Carnegie Museum Research Articles

Unraveling the 120 Year Mystery of Ernest Bayet and His Fossil Collection at Carnegie Museum

Unraveling the 120 Year Mystery of Ernest Bayet and His Fossil Collection at Carnegie Museum

Records of fleas (Siphonaptera) from Delaware.

We present an annotated checklist of fleas (Siphonaptera) known to occur in the state of Delaware based on an examination of Siphonaptera collections at the University of Delaware and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, as well as new specimens of fleas we collected from wildlife, other hosts, and tick flags. We review published records and compile them herein with our new records, which include 3 species previously unreported from Delaware. With these additions, there are now 18 flea species from 19 avian and mammalian hosts documented from Delaware.

Moth Man: The Life and Legacy of John Edward Rawlins (1950–2021) Emeritus Curator of Insects at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Moth Man: The Life and Legacy of John Edward Rawlins (1950–2021) Emeritus Curator of Insects at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Review of Unsettling Matter, Gaining Ground

Tucked within the surprisingly earnest postmodern halls of the Heinz Architectural Center in the Carnegie Museum of Art, Unsettling Matter, Gaining Ground offers a visceral portrait of extractivism. Cocurators Ala Tannir and Theodossis Issaias display a variety of media that engage mourning, loss, and action in times of climate and social transition. Anchoring seven new commissions alongside seven historical artworks from the Museum’s collection, the curators build the scaffold for an institutional critique without getting mired in the details.

Proximity, wholeness, and animality: The case of Little Sorrel's repatriation

AbstractFrederic Webster, chief preparator at the Carnegie Museum (CM) from 1897 to 1907, is credited by some for “rescuing” Lion Attacking a Dromedary (LAD) from destruction by the American Museum of Natural History. Webster's work on LAD was not his only involvement with the preparation and display of controversial bones, however. Webster mounted the hide and bones of Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson's war horse, Little Sorrel and displayed the skeleton at CM. In 1949, Little Sorrel's skeleton were returned to Virginia, where it was eventually cremated and interred under a statue of Jackson in a public ceremony in 1997. This article compares the return and reburial of the bones of a Confederate horse to the continued display of the remains of a person of unknown origin in LAD to highlight the very differing treatment of these human and equine individuals. By considering the return of Little Sorrel's remains to be a repatriation, I argue that the horse was transformed from a museum specimen into a monument, leveling him as a symbol of the Lost Cause and further cementing the status of the individual contained within LAD as a specimen. Through a displayed proximity to animals, Jackson (and his horse) become more human, while the person whose remains remain on display in LAD is treated as less than human.

Visual representations of dromedaries in Greco‐Roman antiquity and the middle ages: Imagining the other before orientalism

AbstractThe diorama Lion Attacking a Dromedary found in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History rightfully belongs to an Orientalist artistic tradition that crystallized many of the discriminatory misrepresentations of people of color that have plagued our society to this day. Camels and dromedaries, associated with the “Orient,” constituted an integral element of the exotic vision held and disseminated by Europeans. The motif of the camel and its dark‐skinned rider, however, emerged many centuries prior to the context of colonial Europe and across media. This paper explores the surfacing and subsequent proliferation of the camel as a symbol of otherness and foreignness in Antiquity and the Middle Ages in relation to Christian and imperial ideologies. I argue that the material evidence points to a long‐standing associative combination of the camel with people of color and/or of foreign origin and thus establishes a precedent worth our attention as we continue to wrestle with the racial and political ramifications of Lion Attacking a Dromedary.

Dismantling the diorama: A case study in “unknowable” human remains

AbstractBlack Americans have long been disproportionately represented among the victims of state‐sanctioned violence. In response, the Black community has mobilized around movements like Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name. However, the exploitation, objectification, and anonymization of Black bodies persists. In many academic disciplines, Black death and suffering are regularly presented as acceptable research findings. Here, we consider the role objectified Black bodies have played in upholding white supremacy within the context of the museum by piecing together the suspect itinerary of the individual whose skull is contained within Lion Attacking a Dromedary. This diorama, currently housed at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, exemplifies how scientific institutions have perpetuated imperial scientific ideologies in their ongoing exhibitions. By engaging with Black feminism and decolonial frameworks, we present a path forward for such artifacts and consider how museums can truly support the Movement for Black Lives.

