Carnegie Museum Research Articles

Reptilia, Squamata, Iguanidae, Anolis heterodermus Duméril, 1851: distribution extension, first record for Ecuador and notes on color variation

We report the first record of A. heterodermus for Ecuador based on four specimens from Chilmá Bajo, province of Carchi, ca. 120 km NE from the nearest record (departamento Putumayo, municipio de Santiago, Colombia) reported in the literature. Two additional records for Ecuador are listed in the Herpnet database, from specimens deposited at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and collected 18 km SE from Maldonado (ca. 8 km NW from Chilmá Bajo). We also present information about color variation in the recently collected specimens.

A Phytogeographical and Ecological Study ofPrenanthes crepidineaMichaux (Asteraceae)

ABSTRACT This study determines the current and historic distributions of Prenanthes crepidinea Michaux (Asteraceae: Lactuceae) and describes its habitat and life history. A phytogeographical study based on herbarium material was conducted to delimit historic and current distributions of P. crepidinea. Ecological data were gathered from herbarium specimens. A literature search was conducted for information about P. crepidinea to enhance the herbarium study. An in-depth field study over two seasons, 1998 and 1999, was made at three extant sites, providing a characteristic life history and habitat description for the species. Associated plant species, pollinators, and parasites were investigated, with voucher specimens for all associated plant species deposited in the herbaria of Youngstown State University (YUO) and Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CM).

Proceedings of the Ninetieth Annual Meeting

The ninetieth annual meeting of the Wilson Ornithological Society (WOS) was held in joint session with the Association of Field Ornithologists (AFO) from Thursday, 9 April, through Sunday, 12 April 2009 at the Hilton Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the invitation of the National Aviary and Powdermill Nature Reserve, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, in partnership with the Three Rivers Bird Club, Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania, Duquesne University, University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Game Commission, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, and the American Birding Association. Todd Katzner, Director of Conservation and Research at the National Aviary, chaired the local committee, which also included Anthony Bledsoe, Jim Bonner, Tammy Colt, Jean Deo, Erin Estell, Mike Kuzemchak, Steven Latta, Andrew Mack, Brady Porter, Brian Shema, Poly Singh, Jack Solomon, Samara Trusso, and James Valimont. The Council met from 0916 to 1708 hrs on Thursday, 9 April, in the Brigade Room of the Hilton Pittsburgh. That evening there was an ‘‘ice-breaker’’ reception for the conferees and guests. The opening session on Friday convened in the Grand Ballroom at 0814 with welcoming remarks from Todd Katzner, WOS President James D. Rising, and AFO President David N. Bonter. After several items of information for the conferees, David Bonter concluded the opening ceremony by introducing the plenary speaker, Bruce Beehler, who delivered a wonderfully thought-provoking presentation, ‘‘The forgotten science—a role for natural history in the 21st Century.’’ The scientific program included 54 contributed papers and 62 contributed posters, which were organized into eight paper sessions, a poster session, and a symposium on remote and automated technologies for monitoring birds. In addition, WOS hosted the Margaret Morse Nice Lecture, presented by the 2009 Nice Medal recipient, Sidney A. Gauthreaux Jr., ‘‘Radar ornithology at different spatial scales.’’ The evening program on Friday included a reception at the National Aviary, which coincided with the poster session. The Three Rivers Bird Club hosted birding forays in the vicinity of the conference site each morning from Thursday through Sunday. In addition, longer trips were scheduled for Sunday to: (1) Powdermill Nature Reserve, the biological research station of Carnegie Museum of Natural History with a trip to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater; (2) the Pittsburgh Zoo and view of downtown Pittsburgh from an amphibious tour vehicle; (3) the University of Pittsburgh campus, home of a breeding pair of Peregrine Falcons (Falco peregrinus), and a tour of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History; (4) the Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology in northwestern Pennsylvania; and (5) Moraine State Park and Lake Arthur. The attendees enjoyed a social hour prior to the annual banquet, which was held in the Kings Garden Room of the Hilton Pittsburgh. The evening festivities included an enjoyable dinner, and afterwards WOS President Rising and AFO President Bonter joined those assembled in thanks to the many persons whose hard work had resulted in a successful conference. President Rising also thanked the three elected members of Council who had completed their terms of office, Carla Dove, Greg H. Farley, and Daniel Klem Jr., and welcomed the three newly elected members of Council, Mary Bomberger Brown, Mary Garvin, and Mark S. Woodrey, who will serve the 2009– 2012 term, and another newly elected member of Council, Mia R. Revels, who will serve the remainder of a vacated 2007–2010 term. The following WOS awards and commendations also were presented:

