therizinosaur embryos. And back in Leicester,
Unwin says his own work in museum studies has taught him
that most important museum fossils have come from private
collectors. “We’re due a fairly major reevaluation of how this
scientific subculture actually deals with these items,” he says.
Manning’s situation illustrates the need for change. “This
work is like an experiment in the history of science,” Unwin
adds. “What would happen if we found something great,
but you’re not allowed to study it, and you’re not allowed to
look at it?”
Until something else happens, the experiment continues.
On his ranch in Arizona, Manning is working on other
eggs that he says contain fossilized yolks of oviraptors — a
long-misunderstood dinosaur that science named an “egg
thief ” before newer specimens revealed they were likely
egg protectors. When asked about this collection, Manning
calls these eggs “the ones nobody knows about.” Similar to
COURTESY OF JOHN NUDDS
his embryos from China, they too have been waiting more
than 70 million years to emerge. D
Timothy Pratt is a freelance writer based in Georgia. Follow
@TimothyJPratt on Twitter.
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Darlene Cavalier has boosted
some of the biggest citizen science
projects in the nation — and wants
everyone to join in.
BY JENNIFER WALTER • ILLUSTRATIONS BY TERRI FIELD

S
he didn’t want to be a scientist when she
grew up. As a kid, Darlene Cavalier was more
interested in cheerleading and dancing than
in learning how to crunch numbers and snag
awards at science fairs. “I was a good student,”
she explains. But science just wasn’t her thing.
That might seem like an unexpected start for someone
like Cavalier, who’s since made her mark on the lives
of countless scientists and their work. Today, she’s the
founder and director of SciStarter, a national organiza-
tion that connects citizen scientists with established
researchers working on large-scale, data-driven projects.
She’s also the founder of Science Cheerleader, an organi-
zation for current and former professional cheerleaders
pursuing careers in science.
At the heart of Cavalier’s work is a common thread:
a mission to connect scientists and the public. Over
the years, she has worked with Discover on a variety
of projects to advance that mission, including a new
collaboration to support ScienceNearMe.org, a web and
mobile platform connecting families and the general
public with opportunities to explore and engage in
science from anywhere. She knows firsthand the joy
and wonder that can go into learning about discover-
ies that impact everyday life — only she takes things
a step further to help everyday people participate in

MAR/ APR 2 02 2 . D IS C OVER 53

 IN HER BOOK,
The Field Guide to
Citizen Science,
Cavalier and co-
authors Catherine
Hoffman and
Caren Cooper
offer 50 projects
for non-science
readers.
those discoveries. We caught up with Cavalier to learn
more about the expanding field of citizen science, why it
matters, and how you can get involved.
Q Tell me about your background and how
you got interested in science.
After I graduated college in 1991, I started working by
just taking the first job that I could. It was very close
to where my parents live and I was working in a mail-
room, sending packages to different leads that editors
at Discover had put together for an awards program.
Basically, the editors would look through a bunch of
different types of magazines, circle interesting innova-
tions, and ship all those magazines down to where I
worked.
It was my job to hunt down the people working on
those innovations and mail them applications. All of this
CITIZEN SCIENTISTS ARE ACCELERATING
RESEARCH AND ENDING UP IN PEER-REVIEWED
JOURNALS.
matters because when the scientists would fill out the
applications and mail them back, there was a sentence
in there: Tell us how your innovation benefits society, in
basically two sentences or less.
That was fascinating to me. I had to take those answers
and enter them into a database, which meant I was read-
ing every single one of these entries. Occasionally I had
to call the scientists if they’d forgotten to fill something
out. I remember thinking, “I don’t know that I’ve ever
talked to a scientist before this, but they are incredible.”
I would tell my family stories about them, too.
54 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
Q What about citizen science? How did your
interest spark there?
My family was very blue collar. I was the first one to go to
college, with the exception of my mom who went for two
years to get her nursing degree. But they’re really smart
people, and they can fix anything.
I started thinking, there’s gotta be a way for people who
don’t have formal science degrees but find an interest
later in life — or just don’t have an opportunity to go to
college — to play a role in science. Plus, they’re funding
basic research through their tax dollars and putting
people in office who are deciding on issues that they
could have a say in.
At that point in my career, I was getting a little tired.
Discover had hired me in-house to run their awards
show, and I was commuting between Philadelphia and
New York. I was talking with the then-editor in chief,
who encouraged me to consider going back to school to
explore this innate interest I had in science. So when I
went back to school, I pursued a master’s in liberal arts
from the University of Pennsylvania. That’s actually
where I learned about citizen science, which goes by a lot
of different names.
Q I’ve also heard citizen science called
by a number of different terms, like DIY
science, for example. Are these terms for the
FROM LEFT: TIMBER PRESS; ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
same thing, or are they a bit different?
The terminology is a huge hot-button issue … and there’s
real debate going on about how to describe these things.
With DIY science, you may or may not ever share your
data with anybody in your community. Some do! But
it may not be actionable data. It could be for the sake of
exploring. And sometimes, more often than not, that
community does do amazing things with low-cost tools
that they build on their own.
Then there’s community science; it’s a very distinct field.
These are usually environmental justice communities

