Thanks for the mammoth tooth!

It was just another day at work for Environment Agency worker Simon McHugh when he spotted an unusual looking object sitting in a pool of water on the gravel riverbed of the River Otter in East Devon. The biodiversity technical officer, who had been assessing the extent of erosion of the river bank, recognised the 20cm long object as a tooth - but was astounded to realise he had stumbled upon a mammoth molar which could be up to 70,000 years old.

Experts at the Natural History Museum have confirmed that the tooth is not only a interesting find, but a rare one too - only a handful of mammoth teeth have been found in the UK, with just two being found in Devon. In fact, this is the first find of its kind since the 1800s.

A mammoth discovery - a 20cm long, upper right molar tooth.

The sizable tooth weighs in at a hefty 2.2kg -  much heavier than it would have been sitting in the mouth of its original mammoth owner. This is due to the fossilisation process, which saw the tooth absorb silica or other minerals over time, slowly becoming petrified.

So, after surviving Ice Ages and tens of thousands of years, what's next for the River Otter mammoth tooth? As big as it is and as tough as it looks, it firstly needs some conservation to prevent it drying out too quickly and crumbling to dust. Once it's preserved, it's destined to go on display at Exeter Museum - reminding people that once upon a time, just a few thousand years ago, beasts with individual teeth as long as an iPad were once numerous in southern England...

Indiana Jones, eat your heart out!

I've just got back from a really inspiring lecture and I thought I might tell you all about it. Mostly because this is more fun than staring my thesis - but also because I desperately want to share the joy I just felt at spending a couple of hours with a world renowned archaeologist Dr Warwick Bray, Emeritus Professor of Latin American Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College, London.

Dr Bray came to the department today to talk about his early career at the University of Sheffield archaeology department in the early 1960s and his subsequent work digging and surveying the landscape in Colombia. I knew it was going to be a great talk because we'd had to bring the slide projector out of retirement for him - and I wasn't disappointed. Right off the bat there was an anecdote about his first lecture, on the first archaeology course ever run  at Sheffield, how he'd never forget it because on that morning his wife went into labour and they shared the same taxi - with him getting out at the department and her continuing to the hospital. It did teach him early on, he said, that one could give a passable lecture on something, whilst thinking about something completely different.

Emeritus Professor
Dr Warwick Bray

After many beautiful pictures of pottery, golden artefacts, worked Colombian landscapes and grave shafts - some of which disappeared several metres into the ground and were accessed via a bucket on a winch - we all went to the pub, as archaeologists are wont to do. Other wonderful snippets of information included how him and his colleagues were banned from a hotel in Panama for creeping into the kitchens at night to deflesh exotic roadkill and how local youths, on seeing how interested the team was in dead animals, started to bring along live ones for them. Subsequently, they had to deal with a gift of a live and angry anteater was -  wrestling it into a sack and driving it 20 miles away was apparently the solution. This was truly the stuff of Indiana Jones-esque legend!

At a time when funding for archaeology in the UK is diminishing in a misguided austerity measure, with universities closing departments and students picking university careers based on their money earning potential (who wants to do archaeology when you can do law?) rather than personal interest, it struck me as important to remember how exciting archaeology can be. Sure, there are a few more health and safety concerns these days, but there is still good work to be done - and if we can muster even half the energy and enthusiam of a gentleman like Bray, we'd stand a bit more of a chance of saving it.


PS . I recommend reading this oral-history account of Warwick Brays early career, if you're interested.

Falling out of Ivory Towers

This week I decided to throw off the shackles of writing-up my thesis and attend a free training event on the topic of 'Engaging with Non-academic Audiences' which was held at the University of York, organised by the White Rose University Consortium. Not put off by the snow, I made my way to York to attend a series of workshops about what 'impact' really is (bad terminology apparently, but more on that later) and what the practicalities of public engagement are.

The talks were generally useful, good natured and informative. The first workshop was a sort of primer for why we should be engaging with wider audiences and what the research 'impact agenda'. It quickly became apparent that 'impact' isn't a word that many people feel comfortable with - some feel that it implies that the academic is presuming their own importance or that it implies that all research has to make a big splash. Impact has thus become 'engaged research' or even, for those of you who like long words 'democratising knowledge'. I suppose the idea that came across was, simply, to share your research and have meaningful fun doing it.

The second workshop focussed on the practicalities of engaging with non-academic audiences, presenting lots of questions about how to engage those audiences, how to approach partner institutions (museums, galleries, community groups and so on) and how to secure funding for research undertakings. There was a lot of discussion, but I'm not sure how much practical information it really provided - a couple of case studies aside, I am no wiser on how to go about securing funding, other than turning up on the doorstep of your desired partner in research with a smile and bags of enthusiasm (maybe that is the only way). Slight misnomer aside, the session was still useful and again provided an opportunity to reiterate that there should be no Ivory Towers in academia.

An excellent demonstration of that was the key note speaker for the day - Professor Angie Hobbs, Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Professor Hobbs gave a Powerpoint free talk (and stressed the importance of being able to talk without it!) full of anecdotes about discussing Socrates in marketplaces and the difficulties of sounding good on the radio. She was keen to emphasise how non-academic audiences aren't stupid and should never be thought of as such - most people can understand complicated subjects, if they're explained well. Definitely something to keep in mind, I thought, as I made my way home.

