Dr Alice Clement

EXTINCT! The perfect name for a podcast about dead things…. I was interviewed by the creator of Extinct, Alice Leggett, a journalist, podcaster, and wildlife enthusiast recently to talk about the BEST FISH of all time (lungfish, obviously).

We chat about what sparked my own interest in lungfish, lungfish fossils, air-breathing, anatomy, brains, extinction risk, VAMP, and much more.

My episode goes live today, listen wherever you get your podcasts, or via the following link: https://linktr.ee/extinctpodcast

I’ve been attending ICCB, the 10th (X) International Conference on Computational Bioengineering in Vienna, Austria, this last week.

Among all the talks about blood, cells, and organs, there were plenty of sessions in honour of the great mineralized tissue of vertebrates, bone. In fact I was here specially to attend a session with the title: Multiscale assessment of bone remodeling and adaptation using novel experimental and computational methods.

This mini-symposium was dedicated to my late father, Prof John Clement (former Chair in Forensic Odontology, University of Melbourne, Australia). Dad was a scientist who worked across many disciplines, one of which was tissue science with a focus understanding bone tissue at different scales.

Read more: “Scientist and doyen of forensic dentistry driven by a sense of fairness and a desire to help others”

I was honoured to have been considered and accepted to speak in this session, and gave a talk highlighting how myself and colleagues are using novel imaging methods, like CT scanning, to image palaeontological bones over the fish-tetrapod transition. It was an incredibly difficult presentation to give but I hope Dad would have been proud.

The best thing about it all was to see so many of Dad’s old colleagues, students and friends, and hear from several others who had collaborated with him. His scientific legacy lives on with much research still being done in particular on the Melbourne Femur Collection, which he initiated.

Many people reminisced with fond or funny memories about him, and several people noted how good he was at bringing people together.  And even five years since he died, he was still bringing scientists from all over the word to Vienna to talk all about bone. I’m sure he would have enjoyed the sessions immensely if he could have been here. Huge thanks to the symposium organisers, Peter Pivonka, Rita Hardiman, David Cooper & David Thomas, for making it happen.

Do you know who proposed the idea of evolution through natural selection in 1858? You could be forgiven for answering this question with “Why, Charles Darwin, of course!” But did you know that Darwin wasn’t alone in conceiving and communicating his theory of evolution some 165 years ago?

Alfred Russel Wallace was an English naturalist, explorer and geographer who independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection at the same time as Charles Darwin. Although, Alfred Russel Wallace and his contributions have always remained less celebrated than those of Darwin.

Wallace published “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type“, notes from which, Wallace had sent to Darwin as he was finishing his own contribution to the topic, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” (catchy titles in those days!)

Aside from the theory of evolution, Wallace was an avid explorer fascinated by geography and biology. The combination of these fields is known as biogeography, and describes the distribution of species in both space and time. Wallace conducted extensive fieldwork throughout the Amazon River basin and the Malay Archipelago (the Indo-Australian Archipelago).

It was in this region where Wallace identified an apparent divide between the fauna in the western portion (where the animals are largely of Asian origin), and an eastern portion (where the animals had a more Australasian flavour). This was termed the Wallace Line. For this, and other work of his, Wallace is sometimes described as the father of biogeography.

This years marks 200 years since the birth of Alfred Russel Wallace, and so the Royal Society of South Australia (of which I am Vice President), and the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia have joined forces to celebrate the life and legacy of this incredible scientist. With support from Inspiring Australia and as part of National Science Week we will hold a special event this Thursday 31st August in Adelaide, Australia, “Lines in the Sand: 200 Years of Alfred Russel Wallace”.

