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96th National FFA Convention elects national officers, honors students

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As reported in High Plains Journal, the 96th National FFA Convention took place Nov. 1 to 4 in Indianapolis, Indiana. FFA members from across the nation represented their home states and local chapters in the highest levels of FFA competitions. National FFA officers were elected and around 3,500 FFA members received their American FFA Degrees—the highest degree achievable for a member. Over 70,000 FFA members from Alaska to the Virgin Islands and from Maine to Hawaii were in attendance.

Of the many honors presented at this long-standing convention, the highlights included the announcement of the 2023-2024 National FFA Officer Team, American Star Award winners, Career and Leadership Development Events, Agricultural Proficiency Award winners and the American FFA Degree ceremony.

The newly-elected officer team includes: Amara Jackson of Michigan, who was elected president; Grant Norfleet of Missouri, who was elected secretary; Carter Howell of Florida, who was elected southern region vice-president; Kanyon Huntington of Iowa, who was elected central region vice-president; Morgan Anderson of Ohio, who was elected eastern region vice-president and Emily Gossett of New Mexico, who was elected western region vice-president.

Sixteen finalists were selected to be interviewed for four American Star Awards. The Star Farmer was presented to Daniel Jossund of the Ada-Borup-West FFA in Minnesota; the Star in Agricultural Placement was awarded to Whitney Glazier of the Lomega FFA in Oklahoma; the Star in Agribusiness went to Lainey Hutchison of the Crockett County FFA in Tennessee and the Star in Agriscience was awarded to George Free, a member of Cass Career Center FFA in Missouri.

If Only I’d Have Known

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lee pitts

 

With the onset of old age come the regrets and remorse of how I should have lived my younger life if only I’d have known then what I know now.

Why didn’t anyone tell me that it would be the last time I gaped in wonder at the Grand Canyon, the mighty redwoods, the beauty of Lake Tahoe and the haunting Badlands. If only I’d have known it would be the last time I saw a show in Vegas, listened to the poets in Elko, rafted the Rogue or flew into Seattle and Sydney, Australia, on a sunlit day. I wish someone would have warned me that I’d never again experience enchanting New Mexico, the Alamo in San Antonio, the Lincoln Memorial, the village of Williamsburg and the music on Bourbon street. If I only knew I’d have lingered a little longer.

I would have said goodbye a little differently if I’d known it would be the last time to tell my mom I loved her, to give my horse Gentleman one last carrot and my dog Aussie a big old bone. I would have been with my Grandpa the day that he died instead of regretting it the rest of my life. I wish I would have asked Grandpa to teach me how to troll for fish and how to barbecue a steak. I should’ve paid more attention when Grandma tried to teach me how to play the piano. Who knew that I’d one day become a leatherworker and would have benefitted greatly by letting my mom teach me how to put in a zipper, construct a gusset and the proper maintenance of a sewing machine, after all, she kept us all fed by working 14 hours a day as a seamstress?

I wish I’d have made a list of all the books I ever read so that I’d never read the same book again. Life is too short to read the same book twice.

If only I’d have taken advantage of the opportunities given to me to learn how to operate a backhoe, truck crane, milling machine and lathe. Why didn’t I learn to speak Spanish better than I did after studying it for five years in school? I wish I’d have read more novels, fewer People magazines and definitely more directions. (Hey, what can I say, I’m a man.)

You may laugh but I wish I’d of raised a goat. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I raised sheep and cattle for a living, but I’ve always been curious about goats. It seems they have several advantages: you don’t have to sheer them, they aren’t the picky eaters that horses are and the kids are so darn cute.

Speaking of kids, had I known we couldn’t have any I’d have held more babies, been a 4H leader longer and read to more toddlers. I wish I’d have known how valuable our first cars would one day become then we might have hid them away for decades. And why didn’t I collect land instead of old and rusty horse bits?