Lions Attacking a Dromedary: The Verreaux brothers, imperial taxidermy, and postmortem bodily rights

AbstractLions Attacking a Dromedary created at Maison Verreaux brings up a larger discussion about representations of racialized bodies (real and synthetic) in the history of museum display. Looking to the history of racialized bodies on display, I outline how taxidermied animals and racialized mannequins oscillate to reinforce continual colonial projects of the present. I show my reader how the construction of a ‘specimen’ is used in the dehumanizing processes that shapes who and what is human: a recognizable being that is (borrowing from Judith Butler) grievable upon death. Since the discovery of real human remains inside the racialized mannequin, the group is now redisplayed at the Carnegie Museum alongside educational insights that seek to ethically interrupt the colonial violence that the display narrates. In order to push this discussion further, I seek direction from decolonial artists and scholars on the best approaches to take in response to postmortem human rights abuses (past and present) and to show the ways that art can be both a destructive and reparative exchange.

Perspective: Is re‐interpretation enough? Dismantling violence in the natural history museum

AbstractThe taxidermy assemblage “Lion Attacking a Dromedary” (LAD) has been critiqued as a piece of French colonial propaganda, containing unethically sourced human remains, that desensitizes visitors to violence against people of color and lacks value for science education. It has also been on display continuously since 1899 at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and has sentimental and pedagogical value for local community, thus making it complicated to remove. To address its difficult legacy while maintaining its display, LAD has been re‐interpreted multiple times with new descriptive labels. This approach is of limited success, however. Re‐interpretation cannot sufficiently counter the visual narrative of the diorama itself. In addition to the aforementioned critiques, the figures in LAD are posed to tell a harmful “man versus nature” story. LAD points toward a broader narrative bias in natural history, namely an overemphasis on competition and an underemphasis on cooperation. For ethical and effective contemporary science education, and for galvanizing action on climate change and other sustainability and justice crises in the 21st‐century natural history museum, there is an urgent need for radical deconstruction of dioramas like LAD.

The concrete Diplodocus of Vernal—a cultural icon of Utah

Although many casts have been made of the Carnegie Museum’s iconic Diplodocus, initially in plaster and more recently in various plastics, one stands alone as having been cast in concrete. This skeleton, made from the original Carnegie molds starting in 1956–1957, was unveiled at the Utah Field House of Natural History in Vernal, Utah, in 1957, and stood outside the museum for three decades. The fate of the molds after this casting is uncertain. The concrete Diplodocus was the museum’s icon for 32 years until the weather damage became too great. The cast was then taken down and repaired, and fresh molds made from it by Dinolab in Salt Lake City. From these molds, a new replica was cast in water-expanded polyester and mounted inside the Field House. This cast was moved to the Field House’s new location in 2004 and was remounted in the atrium, but the old concrete cast could not be easily remounted and was instead transferred to the Prehistoric Museum at Price, Utah. It has, however, yet to be remounted there, as it awaits a new building for the museum. Meanwhile, the new molds have been used to create more Diplodocus casts that are mounted in Japan and elsewhere, and have also furnished missing parts of the iconic rearing Barosaurus skeleton in the atrium of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Thus, the concrete Diplodocus of Vernal has become one of the most influential of all Diplodocus specimens, second only to the Carnegie original.