We’ve got four incredible scientists coming to speak to us about fauna across the Wallace Line today, covering everything from butterflies to sea snakes to small mammals. Including:

• Dr Kevin Rowe (Museum Victoria) Crossing lines and diversifying opportunities: Repeated radiations of small mammals through Wallacea
• Dr Yi-Kai Tea (University of Sydney/Australia Museum) Chasing butterflies. A celebration of biodiversity across Wallacea
• A/Prof Kate Sanders & Dr James Nankivell (Uni Adelaide) Here and back again, a snake’s tale

It is shaping up to be an incredible night, with tasty Indonesian food and local South Australian wine provided. We’ve got limited in-person seats, so book your ticket NOW! However, if you can’t join us in person on the night, then we do offer an online version as well. I hope to see you there.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/lines-in-the-sand-200-years-of-alfred-russel-wallace-om-frs-tickets-693784406837

This week I was lucky enough to attend the International Congress of Vertebrate Morphology in Carins, northern Queensland, Australia. What exactly does that mean, you might ask? This is a meeting held every three years for researchers who love to study the size, shape, and form (morphology) of vertebrates, that is, animals with a backbone.

I was honoured to be invited to speak within a special symposium looking at New Approaches to Vertebrate Brain Evolution. I spoke about how I’m trying to understand how the brain changed in animals as they evolved over the water-land transition hundreds of millions of years ago.

There were hundreds of amazing talks from fascinating presenters on everything from brains, bones, biomechanics and breathing (and much, much more). I was especially pleased to see two of the students from our lab attend the conference and show their work during the poster sessions.

Corinne Mensforth presented Insights into the brain-braincase relationship across the Sarcopterygii, Lissamphibia and Lepidosauria, while Josh Bland had a poster all about Using Finite Element Analysis to Interpret the Feeding Biomechanics of Devonian Lungfish Jaws. I’m very proud of the both of them.

Cairns in tropical QLD was a stunning setting for this meeting, with many attendees beside themselves with excitement seeing our amazing and unique Australian fauna. I was very glad to escape the cold winter of southern Australia for a week of warmth and amazing science, and catching up with colleagues from all over the world. I very much look forward to the next ICVM, due to be held in Canada in three years’ time.

Speaking of digital palaeontology… Welcome to VAMP, the Virtual Australian Museum of Palaeontology! Together with some colleagues from the Flinders University Palaeontology lab, we have created an online museum that you can access from any computer or smart phone. Via our online museum, we are scanning, sharing and celebrating 600 million years of spectacular digital Australian fossils in 3D.

VAMP has more than 500 scans of Australian fossils, ranging from the earliest enigmatic early cellular life of the Ediacaran Period, to recently extinct megafaunal giants (and much more in between!) We have more than 30 scans of trace fossils, such as animal footprints, more than 30 genera of Australian vertebrates, and bespoke teaching sets available for educators.

Best of all, the website is completely free for you to explore and interact directly with 3D models of rare Australian fossils.

VAMP launched officially last night at an event held at Flinders University at Victoria Square, Adelaide, Australia. It has been fabulous to work with Jacob van Zoelen and Aaron Camens in the leadership team to bring VAMP to life.

But we couldn’t have done it without lots of help! VAMP is a Flinders University-led initiative, with support from Flinders Microscopy & Microanalysis, the South Australian Museum, the Western Australian Museum, and the Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, and MorphoSource. We also had many staff, mentors and volunteers giving generous support and guidance who have been invaluable.

Please read more about VAMP in our article published yesterday in The Conversation “A new virtual museum reveals 600 million years of Australian fossils in unprecedented 3D detail”, or listen to the Pals in Palaeo episode about VAMP here.

We are always on the lookout for new partners and more scans, so if you’d like to be involved then please get in touch.

** EXPLORE THE VAMP WEBSITE HERE **

I seem to have digital palaeontology on the mind lately…. I’m not talking about digits (fingers and toes), although sometimes that is exactly what I mean. I’m talking about the digitalisation of fossils into virtual computer models.

Modern scanning methods are revolutionising the way we do palaeontology these days, with increasing access to various methods such as diceCT, synchrotron, neutron or surface scanning. This enables the analyses we do and the questions we can ask are expanding beyond anything that has been possible before.

Thanks to the type of research that I do, I was lucky enough to be invited to present at a “Digital Palaeobiology” symposium held at the Department of Paleontology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, last week.