Why didn’t someone tell me to always wear a leather jacket when arc welding, to never wear flip flops in the shop and the right way to sharpen a knife? I should have paid more attention in my one computer class in college. If only I’d have properly appreciated the eight hours of undisturbed sleep I used to get instead of having to get up at least twice during the night. If only I’d have known to always floss my teeth, eat fewer sweets, run more marathons and walk every day. I should have taken more adult education courses, paid more attention to pool sharks, learned all about diesels from Uncle Buddy, kept on tooling leather after a couple sessions in Cub Scouts and gone to auctioneering school. If only I’d have known I’d one day become a writer I’d have taken a typing class in high school instead of trigonometry. I’ve regretted not knowing enough about electricity. If I knew I’d one day become a cowboy I’d have fallen in love with horses a lot sooner.

If only I’d have known… I would have fished more, worried less, done more doodling and less dawdling.

Why didn’t anyone tell me these things?

Maybe they did and I just wasn’t listening.
Top Dog

If a Martian were to land on earth and say, “Take me to your leader,” there’s no doubt in my mind it would be taken to a Chihuahua, Border Collie or a Bichon Frise. That’s because in our society dogs definitely rule.

Who else gets to eat for free and never has to do the dishes, always has doors opened for it and gets its hair trimmed like they were a topiary? Who else gets carried around in purses and pushed in prams? Urban dogs never have to cook, clean house, vacuum the carpet, or mow the lawn. They sleep, eat and play all day while the human must work in order to buy expensive dog food. The only exception are working dogs on a ranch where its obvious who does all the work and makes all the important decisions. The dog does, of course.

Basically a dog’s play time consists of having a dumb human throw a tennis ball for it to retrieve over and over again. If the human refuses to pick up the slobbery ball the dog whimpers and whines like a child until its demands are met. When it’s not fetching tennis balls or napping in its own bed the dog and the human go for a constitutional so the dog can poop in someone else’s yard. And when its done the dog turns to its private lackey human and says, “Hey, pick that up.”

And the stupid human does!

If you still doubt who is top dog consider flying on a commercial airliner these days. It is a law that for a dog to fly it must have enough room to stand up, turn all the way around and roll over. If you’re a people passenger there are no such rules and if you must squeeze in a middle seat there isn’t even anywhere to put your arms, let alone roll over.

Or consider traveling in a vehicle. The dog never has to drive and is chauffeured everywhere it has to go, like doggy day care, the dog beach, swimming at the pool or its weekly massage. If the dog gets road rage at all the moron drivers it merely puts it head out the window while sitting on the driver’s lap and barks out its displeasure.

It’s obvious that we work for them. We’re constantly freshening up their drinking water every time we flush the toilet. We buy them clothes, take them fishing and hunting, and let them sit in your recliner to watch their favorite TV shows. And they never have to get up to fetch the snacks! They decide what time we get up in the middle of the night and you can never sleep in because the dog needs to be let outside. And if you refuse they snarl, growl or howl and pee on the carpet to remind everyone who is boss.

Maybe it has always been this way but I think it’s become more apparent these days as we’re now taking our dogs into grocery stores and restaurants. It used to be that people would see a baby in such places and fawn over them but nowadays when they look into a baby stroller and get all googley-eyed and talk baby talk, more often than not there’s a beagle or poodle pup in the pram.

Dogs never get married, divorced, drafted, investigated by the IRS or given a ticket for chasing cars. Their relatives never drop by and then stay for a week. They’re never embarrassed by things their parents do because they don’t know who their parents are.

Unlike the millions of homeless people in America today dogs always can sleep with a roof over their heads, protected from the elements. And there’s always food to keep them well fed and healthy. And when they’re diagnosed with a deadly disease they aren’t kept alive by doctors and drugs to suffer a painful death but instead we “put them to sleep” to save them from all the pain that humans must endure.

If you still wonder who is presently top dog in this country I refer you to a popular television series called America’s Got Talent where talented singers, dancers, magicians, and other entertainers compete for a million bucks. And who, you may wonder, won the most recent contest?