who act upon data at the local level to create social
change. There’s also participatory research, and a lot of
different names in general. Public science is another that’s
being used. The field is emerging and as it continues to
grow, the terms we use are becoming better defined.
5 WAYS YOU CAN BECOME
A CITIZEN SCIENTIST
Citizen science gives curious people the opportunity to
become extra sets of hands, eyes and ears in real scientific research.
Bringing many people together to document endangered species,

Q
monitor water quality or watch the stars makes it possible to do
I feel like citizen science is way more science on larger scales and tackle bigger research questions.
visible than it was, say, 10 or 15 years ago. Here are just five of the hundreds of citizen science projects that
How would you say attitudes have shifted in you can participate in. (They can all be found at SciStarter.org.)
the professional scientific community when
it comes to people without science degrees Nature’s Notebook app-based, and users can
participating in the work? Volunteers in this project upload observations about
I think it used to be harder to try to persuade profes- “take the pulse of the planet” clouds, mosquito habitat,
sional scientists that data or efforts among the lay public by documenting changes in trees or land cover to give
could actually be useful. There were a lot of questions plants, animals and insects researchers a global picture
from the science community about data quality, and to help scientists understand of how our planet is changing
these are valid questions for sure. There was also maybe how ecosystems are being over time.
a feeling of “they can’t possibly do what it took me so affected by climate change. You
long to study,” and just a sense of uneasiness overall. I’ve can join a regional campaign The Happiness Project
seen that change pretty dramatically, although it’s still like Mayfly Watch or Pesky Help psychology researchers
there to a certain extent. Plant Trackers, or choose from understand the relationship
Part of the reason why we’ve seen that change is over 1,400 species to watch in between happiness and
because … there have been a number of projects that North America. Then, log your decision-making — by
posed questions that just couldn’t have been answered observations on the Nature’s playing games. All you need
without help from the public. That could be due to a few Notebook mobile app. to participate is the project’s
people who happen to be strategically located in an area smartphone app to access
where the scientists could just not get to. They could just Crowd the Tap games that subtly investigate
happen to see dragonfly swarms when nobody else was Volunteers test the water and how players approach risky
able to catch them, for example. Or it could be because pipes in their homes decisions, while
there are millions of people sifting through tons of data so researchers periodically asking
that is just impossible for professionals to sift through. can map them to rate
Citizen scientists are accelerating research and ending the pipe their happiness
up in peer-reviewed journals. More is being done too, to infrastructure level. Game
use proper tags and taxonomies. So as papers are pub- in the United and happiness
lished, the phrase citizen science is being used. Now it’s States and scores
easier to look up and have evidence that certain papers identify become
use data from citizen scientists; we didn’t even have that contaminated data that
language before. Now it’s a field of practice, which is the water supplies. researchers use
other thing that helps to legitimize it. All you need is a to figure out how

Q
penny and a magnet expectations contribute
So, here’s the big question: Why is (to determine whether pipes to happiness.
citizen science important? are made of steel, copper,
Well, it’s important for different reasons to different plastic or lead, which is not Exoplanet Watch
people, and even at different points along the course of always obvious visually). You Experiment time on big
one single person’s lifetime. We all belong to different can also share observations telescopes like Hubble is
communities, and at times we all play different roles. about your tap water like color, precious, so NASA needs
Some years I’m a parent of young kids, so I have time smell and taste. If you live near backyard astronomers to help
to do certain things and everything’s around my kids’ a participating library or school, researchers narrow down when
interests. In my stage of life now, I’m starting to take care you can check out a kit to test and where to turn their sights to
of my own parents, so the ways that I bond with them, your water chemistry. find planets outside of our solar
the amount of time that I have, those things are taking
VADIM SADOVSKI/SHUTTERSTOCK

system. Every day, the project

priority. So we really want to try to create something GLOBE Observer posts new exoplanet targets for
where there’s always an on-ramp to citizen science, even The NASA-sponsored GLOBE volunteers to keep an eye on.
if it’s different opportunities for the same person who project seeks to understand If you don’t have a telescope,
just changes identities over time. our changing environment and you can still aid the search by
But on a broader level: The world needs citizen climate through crowd-sourced analyzing data from others’
scientists to accelerate important research, advance observations. The project is observations. — BRIANNA BARBU

