She's a Scientist: Kate Lyons

Curt Bright Author

03/05/2021 Added

18 Plays

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Biologist Kate Lyons looks to the fossil record of elephants and mammoths to predict the future of today's large mammal communities.

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[00:00:00.371](upbeat music)
[00:00:03.057](elephants trumpeting)
[00:00:05.950]Nebraska used to have elephants.
[00:00:08.050]This was like prime elephant habitat for millions of years.
[00:00:13.130]Kate Lyons studies prehistoric mammals
[00:00:15.820]to understand the role humans played in mass extinctions.
[00:00:20.090]And if you look at the pattern of human migration
[00:00:23.440]and the pattern of extinctions,
[00:00:25.130]what you see is that
[00:00:26.170]humans show up in an area of the globe
[00:00:28.340]and these large mammals go extinct.
[00:00:30.364](elephants trumpeting)
[00:00:31.414](upbeat music)
[00:00:33.330]These really big mammals were
[00:00:35.360]what we call ecosystem engineers,
[00:00:37.570]elephants compact the soil
[00:00:39.290]When they walk around,
[00:00:40.500]they eat a lot and frankly,
[00:00:42.180]they poop a lot and they move a lot.
[00:00:43.950]And so they move nutrients around the environment
[00:00:47.420]Lyons looks to the fossil record to find
[00:00:49.990]out what happened to the surviving species
[00:00:52.580]when these ecosystem engineers disappeared.
[00:00:56.190]The reason why that question to me is timely
[00:00:59.270]and interesting is because the remaining large mammals
[00:01:01.800]that we have worldwide,
[00:01:02.900]they're all impacted by human activities.
[00:01:04.680]and they're all at risk of extinction
[00:01:05.910]and so understanding what happened 12,000 years ago
[00:01:09.340]when we lost these large mammals is sort of germane
[00:01:11.880]to understanding what can happen in the future
[00:01:13.830]If we don't manage to save the ones we have left.
[00:01:16.630]Lyons first unearthed
[00:01:18.170]her interest in prehistoric mammals
[00:01:20.010]when she took a biology class in college.
[00:01:23.000]And part of this class
[00:01:23.990]you had to make a museum collection of mammals.
[00:01:26.720]And so we had to collect 13 different species
[00:01:29.880]and make museum specimens out of them.
[00:01:32.090]And I just thought this was the coolest thing in the world.
[00:01:35.040]I love the fact that I get to follow my curiosity
[00:01:39.090]ask whatever question I want,
[00:01:40.350]and then actually increase the knowledge
[00:01:42.840]that we have as humans.
[00:01:44.320]I learned stuff that until I write my papers
[00:01:47.120]and tell people about it,
[00:01:48.400]nobody else knows.
[00:01:49.320]And to me, that's just amazing.
[00:01:51.752](upbeat music)

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She's a Scientist: Kate Lyons

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