New Perspectives on William Demby: A Special Issue of African American Review

New Perspectives on William Demby:A Special Issue of African American Review Melanie Masterton Sherazi (bio), Ugo Rubeo (bio), and James C. Hall (bio) Introduction Following his service in Italy during World War II, William Demby (b. 1922) returned to live in Rome in 1947. Inspired by Giorgio de Chirico's paintings that he viewed often at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum in his youth and by Roberto Rossellini's films, Demby considered a move to Rome as the "gritt[ier]," less obvious choice than Paris for an artist.1 Rents were cheap in a city rebuilding itself from the rubble of fascism and war and a revolutionary antifascist current flowed through the artistic circles into which Demby landed, rather serendipitously, upon his postwar return. He was invited almost immediately to live in a flat on Via San Teodoro overlooking the Ancient Forum with a group of Italian leftist and Communist artists and filmmakers, including Renzo Vespignani and Marcello Muccini. There, he got back to work on his debut novel in progress, Beetlecreek, and was driven to complete it as an artist living among other serious artists. From his bohemian flat across from Rome's ancient ruins, Demby took a writing sojourn in the Palazzo Ca' Dario, an elegant, late fifteenth-century residence on Venice's Grand Canal, where Peggy Guggenheim was living just a few doors down.2 Of his first novel's extraordinary composition history, Demby himself acknowledged that some positive astral conjunction might have worked in his favor, recalling that "it all came together in a palace in Venice; and the first thing I know is that I had finished a novel" (qtd. in Micconi 131). Beetlecreek was, in fact, a novel several years in the making: Demby had work-shopped it before the war as Margaret Walker's student at West Virginia State College, then an HBCU.3 He continued drafting it during his service in Italy and while completing his studies at Fisk University under the mentorship of Robert Hayden.4 The spectacular Italian settings of Beetlecreek's composition are at odds with the novel's eponymous, fictional town in the segregated, Depression-era US South. Moreover, Demby's own mobilities signal the dizzying quality of his lived experiences in this period: a move with his family after high school from an integrated neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Clarksburg, West Virginia; his later wartime service in Italy in an African American troop; his settling into a flat overlooking the ruins of Ancient Rome; and his aforementioned retreat in a Venetian palace on the Grand Canal—all in the span of just a few years.5 In these ways and more, Demby's life and work resisted the entrenched racist norms of Jim Crow America. This special issue of African American Review appears in the centenary year of Demby's birth on Christmas Day in 1922. Although he was honored with an Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, Demby's body of work has struggled to gain a lasting foothold in the African American literary canon and in classrooms, perhaps for the very fact of his living off the radar for decades in Italy. In actuality, Demby often traveled between Italy and the United States while working and visiting family. The issue aims to energize new directions in the study of the overdetermined workings of literary reputation and of place, genre, and style in [End Page 111] the shaping of an African American canon. Presented largely in chronology with Demby's artistic career, which spanned over sixty years, the issue's essays celebrate and contend with his work's generative eclecticism and transnational orientations. Italian Contexts Just a few months after Beetlecreek's appearance in 1950, another fortuitous event happened to propel Demby's early career when the major Italian press Mondadori's "Medusa" series—widely acclaimed, and dedicated to the works of "Great Narrators of All Countries"—published Festa a Beetlecreek as Series No. 243 in its signature emerald-green hardcover. Demby's novel's translator, Fernanda Pivano, was a young intellectual from Turin who, though not an academic, was already on her way to becoming one of Italy's leading Americanists...

Rediscovery of the Spiny-cheek crayfish (Faxonius limosus) in the Middle and Upper Susquehanna River Basin in Pennsylvania.

The first state-wide survey of crayfishes in Pennsylvania was completed in 1905 by Dr. Ortmann of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. One species, the Spiny-cheek crayfish (Faxonius limosus), was determined to be endemic to the Delaware, Susquehanna, and Potomac River Basins of Pennsylvania. Since the Ortmann survey in 1905, additional surveys have returned with other species. Due to landscape alteration (urbanization and agriculture) and the presence of invasive crayfish, the current distribution and conservation status of F. limosus is unknown. We have completed surveys at both historic records and new sites through the upper portion of the Susquehanna River Basin. Each site was standardized with a sampling effort of ten seine hauls distributed to target all available habitats. All crayfish collected were identified to species and curated into the West Liberty University Astacology Collection. A qualitative habitat evaluation index score (QHEI) was generated at every site and water quality data was collected using a YSI Pro 1030 data sonde. Thus far, 312 sites have been surveyed. Unexpectedly, we did find F. limosus in the Lackawanna River, a tributary of the upper Susquehanna River. All other historic sites returned either invasive F. rusticus or native F. obscurus. The absence of F. limosus at historic locations indicates a decline in range, which likely warrants state-level protection for this species.

Review of An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain

This is an exhibition review of An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain, which took place at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from May 14, 2020, to January 18, 2021. The exhibition was a comprehensive survey of the photographer An-My Lê’s work, which addressed the complexity and politicization of the American landscape and the people found within it. This review explores the difficulty of interpreting Lê’s work and the inability to come away with clear answers about the contradictions that the American landscape and its inhabitants embody.

Constraining the body mass range of Anzu wyliei using volumetric and extant-scaling methods

The ability to accurately and reliably estimate body mass of extinct taxa is a vital tool for interpreting the physiology and even behavior of long-dead animals. For this reason, paleontologists have developed many possible methods of estimating the body mass of extinct animals, with varying degrees of success. These methods can be divided into two main categories: volumetric mass estimation and extant scaling methods. Each has advantages and disadvantages, which is why, when possible, it is best to perform both, and compare the results to determine what is most plausible within reason. Here we employ volumetric mass estimation (VME) to calculate an approximate body mass for previously described specimens of Anzu wyliei from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. We also use extant scaling methods to try to obtain a reliable mass estimate for this taxon. In addition, we present the first digital life restoration and convex hull of the dinosaur Anzu wyliei used for mass estimation purposes. We found that the volumetric mass estimation using our digital model was 216-280kg, which falls within the range predicted by extant scaling techniques, while the mass estimate using minimum convex hulls was below the predicted range, between 159-199 kg . The VME method for Anzu wyliei strongly affirms the predictive utility of extant-based scaling. However, volumetric mass estimates are likely more precise because the models are based on comprehensive specimen anatomy rather than regressions of a phylogenetically comprehensive but disparate sample.

