Top 10 plants for the Apocalypse: Part 1

By Dr. Graham Young, past Curator of Palaeontology & Geology

When I started to work at the Museum just over 20 years ago, my job title said that I was the “Assistant Curator of Geology and Paleontology.” Quite a mouthful, to be sure, and one for which the meaning was not entirely clear. Certainly people could understand the “assistant” part, except that I wasn’t actually the assistant to anyone, since I was also the only staff member in geology and paleontology. Rather, the “assistant” in my title was like that for an assistant professor at the university. It meant that I was on the first rung of progress through a professional career, and if I worked hard then I could look forward to being associate curator, and then full curator.

But what about the “curator” part of the title? What did that mean?

In the early 1990s, curator was not a commonly-used word, to the extent that it seemed like a lot of people had never heard it. I would tell them that I was responsible for the rock, mineral, and fossil collections, and that I created exhibits and answered inquiries. Those were really the things that were emphasized in my job description, and to be honest I didn’t look further than that into what a curator might be.

But where does the word come from, and how does it lend itself to so many different purposes?

Curator is derived from the Latin curare, to care for, so a curator is a person who takes care of something. In fact, in Scottish legal terms a curator is someone who is the guardian of a minor or mentally ill person. Several other nouns that come from the same root have religious connotations, such as the English curate (an assistant priest), the French curé (a parish priest), and the Curia (the central administration of the Catholic Church). It is, perhaps, no coincidence that the name for our profession gives some evidence of the reverence with which we hold the objects given to our care.

Even if you hear that someone is a curator at a museum, as opposed to all those other types of curators, that still doesn’t necessarily give you a clear idea of what that person might do. I know of English museums where the people called curators are what we would call Collections Specialists at The Manitoba Museum, people who are responsible for the care of collections but not their interpretation. Elsewhere, the curator may be the administrative lead for an entire institution, a position more equivalent to that of our Executive Director. In museums of art, curators may have no responsibility for long-term care of collections; rather, they may be specialists hired as consultants to select and interpret the works for a particular exhibition.

Writing about my job in this way, it seems like an awful lot. I guess it is. Manitoba is a very big place, and the Museum has a modest number of dedicated curators whose job it is to cover and represent that territory. Like all the other curators at the Museum I absolutely love this job; the diversity of work is just one of the things that makes it possibly the best job in the world.

By Dr. Graham Young, past Curator of Palaeontology & Geology

I have often been told by members of the public that, “it must be so exciting to do paleontological fieldwork.” This is true, it can be very exciting to visit new places, to discover and collect fossils that were previously unknown to science. But often the conditions are such that the fieldwork is more of a necessary evil. It is a step that must be passed to acquire essential specimens, rather than a pleasure in itself.

Last week was a case in point. I had planned to travel to the Grand Rapids Uplands of central Manitoba with Dave Rudkin (Royal Ontario Museum) and Michael Cuggy (University of Saskatchewan) to carry out a bit of additional collecting at some unusual fossil sites. We had chosen late September because (1) the weather is often dry and clear, and (2) the mosquitoes and blackflies have generally been depleted by this time of year.

It turned out that we were only partly right on just one of these assumptions: I don’t think I saw a single mosquito. Their absence was, however, compensated by the swarms of blackflies that descended whenever the wind died down. And that merciful wind was a chill, damp one, associated with rains that were at times heavy.

We first arrived at the main site on Wednesday afternoon. Under a relatively pleasant overcast sky, we spent several hours splitting rock, but found little in the way of specimens worth taking back to the Museum. By Thursday morning the torrential downpours had begun. These died off by the time we arrived at the site, but we discovered that the gently sloping limestone had been replaced by a “water garden” that combined both pond and waterfall features.

By Friday the rain had ceased, but much of its moisture seemed to have attached itself to any clay that remained on and adjacent to the bedrock, resulting in large patches of wonderfully glutinous mud. Our crawling in this mud was at least worthwhile, as we came upon an area of rock that was very rich in fossils. We hauled out nine partial eurypterids (“sea scorpions”), along with other associated bits and pieces. By the end of the day Michael and I looked rather disgusting, encrusted with mud as we were. We were also disgusted with Dave, because he somehow managed to avoid getting mud on himself!

Saturday we had planned to do quick stops at several sites, prior to returning to Winnipeg in the afternoon. Of course, by now the weather had improved and we were greeted by a sunny, mild day with patchy cloud. Nevertheless, we were not unhappy that we had finished heavy collecting on the main site, as the blackflies had returned in profusion.

So if paleontologists tell you they are off to do fieldwork, you should not immediately imagine a romantic, exciting “dig”, in a setting reminiscent of that at the start of Jurassic Park. The specimens are often worth the pain, but the pain is often genuine!

By Dr. Graham Young, past Curator of Palaeontology & Geology

Following on from my recent post about the geology of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, it seems entirely appropriate timing that another piece of architectural geology work has just been published. Last week, a guidebook to the geology of the Manitoba Legislative Building, by Jeff Young, Bill Brisbin, and me, finally appeared in downloadable form. The entire file (20 megabytes) can be found here.

This book was published as part of a series of field trip guides for the Geological Association of Canada – Mineralogical Association of Canada annual meeting, which took place in Winnipeg in May. Jeff Young (University of Manitoba) and I had the pleasure of leading an afternoon tour of the Legislative Building; it is such an interesting and beautiful structure, and it is always a pleasure to see people’s reactions to its geological features. The guidebook is based on research Jeff and I did with Bill Brisbin (also of U of M) almost a decade ago.

In addition to the Legislature guidebook, I also enjoyed assisting with a field trip on the Ordovician to Silurian geology of southern Manitoba. The guidebook for that trip (26 megabytes), by Bob Elias et al., can be downloaded here.

By Dr. Graham Young, past Curator of Palaeontology & Geology

Columnar jointing is a term used to describe the polygonal columns seen in many volcanic rocks. These developed as a result of stresses, when lava cools from a molten form. Famous columnar basalts can be seen in places like the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, and at many sites around the Bay of Fundy in eastern Canada (columnar-jointed bedrock in the Lake Nipigon area of Ontario has a similar appearance, though much of it may have actually formed from magma that was intruded between other rocks, rather than erupted onto the Earth’s surface).