The Ear Region of the Pen-tailed Treeshrew, Ptilocercus lowii Gray, 1848 (Placentalia, Scandentia, Ptilocercidae)

The ear region of the pen-tailed treeshrew, Ptilocercus lowii Gray, 1848 (Scandentia, Ptilocercidae), is described and illustrated in detail based on five museum specimens from the National Museum of Natural History, two with the auditory bulla removed exposing the intratympanic surfaces. Soft tissues (arteries, veins, nerves, and muscles) are reconstructed onto the adult skulls based on published reports of these elements in a fetal P. lowii. Comparisons are made with four specimens of the common treeshrew, the tupaiid Tupaia glis (Diard, 1820), from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, including one with the auditory bulla removed.

Investigations of the Suburban

Away: New Suburban Landscapes Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art Pittsburgh October 4, 2008-January 18, 2009 Yale Architecture Gallery New Haven, Connecticut March 2-May 10, 2009 In an exhibition entitled Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes, curators Andrew Blauvelt, Design Director and Curator of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and Tracy Myers, Curator of Architecture and Design at the Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, set out to explore the notion of the suburban. Thus, the works of the more than thirty artists and architects included in the exhibition share a common conceptual anchor: the contemporary American suburb as fundamentally constitutive of our subjectivity. The relationship between the suburb and the city has over time become less distinct; as a result, the suburbs have evolved from stereotypical mundane sites of architectural sameness and demographic conformity to sites of class, racial, and cultural heterogeneity and architectural experimentation. In the preface to the exhibition catalog, Blauvelt writes: [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The American suburb represents something of a paradox, since its very definition hinges on both its physical proximity to as well as its cultural distance from the city. The mutually dependent relationship between city and suburb is the product of both historical origins and contemporary necessity. City dwellers and suburbanites need each other to reinforce their own sense of place and identity despite ample evidence that what we once thought were different places and lifestyles are increasingly intertwined and much less distinct. (1) The works, which range from two-dimensional media to three-dimensional sculpture and video installation, attempt to critically examine precisely what Blauvelt calls the paradoxes of the suburban landscape--the notions of site and identity being crucial coordinates of this investigation. In various ways, the artists and architects document, map, and represent the landscape, questioning its supposed transparency and readability while simultaneously calling attention to its interpretive present and future potentials. The exhibition was a collection of viewpoints, producing the suburban landscape as a site of evolving, open-ended difference. The photographs of Larry Sultan often require a second glance to fully read their content. In Tasha's Third Film (1998), Sultan questions the presumed innocence of suburbia, revealing it as a site of scopophilic desire. In the foreground of what appears to be an ordinary living room, Tasha is seated on a couch between two sleeping men. She seems passive and tired, scantily dressed with curlers in her hair. In the brightly lit background separated from the interior by a French-style window, we see a glimpse of a terrace filled with people. In the right-hand corner, a film production crew is recording two people having sex. In the left-hand corner, another group of people, presumably the owners of the house, dressed casually in shorts and T-shirts, are watching the production crew filming the sex scene. What appears to be an ordinary domestic snapshot is suddenly read differently: the innocence of the suburban idyll is transformed into a documentary expose of the pornography industry. By closely studying a specific social phenomenon the porn industry--Sultan demystifies the photographic apparatus and exposes its artificiality. The suburb, inherently implicated in this process, becomes a space that propagates voyeuristic sexual desire. While Sultan researches a specific phenomenon, such as the provisional, suburban porn sets, Gregory Crewdson stages the suburban milieu. His work references the photographic tradition of the horror film as both seductive yet frightening, beautiful yet terrifying. …

Merritt, J. F., S. Churchfield, R. Hutterer, and B. I. Sheftel (eds.).2005. Advances in the Biology of Shrews II. Special Publication of the International Society of Shrew Biologists 1, New York, 468 pp. ISBN 978-1411678187, price (paper), $37.50.