A dog, of course.

Have a $2 bill laying around? It could be worth thousands

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If you have any old $2 bills laying around, they could be worth thousands.

Some newer bills, such as those printed in 2003, could have significant value.

According to Heritage Auctions, the largest auction house in the world that deals with currency, a $2 bill from 2003 with a very low serial number recently sold at auction for $2,400. Later, it resold for $4,000.

The auction site U.S. Currency Auctions estimates that uncirculated $2 bills from nearly every year up to 1917 are worth at least $1,000.

A $2 bill with a red seal can sell for $3 to $2,500. Those with brown or blue seals can sell for hundreds.

You can find a complete list of the values of collectible $2 bills at uscurrencyauctions.com .

KU News via Media1

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From the Office of Public Affairs | http://www.news.ku.edu

 

Headlines

 

 

KU announces new director of Monarch Watch

LAWRENCE — Monarch Watch, an international program at the University of Kansas dedicated to the conservation and study of monarch butterflies, has a new director. Kristen Baum, well known for her work on monarchs and pollinators, began this week as director of Monarch Watch and as a senior scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research and a professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology.

 

‘Infamous’ woman physician at center of criminalizing abortion profiled in new biography

LAWRENCE — The word “Restellism” used to be synonymous with abortion. The term was coined because of the notorious Madame Restell, a wealthy midwife who became a renowned and divisive figure in America during the 1800s. But who exactly was she? That is answered in a University of Kansas professor’s new book titled “The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America’s Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime.” This account also features unmistakable parallels to current political and social issues that still divide the nation.

 

Distinguished professor lecture to highlight pay, promotion and grants in academia

LAWRENCE — Donna Ginther will give her inaugural distinguished professor lecture next week at the University of Kansas. The Roy A. Roberts and Regents Distinguished Professor of Economics will present “Turning the Research Lens on Ourselves: What Do We Know About Pay, Promotion, and Grants in the Academy?” at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 8 in the Malott Room of the Kansas Union. Individuals can register to attend the lecture.

 

Music theorist shows how EDM broke pop music’s chorus

LAWRENCE – Your ears are not fooling you. Electronic dance music DJs-turned-producers have affected the very form of popular music in the past decade, essentially breaking the chorus in half, a University of Kansas music theory professor says. In “Formal Functions and Rotations in Top-40 EDM” in the latest edition of Intégral, the Journal of Applied Musical Thought, Brad Osborn shows how electronic dance music producers like Calvin Harris who have recently dominated the Billboard magazine pop charts have broken apart the old rock top-40 structure.

 

Full stories below.

 

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Contact: Kirsten Bosnak, KU Field Station, 785-864-6267, [email protected], @KUFieldStation

Kristen Baum will lead Monarch Watch

LAWRENCE — Monarch Watch, an international program at the University of Kansas dedicated to the conservation and study of monarch butterflies, has a new director. Kristen Baum, well known for her work on monarchs and pollinators, began this week as director of Monarch Watch and as a senior scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research and a professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology.

Baum comes to KU from the College of Arts and Sciences at Oklahoma State University, where she was a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and associate dean for research. The Monarch Watch directorship will be supported in part by the Chip and Toni Taylor Professorship in Support of Monarch Watch, established last year by founding director Orley “Chip” Taylor and his wife, Toni Taylor. Chip Taylor announced last year that he would be stepping away from day-to-day operations of the program to focus on completion of several projects.

Baum has worked with monarchs and pollinators in the Great Plains for more than 25 years. Her research also focuses on the effects of land use and management practices on monarchs, native bees and other pollinators. She has served on numerous state, regional and national working groups to support pollinator conservation efforts.

“I started a small monarch tagging project in 1992. This project grew and changed through the years from a focus on research and outreach to an international program dedicated to monarch science and conservation,” Chip Taylor said. “When close to retirement, I realized that the program was reaching at least 100,000 people a year and that it simply had to continue.