MAR /APR 2 02 2 . D IS C OVER 55

 discoveries and broaden the range of perspectives, values
and observations that help shape science. Citizen science
also provides public access to data, research agendas, tools
and other resources that are largely funded by citizens’ tax
dollars, to help create a better-informed society.
Q
SciStarter is primarily a website where
citizen scientists can find a variety of
projects to work on. But how do you reach
communities offline to help them get involved
with citizen science?
In addition to authoring or co-authoring two books on
citizen science, one for academia and policy-makers [The
Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science] and the other
written for the general public [The Field Guide to Citizen
Science], we work closely with the other organization I
founded: Science Cheerleaders. For example, we were PIs
[principal investigators] in a project that compared growth
rates of microbes on Earth and on the ISS [International
Space Station]. More than 4,000 fans helped collect
microbes at games after we shot microbe collection kits
from a T-shirt bazooka into the stands at a Philadelphia
THE FOUNDATIONS OF CITIZEN SCIENCE SELF-
GUIDED MODULE INCLUDES PARTICIPATION IN
TWO FUN AND SIMPLE PROJECTS.
76ers game! Forty-eight samples were flown on the ISS and
some participants were cited in the related papers.
Another initiative: We did a pilot program with librar-
ies, and the facilitators who already reach in-person com-
munities are our key. A facilitator might be the librarian,
for example; she has direct contact with everybody coming
into the library and usually particular groups that use the
library, like the 55 and older community, who might meet
up there already. There are actual, physical kits that people
can check out, with everything they need to get involved in
a project.
And I really want to stress that our initiatives are a team
effort. We do everything in partnership with people and
organizations that also believe in the power of the people.
Q
Did the pandemic change citizen science
in any ways you’ve observed?
We saw more flexibility from project scientists who were
desperate for people to get involved in their project and
could no longer go somewhere, like to a national park
for example. We also saw more of a willingness for the
scientists to communicate online. There had been years
where we were saying, come on, join us online and talk
about your project to these communities. It was like pull-
ing teeth for some of them. So that was really nice because
56 D I S C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
it allowed us to do some evaluation and measure what we
could do better.
Some of the feedback was that scientists had not been
able to connect directly with volunteers before. We forget
about that part. When you have a citizen science project
where you’re asking people to collect data, it’s because you
can’t get it yourself. Usually somebody somewhere else
helps out, but you never really know who they are.
We did face-to-face Zoom conversations, listened to
questions directly from the volunteers — that was just all
stuff we loved. We love watching and building community.
Q You recently launched a new initiative
called Science Near Me. What can you
tell us about it?
Science Near Me is an extension of SciStarter and it unites
traditionally separate offerings from museums, science
festivals, citizen science, policy forums, after-school
programs, maker programs, astronomy clubs and more.
While there are many resources for people to learn
about science, we wanted to create a place for people
from all backgrounds and interests to easily find ways to
interact. ScienceNearMe.org makes it easier for people to
connect with the right opportunity across a spectrum of
STEM topics and venues, and helps accelerate research on
science engagement and learning in the process.
We have tools like the Opportunity Finder, which lets
people search a network of partner organizations’ data-
bases to identify programs, events and projects by location,
age levels, topic, type of engagement and more. Now, in
one place, you can find an event at a local museum, an
astronomy talk at a local pub or a science policy forum
open to the public online. Check it out!
Q
How can someone interested in a citizen
science project get involved? What
resources do they need?
Typically, no prior experience is needed, just a com-
mitment to make and share observations following
the project’s protocols. Some projects seek people with
specialized skills, instruments, access to specific locations,
or who fit particular demographics. Some projects offer
online or in-person training so volunteers can learn how
to use sensors, follow protocols, analyze data and even find
resources to act upon the data to shape policies.
And if you aren’t quite ready to commit or want to learn
more about citizen science first, SciStarter and Arizona
State University developed the Foundations of Citizen
Science self-guided module, which includes participation
in two fun and simple projects. That’s at SciStarter.org/
training. And some good projects for beginners, where
they can also track all their contributions to projects, can
be found at SciStarter.org/affiliates. D
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Jennifer Walter is a science writer based in Wisconsin.
 HISTORY LESSONS
BY SHOSHANA AKABAS

