July 17, 2003

	Paleontologists and scientists from the University of Nebraska State Museum excavate a site in late May near the town of Center to uncover fossils from a plesiosaur. More than 1,000 visitors checked out the progress of the dig, which uncovered about one-third of the dinosaur's neck vertebrae, but not its head.
	Mike Baldwin, who discovered the plesiosaur, shows an example of some of the other tiny fossils that showed up at the excavation site near Center, Neb.
	Greg Brown of the University of Nebraska State Museum demonstrates with a toy plesiosaur how the dinosaur skeleton is lying in the hillside where it was being excavated near Center, Neb. Photos by Kelly Bartling.

Uncovering a dinosaur

Museum workers piece together a plesiosaur pulled from its home after 70 million years

By Kelly Bartling, University Communications

Some 70 million years ago, in the great sea that once covered Nebraska, a giant lizard-like plesiosaur swam. When it died, its bones settled on the ocean floor, where it remained undisturbed.

Until Mike Baldwin, a science teacher from Texas, discovered parts of its skeleton in dirt eroding from the hillside along Highway 84 near Center, in north central Nebraska. Baldwin, a fossil enthusiast, carefully recovered two neck bones, about the size of coffee cans, and knew he had something exciting. He figured he had a plesiosaur and contacted the University of Nebraska State Museum.

On May 20, Baldwin, who hails originally from Creighton, Neb., Mike Voorhies, Shane Tucker, Bruce Bailey and Greg Brown of the State Museum began a two-week excavation that uncovered the fossil they now call the Baldwin Plesiosaur and moved it to its new home in Nebraska Hall.

The project, which is the first major dig in 2003 for the museum, marked a significant find for the Highway Salvage Paleontology program.

"It's a red-letter day when someone finds one of these creatures," Voorhies said in May, holding a shovel from his spot overlooking the fossil dig, unable to hold back his enthusiasm. "Who has ever seen an actual sea monster in the rock?" he asked. "Not very many of us. I think people in Nebraska don't even realize that we had things like that living here."

As many as 1,200 visitors stopped to look at the excavation - small groups of school children, families passing by, local curious, and the media - while the group carefully uncovered the bones, covered them in tissue paper and plaster casts and removed them from the shallow roadside cliff. They now sit waiting further study at Nebraska Hall, where Bailey and other co-workers and volunteers will continue to use tiny flexible knives and brushes to extract the bones from the chalk and piece the specimen back together.

Bailey said the specimen is probably a long-neck plesiosaur, and only the sixth articulated specimen found in Nebraska during the 130-year history of fossil-collecting in the state. About one-third of the 60 to 70 neck vertebrae were recovered, but not the skull, which would have been an extremely rare find.

"An articulated specimen (with its bones joined) like this is incredibly rare it's probably the second-best one found in Nebraska," Bailey said. Another lies in the floor of the Mesozoic Gallery in the State Museum, under plexiglass where visitors can walk along the length of its neck.

The scientists were a bit disappointed not to find the skull. At the dig site, the vertebrae suddenly ended, and Bailey points out that the last several appear to have bite marks.

"I would envision a bloated carcass of this plesiosaur floating around the sea and the sharks biting at it," he said. "That's part of what we do during preparation try to understand the cause of death" and other details about the prehistoric animal. The paleontologists were also interested in finding a complete paddle, or arm-like fin. This specimen's paddles were somewhat scattered.

The great water creature is a nice addition to the museum's collection, Voorhies said.

"These aren't fossils Nebraska is famous for. If you go to our museum, the outstanding fossils tend to be the big land animals, the giant mammoth and saber-tooth cats and the world's largest camels. These fossils are much older," he said. "This skeleton is 70 million years old, which is about seven times older than the Ashfall Fossil Beds. To most of us, 10 million years is a huge amount of time. Seventy million is almost unbelievable. I get excited at seeing something in this good of shape and it's that old."

The find is also a boost for the Highway Salvage Paleontology program, administered by the Nebraska Department of Roads and UNL. Because of the wealth of fossils in Nebraska's soil, which may remain undisturbed except through road construction, the Highway Salvage Program is a huge success, and nearly unique nationally.

"Every summer that the Highway Salvage program has been going, at least five or six of what I would call major finds have been made," said Bailey, the program director. "There is so much road work going on in Nebraska and so many fossils just under the soil, that pretty much every major earth-moving project in the state uncovers some bones. Over the years, thousands and thousands of fossils would have been lost to science and the state without the program."

Some of the ability to prepare the fossils has been lost because of museum budget cuts, Bailey said, which he said is unfortunate.

"These things belong to the people of Nebraska," Voorhies said. "They pay their taxes for roads and for the university, and here's a case where the Department of Roads and the university collaborate on a project that rescues these priceless treasures. We're proud of that."

Greg Brown, chief preparator in the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology at UNL, said "you'd think after a quarter century of doing this it gets to be old hat. But it never does. Every time you're involved in an excavation, you're seeing something no one has ever seen before. It may be the same species that's been collected before, but that individual which was once a living creature, you're the first one to see it. And the second thing you think about is the great responsibility that carries with it, this animal's been preserved for millions of years, you're now attempting to preserve it for future generations. That's a great responsibility."