“I’m excited and pleased to see this program continue and to be able to turn the directorship over to Kristen Baum. Kristen is an outstanding scientist, a dynamic and experienced leader with a strong research program. She also has an outstanding record as an adviser to developing scientists.”

Baum said she was excited about the opportunity to join the Monarch Watch team.

“I’ve participated in several Monarch Watch programs over the years, including tagging monarchs as part of my research and creating a Monarch Waystation at my home,” she said. “Under Chip’s leadership, Monarch Watch has developed an international reach through research, education and on-the-ground conservation efforts that have benefited the monarch butterfly, as well as other pollinators and wildlife. I’m honored to have been selected to lead Monarch Watch and build on these efforts that have been decades in the making.”

The Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research, a KU research center, houses a variety of environmental research labs and remote sensing/GIS programs in Takeru Higuchi Hall and the West District greenhouse. It also is the administrative home for Monarch Watch. In addition, the research center manages the 3,200-acre KU Field Station, a site for study in the sciences, arts and humanities.

 

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The official university Twitter account has changed to @UnivOfKansas.

Refollow @KUNews for KU News Service stories, discoveries and experts.

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Contact: Jon Niccum, KU News Service, 785-864-7633, [email protected]

‘Infamous’ woman physician at center of criminalizing abortion profiled in new biography

LAWRENCE — The word “Restellism” used to be synonymous with abortion. The term was coined because of the notorious Madame Restell, a wealthy midwife who became a renowned and divisive figure in America during the 1800s.

“She was famous enough that anyone who saw that word in a newspaper knew Restellism was referring to her,” said Nick Syrett, a professor of women, gender & sexuality studies at the University of Kansas.

But who exactly was Madame Restell? That is answered in Syrett’s new book titled “The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America’s Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime.” This account also features unmistakable parallels to current political and social issues that still divide the nation. It’s published by The New Press.

Syrett first ran across her story while attending graduate school at the University of Michigan.

“She is basically a figure in everyone’s history of New York City or prostitution or contraception or abortion. She appears everywhere, but generally for only a page or two,” he said.

Madame Restell was the pseudonym of Ann Trow Summers Lohman, a British-born woman who immigrated to the U.S. in 1831. She ran what was called a “lying-in hospital,” which was a place where women “could stay during their pregnancies and be delivered of their babies.”

“This is in some ways a conventional biography. A story from birth to death with what happened in between,” Syrett said.

Yet Restell’s life was anything but conventional.

He said, “Most of the dialogue about her in the 19th century was critical. No one stood up for her. So what I tried to do is understand what motivated her. What was she trying to do? How did she serve people’s needs? And why did she call herself what she did?”

The era in which Restell practiced is notable for being when abortion went from a vaguely regulated misdemeanor to a full-blown felony. It follows the trajectory over that period (1820s to 1880s) in which the act is increasingly criminalized.

“There are numerous reasons for why this occurred,” said Syrett, who is also an associate dean at KU’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

He said that beginning in 1857, doctors in the American Medical Association lobbied state legislatures to criminalize abortion, in part so that they could eliminate the competition of lay practitioners who did not have medical degrees.

“It’s also due to concerns about single women getting pregnant and being able to disguise and/or terminate a pregnancy and not get in trouble for having sex outside of wedlock,” he said. “It’s nativist fears about the white middle-class birthrate going down while immigrant birthrates are going up. It’s fears of middle-class married women taking control of their own reproductive lives and trying to have smaller families. And then it’s also a fear that the most successful abortion providers were women, and women were expected — like Madame Restell — to be housewives and mothers.”

While Restell was indeed a wife and mother, she was also a wildly prosperous entrepreneur in a society not eager to tolerate women in that role.

“She was convicted a couple of times,” Syrett said. “And once when the conviction was overturned on legal technicalities, she paid to have the entire opinion from the New York Supreme Court printed in the newspaper to prove to readers, ‘I’m not making this up.’”

The professor pored through thousands of articles while researching this story, which took him to New York’s municipal and state archives, and to the American Antiquarian Society in Massachusetts.