My talk, Once we were fish: uncovering our distant piscine origins, explored the anatomical journey from placoderms to tetrapods as elucidated from modern scanning methods.

Other speakers discussed amazing methods used on digital palaeontological specimens including 3D geometric morphometrics, the use of AI in analysis, Computational Fluid Dynamics and Finite Element biomechanical analysis. It’s amazing what can be done with our virtual computer models!

I’m very grateful to the organisers, and had a fabulous time meeting the UZH students, staff, and my other “digital palaeo” colleagues. I loved visiting the beautiful city of Zurich and hope to get back there one day.

If I ask you to picture a parrot, what image do you conjure up? Likely it would be some version of colourful, noisy birds feeding in a tree or soaring through the sunshine. But did you know that Australia has an elusive night parrot? Not only is this creature nocturnal (active at night), but it prefers to hop around on the ground more than hanging about in trees.

The Night Parrot (scientific name Pezoporus occidentalis), is so rare that it was thought to have gone extinct for almost 100 years with no confirmed sightings between 1912 and 1979. It wasn’t until 2013 that photographs and videos of live birds were captured! The Night Parrot is still incredibly elusive, but we seem to have been given a second chance to conserve this mysterious species and conservation efforts are continuing.

However, as palaeontologists we require skeletons of “extant” (alive today) species to compare to the fossil bones we find to aid our identification and interpretations. But if a bird is as rare as the Night Parrot, how on earth would you find a skeleton to look at?

Thankfully, museums are a repository of biological specimens that can be used by scientists in instances like this. As stated in a recent paper published in the leading journal Science, “The world’s natural history collections provide a window into the planet’s past and present, and they are increasingly being used to make actionable predictions relative to climate change, biodiversity loss, and infectious disease.”

Working with fossil bird expert, Dr Elen Shute, and Professor of palaeontology at Flinders University, Prof. Gavin Prideaux, we have described the skull anatomy of this elusive bird for the first time thanks to being able to access the holotype specimen from the Natural History Museum of London collection. We used microCT scanning to non-destructively examine the “skin” of a specimen (originally shot and collected in 1861!), and digitally segment out the bones from within.

It’s not a fish, but a very special bird to work on indeed and I’m thankful for the invitation from my coauthors to contribute to this research. Digital models of all the bones are available via the online repository MorphoSource for research, education or just simple curiosity.

READ MORE: Our paper “Cranial adaptations of the Night Parrot (Psittaculidae: Pezoporus occidentalis), a cryptic nocturnal bird“ was published in the journal Emu – Austral Ornithology, earlier this month. Additionally, we wrote an accompanying piece for The Conversation : “Our mysterious night parrot has terrible vision – but we discovered it might be able to hear like an owl”.

GO WEST, in the open air, where the skies are blue, this is what we’re gonna do…. (who doesn’t love the Village People/Pet Shop Boys tune?) “Go west” is exactly what me and my Honours student, Josh, did earlier this month. Now that border restrictions have eased and travel is possible again we flew over to Perth in Western Australia for a few days. The purpose of our trip was to visit the Western Australian Museum collections to pore over the beautiful fish fossils from the Gogo Formation.

We selected a few of these beauties to take for scanning at the CMCA imaging facility within the University of Western Australia. Some of these included 3D preserved skulls for my own research into fish brain evolution, and some contained jaws for Josh’s honours project investigating the biomechanics of fossil lungfish feeding.

While we were there we caught up with our colleague and mentor, Prof. Kate Trinajstic (pictured below) at Curtin University to discuss various ongoing “fishy” projects, and even managed a flying visit to the incredible new Western Australian Museum, Boola Bardip.

The new museum is literally jaw-droppingly good, and has an amazing selection of real specimens on display, with everything from stromatolites, meteorites, life-size dinosaur models, thylacine skins, stunning dioramas and visualisations, and most exciting of all a beautiful exhibit all about the fossils of the ancient Gogo reef! It is a real feast for the senses and very nicely done. I highly recommend a visit.