— an entomolo-
gist specializing in

PORTRAIT: COURTESY ELEANOR LOWENTHAL. ANT: BARTBOTJE/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. SPECIMENS: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY. PHOTOGRAPHED BY CRYSTAL MAIER. COPYRIGHT 2021, PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE
ants — published
more than 430
articles, among
them some of
the most cited
scientific papers
in history, and
wrote over 30
books, including 2020’s Tales From the
Ant World. He also received dozens of
awards, from the Pulitzer Prize to the
National Medal of Science.
When Eleanor joined the depart-
ment in the ’50s, researchers around
the world were racing to collect and
catalog specimens. As Wilson shifted
research toward smaller, less glamorous
species that nonetheless held ecological
significance, he set the stage for conser-
vation biology, centered on preserving
ecosystem biodiversity. Behind the
scenes, technicians like my grand-
mother preserved the specimens that
furthered Wilson’s work and continue to
provide new insights and opportunities
for researchers across the globe.
KNOWN FOR HER
SPEED, MEMORY AN UNLIKELY CONTRIBUTOR
and accuracy,
An Eye for Ants technician
Eleanor
As a teenager, Eleanor spent hours
roaming the halls of the American
Lowenthal (top Museum of Natural History in New
AS THE HARVARD MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE right) mounted
ZOOLOGY’S ANT COLLECTION RAPIDLY GREW IN THE as many as 200 York City, flipping through gift shop
1950S, ONE WOMAN WORKED BEHIND THE SCENES ant specimens books about insect mounting. She once
per day at the had kept a praying mantis in a glass jar
WITH EXTRAORDINARY SPEED, ACCURACY AND Harvard Museum
ARTISTRY. TODAY’S RESEARCHERS ARE STILL REAPING of Comparative
for a whole year. But that was the extent
THE BENEFITS. Zoology in the of her entomology experience.
1950s. During her job interview at Harvard,

T
he night after their wedding in 1954, my grandpar- when Philip Jackson Darlington, one
ents sat on the bed in their motel room, counting of the most influential zoologists of
the cash in my grandpa’s pockets. There was barely the 20th century, asked Eleanor about
enough to open a bank account. So, the next morn- her specialty, she replied, “Oh, I like
ing, Eleanor Lowenthal — my grandmother — in desperate everything.”
need of income to put her husband through graduate school, “He probably realized right then
walked into the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. that I didn’t have a specialty,” she says.
There, she convinced some of the most prominent scientists in She’d worked in a hardware store
the world that she was the perfect person to mount and catalog in Mamaroneck, New York, during
their burgeoning ant collection. her high school summers, but none of
At the time, a promising graduate student named E.O. the shops in Cambridge would hire a
Wilson was coming up in the department. Wilson, who passed woman, and she had no typing skills to
away in December 2021 at the age of 92, was called the “father be a secretary. She had dropped out of
of biodiversity” and the “heir of Darwin.” The myrmecologist the Tyler School of Fine Arts to marry;

