mounted several significant exhibitions, including the extraor- 

 dinarily popular Landscape Kimonos by Itchiku Kubota; Eyes on 

 Science: Illustrating Natural History, an exploration of the aes- 

 thetic and scholarly importance of scientific illustration; 

 Science at Sea, honoring the anniversaries of the National 

 Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (25th), the Nation- 

 al Marine Fisheries Service (125th), and the Smithsonian 

 (150th); and Feather Focus, a look at how NMNH scientist 

 Roxie Laybourne's work studying feathers enables others to 

 solve crimes, avoid aircraft accidents, and identify esoteric 

 fossils. 



Research projects undertaken by Museum scientists in 1996 

 are too numerous to credit inclusively. Many can be inferred 

 from the list of staff publications toward the back of the An- 

 nals. The few projects mentioned here — and those outlined in 

 the Chronology that precedes this section — give readers a 

 glimpse of NMNH's scientific activities in 1996. 



Anthropology 



Dr. Rick Potts, director of the Human Origins Program, and 

 Dr. Nancy Sikes, Smithson Light Isotope Lab, collected 

 samples of buried soils and soil carbonates in Olduvai Gorge, 

 Tanzania, and Olorgesailie, Kenya. Through stable isotope 

 analysis of the samples, they plan to reconstruct vegetation 

 strucrure and climate in those regions as early as 1.75 million 

 years ago. 



The American Historical Association named Rivers of 

 Change: Essays on Early Agriculture m Eastern North America, by 

 Dr. Bruce D. Smith, director of the Archaeobiology Program, 

 the year's outstanding book of history before A.D. 1000. Also 

 in 1996, Phylissa Eisentraut, a doctoral candidate at UCLA 

 working with Smith, used scanning electron microscopy to 

 identify domesticated quinoa recovered from 5,000-year- 

 old strata near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru, the earliest 

 documentation of this important South American grain 

 crop. 



Dr. JoAllyn Archambault, director of the American Indian 

 Program, is studying native plant dyes used in South Dakota 

 quillwork. Her research — funded primarily by nonprofit or- 

 ganizations, including the American Indian Service, Inc., of 

 Sioux Falls — will be published in a book for Indian 

 quillworkers. 



Carolyn Rose, Greta Hansen, and Natalie Firnhaber, 

 Anthropology, organized and conducted collections conserva- 

 tion programs for Native Alaskan and Javanese museum 

 professionals in Anchorage and Semarang, Java. 



tions for the management of an introduced species oiCaulerpa 

 now spreading uncontrolled throughout Spain and other 

 countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. 



Dr. Jane Villa-Lobos co-authored Centres of Plant Diversity: 

 A G uide and Strategy for Their Conservation, Volume $ (The 

 Americas), the culmination often years' research on priority 

 sites for botanical conservation in Latin America. 



Alice Tangenni, staff illustrator, traveled to Hawaii to il- 

 lustrate living plants at the Lyon Arboretum in Oahu. Her 

 drawings of plants in the order Zingiberales, which includes 

 ginger, will appear in a ma|or botanical work in progress by 

 departmental colleague Dr. John Kress. 



Entomology 



Funded by the Smithson society, the Diptera office in- 

 itiated a pilot project to assist Costa Rica in efforts to 

 achieve the sustainable use and conservation of the 

 country's wild biodiversity. The project will identify and 

 inventory certain flies from Costa Rica in the Smithsonian 

 collections, with images of typical specimens. Ultimately, 

 databases and images will be made widely available on CD- 

 ROM and via the Internet. 



Dr. Dan Polhemus and Hawaiian scientists identified 

 several previously unknown species of insects endemic to the 

 mountaintops of Hawaii. 



Dr. Donald Davis took part in field studies in Costa Rica to 

 determine the diversity of leaf-mining moths within neotropi- 

 cal forests. His research suggests that perhaps 99 percent of 

 the moths may be new to science. 



Dr. Paul Spangler described three new genera and four new 

 species of rare, blind beetles adapted to life underground in 

 fresh-water aquifers and springs. 



Invertebrate Zoology 



The International Society of Reef Studies presented Dr. Ian 

 Macinryre with the Darwin Medal for lifetime achievement in 

 reef research. 



Mark Grygier, a research associate in Dr. Stephen Cairns's 

 laboratory, took part in a survey of parasites of the starfish 

 Asterias amurensis. research that may yield biological control 

 agents for the starfish, potentially catastrophic pests intro- 

 duced into Tasmania. 



Through the Museum's Senate of Scientists, Dr David Paw- 

 son, NMNH's Associate Director fot Science, presented lec- 

 tures at universities and research institutions on life in the 

 deep sea and how little we know about it. 



Botany 



Dr. Mark Littler and Dr. Diane Littler and Dr. Barrett Brooks 

 observed the first known example of a tunicate that kills reef- 

 building corals by smothering. Working with postdoctoral fel- 

 low Dr. Esperanca Gacia at the Smithsonian Marine Station at 

 Link Port in Ft. Pierce, Florida, the Littlers also conducted re- 

 search into the green algae Caulerpa, Their work has lmplica- 



Mineral Sciences 



Dr. Glenn MacPherson published data that may provide a 

 fine-scale chronometer for events in the very early solar sys- 

 tem. His work suggests that 2 to 5 million years passed be- 

 tween the formation of the first dust particles and the 

 accretion ol the planets — significantly longer than 

 astronomers previously thought. 



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