“The New York part was fun for me because I lived there for about 10 years. In doing the research, I went and walked the map and landscape of everywhere that she lived and practiced,” he said.

Madame Restell’s life did not have a happy ending. She was arrested by postal inspector and moral reformer Anthony Comstock, whose “Comstock laws” were aimed at banning the distribution of anything deemed obscene by the government (laws which are currently used to prosecute those sending abortion drugs through the mail). In the morning hours before her trial was to start, Restell was found in a bathtub with her throat cut. It was ruled a suicide, but rumors of it being murder have persisted to this day.

“I don’t think she was killed,” Syrett said. “I’ve seen the coroner’s report and the death certificate. It’s also quite clear that based on the testimony of the servants who worked in her household, no one would have been able to get in at night because the doors were still locked. This all demonstrates she took her own life.”

Now in his seventh year at KU, Syrett has investigated subjects ranging from maturity and masculinity to fraternities and queer history. His books include “An Open Secret: The Family Story of Robert and John Gregg Allerton” (University of Chicago Press, 2021) and “American Child Bride: A History of Minors and Marriage in the United States” (University of North Carolina Press, 2018). He is also co-editor of the Journal of the History of Sexuality.

“Madame Restell is a fascinating figure in her own right,” Syrett said. “But I also realize lots of people in the U.S. don’t know that abortion was legal in colonial America through the early 19th century. If this book educates us more about how it came to be criminalized, that can help us understand the debates we’re having now.”

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Contact: Savannah Rattanavong, Office of the Provost, 785-864-6402, [email protected], @KUProvost

Distinguished professor lecture to highlight pay, promotion and grants in academia

LAWRENCE — Her work has been featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Economist, the New York Times and more. She’s testified before Congress and consulted on equity and diversity issues in science funding with organizations like the National Academies of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

And soon, Donna Ginther will present her inaugural distinguished professor lecture at the University of Kansas.

Ginther, the Roy A. Roberts and Regents Distinguished Professor of Economics, will present “Turning the Research Lens on Ourselves: What Do We Know About Pay, Promotion, and Grants in the Academy?” at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 8 in the Malott Room of the Kansas Union.

Individuals can register to attend the lecture.

Ginther’s research focus includes scientific labor markets, gender differences in employment outcomes, wage inequality and children’s educational attainments.

As the director of the Institute for Policy & Social Research since 2019, Ginther develops the institute’s multidisciplinary research program and manages the direction of the center. The institute is a faculty-driven research center supporting scientists who focus on policy-relevant issues and social problems.

In addition to her leadership work at the institute, Ginther is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an adviser to Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly’s Council on Tax Reform. During her service in the latter role, the council recommended the successful repeal of the state food sales tax.

Some of Ginther’s recent research covered the economic impact of COVID-19 and its effect on the Kansas economy. During the pandemic and through 2022, IPSR provided regular updates on economic conditions in the state, as well as county infection rates.

Ginther and her colleague Carlos Zambrana showed that Kansas counties that adopted mask mandates before vaccines became available experienced a 60% reduction in COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths. This work received national attention, and Ginther received the COVID-19 Pivot Award from the KU Office of Research and the Don Steeples Service to Kansas Award.

She has also won multiple teaching and research awards, including the Byron T. Shutz Award for Excellence in Teaching, the University Scholar Award and the American Society of Cell Biology Public Service Award.

Ginther has previously served as vice president and board member of the Southern Economic Association, member of the Nominations Committee and the Board of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, and member of the American Economic Association Committee on Equity, Diversity and Professional Conduct.

Before joining the KU faculty in 2002, Ginther worked as a research economist and associate policy adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and taught at Washington University and Southern Methodist University.

Ginther earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The first distinguished professorships were established at KU in 1958. A university distinguished professorship is awarded wholly based on merit, following exacting criteria. A complete list is available on the Distinguished Professor website.