J. F. Merritt, S. Churchfield, R. Hutterer, B. I. Sheftel (eds.). 2005. Advances in the Biology of Shrews II. Special Publication of the International Society of Shrew Biologists 1, New York, 468pp. ISBN ISBN 978-1411678187, price (paper), $37.50. Advances in the Biology of Shrews II is not a textbook on the general biology of shrews (Soricidae). The book is a collection of 39 peer-reviewed papers that demonstrate the diversity of research into shrew biology currently being undertaken; the book summarizes the state of knowledge in the various topic areas. The volume is a product of the International Colloquium on the Biology of the Soricidae II that convened 14–18 October 2002 at Powdermill Biological Station, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Rector, Pennsylvania, with 61 participants representing 15 countries, including Belarus, China, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, and Venezuela. Hence, the colloquium and the resulting proceedings volume have international value and high scientific standards, with the background of former meetings of the “community” of shrew biologists scattered worldwide. In the past decades there were a few other meetings of shrew specialists, which probably inspired this scientific meeting and enhanced international collaboration. Among many other extensive works, I want to highlight 4 publications: Population Biology of Eurasian Shrews (Hanski and Pankakoski 1989) and The Biology of the Soricidae (Findley and Yates 1991) were probably 2 of the 1st symposia volumes on shrews published in English, followed by Advances in the Biology of Shrews (Merritt et al. 1994). Wojcik and Wolsan (1998) published Evolution of Shrews . I vividly remember when J. F. Merritt approached me via “The Shrew Shrine” with the idea of organizing another meeting on Soricidae. Amusingly, he called this project “The Shrew Bash.” Advances in the Biology of Shrews II , as J. F. Merritt states, is dedicated to “shrewologists” par excellence: Peter Crowcroft, Charles O. Handley, Jr., Gordon L. Kirkland, Jr., and Mikhail V. Zaitsev. Churchfield states in the preface that “some authors were ‘old hands’ …

Review: Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes; Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 4 October 2008–18 January 2009.; and Yale School of Architecture, 16 February–9 May 2009.

Review: <i>Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes</i>; <i>Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 4 October 2008–18 January 2009.</i>; and <i>Yale School of Architecture, 16 February–9 May 2009.</i>

On the Cranial Osteology of the Hispaniolan Solenodon, Solenodon paradoxus Brandt, 1833 (Mammalia, Lipotyphla, Solenodontidae)

The external and internal surfaces of the skull of the Hispaniolan solenodon, Solenodon paradoxus Brandt, 1833, are described and illustrated in detail based on five museum specimens (one from Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the remainder from American Museum of Natural History). Two of the specimens are juveniles that preserve sutural information that is lacking in the adults; one adult is bisected and exposes the interior of the nasal and cranial cavities. A sixth specimen is a serially sectioned ear region of a juvenile from the Max-Planck-Institut für Hirnforschung that provides information on soft-tissue structures.The Hispaniolan solenodon has a peculiar skull with numerous highly unusual features among mammals. Included are: a small, oval ossification, the os proboscidis, jutting anteriorly from the ventral rim of the external nasal aperture; zygoma incomplete and jugal bone absent; exposure of the ethmoid bone in the orbit but palatine not; numerous orbital foramina accommodating veins communicating across the midline ventrally in the presphenoid and dorsally in the frontal; tiny optic foramina; venous transverse canal through basisphenoid; entoglenoid process of squamosal but no postglenoid process; abutment between the rostral process of the malleus and the crista parotica of the petrosal; rostral and caudal tympanic processes of the petrosal fused; large occipital emissary vein foramen endocranially between supraoccipital and parietal; large venous condyloid canal through exoccipital; paired interparietals; mandible with two “angles,” a true angular process and a process for the digastric muscle. Perhaps the most unexpected finding is that of a prootic canal for the lateral head vein in the petrosal bone. Prootic canals are broadly distributed in Mesozoic mammals including a few Cretaceous eutherians, but heretofore are unknown in placentals.