Records of Fleas (Siphonaptera) from Australia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea with the Description of a New Species of Bibikovana Traub, 1980 (Pygiopsyllidae)

The Robert Traub collection of fleas is maintained in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. During the height of collecting fleas from the 1960s onward, many specimens were collected from Australia, Malaysia, and New Guinea and provided to Robert Traub. A plethora of publications resulted; however, Dr. Traub died before he could finish much of that work. Following his death, specimens were available that had never been fully studied, and in many cases, inadequately curated (alcohol material, unidentified slides, vials of dried up specimens, etc.). Following the in-depth reviews of 14 genera (published in six parts by the author), additional specimens were obtained from the Carnegie Museum. These additional specimens represented 32 species in nine flea families and are reported here for the first time. Many of the specimens included in this study, are supplementary specimens associated (but not reported) by Hastriter (2012) and in Hastriter's six-part series (Parts I–VI) published between 2013 and 2021. Among the material was a new species of Bibikovana Traub, 1980, from Australia, Bibikovana acumena, that is closely related to Bibikovana colossus (Rothschild, 1906). This new taxon is described and illustrated. The ranges of five flea species are extended: 1) Porribius caminae (Rothschild, 1903) to Tasmania, 2) Neopsylla dispar Jordan, 1932, to the island of Borneo (State of Sabah, Malaysia), 3) Bibikovana engilisi Hastriter, 2021, to Papua New Guinea, 4) Pygiopsylla zethi (Rothschild, 1904) to Mole Creek and Bridport, Tasmania, and 5) Smitella thambetosa Traub, 1968, to Papua New Guinea. Eight new host records include: 1) Sigmactenus toxopeusi Smit, 1953, on Rattus giluwensis Hill, 1960, 2) Stephanocircus pectinipes Rothschild, 1915, on Pseudomys novaehollandiae (Waterhouse, 1843), 3) Stephanocircus simsoni Rothschild, 1905, on Pseudomys higginsi Trouessart, 1897, 4) Bibikovana engilisi Hastriter, 2021 on Microperoryctes papuensis (Laurie, 1952), 5) Parastivalius gressitti Holland, 1969 on Mi. papuensis, 6) Rectidigitus glomerospinosus Hastriter, 2016 on Cercartetus caudatus (Milne-Edwards, 1877), 7) Rectidigitus traubi Holland, 1969, in a Mi. papuensis nest, and 8) Smitella thambetosa Traub, 1968 on Mammelomys rattoides (Thomas, 1922). Host data supporting the primary host of Choristopsylla ochi (Rothschild, 1904) was presented and determined to be Trichosurus vulpecula (Kerr, 1792). Host associations are discussed for each species and a list of hosts and respective flea species are provided.

The Element of Paaw in Marsupials and the Ear Region of Philander opossum (Linnaeus, 1758) (Didelphimorphia, Didelphidae)

A small piece of cartilage or bone, the element of Paaw, occurs in the tendon of the stapedius muscle in some extant marsupial and placental mammals. It has been nearly a century since the last comprehensive treatment of the distribution of the element of Paaw in mammals. The current report updates knowledge on this structure by synthesizing the subsequent literature and providing new observations of extant marsupials from the collections of the Section of Mammals, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and two online resources for CT scanned data: DigiMorph.org and MorphoSource.org. We found an element of Paaw in some representatives of all seven extant marsupial orders: Didelphimorphia, Microbiotheria, Notoryctemorphia, Peramelemorphia, Paucituberculata, Dasyuromorphia, and Diprotodontia. In the first four orders, the element is substantial, longer than the long axis of the fenestra vestiuli (oval window), which holds the stapedial footplate; it is smaller than the long axis of the fenestra vestibuli in Paucituberculata and we do not have measures to report for the last two orders. In most marsupials examined, the element of Paaw contacts the petrosal behind the oval window, suggesting it functions as a sesamoid bone, increasing the lever arm of the stapedius muscle. Although there is some variability in the presence of the bone both between and within individual museum specimens, we interpret this as the result of preparation techniques rather than true variation.To place the element of Paaw in its anatomical context, we describe in detail the ear region and middle-ear auditory apparatus of the gray four-eyed opossum, Philander opossum (Linnaeus, 1758), a didelphid from Central and South America, based on a CT scanned specimen from Carnegie Museum of Natural History. It has an ossified element of Paaw with a volume greater than the stapes. Comparisons are made with petrosals of Didelphis marsupialisLinnaeus, 1758, and Monodelphis domestica (Wagner, 1842), also based on CT scanned specimens.