58 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
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 HISTORY LESSONS
that artistic background was a selling point
for the Harvard job, and she was hired on
the spot.
These days, artistic backgrounds are
common for volunteers and interns and
even researchers, explains Crystal Maier, the
current curatorial associate and collection
manager for entomology at the museum.
After all, if art is making something from
what exists, and science is about making
possible what comes next, at the intersection lies the
act of preservation. At the time, however, hiring a
21-year-old woman who’d dropped out of art school
was a significant gamble.
It paid off. Eleanor’s job as a technician required
the same manual dexterity and coordination that
art school had demanded. She began each day at the
museum mixing fresh glue to the perfect consis-
tency. Then she pulled the dead ants from their
alcohol vials and set them out to dry. Some ants
were miniscule — barely 3 millimeters long — and
their thin legs were tangled like steel wool, requiring
patience and a careful hand. After writing a label
for each specimen, she’d balance the ant’s thorax on
the corner of a tiny cardstock triangle with a spot
of glue, then spear the pin precisely through the
handwritten label and cardstock.
The job required her to work quickly, yet precisely.
“The average person never really hears about the
machinery and the expertise and the effort that goes
into it,” said Wilson in an interview before his death.
Rushing could risk ruining a rare specimen, but
60 D I S C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
BUILDING: JON BILOUS/DREAMSTIME. ANT: PASCAL GRUENER/SHUTTERSTOCK. SPECIMENS: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY. PHOTOGRAPHED BY CRYSTAL MAIER. COPYRIGHT 2021, PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE
Eleanor could process ants as quickly as Wilson
could mail them back from his expeditions to
Australia and Papua New Guinea. She sometimes
mounted as many as 200 a day.
And Eleanor’s advantage wasn’t just dexterity and
fine motor skills: She also had an exceptional
memory. In the mornings, as she was handed
vial after vial filled with ants, the associate
director detailed the contents, scientific
names, and specimen’s origins to be written
on the identification tag. My grandmother
retained it all, and the researchers were
floored that she never wasted a minute
writing anything down.
AT THE HARVARD Ulric Neisser, a researcher at Cornell
MUSEUM OF University, wrote about Eleanor’s abilities
COMPARATIVE decades later in his book Memory Observed, noting
ZOOLOGY (top
left), Lowenthal
that Eleanor’s supervisor at Harvard “confirmed …
mounted many the numbers of insects she had to remember on a
specimens (top typical day. She was the best technician who ever
right) collected
by famed
worked for him.”
entomologist — With new species regularly being discovered,
then graduate Wilson recalled the department had “a continuous,
student — rolling sense of discovery and adventure.” The
E.O. Wilson.
collection is now home to approximately 1 million
ant specimens. Eleanor felt lucky to tap into to
conversation around her, which included Wilson’s
“We’re able early work on the ant genus Lasius, using the collec-
to pull more tion she was mounting. Noting how characteristics
and more data such as antennal length and head shape diverged
out of these in specimens from eastern North America (where
related species shared territory) led Wilson to
specimens
develop the theory of character displacement, which
than we explained that when two similar species come into
ever thought contact with each other, they often quickly evolve to
we could.” differentiate themselves.
Wilson frequently used ants as a model to
help paint a much larger picture of evolution or
 biodiversity. “Ants are excellent — the variety of
them and the environmental influences — they’re
excellent subjects to use in developing the discipline
of ecosystem studies,” he explained. They show, for
example, that cooperation can evolve as an effective
species survival trait — in ants, as well as humans.
According to Wilson, ants are “not something that
the average person would think about, not ever,
once,” yet they’ve contributed significantly to our
understanding of the natural world.
PRESERVING A LEGACY
It wasn’t a coincidence that Eleanor found work in
entomology. Wilson’s high-profile research on ants
cracked an opening for women in the previously
male-dominated field of conservation, which
had been funded largely by hunting dues and was
centered around studying big game in the first half
of the 20th century. Though the only woman in
her department aside from the secretary, Eleanor
was one in a long line of female technicians in the
Harvard Entomology Department, humble workers
making largely unseen contributions.
“Especially in entomology collections, there’s
so much work that goes into these specimens that
doesn’t get credited,” says Maier.
Even when women’s early work has been
credited, the language used to describe their
contributions often minimized their role in the
team, not mentioning them by name. Maier
recently discovered some department reports from
the mid-1800s, including lines such as, “A large
amount of spreading and setting insects was done
by the lady assistant,” and, “The collection has been
remarkably free from pests … due to the incessant
care of the lady assistant.”
“It was the case for a very long time that women
were in the role of assistants,” says Etienne Benson,
associate professor of history and sociology of
science at the University of Pennsylvania. “Women
were moved into positions that didn’t have as much
status,” he says, “but these jobs turned out to be
really critical and take a lot of expertise.”
Eleanor was also responsible for the day-to-day
preservation of the entomology collections; because
of this skillful preservation, even 250-year-old
specimens still look as good as the day they were
collected. The Harvard Museum of Comparative
Zoology functions like a library (specimens can
be borrowed for study or examined on site), and
RICK FRIEDMAN/GETTY
serves as a training hub for the next generation of
scientists who use the collection in ways Wilson
and my grandmother probably never imagined.
“In the past couple of decades, there’s been a
If art is making renewed interest in going back to natural history
something collections and trying to use them for different
purposes,” Benson explains, such as testing bird
from what feathers from the 1950s for toxic chemicals.