Annals of Carnegie Museum, Volume 76, Number 4

Annals of Carnegie Museum, Volume 76, Number 4

Steel and science bring dinosaurs into the 21st century at the carnegie museum of natural history

Steel and science bring dinosaurs into the 21st century at the carnegie museum of natural history

Cowboys, Scientists, and Fossils

Even as the division between professional scientists and laypeople became sharper by the end of the nineteenth century, the collaboration of local people remained important in scientific fieldwork, especially in sciences such as vertebrate paleontology that required long-term extractive access to research sites. In the North American West, the competition between museums and universities for the best fossil quarry sites involved negotiations with locals. The conflict over differing conceptions of the field site is vividly demonstrated through an examination of one site on the High Plains of western Nebraska in the early twentieth century. This case offers a rare opportunity to see not only how professionals regarded such sites but also how the resident ranching family, the Cooks, attempted to exercise leverage over the scientific fieldwork that took place there. While the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh became mired in protracted conflict with the Cooks over discovery claims and the ongoing control of the site, the University of Nebraska and the American Museum of New York developed more harmonious relations with the site's resident ranching family.

Obituary

Obituary

An Osteological Analysis of Ten Human Crania from Costa Rica

ABSTRACT This paper presents an analysis of human cranial remains from the Cartago Phase (Period VI, A.D. 1000–1550) in the Central Highlands Region of Costa Rica. The collection was likely obtained by Carl Vilhelm Hartman, Curator of Ethnography and Archaeology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, in 1903 during his seven month field expedition to Costa Rica. Aside from the geotemporal context, little is known about the sample, because it was not excavated through systematic archaeology. Bioarchaeology in Costa Rica is restricted due to the poor preservation of biological material because of acidic volcanic soil and high humidity. Large scale looting of archaeological sites has been an unfortunate part of Costa Rican history, and sites have been completely decimated by the hands of looters. This analysis provides information and contributes to the limited corpus of comparative Costa Rican skeletal data that can be utilized for future research. Ten crania were analyzed for demographic, metric, nonme...

On the Cranial Osteology of the Lagomorpha

The Section of Mammals, Carnegie Museum of Natural History houses skulls from seven genera of extant lagomorphs (one ochotonid and six leporids). Described and illustrated are the external surfaces of the bones of the skull of the North American pika Ochotona princeps (Richardson, 1828) and also illustrated is the volcano rabbit Romerolagus diazi (Ferrari-Pérez, 1893). Comparisons of selected craniomandibular features are made between O. princeps, R. diazi, and the following additional leporids: Pronolagus crassicaudatus (I. Geoffroy, 1832), Lepus capensis Linnaeus, 1758, Oryctolagus cuniculus (Linnaeus, 1758), Sylvilagus nuttallii (Bachman, 1837), and Brachylagus idahoensis (Merriam, 1891). Also included in the comparisons based on published descriptions are the following extinct taxa: Prolagus, the Sardinian pika, a Quaternary ochotonid; Palaeolagus, a late Eocene-Oligocene stem lagomorph; Mimolagus, an early Oligocene mimotonid; Mimotona, a Paleocene mimotonid; Gomphos, an early Eocene stem lagomorph; and Rhombomylus, an early Eocene eurymylid. Characters are identified that support various hypotheses of phylogenetic relationships among the studied taxa.

