ENHS Nature Trails December 2000 Article 1

This month's speaker: Dr. Art Boucot

December brings another distinguished scientist with a great talk, "Changing Climates for the Last _ Billion Years." Not quite that long ago, but a few decades back, the seeds for research into the Earth's geologic record began sprouting within Dr. Arthur Boucot, now an OSU Distinguished Professor in the Department of Zoology, currently teaching Paleobiology and Biogeography.

Art grew up in the City of Brotherly Love where he discovered natural history at an early age. As a five year old, he began collecting minerals and fossils, and I suspect, anything he could he brought home to study. His curiosity increased and his mother "really got him rolling," according to Art. He expanded his observations and collecting to outside Philadelphia, into adjacent New Jersey, and some in New England and New York. His mother, at first a homemaker and later a student, shared her freshman geology text with Art, and Art began to fly on his own. (As an aside, I have to tell you that Art's mother went on to medical school and distinguished herself as a Professor of Preventative Medicine in Philadelphia while raising her young scientist.) With a little historical geology in his grasp, Art "paid a very exciting visit" to the American Museum of Natural History by himself at age 11. Of course he remembers the dinosaur skeletons on exhibit, but also his meeting with Roy Chapman Andrews, top administrator at the museum. Apparently Andrew's signature was needed so that the 11 year old lad could take pictures with his Kodak of dinosaur skeletons inside the museum.

Art's own pursuit of his natural science interests needed little encouragement, but, besides his mother, he also remembers the Curator of Mineral Collections and a geology professor from Princeton as early mentors. Art, still a youth, took Princeton Professor Benjamin Franklin Howell's geology class at the Wagner Free Institute of Science, established in the early 19th century for workers by a wealthy Philadelphia merchant, William Wagner. Workmen could take free classes in the evenings to improve themselves. Art remembers his classmates as "doddering octogenarians, housewives, college students" and others. Professor Howell undoubtedly appreciated the opportunity to teach anyone interested, and the students mutually grabbed at this opportunity, as this was deep in the Depression.

Art comments, "I still have my diploma proudly displayed on the wall from classes taken in 1935 through 1939" at the Wagner Free Institute of Science. Later on Art earned his B.A. M.S. and Ph.D. all from Harvard University. His research areas are extensive and include but are not limited to marine benthic community paleoecology, behavioral evidence from the fossil record, and biogeography and taxonomy of Paleozoic gastropods and brachiopods. He remembers best his travels wherever Silurian and Devonian brachiopods occur. These brachiopods contribute to the picture Art's going to present in his talk Friday evening on Phanerozoic climatic belts through time. If his talk is anything like his e-mails, the ENHS should be thrilled that Dr. Arthur Boucot, whose favorite youthful hangout was the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, has decided to hang out with us at Willamette Hall.

PHANEROZOIC and BRACHIOPODS

For some of us who don't always keep our geologic time periods in order, the Phanerozoic (revealed life) includes only a short eon of geologic time, from the end of Precambrian (approximately 540 million years ago) forward. And brachiopods are marine invertebrates having bivalve shells with a pair of arms inside bearing tentacles to capture microscopic food brought in on currents of water. This horseshoe-shaped arrangement of tentacles, called a lophophore, along with an asymmetrical valve arrangement, has generally distinguished brachiopods from mollusks.

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