exists, and Now, photographers are digitizing the Harvard
science is ant collection using photo-stacking techniques to
about making create 3D images of each ant, and Maier says they’re
possible only beginning to unlock the potential of the collec-
tion. “We’re working with researchers now who can
what comes
even pull DNA from these older specimens,” says
next, at the Maier, “and so the boundaries keep getting pushed
intersection further and further, and we’re able to pull more
lies the act of and more data out of these specimens than we ever
preservation. thought we could.”
Eleanor didn’t realize the impact of her contribu-
tions at the time — the technician role was just a job
that paid $38 a week. Her work over several years
at the museum was a sentence in a larger story: She
also competed in international sailing competi-
tions, met with the pope, built a harpsichord, and
TODAY CALLED
“the father of
biodiversity,”
taught her granddaughter to weave on a loom. But
Wilson’s (above) she’s come to appreciate the significance of her work
early work on on a project that spans centuries. “You can see how
the ant genus
Lasius (opposite
it goes from one era to another,” says Eleanor. “It’s
page, bottom) led so important to have this library for people to make
him to develop connections and new discoveries.”
the evolutionary As the collection grows year after year — each
theory of
character ant containing untapped data that can expand
displacement. our understanding of evolution, ecosystems, and
symbiosis in the natural world — technicians
like Eleanor have ensured they’re preserved for
whomever comes next. D
Shoshana Akabas is a writer and teacher based in New
York City.
MAR/APR 2 02 2 . D IS C OVER 61
 OUT THERE
BY NOLA TAYLOR TILLMAN
THE NIGHT SKY
could look like this
in about 4 billion
years, when
the Andromeda
Galaxy is
expected to
collide with our
own Milky Way.
Milky Way’s Crash-
Bang Neighborhood
THE FATE OF OUR GALAXY — AND MANY OTHERS
— IS PLAYED OUT IN A SLOW BUT SURPRISINGLY
DRAMATIC COSMIC DANCE.
S
tars and galaxies move around us at a pace that seems
glacial on human time scales. Their dance is exceed-
ingly gradual, taking place over billions of years. But
if we could see time the same way the stars do, the
neighborhood around our Milky Way Galaxy would appear
surprisingly active.
Galaxies swing around one another, slowly spiraling
together until they merge. Many don’t travel alone but bring
companions with them, in a dark collision that may tear some
stars from the heart of their homes and splay them across the
sky. Other regions grow rich in gas and dust and begin, in
their newfound opulence, to birth new stars. The dance of the
galaxies is slow and violent, filled with both life and death.
The Milky Way drives the motion of the collection of more
than 100 galaxies known as the Local Group. Within that
group, only the Andromeda Galaxy is larger than the Milky
Way — roughly 125 percent more massive — and like our
62 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
galaxy, it has a spiral shape. Two smaller
galaxies stand out: the Triangulum
Galaxy, dancing around Andromeda,
and the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC),
orbiting the Milky Way. The rest of
the neighborhood is filled mostly with
satellites of the pair, smaller galaxies
hovering like adoring fans. These galax-
ies flit about, but eventually will meld
with their larger companions. When
that happens, it will not be the first time
NASA/ESA/Z. LEVAY AND R. VAN DER MAREL/STSCI/T. HALLAS/AND A. MELLINGER
our galaxy has bumped into another.
ANCIENT ARTIFACTS
The Milky Way suffered its first major
collision early in its lifetime, roughly
10 billion years ago. Prior to that, it
The dance of probably had a handful of scrapes
the galaxies with smaller galaxies, but the dramatic
crash into a galaxy referred to as Gaia
is slow and
Enceladus left lasting scars. For a long
violent, filled time, those scars were hidden, their
with both life absence puzzling astronomers. It took
and death. the European Space Agency’s Gaia space
telescope to bring them to light in 2018,
after years of hints.
 “Before the Gaia data was released, we thought Sagittarius Sagittarius is also triggering waves of star forma-
the Milky Way was a very quiet galaxy with no dra- is triggering tion in the Milky Way. Researchers have found
matic impact,” says Eloisa Poggio, an astronomer at patches of star formation that coincide with the
the Astrophysical Observatory of Turin in Italy. “It’s
waves of star closest approach, or pericenter, of the dying galaxy.
more complicated than we thought before.” formation in Gravitational interactions push together piles of gas
Gaia Enceladus was a dwarf galaxy, slightly the Milky Way. and dust to create regions ripe for starbirth. Tomás
smaller than the Milky Way, perhaps 2 billion years Gravitational Ruiz-Lara, an astronomer at Kapteyn Astronomical
old when it crashed into us. The collision would interactions Institute, the Netherlands, found bursts of stel-
have significant ramifications. The Milky Way was create regions lar formation roughly 6.5 billion, 2 billion, and
a stubby disk from which stars were flung out, cre- 1 billion years ago, and tied each one to several
ating its halo. Part of the disk then became unstable
ripe for pericentric passes of Sagittarius.
and collapsed into a barlike structure. Over time, starbirth. “The main surprise is that something so small
a new, thin disk was created. When the show was is able to cause all these effects,” says Ruiz-Lara.
over, the Milky Way was a different galaxy. “Sagittarius is an important actor in the film of the
“This is a key pivotal moment in the Milky Way’s origin and evolution of our galaxy.”
life,” says Vasily Belokurov, part of one
of the two teams that co-discovered
the ancient artifact. “It unleashed a
sequence of transformations in the
Milky Way that have changed it into
the Milky Way we know.”
For the next few billion years, the
Milky Way was quiet, consuming the
occasional satellite galaxy but leaving
the larger ones alone. That changed
around 6 billion years ago when the
Sagittarius Galaxy made its own
grand entrance.
Sagittarius is an elliptical galaxy,
one of the nearest neighbors to the
Milky Way, and is coming to an
agonizing end as it interacts with the
larger object. Discovered in 1994,
Sagittarius spirals around the Milky
Way’s poles, a hundred to a thousand
times less massive than our galaxy.
In 2018, scientists discovered a
warp in the disk of the Milky Way.
Large-scale distortions — collec-
NASA/ESA/Z. LEVAY AND R. VAN DER MAREL/STSCI/T. HALLAS/AND A. MELLINGER