Jaw Shows Platypus Goes Way Back

SOCIETY OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY MEETING > SOCIETY OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY, 17–20 OCTOBER 2007, AUSTIN, TEXAS ![Figure][1] Sensational. Ancestors of the duck-billed platypus may have had the same electrosensory bill. CREDIT: NICOLE DUPLAIX/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC/GETTY IMAGES When scientists first laid eyes on the duckbilled platypus and the echidnas in the late 18th century, they were so baffled by these bizarre egg-laying mammals that some considered the specimens a hoax. Modern researchers have uncovered other implausible features, including 40,000 tiny glands in the broad bill that sense electric currents, which may help the platypus catch prey underwater. The ant-eating echidna has about 100 in its tiny snout. The platypus and echidna are so unusual that they were assigned an order—the Monotremata—separate from the more common marsupial and placental mammals. The fossil record of monotremes is also sparse. The oldest known specimen is a single tooth from Patagonia, about 62 million years old, with a distinctive compressed shape like that of juvenile platypuses before they lose their teeth. A reanalysis of fossil jaws from Australia, reported at the meeting, suggests it belonged to a platypus that lived at least 112 million years ago. “It's really, really old for a monotreme,” Timothy Rowe of the University of Texas (UT), Austin, told the audience. Teinolophos trusleri was discovered near Inverloch, Australia, in 1997 and described by Thomas Rich of the Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Pat Vickers-Rich of Monash University, and colleagues. The specimens consist of jaws and teeth. ![Figure][1] Grand canal. The dark gray area in the CT scan ( above ) of a jaw marks the path of nerve fibers. CREDIT: TIMOTHY ROWE/ PNAS Looking for more anatomical clues to the evolution of mammals, Rich's team took fossil jaws to Rowe, a paleontologist who also runs a computed tomography-scanning facility at UT Austin. Scans of three specimens revealed a large internal canal along the entire length of the jaw, like the canal in a modern platypus that carries nerve fibers from the electrosensory glands in the bill to the brain. “There's no other mammal that has a canal this size,” Rowe said. Even back in the early Cretaceous, it seems, the platypus was using electrosensation. “This is the most compelling evidence to us that Teinolophos is a platypus.” That would push back the fossil record of the platypus quite a bit; the next youngest fossil is Obdurodon dicksoni from 15-million-year-old rocks in Australia. It is also much older than current estimates from DNA of when platypuses and echidnas diverged from their most recent common ancestor. Molecular clocks put that date somewhere between 17 million and 80 million years ago. Rowe speculated that one reason for the underestimate may be that monotremes evolve at slower rates than other mammals do, an idea that fits with their lower diversity. Zhe-Xi Luo of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, agrees that the canal in Teinolophos resembles that of a modern platypus: “I'm leaning toward accepting Rowe's idea.” [1]: pending:yes

“Dad look, she's sleeping”: Parent–Child Conversations about Human Remains

ABSTRACT Research on parent–child learning in museums has shown that parents often use conversation to facilitate their children's exploration of exhibits. This observational study investigated whether the patterns of talk found in science and history exhibits are used during parent–child conversations about challenging content such as death and dying and forensics. This research was conducted at a traveling exhibit, Mysterious Bog People, which was on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Thirty-four families were observed as they interacted with and explored the exhibit. Parent comfort with the content of the exhibit was found to have an impact on the conversations they had with their children and their enjoyment of the exhibit overall. Implications for museum mediation are discussed.