Fleas (Siphonaptera: Pygiopsyllomorpha) of Papua New Guinea and Papua Province (Indonesia). Part VI. Bibikovana, geohollandia, and Hoogstraalia (Pygiopsyllidae: Pygiopsyllinae), with Descriptions of Four New Species

Part VI is the final installment of a six-part series of papers discussing the fleas of Papua Province, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea as a continued study of fleas in the Robert Traub flea collection deposited in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA. Taxa from the genera Bibikovana, Geohollandia, and Hoogstraalia are included with emphasis on those species endemic to Papua Province, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Four new species are described (Bibikovana engilisi, Bibikovana bosaviensis, Bibikovana mekiliensis, and Hoogstraalia nadchatrami). Bibikovana laciniosa bismarckensis is treated as a junior synonym of Bibikovana laciniosa laciniosa and Hoogstraalia novaeguineae is treated as a junior synonym of Hoogstraalia turdella. The females of Geohollandia solida and Hoogstraalia turdella are described and illustrated for the first time. The mammalian hosts of the three genera studied herein are summarized in Table 1. The avian host specificity of the genera Geohollandia and Hoogstraalia are substantiated with many new records of avian host associations included as Table 2. Geographic distributions of species of all three genera are summarized in Table 3. Keys for species of Bibikovana and Hoogstraalia and an updated key to the genera of Pygiopsyllomorpha are included. With the description of four new species and the proposed synonymies of two species, the total number of species in the superfamily Pygiopsylloidea in Papua Province, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea (including Bismarck Archipelago) and the Solomon Islands is 113. An additional eight species belonging to three other flea families (Ischnopsyllidae (3), Pulicidae (3), and Leptopsyllidae (2) bring the total number of flea taxa to 121 species (including subspecies).

Identification of growth cessation in dinosaurs based on microscopy of long bone articular surfaces: preliminary results

As applied to bone, ‘determinate growth’ identifies an upper limit to size and the point when normal endochondral ossification ceases. This contrasts with ‘indeterminate growth’, which proceeds through the entire life of the animal. In this study, a non-destructive method, epi-illumination surface microscopy of the articular surfaces of long bones, is applied for the first time in 40 taxa of non-avian dinosaurs to determine cessation of endochondral growth. Thereby, the presence or absence of articular vascular channels between the endochondral bone and the cartilage is assessed. As articular vascular channels are the major source of nutrients for continued longitudinal growth, atrophy or loss of those channels would preclude continued growth of bone. We correlated our findings with published histological data and bone length measurements. We found articular vascular channels in all assessed dinosaur groups, but some individuals showed a loss of detectable articular vascular channels – what we interpret as evidence of longitudinal skeletal growth cessation. This observation contrasts with the hypothesis of continuous indeterminate growth in dinosaurs, at least for the taxa identified here, in which channels have been documented as closed or closing over. The new method introduced here provides a phylogenetic tool for definitively distinguishing new ‘dwarf’ species from juveniles of known species. Furthermore, this study confirms the rarity of skeletally mature dinosaurs discovered to date and indicates that we have only begun to witness the full extent of dinosaur growth. Bruce M. Rothschild [spondylair@gmail.com], Carnegie Museum, 4400 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA; Florian Witzmann* [florian.witzmann@mfn.berlin], Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Invalidenstraße 43, 10115 Berlin, Germany.

Records of Fleas (Siphonaptera) and Other Ectoparasites from Maine

During four 5-day trips to the 3 northern-most Maine counties of Aroostook, Piscataquis, and Somerset, we captured 347 small mammals from which we collected 415 fleas, 36 lice, and 10 larval botfly ectoparasites. Additionally, we located records of fleas from Maine in the Traub collection at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA. From these sources, we establisned new state records of occurrence in Maine for 2 flea species, Conorhinopsylla stanfordi and Orchopeas howardi, and 1 louse species, Neohaematopinus semifasciatus. We herein report 27 new county records for fleas and 3 for botflies. The total number of flea species known to occur in Maine is now 32.

Collaborations and Moving Past COVID‐19: The Human Ecology and Applied Ecology Sections

Collaborations and Moving Past COVID‐19: The Human Ecology and Applied Ecology Sections