 

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Don’t miss new episodes of “When Experts Attack!,”

a KU News Service podcast hosted by Kansas Public Radio.

 

https://kansaspublicradio.org/when-experts-attack

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Contact: Rick Hellman, KU News Service, 785-864-8852, [email protected], @RickHellman

Music theorist shows how EDM broke pop music’s chorus

LAWRENCE – Your ears are not fooling you. Electronic dance music DJs-turned-producers have affected the very form of popular music in the past decade, essentially breaking the chorus in half, a University of Kansas music theory professor says.

In “Formal Functions and Rotations in Top-40 EDM” in the latest edition of Intégral, the Journal of Applied Musical Thought, Brad Osborn shows how electronic dance music producers like Calvin Harris who have recently dominated the Billboard magazine pop charts have broken apart the old rock top-40 songs’ verse-chorus-bridge structure.

Instead, Osborn writes and shows in diagrams, these producers have substituted “a hybrid section” he calls the “riserchorus” and paired that with a beat-heavy “drop” section that provides the release of psychic tension that the old-fashioned chorus did.

Osborn writes that the riserchorus “blends the anticipatory sonic functions of a riser (including rising pitch with a rhythmic build) with the lyrical-melodic memorability of a chorus.”

In retrospect, Osborn said, he noticed this change in structure around 2014.

“All of a sudden, I heard music in which it was really unclear what the chorus was,” Osborn said. “Essentially, instead of one big section that we could all point to, you had two sections. In the first one, you had the memorable vocal hook that we all love in a chorus — the title of the song — but there’s no beat. And it’s quiet.

“I was like, ‘That’s not what a chorus is supposed to do.’ And then the next section would have the big, thumping beat, but no vocals. That’s the drop section.

“And so the question becomes, ‘Is there a chorus in this music anymore? Or have we split the idea of chorus into two separately functioning sections, such that one of them has the catchy hook, and the other has the beat, but never the two shall meet?’”

Osborn believes this stems from producers like Harris, David Guetta and Skrillex bringing their club-pleasing ways to their recorded collaborations with pop singers, then condensing that into a three-minute package.

“You’ve got these producers behind the boards now working in pop music, but where they all started were sweaty clubs in Detroit and Berlin. And that music was not about melody at all. That music was about beat. Building up textures slowly and then taking them away and then dropping the beat. So what we hear starting around 2014 is some of that being made more radio-friendly in these collaborations with vocalists. So now, all we’re really doing is putting a catchy melody on top of that stuff.”

That’s if you bother to build at all, Osborn said.

“A lot of times what you’ll hear now are songs starting right on their chorus, because we have such short attention spans. There’s no time for an intro, no time for a buildup, no time for verse. We start on the chorus. And we still get three choruses. But usually that comes at the expense of only one verse.”

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KU: Fossils tell tale of last primate to inhabit North America before humans

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From the Office of Public Affairs | http://www.news.ku.edu

Headlines

Fossils tell tale of last primate to inhabit North America before humans

LAWRENCE — The lone ranger primate Ekgmowechashala — the last to inhabit North America before Homo sapiens — is actually member of a species that evolved in Asia and migrated to North America during a surprisingly cool period, most likely via Beringia, according to new research led by KU paleontologists that rewrites his origin story. The new work was published today in the Journal of Human Evolution.

 

Kansas Public Radio launches KPR’s Community Spotlight

LAWRENCE — This fall, Kansas Public Radio is offering a new program to help spread the word about local community organizations. KPR’s Community Spotlight will give these organizations an opportunity to spread awareness using KPR’s airwaves each month. They will also have a small feature on-air, in KPR’s monthly e-newsletter and on the KPR website. Local organizations that serve the KPR listening area may apply through Nov. 30, and 12 organizations will be selected for 2024.

 

Full stories below.

 

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Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch

Fossils tell tale of last primate to inhabit North America before humans

LAWRENCE — The story of Ekgmowechashala, the final primate to inhabit North America before Homo sapiens or Clovis people, reads like a spaghetti western: A grizzled and mysterious loner, against the odds, ekes out an existence on the American Plains.