Edwards to resume teaching

Richard Edwards, senior vice chancellor for academic affairs, will leave his current post as of December. He will move to a teaching and research position in UNL's College of Business Administration. Edwards has served as senior vice chancellor for academic affairs since April 1997.

"I look forward to returning to teaching and research, although I regret leaving the administrative team with whom I have worked so closely these last six years," Edwards said.

Edwards will be a professor in the department of economics with his assignment split between economics and the Center for Great Plains Studies.

"Rick has provided outstanding leadership during his tenure in academic affairs," said UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman. "He has made the university a better place, and I'm pleased UNL will continue to benefit from his wisdom and vision as he makes this career move."

Edwards, 59, earned his bachelor's degree at Grinnell College (1966) in Grinnell, Iowa. He then earned his master's (1970) and doctoral (1972) degrees in economics at Harvard University, where he was also a research associate in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He joined the economics faculty at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1973 as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor and then professor at Massachusetts and chaired its economics department from 1984 until 1991, when he left to become dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky. He joined UNL in 1997. Edwards is the author or co-author of 10 books and more than 50 articles on economics, history and topics in higher education.

The senior vice chancellor for academic affairs is the chief academic officer for the campus and is second to the chancellor in the university's organizational chart. The office provides leadership and support for academic programs and serves as chief advocate for faculty and students.

A national search will be launched to fill the vice chancellor's position.

Sunita Gupta, left, and Anita Gupta work on algebra problems with students during a Just...ASK workshop last spring. The sisters started the program to teach high school students more about science and math, and to help them compete in science contests. Photo by Tom Slocum.

Sisters launch science education program

By Rayna Watson, Special to the Scarlet

Just ask twin sisters Anita and Sunita Gupta if they are eager to teach Nebraska high school students more about science, and you'll get an enthusiastic yes.

Anita and Sunita, who will be sophomores in the J.D. Edwards Honors Program in the fall, have used their four years of high school experience competing in science bowl competitions to launch a program called JustASK (Advancing Science Knowledge).

Just...ASK offers free interactive seminars to Nebraska high-school students to enrich their scientific knowledge. The goal is to educate the students so they become more interested in the sciences, more informed about science careers, and more competitive in regional and national science contests.

Sunita and Anita know how important programs like Just...ASK can be for high school students who may be undecided about what career path to take.

"I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was in high school. I knew I liked math and science but that was about it. I didn't know what I could do with it," said Sunita, a computer engineering major. "I went to a summer program one year involving trigonometry and computer science. After that program I realized how much I enjoyed going there everyday and working. That's when I thought I would really like to continue doing this for a living. Then I realized I could. That's how I chose my major."

That is the kind of impact the sisters hope to have on the participants of their program. By increasing students' knowledge of different areas of science, they hope to show the students there is a world of possibilities for their education and careers.

"The more people know about the different science topics, the better they can choose a field," Sunita said. "There are a lot of other things you can do with natural sciences. You don't just have to become a doctor or a scientist."

The seminars are also meant to increase Nebraska students' competitiveness in state and national science competitions such as Nebraska Science Olympiad and National Science Bowl.

Sunita and Anita were moderators at the Nebraska Science Bowl at UNL last February. There, they noticed not all the teams were prepared for the competition.

"At the end of the day, we talked to some of the teams and found out that many of them came without a lot of practice," Sunita said.

This surprised the sisters, who had participated in the Kansas/Missouri Science Bowl during all four years of high school in the Kansas City area. Their senior year, they took first place in their division after countless hours of studying and spending three days in seclusion with their team preparing for the regional competition.

This year, their high school team came to compete in the Nebraska Science Bowl and outperformed the Nebraska teams, breaking the record for the highest score by more than 100 points. The sisters decided to start JustASK to raise the level of competition at these events.

The sisters kicked off the series with four two-hour seminars on Saturdays in March and April at the Kauffman Center, with each seminar focusing on a different topic: physics, computer science, biology and chemistry. Plans are in the works for fall JustASK seminars to focus on math and Earth science. All of the subjects are covered in Science Bowl competitions.

The seminars are interactive with presentations and demonstrations and offer beginning and advanced lessons for whatever level the students are comfortable with.

"That way, if someone has never had exposure to the topics, they'll just learn the basics," said Anita, a consumer science and pre-medicine major. "And if they know a lot about it and they're really interested, the advanced class will help to expand their knowledge."

At the end of each seminar, participants compete in a small mock Science Bowl, and each is given a packet including the concepts and equations discussed during the seminar. About 15 students attended each of the spring sessions, and the sisters have approached many Nebraska schools to inform them about JustASK. They hope the fall seminars will attract about 30 students each session.

The seminars are sponsored by the J.D. Edwards Honors Program, the College of Engineering and Technology, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and Runza.

The sisters say they hope JustASK will reach out to smaller schools in Nebraska. Anita said many smaller schools don't always have the same exposure to sciences that larger schools do, and she found smaller schools could benefit most from all the resources Just...ASK has available.

"We hope that students might come to our program and find something they are very interested in and pursue it more," Sunita said. "We want them to take an interest in science and explore it."

Rayna Watson is a senior advertising and broadcasting major at UNL.

About the seminars JustASK seminars are free and open to students in grades 8-12 as well as others who might be interested. For more information, call Anne Sweet at the J.D. Edwards Honors Program at 472-9097 or visit <http://justASK.unl.edu>.