Kathleen Pigg Collaborates on Guidebook
Paleobotanists Kathleen Pigg, Melanie DeVore, and Karl Volkman created an extraordinary tool, “Fossil Plants from Republic: A Guidebook” which makes identifying plant fossils from a locality in northeastern Washington state easy for fossil hunters of all ages. The book is emblematic of the authors’ dedication to collaboration and education. Sold at the Stonerose Interpretive Center in Republic, Ferry County, Washington, the book uses everyday terms, full color photographs, and a decision tree (taxonomic key) to allow everyone to identify plant fossils and relate them to the long geologic history of well known plants growing today.
The Stonerose Interpretive Center and Eocene Fossil Site is a unique destination in a remote area in the mountains of northeastern Washington State where the public can collect 50-million year old plant fossils under the guidance of the Stonerose staff. Tools are provided at nominal cost, and visitors are taught how to collect and identify their fossils. Research-quality fossils are kept at Stonerose, studied by scientists, and attributed to their collectors, giving the public a direct role in the process of discovery. Collecting occurs at the fossil-rich Boot Hill site right in the Republic, the former gold mining capital of Washington State.
Stonerose was founded by Wes Wehr, Affiliate Curator of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington, Seattle and Republic resident Bert Chadwick shortly after Wehr and Kirk Johnson's 1977 rediscovery of fossil site. This Eocene lakebed once was home to a diverse assemblage of ferns, conifers and flowering plants, as well as a large insect and fish fauna. This Eocene paleoenvironment supported a combination of plants that grow today in warm microhabitats, and ones adapted to a cooler temperate climate, some of which are found only in Asia today. Stonerose is a favorite destination of lovers of regional natural history, and last year had over 7000 visitors, many of whom were students. Many additional K-12 students are also served by Stonerose's educational outreach program that brings fossils and expertise to schools and other venues all over Washington State. The book by Pigg, DeVore, and Volkman was developed because the three saw that both tours of Stonerose and the Boot Hill site and classroom activities with these fossils had the need for a user-friendly guidebook for visitors and students.
Pigg and DeVore are paleobotanists who met in graduate school at The Ohio State University and have collaborated on well over a dozen technical papers in recent years. Their coauthor, Karl Volkman was Collections Manager at Stonerose for the past 6 years. During Fall 2007, the Center for Biology and Society funded Dr. DeVore as a Visiting Scientist in residence at Arizona State University. During this time DeVore and Pigg produced two comprehensive review papers that detail the geological and evolutionary history of major plant fossil sites in western North America from the Paleocene (58 million years ago) through the Oligocene (23 million years ago). During this semester they conducted research along with graduate student John Benedict that resulted in a recently published paper on two rare fossil flowers found at Republic which are members of the rose family (Rosaceae). The first, Prunus cathybrownae, isthe first reliable Tertiary report of flowers and young fruits of Prunus, a large genus of stone-fruited plants such as cherry, peach, plum and apricot that occur worldwide, particularly in the temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere. The second, Oemleria janhartfordae, is the oldest member of the osoberry genus, plants that live only along the West Coast from British Columbia into northern California. The rare flowers were named for leading members of the Republic fossil community, Stonerose Executive Director Cathy Brown, her mother and daughter, who share her name, and fossil plant collector Jan Hartford, who devised Stonerose Strata, the customized computer program that keeps track of collectors, and their specimens, and keeping them informed of research progress on specimens kept at Stonerose.
While considerable research has focused on the tropics, until recently, less attention has been given to the origins and early diversification of temperate floras. Yet it is the temperate regions of the world, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere where much of the world lives, and where the effects of global warming are being felt. Understanding how plants adapt to cooling and warming trends in these environments is critical today. Pigg and DeVore's research aims to contribute to understanding of the evolutionary history of plant families critical to temperate floras.
The significance of the Stonerose experience is the rare and direct opportunity to find your own piece of plant evolutionary history, and to understand something of the journey through the past 50 million years of families of conifers and flowering plants you see today. Fossils are a direct link to the past. From Republic, a thriving gold mining town during its heyday, gold of a different kind can be discovered, shared, and perhaps equally important, explained.
Clementine Brown and her mom,Stonerose Executive Director Cathy Brown, for whom Prunus cathybrownae is named, are pictured with Jan Hartford, for whom the fossil, Oemleria janhartfordae is named.
References
Benedict, JC, ML DeVore, and KB Pigg. 2011 Prunus and Oemleria (Rosaceae) flowers from the late early Eocene Republic flora of northeastern Washington state, USA. Int J Plant Sci 172: 948-958.
DeVore, ML, and KB Pigg. 2010. Floristic composition and transitions of middle Eocene to late Eocene and Oligocene floras in North America. In: Collinson, ME, KB Pigg, and ML DeVore. Northern Hemisphere Paleogene floras and global change events. Bulletin of Geosciences 85(1): 111-134, published online 2009: doi 10.3140/bull.geosci.1135.
Pigg, KB, and ML DeVore. 2010. Floristic composition and transitions of late Paleocene to early Eocene floras in North America. In: Collinson, ME, KB Pigg, and ML DeVore. Northern Hemisphere Paleogene floras and global change events. Bulletin of Geosciences 85 (1): 135-154, published online 2009: doi 10.3140/bull.geosci.1136.
Pigg, KB, ML DeVore & KE Volkman. 2011. Fossil plants from Republic: a guidebook. Stonerose Interpretive Center, Republic, Washington.
Volkman, KE, KB Pigg, and ML DeVore. 2009. An historical overview of paleontological research of the Eocene Republic locality, northeastern Washington state, USA. 2009 Portland Geological Society of America Annual Meeting (18-21 October), Abstract Paper No. 32-17 (Poster).