Except this tale unfolded about 30 million years ago, just after the Eocene-Oligocene transition during which North America saw great cooling and drying, making the continent less hospitable to warmth-loving primates.

Today, paleontologists from the University of Kansas and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing have published evidence in the Journal of Human Evolution shedding light on the long-standing saga of Ekgmowechashala, based on fossil teeth and jaws found in both Nebraska and China.

To do so, the researchers first had to reconstruct its family tree, a job helped by the discovery of an even more ancient Chinese “sister taxon” of Ekgmowechashala the team has named Palaeohodites (or “ancient wanderer”). The Chinese fossil discovery resolves the mystery of Ekgmowechashala’s presence in North America, showing it was an immigrant rather than the product of local evolution.

“This project focuses on a very distinctive fossil primate known to paleontologists since the 1960s,” said lead author Kathleen Rust, a doctoral candidate in paleontology at KU’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum. “Due to its unique morphology and its representation only by dental remains, its place on the mammalian evolutionary tree has been a subject of contention and debate. There’s been a prevailing consensus leaning towards its classification as a primate. But the timing and appearance of this primate in the North American fossil record are quite unusual. It appears suddenly in the fossil record of the Great Plains more than 4 million years after the extinction of all other North American primates, which occurred around 34 million years ago.”

In the 1990s, Rust’s doctoral adviser and co-author Chris Beard, KU Foundation Distinguished Professor and senior curator of vertebrate paleontology, collected fossils from the Nadu Formation in the Baise Basin in Guangxi, China, that closely resembled the Ekgmowechashala material known from North America. By that time, Ekgmowechashala was notoriously enigmatic among North American paleontologists.

“When we were working there, we had absolutely no idea that we would find an animal that was closely related to this bizarre primate from North America, but literally as soon as I picked up the jaw and saw it, I thought, ‘Wow, this is it,’” Beard said. “It’s not like it took a long time, and we had to undertake all kinds of detailed analysis — we knew what it was. Here in KU’s collection, we have some critical fossils, including what is still by far the best upper molar of Ekgmowechashala known from North America. That upper molar is so distinctive and looks quite similar to the one from China that we found that it kind of seals the deal.”

Beard left it to Rust to conduct the morphological analysis that tied Ekgmowechashala and its cousin Palaeohodites from China in a phylogenetic tree to establish their evolutionary relationships.

In the course of the work, Rust was able to draw conclusions about how Ekgmowechashala came to be discovered in Nebraska, millions of years after its fellow primates died out in the continent’s fossil record.

“We collected a substantial amount of morphological data to create an evolutionary tree using a phylogenetic reconstruction software and algorithm,” Rust said. “This evolutionary tree suggests a close evolutionary relationship between North American Ekgmowechashala and Palaeohodites from China, which Chris and his colleagues discovered in the 1990s. The results from our analysis unequivocally supports this hypothesis.”

The KU researchers said their discovery is not only exciting in terms of discovering a new primate species from late Eocene China — but also in settling the origin story of Ekgmowechashala. Based on their investigation, Ekgmowechashala did not descend from an older North American primate that somehow survived the cooler and drier conditions that caused other North American primates to go extinct. Rather, its ancestors crossed over the Beringian region millions of years later, anticipating the route followed by the first Native Americans much later in time.

“Our analysis dispels the idea that Ekgmowechashala is a relic or survivor of earlier primates in North America,” Rust said. “Instead, it was an immigrant species that evolved in Asia and migrated to North America during a surprisingly cool period, most likely via Beringia.”

Species like Ekgmowechashala that show up suddenly in the fossil record long after their relatives have died off are referred to as “Lazarus taxa” after the biblical figure who was raised from the dead.

