by Peggy High '55
Would you like to dig for dinosaurs? To see an amphibian with an intensely blue skin so toxic that it is used to poison arrows in Guyana? To spend nights alone on an uninhabited island?
Students, parents and alumnae who came to Chapin to hear three scientific experts talk about their explorations in remote corners of the world were able to live those adventures vicariously.
Sponsored by the Alumnae and Parents’ Associations, the November 11 panel discussion made clear that the theme of globalization — the focus of this year’s Chapin curriculum — has connections far beyond the obvious historical and cultural ones, encompassing the scientific realm and the unusually plumed birds, microscopic insects and knowledge-hungry, tent-dwelling researchers who inhabit it.
Jack Horner, a paleontologist who directs the world’s largest dinosaur field-research program, spoke about how he has discovered several species of dinosaurs in locations such as Montana, France, Argentina and Mongolia. Modestly describing himself as “a glorified ditch digger,” Horner delighted in talking about the close relationship between birds and dinosaurs and the seemingly fantastical possibility of retro-engineering a dinosaur from a chicken. Through genetic-engineering projects such as this, he believes that we can one day “actually grow a spinal cord, and that would be pretty cool and very important to our medical community.”
A fellow panelist took the discussion in a very different direction from Horner’s, at least in terms of animal size. Piotr Naskrecki, an entomologist and katydid specialist who has discovered more than 150 species of insects and arachnids, has traveled the globe to examine and protect the miniature worlds of insects, including an evergreen forest in Ghana and a rainforest in Guyana. He has tried to educate communities worldwide about the value of their pristine environments and the need for conservation. “In the end,” Naskrecki said, these people “will have the most to say about the future of their land and, collectively, about the future of our planet.”
Like Dr. Naskrecki, panelist Eleanor Sterling, the director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History, has worked to “heighten public understanding and stewardship of biodiversity.” She once spent long nights on an uninhabited island off the coast of Madagascar waiting for a nocturnal lemur to appear, observing breaching whales in the same area by day. Equipped with her knowledge of 10 languages, Sterling has written a marine whale guide in French and English and has traveled to Vietnam and Bolivia to help those countries determine the best areas for their parks and nature reserves.
Bringing the three scientists together was Joanne Prager ’83, a Chapin alumna, parent and trustee, who moderated the discussion and noted that each researcher had, “at a remarkably young age, felt the pull of discovery and an interest in the natural world.” Naskrecki, for example, constructed a coral reef made of Play-Dough in his family’s bathtub when he was 5 years old. Sterling was inspired by her sixth-grade biology teacher to study “wild primates in Africa.” And in Horner’s case? He simply declared that he was “born this way.” In the audience, no doubt, sat at least a few students who were thinking the same thing.