tions of stars gravitationally shoved

together — are common among spiral
galaxies, and ours travels relatively THIS ILLUSTRATED
slowly around the disk. A warp can form due to sequence of DESTRUCTION AHEAD
the future Milky
interactions within a galaxy, but the movement sug- Way/Andromeda Sagittarius isn’t the only galaxy ready to smash into
gests an external origin. “The only possible model collision starts the Milky Way. The LMC, the fourth largest object
that can explain such large precession is interaction with present in the Local Group, is slowly spiraling towards us.
day (top left)
with a satellite [galaxy],” says Poggio, who measured and unfolds over For decades, astronomers thought that the massive
and tracked the warp. 4 billion years irregular galaxy and its smaller cousin, the Small
But who’s the culprit? While it’s possible that the until our galaxy Magellanic Cloud (SMC), had already made several
becomes warped
Milky Way’s warp was caused by the LMC, Poggio (bottom right). loops around the Milky Way. But in 2007, astrono-
thinks that the influence of Sagittarius might be mers used the Hubble Space Telescope to confirm
stronger, and she’s working to prove it. Confirming that the pair were on their first approach.
her theory requires further simulations, which she is Although the LMC won’t merge with us for
in the process of analyzing. another 2 billion years, it is already making its

MAR/ APR 2 02 2 . D IS C OV ER 63
 OUT THERE
COLLISION SCENARIO
FOR MILKY WAY AND
ANDROMEDA GALAXY
presence felt. Because it is so massive, not only is the
LMC drawn to the Milky Way, but the Milky Way
itself is also pulled towards the LMC. A collection
of material rather than a solid body, the Milky Way
responds to the interaction differently in different
regions. The inner halo and stellar disk are being
tugged by the LMC, while outer halo material does
not move much. “It’s a total mess,” Belokurov says.
Unlike Sagittarius, the LMC isn’t alone. In addi-
tion to the SMC, the LMC appears to be bringing its
own satellite galaxies. “Those satellites are coming
along for a ride,” says Ekta Patel, an astronomer at
the University of California, Berkeley. Patel has stud-
ied several of the smaller galaxies of the Local Group
and found six that appear tied to the Magellanic
Clouds — for now. The future collision between
the Milky Way and the LMC may cause them to
disconnect from the LMC. At that point, they may
fall into the Milky Way along with the LMC, or they
could wind up flying off on a new orbit.
Colliding with the LMC may make the Milky
Way more like other spiral galaxies. Today, the
Milky Way has a supermassive black hole much
smaller than the black holes of other similarly sized
galaxies. The halo of stars surrounding the galaxy
is lightweight and metal-poor. And the LMC is an
unusually large satellite for similar spirals. All of
these are likely signs of the unusual quiet period our
galaxy has gone through; most galaxies undergo
more than one major merger, while the Milky Way
64 D IS C O V E R M A G A Z I N E .C O M
has so far only clashed with Gaia Enceladus. “Since
then, there has been hardly anything,” says Marius
Cautun, an astronomer at Leiden Observatory in
the Netherlands.
In a 2019 paper, Cautun and his colleagues
simulated how the upcoming collision with the
LMC will change the Milky Way. The size of our
galaxy’s black hole should grow up to eight times
larger. Stars from the infalling galaxy, as well as
those pulled from the Milky Way’s disk, should bulk
up the stellar halo and metallicity. By the end of
the crash, the Milky Way should be less unique and
more comparable to other galaxies.
Perhaps the most well-known collision in the
Milky Way’s neighborhood has yet to happen. The
massive Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31,
will smash into us in about 4 billion years. Although
this event has long been suspected, it wasn’t until
2012 that scientists used NASA’s Hubble Space
Telescope to prove it by measuring the sideways
motion of Andromeda. By comparing previous
observations, scientists concluded that Andromeda
was moving straight towards us. Refined measure-
THE FUTURE ments using the Gaia telescope now indicate that
COLLISION path of
Andromeda and
the smash-up will be slightly off-axis.
the Milky Way. “Whether it’s fully a head-on collision or more
Triangulum may of a glancing blow doesn’t really affect the end
also be part of the
result,” says Roeland van der Marel, an astronomer
impending crash.
at the Space Telescope Science Institute who led
the teams that took both measurements. That end
result will convert the two spiral galaxies into one
spheroidal elliptical galaxy, empty of almost all of
its star-forming gas. The supermassive black holes
will spiral together, eventually becoming a single
monster in the heart of the new galaxy.
CRASH! BANG!
As the LMC and SMC orbit the Milky Way, they
are in the midst of their own tug-of-war. In 2012,
Gurtina Besla, of the University of Arizona, was
part of a team that modeled the results of a collision
between the LMC and SMC. Two years ago, another
team’s observations of massive, hot young stars
Perhaps inside the pair confirmed their model — the two had
the most collided only a few hundred million years ago.
NASA/ESA/A. FEILD AND R. VAN DER MAREL/STSCI
well-known Prior to the 2000s, astronomers knew about
collision in the only a handful of satellites in the Milky Way’s
neighborhood. That changed with digital sky
Milky Way’s
surveys. Now we know of dozens of other, smaller
neighborhood satellite galaxies tied to our own, many of which
has yet to are extremely faint. The arrival of the Gaia
happen. telescope’s second data release allowed us to track
the motion of these satellites. “Gaia is amazing
because it allows us to track the motions of stars in
the faintest known galaxies,” Patel says. “It’s a huge Although first approach towards galaxies roughly 10 times
game changer.” the Large larger than they are — is not as surprising as it
With masses less than 10 percent of the Milky seems, van der Marel says. Current understanding
Way, the tiny satellites are controlled by the stron-
Magellanic of galaxy formation involves smaller things falling
ger gravity of the larger galaxy. As stars are being Cloud won’t into larger ones to build them up. He says it’s more
torn from the galaxies, they create stellar streams, merge with likely to find something relatively massive only
ribbons of stars that stretch across the sky. us for another beginning to merge with its parent galaxy, rather
Andromeda is also suffering its own ongoing 2 billion years, than having orbited it several times over billions
collision. The Triangulum Galaxy, third largest it is already of years. That’s because the large galaxies are more
in the neighborhood, is currently falling into likely to be swallowed up over a few cycles.
Andromeda in much the same way the LMC is fall-
making its The dance of galaxies may take billions of years
ing into the Milky Way. Although radio telescopes presence felt. to conclude, but it will eventually merge the Milky
have done a good job of measuring the motion of Way and its neighbors into a single collection of
the smaller galaxy, Gaia was able to confirm those stars. When the music stops, Andromeda, the
measurements, and provide a little more insight. Milky Way, and all of their satellites will have lost
“It’s a little surprising, but it appears that the most their spiral and their young stars. All that will be
consistent scenario with the observations is that left is the collection of aging stars in a dustless
Triangulum is falling into Andromeda for the very galaxy, enjoying the silence of its golden years. D
first time,” says van der Marel, who used Gaia to
measure the motion of the smaller galaxy. Nola Taylor Tillman is a science journalist who focuses on
On reflection, however, the connection between astronomy. She has written for publications such as Scientific
Triangulum and the LMC — both making their American, Science, and the BBC. She lives in Atlanta.

