“IT IS POSSIBLE, PERHAPS COMMON, IN THE UNITED STATES TO BECOME A SCIENCE TEACHER WITHOUT EVER HAVING PARTICIPATED IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH OR PRACTICED SCIENCE BEYOND THE CLASSROOM. THROUGH THIS EXPERIENCE, THE PRACTICE OF SCIENCE CAME ALIVE. WE WERE THRUST INTO THE DYNAMIC AND EXCITING WORLD OF ‘DOING’ SCIENCE.
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Rob Hoffman
— JASON TOVANI
Santa Cruz, California teachers Jason Tovani and Jill Madden at the Gatun fossil site near the Atlantic terminus of the Panama Canal in July 2013. throughout North America, but prior to this discovery, they were unknown south of Mexico,” he says. The middle formation — the Culabra — dates back to when oceans covered the area about 20 million years ago. Here there are fossils of marine mammals, sea urchins and sharks like the 60-foot-long Megalodon. “Megalodon has been a large part of the project in terms of our understanding of marine life,” MacFadden says. “Megalodon is the subject of Catalina Pimiento’s doctoral dissertation in UF’s biology department and she has become the world expert on this shark.” Modern sharks are known to have shallow-water nursery areas where the moms protect their babies, but based on her discoveries in Panama, Pimiento has shown for the first time in any fossil record the presence of Megalodon nurseries. “The study provides evidence of Megalodon behavior in the fossil record,” says Pimiento. “Behavior doesn’t fossilize, but we were able to interpret ancient protection strategies
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used by extinct sharks based on the fossil record.” The youngest formation is called the Cucaracha Formation and dates to about 19 million years ago. It was here in March 2012 that intern Stephanie Lukowski discovered the jaw of a beardog just a few dozen meters north of the Centenario Bridge. “At this quarry, the teeth and bone are usually either fragmentary or look like they’ve been ground down from being dragged along a river bottom by the current. This makes sense because these rocks were deposited by an ancient stream,” says post-doctoral researcher Aaron Wood. “What makes this discovery somewhat unique is how well preserved the jaw is. The jaw, rhino shoulder blade, and other specimens found close by — including a rodent jaw, two types of turtles and a horse tooth — are almost pristine. We hit the jackpot with this discovery in terms of information density.” Mindful of the E for Education in PIRE, MacFadden and his colleagues built many education and outreach
The PCP PIRE teachers, including Laura Beach (third from right), developed a lesson plan for a group of Panamanian fifth graders. components into their original proposal, and they have since expanded them even more. “Education outreach is a really important component of this project. It’s what NSF calls Broader Impacts,” MacFadden says. “Why should society care or benefit from the science that we’re doing? So we have many different components of our project that relate to Broader Impacts.”