“The ‘Lazarus effect’ in paleontology is when we find evidence in the fossil record of animals apparently going extinct — only to reappear after a long hiatus, seemingly out of nowhere,” Beard said. “This is the grand pattern of evolution that we see in the fossil record of North American primates. The first primates came to North America about 56 million years ago at the beginning of the Eocene, and they flourished on this continent for more than 20 million years. But they went extinct when climate became cooler and drier near the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, about 34 million years ago. Several million years later Ekgmowechashala shows up like a drifting gunslinger in a Western movie, only to be a flash in the pan as far as the long trajectory of evolution is concerned. After Ekgmowechashala is gone for more than 25 million years, Clovis people come to North America, marking the third chapter of primates on this continent. Like Ekgmowechashala, humans in North America are a prime example of the Lazarus effect.”

Rust and Beard were joined in the work by co-authors Xijun Ni of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, and Kristen Tietjen, scientific illustrator with the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.

According to Rust, the tale of Ekgmowechashala is worth people’s attention because it happened in an era of profound environmental and climatic changes, much like our own that’s driven by human activity.

“It’s crucial to comprehend how past biota reacted to such shifts,” she said. “In such situations, organisms typically either adapt by retreating to more hospitable regions with available resources or face extinction. Around 34 million years ago, all of the primates in North America couldn’t adapt and survive. North America lacked the necessary conditions for survival. This underscores the significance of accessible resources for our non-human primate relatives during times of drastic climatic change.”

The study is also a part of a larger story that represents the earliest chapters of our own evolutionary journey that ultimately led to our own species, Rust said.

“Understanding this narrative is not only humbling, but also helps us appreciate the depth and complexity of the dynamic planet we inhabit,” she said. “It allows us to grasp the intricate workings of nature, the power of evolution in giving rise to life and the influence of environmental factors.”

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The official university Twitter account has changed to @UnivOfKansas.

Refollow @KUNews for KU News Service stories, discoveries and experts.

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Contact: Joanna Fewins, Kansas Public Radio, 785-864-2468, [email protected]

Kansas Public Radio launches KPR’s Community Spotlight

 

LAWRENCE — This fall, Kansas Public Radio is offering a new program to help spread the word about local community organizations. KPR’s Community Spotlight gives these organizations an opportunity to spread awareness using KPR’s airwaves each month. They will also have a small feature on-air, in KPR’s monthly e-newsletter and on the KPR website.

KPR’s Community Spotlight program values nonprofits that share a commitment to the arts, education, health, well-being, sustainability and diversity of the areas KPR serves. By focusing on institutions that benefit local communities, KPR hopes to grow awareness of valuable services and programs in northeast, east-central and southeast Kansas.

Once per year – in 2023, the applications will be open Nov. 1-30 – local organizations that serve the KPR listening area may apply to participate. Twelve organizations will be selected for 2024.

One nonprofit organization per month will be chosen to receive 100 free announcements in KPR’s “Run of Schedule” programming, or the equivalent of $2,000 of free advertising on Kansas Public Radio. These messages may be used as a general awareness campaign to get the word out about services provided to local communities.

More information about how to apply, who is eligible and for a link to the application form may be found on the KPR website.

 

KPR, a 22-time Kansas Association of Broadcasters Station of the Year, licensed to the University of Kansas, broadcasts on 91.5 FM and 96.1 FM in Lawrence, 89.7 FM in Emporia, 91.3 FM in Olsburg-Junction City, 89.9 FM in Atchison, 90.3 FM in Chanute, and 99.5 FM and 97.9 FM in Manhattan. KPR can be heard online at kansaspublicradio.org. KPR also operates KPR2, a news-talk programming stream, which can be heard on an HD receiver or on KPR’s website, and on 96.1 in Lawrence and 97.9 in Manhattan.

 

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KU News Service

1450 Jayhawk Blvd.

Lawrence KS 66045

Phone: 785-864-3256

Fax: 785-864-3339

[email protected]

http://www.news.ku.edu

 

Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, director of news and media relations, [email protected]

 

Today’s News is a free service from the Office of Public Affairs