CSBR: Natural History: Securing Paleobotanical Collections at the University of Kansas: Evolution of Seed Plants and Antarctic Fossil Plants

University Of Kansas Center For Research Inc, Lawrence KS

Investigators

Abstract

The University of Kansas (KU) Biodiversity Institute includes world-class systematic research collections and is one of the leading university museums in the world. KU has an extensive history of paleontological research and collection stewardship back to the late 1800s. Paleontological collections represent an invaluable resource for studying past biodiversity and tracing the evolution and relationships of groups of organisms through time. Such collections represent an irreplaceable record of past life and their proper maintenance is especially crucial in cases where collection sites are no longer accessible, where they contain evolutionarily important organisms, or represent a unique record of Earth history. This project will provide funding for a compactor storage system for fossil plant specimens that are currently in unsuitable storage and inaccessible. The KU Paleobotany Division has a long, successful history of outreach programs that use specimens from the collection. Activities that this project will engage in include: recruitment/retention of underrepresented minority and female graduate/undergraduate students and postdoctoral scholars; workshops for middle school girls using female role models and hands-on science activities; subject-based (paleobotany, environmental change, Antarctica) workshops for various groups (TRIO program for inner-city students from Kansas City; home-schooled students; gifted students from Topeka PS); participation in Natural History Museum Public Education programs (fossil identification day, Darwin Day); collection tours; public lectures; permanent and temporary displays in the Museum; and teaching paleobotanical techniques to school children and the public. This project will include a Museum Studies student who will develop a virtual exhibit based on the newly accessible fossils. The paleobotany collections have greatly exceeded current space in Haworth Hall (biology labs, offices) and specimens are scattered in storage areas and the paleobotany research laboratory. Specimens will be moved into newly renovated space on West Campus, where many other Natural History collections are housed. The Paleobotany Division contains more than 100,000 specimens. KU houses the largest collection of Antarctic fossil plants in the world. These fossils provide calibration points for molecular clocks, molecular phylogenies, and extinction and dispersal events. The current project includes Permian, Triassic, and Jurassic fossil plants from Antarctica, and orphaned collections from Ohio University (OU), which were moved to KU in 2012. The latter includes Paleozoic plants from Appalachia and the Midcontinent, as well as Oxroad Bay, Scotland. Together with collections already at KU, this acquisition forms an unparalleled resource of the history of seed plants, from the earliest accepted fossils to the evolution of modern groups. The OU collection also includes plants from rare, seasonally dry ("upland") floras from North American communities during glacial times in Gondwana; some of these sites are no longer accessible for collection. The Antarctic fossils that need proper storage represent a unique, anatomically detailed record of Paleozoic - Mesozoic plants and fungi at a time before and after end-Permian extinctions - the largest extinctions in Earth history. The Jurassic plants represent the only substantial deposit of Jurassic plants on continental Antarctica and are an important record of plant diversity and paleoclimate at the time of the breakup of Gondwana. Results of project will be shared with iDigBio (idigbio.org) and made available online (biodiversity.ku.edu/paleobotany).