THE UPPER PENNSYLVANIAN (MISSOURIAN) AMMONOID PENNOCERAS FROM THE NORTH AMERICAN MIDCONTINENT

Until recently considered a rare Appalachian Basin endemic, Pennoceras Miller and Unklesbay, 1942 has emerged as one of the most widespread and locally abundant ammonoids in the lower Missourian of the Midcontinent (Boardman et al., 1994). Here we document the first Midcontinent record of the type species of Pennoceras , P. seamani Miller and Unklesbay, 1942, from the Hushpuckney Shale equivalent in southeastern Kansas. Additional, previously undescribed species of Pennoceras from the Exline Limestone and Mound City Shale equivalents in Oklahoma and southeastern Kansas are described as Pennoceras bennisoni new species and Pennoceras heckeli new species. Discovery of these ancestral species provides clarification on the derivation and early history of Pennoceras and provides a possible link to the Desmoinesian Wiedeyoceratidae. Dimensions D, H, W, and U represent conch diameter, corresponding whorl height and width, and umbilical diameter measured from seam to seam. Suture terminology is that of Ruzhencev (1960); V, L, U, I, and D represent the ventral lobe, lateral lobe, umbilical lobe, internal lateral lobe, and dorsal lobe. Sutural symbols hs, hl, and wl refer to height of secondary ventral saddle and height and width of entire ventral lobe, respectively. Repository abbreviations are: SUI, University of Iowa; CM, Carnegie Museum of Natural History. ### Type species Pennoceras seamani Miller and Unklesbay, 1942. ### Included species Pennoceras bennisoni n. sp.; Pennoceras heckeli n. sp. ### Emended diagnosis Conch small (30–35 mm at maturity), subglobose to globose (W/D 0.55–0.9) with depressed to equidimensional whorls (H/W 0.6–1.0) and closed umbilicus. Fine to coarse, straight transverse lamellae trace a low ventral salient. External suture comprises wide ventral lobe with low median saddle ( hs / hl about 0.4) and short, rounded or bluntly pointed ventral prongs; broadly rounded lateral saddle; symmetrical, narrowly rounded or bluntly pointed lateral lobe; and small, rounded umbilical lobe. Sutural formula: ( V1V1 ) …

Exploring Museum Theatre (review)

Reviewed by: Exploring Museum Theatre Scott Magelssen Exploring Museum Theatre. By Tessa Bridal. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2004; pp. xiv + 197. $72.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. Tessa Bridal's how-to book for museum practitioners persuasively evinces the importance of museum theatre and the need for a book on the subject. Citing studies by the Smithsonian, museum scholars, and regional institutions, Bridal reminds us that museum visitors find theatre to be more powerful than exhibits when it comes to "presenting information in a meaningful and enjoyable manner" and allowing "self exploration of historical information" (107). Visitors to museum exhibits [End Page 376] are often better able to articulate the desired facts and connections if they also experience a museum theatre performance. Moreover, Bridal argues, museum theatre is instrumental in transforming points of view, helping us be less fearful in our encounters with new ideas, and "teaching through the emotions . . ., inspiring hope and positive change, and therefore being a force to improve the world" (9). Important business, indeed. In her chapter "What is Museum Theatre?" Bridal's informants (from museums such as the Science Museum of Virginia, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis) draw boundaries to constitute their craft—boundaries by turns conservative or loose, depending on institutional goals and interpreter backgrounds. For some, museum theatre must include speaking characters and a narrative; for others, "an experimental, nonlinear approach to theatre" (xiii) can be equally as compelling. By Bridal's own definition, museum theatre is educational and linked to the museum's mission and values: high artistic quality, employing paid and unpaid trained professionals; most often shorter than commercial theatre performances; and frequently interactive. The strongest chapters are four through seven, which comprise an exhaustive tour through the process of making museum theatre: grant writing and sources of funding; development and scriptwriting; auditioning actors and hiring costume and set designers; stage management and technical requirements. Based on Bridal's own twenty years of experience in the field, each of these chapters covers roles and responsibilities, anticipation of snags, supplies needed, sample timelines and employment listing ads, and even the minutiae of union questions, royalties, and copyright issues. Practical questions treated in these chapters include, for example, "When is it appropriate to use color-blind casting? When should it be avoided?" (An Asian Marie Curie, she cautions, might produce unwanted confusion for a museum audience not used to the conceit of color-blind casting). From the suggested budgets and timelines, it is clear that this is a book for serious museums with serious sources of funding, though its advice can probably be adapted and used by smaller institutions and historic sites. What Bridal makes clear to the would-be museum theatre practitioner, however, is that this enterprise takes several months of planning, plus quite a bit of money, institutional support, and outside resources to reach the level of professionalism she insists upon. The weakest chapters are two and eleven. Chapter two, "A Brief History," though admittedly not of primary interest to her target audience, is the most troublesome. Bridal finds it necessary, as do many who write about museums and performance, to establish a genealogy of museum theatre, seeking legitimacy by dissociating her subject from nineteenth-century popular entertainments like Barnum's lectures and curiosities, and instead grounding its origins in diorama rooms and educational forums of the nineteenth century (or, in its "deepest roots" of myth, storytelling, ritual, celebration, and fantasy). Such an unproblematized reiteration of the evolution narrative made fashionable by museum scholars like Jay Anderson and Edward Alexander not only reinscribes a selective and positivist mode of museum historiography; it also perpetuates the imagined distinctions between, say, Skansen, Hazelius's nineteenth-century open-air museum, and the pop-culture landscape of World's Fairs and sideshows. At the very least, this chapter is unnecessary. Bridal clearly establishes the importance of museum theatre in the present; it shouldn't need such a clichéd and trumped-up pedigree to justify its existence. The inclusion of her genealogy does allow the insertion of Bridal's own institution, The Science Museum of Minnesota, as an evolutionary step (the SMM developed some puppetry programming in...

