I was going to comment that I'd gladly see Dr. Havstad in future videos because her enthusiasm shows and she seems like a nice person, but then I visited her website and read this: "On August 15, 2015 I'll join the Philosophy Department at Oakland University in Detroit as an Assistant Professor." So I guess this video will likely be her only appearance on this channel. Too bad, but good luck (not that she'd need it) to Dr. Havstad in her future endeavors!
Joonas Puuppo She filmed with us on one of her last days at the Museum. I found her to be an incredibly inspiring and enthusiastic addition to our research staff - but the nature of postdoctoral placements doesn't lend itself well to longevity. I'm happy that she found a great position at a University, and we've made plans to catch up over a brew sometime soon. :)
***** ROFLMAO. I know a guy, he got a degree in philosophy of some kind... promptly got a job delivering pizzas. My guess? He didn't need a degree to do that.
Once upon a time Emily was a volunteer curator at University of Montana, and Hank Green was like, "I wanna visit the local college natural history museum." and Emily was like "Ok, I'll show you around!" and the internet was like, "OMG! We love you Emily! Be a part of our lives forever!" and Emily was like, "Ok? We'll dissect roadkill?" and then the Field Museum was like, "OMG, Emily, we love you! Come join us! Play with dinosaur bones!" and Emily was like, "OMG! Wahoo!" and the internet was like, "OMG! Squeee!" And they all lived happily ever after!
I loved it when Emily said, "Like a giraffe...LIKE A GIRAFFE!" That's the kind of excitement that working out things like this makes this series fun. Dr. Havstad has a fantastic way of explaining things, and I'd love to see her on this more often, too!
The standard bar /was/ the definitive meter. It was retired in 1960 for a multiple of the orange-red emission line of a Krypton-86 atom. Nowadays (since 1983) it's defined as the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a second. Considering that both of those units it's created from are based on either fundamental constants (speed of light) or reproducible intervals (frequency of a cesium atom's fluctuation between ground states at mean sea level) it means anybody can know for sure their meter is the same as anybody else's without having to worry about their metal bar shrinking or swelling on the way home from checking it against the standard one in France. The history of standards are a really interesting topic for anyone interested in science. If you're not familiar there are a number of great videos on RU-vid about the subject.
***** You're welcome! Thanks for replying. I've been trying to start writing fact articles again and the comment sections of the science channels I follow on RU-vid are a good place to do a little quick practice.
What a great video! I think the thing I loved the most about it was how well it illustrates the fact that science and liberal arts aren't two separate universes but, in fact, part of a continuous whole. I think people have this conception of disciplines like philosophy as being wholly divorced from the hard sciences, and yet Dr. Havstad's work is clearly both philosophical and scientific in nature. :D
PinkGrapefruit22 My philosophy teacher at uni has a degree in both philosophy and neural brain science (and some other related stuff I don't remember off the top of my head). Thinking about the issues science face in defining itself, philosophy specifically isn't too surprising to pair up with it when concerning things like 'how we define a thing to be a thing' or the ethics or history of science, etc.
PinkGrapefruit22 When I took an intro course in philosophy I was amazed to learn how much it has in common with science. In the early days of philosophy, it's actually a bit difficult to tell the difference between the two, and science was referred to as "natural philosophy" for a long time. We've definitely lost that sense of connection over time, so I agree it is nice to see a video that shows how well they work together :)
Paratrooper 6 Yeah it looked amateur.... although, if they'd added a Whooosh sound and a bright flash of white followed by a shaky side view in black and white it look have looked very pro.... you know like the History Channel or something.
Another wonderful video. I loved seeing the way inference based on the parts available (as few as they are) leads to conclusions about the specimen's original state.
I feel like Joyce has been my favorite guest so far. Like everyone else has also talked about interesting stuff and I love how they're all enthusiastic about it but she's just adorable.
My favourite scene of Jurassic Park was that opening scene where all those huge dinosaurs were pinned to the ground unable to get up due to their enormous size and the park owners started swearing and saying "Well nobody's going to pay to see that!"
She's totally checking Emily out! That could be me projecting myself on someone I don't know because of my crush on Emily.. Or maybe she just really likes that bling gold necklace Emily's wearing.