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BY TIMOTHY MEINCH

THE SILVER LAKE, left, sank in 1900, near Sheboygan, Wisconsin;

the Vernon, above, succumbed to Lake Michigan storm waves in
1887. Both ships remain preserved at depths of 200-plus feet within
the new Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary.

of Lake Michigan that was Sanctuary status will

designated a U.S. National expand exploration oppor-
Marine Sanctuary in mid- tunities for marine archae-
2021. It’s only the 15th such ologists and historians, as
sanctuary in the country, well as recreational divers
recognized by the National and dry-footed tourists.
Oceanic and Atmospheric Preliminary plans include
Administration (NOAA). building a visitor center,
The newly appointed swathe adding mooring buoys
of water along eastern above some shipwrecks and
Wisconsin contains 36 iden- launching glass-bottom
tified shipwrecks, most of boat tours. These tours, in
them listed on the National partnership with NOAA,
Register of Historic Places; would float visitors above the
historical records show the murky remains of freshwater
FRESHWATER TREASURE area holds dozens of other schooners and paddle wheel-
unidentified sunken vessels, ers, like the 300-passenger
If you’ve sunk to the bottom of Lake like unmarked graves. Niagara steamer, which
never visited Michigan in 1929. “Where “They’ve been hidden, vanished beneath the waves
North America’s else on Earth do you have out of sight, out of mind,” in 1856, just 1 mile off the
CAPT. JITKA HANAKOVA/SHIPWRECK EXPLORERS (2)

Great Lakes, it’s more than 260 factory-fresh Overland says. Wisconsin shoreline. D
difficult to grasp their ocean- automobiles preserved?” says
like vastness. Even for those Christian Overland, CEO
who have, few can fathom the of the Wisconsin Historical
trove of maritime artifacts Society. “We have this amaz- SCIENCE IN REAL LIFE
scattered across their floors ing underwater museum We want to see your awe-inspiring photos. Tag #ScienceIRL
— including a shipment of intact.” and @Discover.Magazine on Instagram to share encounters
with science in your cities, nature, the arts and beyond.
some 260 Nash cars aboard Overland’s museum is
the Senator freighter, which a 962-square-mile section

DISCOVER Magazine (ISSN 0274-7529, USPS No. 555-190) is published bimonthly (January/February, March/April, May/June, July/August, September/October, November/December) by Kalmbach Media Co., 21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box 1612, Waukesha, WI 53187.
Periodicals Postage is paid at Waukesha, WI and additional offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Discover, PO Box 8520, Big Sandy, TX 75755. Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement #40010760. Back issues available. All rights reserved. Nothing herein contained
may be reproduced without written permission of Kalmbach Media Co., 21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box 1612, Waukesha, WI 53187-1612. Printed in the U.S.A.

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