ANT NEST BEETLES OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM (COLEOPTERA: CARABIDAE: PAUSSINAE: PAUSSINI)

Paussini (Coleoptera: Carabidae: Paussinae) from the collections of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History were studied and identified. The species are mainly from Africa with one each from the Middle East and India. The collection consists of long series from different localities but is especially rich in specimens from Malawi with eight species recorded from there for the first time. The paper also presents first records for many other African countries. In the framework of a revisionary treatment of the Paussus cucullatus Group sensu stricto, type material of Paussus semicucullatus Wasmann, Paussus pseudocucullatus Nagel, and Paussus conradti Kolbe were studied. It is shown that Paussus elizabethae Péringuey, 1897, is a valid species and not a synonym of P. conradti Kolbe, 1896. Paussus phyllocerus Reichensperger, 1925, is recognized as a new synonym of Paussus excavatus Westwood, 1833. Two species from Malawi are described as new to science: Paussus buet-tikeri, new species, and Paussus rawlinsi, new species. One key each is provided for ease of identification of species closely related to P. cucullatus Westwood and Paussus manicanus Péringuey, respectively. All available type specimens and many other species are shown in drawings.

SOCIETY RECORDS AND ACTIVITES

The meeting of the incoming Council of the Paleontological Society (PS) was called to order by President William I. Ausich at 1:30 pm on 4 November 2003 in the Cedar Room of the downtown Sheraton Hotel. Council members Patricia H. “Tricia” Kelley, David J. Bottjer, Mark E. Patzkowsky, Roger D. K. Thomas, Mark A. Wilson, Robert A. Gastaldo, Lisa E. Park, Russell D. “Tim” White, Dale A. Springer, Ann F. “Nancy” Budd, Jonathan M. Adrain, William A. DiMichele, Leif Tapanila, Christopher J. Crow, Scott M. Ritter, Rex A. Hanger, Craig Oyen and Neil E. Tibert were present. Also attending parts of the meeting were Richard K. Bambach, James W. “Whitey” Hagadorn, Roger L. Kaesler, Norman McLeod, Ronald L. Parsley, John Pojeta, Jennifer Rumford, and Judy Scotchmoor. Following a round of introductions, President Ausich welcomed new members to the Council. He once again acknowledged the contributions of those who had completed their terms of service, singling out Carl Stock's valuable leadership during his four years as Secretary. After noting the roles of several new and reelected members, he reported on several committee appointments. Rena M. Bonem will serve as the President's appointee on the Nominations Committee. Susan M. Kidwell and Brian T. Huber have been appointed to the Paleontological Society Medal Committee. The Schuchert Award Committee now includes Scott L. Wing and James O. Farlow. The members of the committee charged to conduct the annual audit are Marcus M. Key and Dale A. Springer. John R. Groves will chair the Stephen J. Gould Student Grants Committee; it also includes Kevin Padian, Tamra A. Schiappa and Gordon D. Wood. For the record, President Ausich noted the Society's gratitude to Mary Dawson, the Carnegie Museum, and especially to Ilona Weyers for their many years of service, in maintaining the Special Publications Office. The …