Thank you for the videos! The family and I drove 6 hours to visit the Field Museum just because of The Brain Scoop. We are here now, and having a blast. My 7 year old daughter keeps looking for birds on sticks :)
I was exactly thinking that paleontologists are like detectives, when Joyce said it. Haha. I love that through out the channel we get to see amazing women that have fantastic jobs in science. It makes me feel very good.
This is so cool! I wish she had explained how the paleontologists knew that the femur was the femur and the humerus was the humerus, instead of the other way around - were the bones that neatly arranged when they were discovered?
There is no other channel like the brain scoop where I can get my natural history fix. Can we please have more videos of your awesome job at this awesome place, Emily?
I was totally surprised that Emily appeared surprised to hear that Brachiosaurus had longer front than rear legs. I mean she's so incredibly well read in biology, and surely she has seen Jurassic Park, it's a classic!
This was a great episode, I mean even better than usual. I'd like to see an episode or an "Ask Emily" answer about Paleontology greatest hits and misses. I.E. times when things inferred from a partial skeleton were proven rights or wrong. Edit: I'm not asking about hoaxes even if that's also an interesting subject.
Does anyone know what family (if not genus) that skull beside Soon Raccoon belongs to? Based on the heterodont dentition, I'd guess it's @ least a synapsid of some sort, but I can't tell if it's a mammal or stem-mammal. & that zygomatic arch is noticeably large...
For anyone watching this in 2024 or later, there's a great board game called Holotype which is all about fossil holotypes and publishing them as academics. It's pretty fun with GREAT dino art!
Hey Emily! Sorry a bit off-topic question, but I was just watching some of your videos from when you were Peru, and I was wondering, how common is it for scientists to go out in the field to work?
catlife333 Well it's going to depend a lot on your field of study of course. In my case I never go into the field, because I study how cracks grow in adhesive bonds (aka glue), which is a lot easier to study under controlled laboratory conditions. If you're in fields like biology, archaeology or anthropology, where you need to collect specimens, or study how organisms behave in their natural environment you'll go out a lot more of course. To go on a big expedition like the one Emily went on to Peru takes a lot of preparation (permits, organising all the people, getting equipment, sorting out logistics) and money, so you'd only go once a year, or maybe once every couple of years I guess. On the other hand, if you're studying local wildlife you might go out every day, or every week, to see how your local forest is doing for example.
If the holotype is meant be the example to base further research on, can a holotype be redacted if it turned out it was an unusual specimen? If they original holotype of a species turned out to have a mutation not found in the rest of the species, would they change which specimen was designated as the holotype? I would think this situation would have occurred a few times with fossils and other exotic organisms that are known from relatively few specimens.
Factoid I'm pretty sure that if the holotype was determined to be an oddball and the species needed to be split in two, say (into the more common and less common forms), then the holotype and the original name stay with the uncommon form, and the more common form gets its own new name and new holotype. Unless the scientists decide to "conserve" the name because it's been in such widespread/popular use for a long time on the more common form... then it gets complicated fast. I only know how it works for botany, though - it's probably much more involved with fossils, like you say, since the specimens are frequently incomplete.
aquqad Carl Linnaeus - inventor of the binomial nomenclature system we use to describe species today - is actually the designated type.. but the history around that designation is a bit more complicated, and racist. Read more: iczn.org/content/who-type-homo-sapiens
+thebrainscoop That's a good example why I think holotypes are an archaic system. With so much variation within a species, there is no way to really choose the single most representative individual, especially not by selecting the first one we happened to observe. It makes so much more sense to me to think of the breeding community of organisms as the exemplar, not a specific individual.
***** You're correct - in this video we only discussed holotypes, but did not bring up paratypes. Paratypes are specimens of a type series that aren't the holotype.... so, if 5 individuals of a new species are collected from the same place at the same time [like, you dip a net into a river nobody has ever collected in and come up with 5 new fish], then 1 becomes the holotype and 4 becomes paratypes.
5:38 "It still has brains on it" YOU HAVE FOUND BRACHIOSAURUS BRAINS?! Understand that I am joking, and dislike the use of that quote when it is used after an unrelated video.
Soon Raccoon is back there harassing Emily by eyeing her rear. That's inappropriate conduct for the workplace, Soon Raccoon! (not trying to belittle anything, I just thought his eyeline was humorous.)