Given the kind of  day I'd just taken part in, I was subsequently a bit surprised to overhear some other attendees on the train home talk derisively about the same kinds of community group we'd just been talking about engaging and critically... would potentially be asking for money. I heard them chatter about how cringe-worthy some local historic interest and re-enactment groups are - a kind of 'wouldn't be caught dead doing that' attitude. From my few seats back on the train I realised that this was why academics are still thought of as elitist and as tucked away in their far off academic towers, because at least some of them are.  

You may not like the idea of running around at the weekend, eating 'historically inspired' food, watching people talk about the use of medieval weaponry - but you know what? Lots of people do. Lots of normal people, ordinary people, do.  Have you been to an English Heritage open day, with its living history and treasure hunts, or an interactive Science Museum with lots of hands-on demonstrations? They're full of people, families and 20-something year olds enjoying things they are enabled to understand and enjoy. A public lecture has its place, but simple old-fashioned knowledge transfer is not the route of learning or enjoyment for all the people. The sooner we realise that and the sooner we stop being embarrassed by the idea of applying your research in a people friendly way, the better.

It's not about dumbing down, it's about explaining it well and making people feel the joy you feel about a subject using a different route, for people who haven't spent 10 years reading the same books. You can innovate, change opinions, make people think of things in different ways. As a knowledgeable person with all that book learnin', you have the power and ability to do that.

It's hard to do, but if I learnt anything from the tales told at the event, it's worth doing.

Out of the tower, into the open. It's magic.

Get me a guard and make it snappy...

Earlier this month, a 5ft long reptile called 'Mr Teeth' was found protecting a large stash of cannabis in the home of Assif Mayar in Oakland, California. The creature, initially thought to be an alligator was soon identified as a caiman by local veterinarians.

The unfortunate reptile, unexpectedly discovered in the wake of a drugs raid, has since died at Oakland Zoo. Mr Teeth had been kept in poor conditions for many years, confined to a 8-foot-by-2-foot plexiglass tank. He was originally bought by Mr Mayar to 'commemorate the death of rapper Tupac Shakur' in 1996, according to a police spokesperson at the Oakland Police Department. 

As well as significant drugs charges, the caiman's ex-owner is now set to face additional animal cruelty charges in the wake of Mr Teeth's untimely death.

Mr Teeth. RIP.

My, what exoskeleton crushing teeth you have!

A bird with some seriously robust teeth has been unearthed recently in Liaoning province, China. The fossilised remains of Sulcavis geeorum are described in the January issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology and show some unusual dental morphology - not only does this bird have teeth, but they're sharply pointed with distinct grooves on the inside surface.

This sparrow-sized flier, which belonged to the enantiornithine group of toothed birds, lived between 121 and 125 million years ago, consuming a diet of smaller hard-shelled creatures such as insects or crabs.

As rare as hen's teeth might be today, it seems that the group to which this bird belonged to were evolving new and toothy ways to exploit a variety of ecological niches - at a time when other birds were losing their dentitions.

Although small, this bird and it's relatives were certainly toothsome. I like to think of them as Darwin finches with attitude...
 

Sulcavis geeorum skull, a fossil bird from the Early Cretaceous.
Photo by Stephanie Abramowicz. Scale bar in mm.

Kissing a donkey and spitting on a frog!

In the throes of agonising toothache, could you imagine kissing the teeth of a living donkey in an attempt to cure yourself? If you can't, that's understandable - but it's exactly what you would have done in the 14th century... and much more besides.

The cures for toothache in the past are difficult to believe and some of them are difficult to stomach. From spitting into the mouth of frog in the hope it would take on your pain for itself to sucking on the freshly extracted tooth of a dead man, past populations would try anything to alleviate the pain of cavities and gum disease.

Until the germ theory of disease was discovered in the late 19th century, how teeth became cavity ridden was a mystery. In 1890, WD Miller discovered that bacteria lived on the surface of the teeth and their acidic waste products could erode the enamel. Prior to this discovery, common lore attributed cavities to a tooth worm. The worm was a popular explanation for dental problems across the globe throughout the ages.  Ancient Babylonian priests are purported to have called upon the sun god Ra to summon the worm for them so that they could banish it with a curse and medieval Europeans would try to smoke the worms out by taking in the (poisonous) fumes of henbane.

Here be monsters: tooth worms and eternal suffering.

Animals, as with many folk cures, lose out in this situation, with common traditional cures for toothache in England including: wearing a necklace made of mole paws and noses, cutting spines off a dogfish or rubbing the afflicted teeth with the burnt brain of a hare or the horn of a hart. Apparently, hare brains rubbed into the gums were also used to aid the safe eruption of infants' teeth. Lovely.

Nineteenth century Americans would even bite snakes, including deadly rattlesnakes, in an attempt to get rid of their toothache. I'm pretty sure that the threat of getting bitten by a rattler would definitely take your mind off the tooth pain, so at least this one might have worked for a short time...




References:
The Teeth in Folklore (1968), Jeri Tanner
Folklore of the Teeh (1934), Leo Kanner
Of the Teeth  (1961), Byrd Howell Granger