True Evolution of a Discovery & The Rise of Antagonism: True Evolution of a Discovery & the Rise of Antago...

True Evolution of a Discovery & The Rise of Antagonism: True Evolution of a Discovery & the Rise of Antago...:   True Evolution of a Discovery & the Rise of Antagonism Blue Beach Fossil Museum, Nova Scotia  Canada   Written by: Christ...

True Evolution of a Discovery & the Rise of Antagonism - Blue Beach Fossil Museum, Nova Scotia Canada

 

True Evolution of a Discovery & the Rise of Antagonism

Blue Beach Fossil Museum, Nova Scotia Canada

 

Written by: Christpher F. Mansky

The views and opinions expressed herein are strictly those of the author, and not necessarily those of others.

 

Black Forest Point, Blue Beach Nova Scotia

Significant research is still being done at the Blue Beach Fossil Museum in Kings County, Nova Scotia, and this research still mainly depends on unpaid, un-reimbursed, on-site efforts by a husband and wife team. The following discussion examines the project at Blue Beach, and compares this with another similar discovery in New Mexico during the 1980’s. The purpose of this examination is to show the similarity of the discoveries, and the different ways in which they have been greeted, and to point out how the Nova Scotia finds have not received their full measure of respect.

Blue Beach, Nova Scotia, Canada is a fossil locality that has long been known to scientists for its remarkable footprints (Logan, 1841), and is historically significant as “the birthplace of vertebrate paleontology in Canada” (Lambe, 1905). In more recent times the locality gained additional importance because the first finds of the bones of the animals that produced the tracks were coming to light (Carroll et al, 1972), causing several experts to continue working the site in the succeeding years (Anderson, LOS; Anderson et al, In Press), but visits to the site were few and short-lived, and the results appeared disappointing. This eventually caused those workers to report the site as unpromising - unlikely to reveal anything but a few tantalizing glimpses of a particularly important paleontological mystery – the invasion of land by the first vertebrates. Known as Romer’s Gap, there is a 20+ million-year missing fossil record that Blue Beach happens to sit right in the middle of, and if only those fossils could be found in abundance and good preservation we would have here a globally-significant occurrence – perhaps the paleontological find of the decade.

 

Blue Beach, Track Meet 2012

This was essentially what we understood 19 years ago when the beginnings of our research vision began to take form. We believed a longer and more-comprehensive search would prove there was a huge amount of data waiting to be found. Based on the kinds of fossils that were turning up in our growing collections, a few of us local enthusiasts believed Blue Beach contained a previously-hidden richness beyond everyone’s understanding. The search for the rest of the Blue Beach story has been a huge success, with a numbing series of discoveries since 1995. These discoveries have received full validation in the scientific community since as early as 2003, with significant media coverage all the while. Our research vision has proven not only correct in it’s original assumptions, but has exceeded all expectations in terms of: 1) how many species of tetrapods and fishes we would find bone evidence of?; 2) how complete and/or well-preserved could some of the skeletal evidence be?; 3) how abundant, how many layers, and how many kinds of tracks would we find in this classic geological section?; and 4) how much, if any, good evidence could be found to paint a fuller picture of the unknown, softer-bodied invertebrate faunas that can only be conjectured to have existed alongside these tetrapod ecosystems? In addition to several early reports and articles in natural history magazines, over 60 newspaper articles have been written to describe these discoveries and our new museum proposal. Furthermore, an array of web- and media-based posts have appeared online for over a decade as we are taking whatever means we can to get the word out on the importance of these finds. In terms of our research, the important preliminary findings, along with an up-to-date review of the Blue Beach paleontology, have now been published (Mansky and Lucas, 2013); first announced at an international congress of paleontologists in Albuquerque, New Mexico in May, 2013.
 

Mansky and Lucas 2013
 

Whenever big discoveries are made, particularly geographically-fixed treasure-like discoveries such as fossil sites, archaeological sites, etc – the discoveries have to undergo an evolution of sorts. First comes that moment of discovery, when those who have just uncovered the thing comprehend its significance. This is phase one of the evolution, or the recognition stage. If the fossil discovery is rich enough, and impressive enough, it needs to be communicated to the greater world. The evolution of public awareness of the discovery then needs to ascend through the following steps. Phase two is the legitimization stage, where the discoverers seek validation from recognized experts, announce their finds through the public media, and gather supporters. Phase three is the politicization stage, which occurs when the importance of the discovery and the discovery site itself attracts the attention of politicians, who then move in to help with the further study, preservation, and protection of the project. Lastly, phase four, or the enculturation stage, usually follows quickly on the heels of the politicization stage, and includes aspects like visitor information centers, museums, gift shops, roadside stands, postcards, t-shirts, bumper stickers, and the like. This last stage marks the full integration of the geosite into everyday lives, as cultural entities, and there are numerous examples where geosites have become such entities (e.g., Burgess Shale, Drumheller, Joggins, Petrified National Forest).

 

Tetrapod femur found at Blue Beach, Nova Scotia

The Blue Beach fossil discoveries have provided a unique new window into ancient terrestrial and nearshore environments, a window into the middle of Romer’s Gap; fully qualifying it as an important lagerstätte of earliest Carboniferous age (~350 m.y.). The word lagerstätte comes from the German term meaning ‘place of deposit’, and in geology has come to mean “motherlode”. This escalation of discovery at Blue Beach reveals the site contains an enormous potential for renewed study, and these research gains can meaningfully contribute to longstanding questions in many areas – not solely the Holy Grail of topics: the vertebrate-conquest of land by the first terrestrial groups of tetrapods…

 

TW:eed Project

 

Without question, the magnitude of discovery at Blue Beach ranks it as one of those finds of the decade, and our evolution of discovery has been underway for almost twenty years. At this point everyone except that ‘instrumental political body’ understands this natural resource needs a new museum, and official support (both moral and financial), and needs to move through phase three and four with no further hurdles.

Blue Beach is a textbook example of what kind of academic hurdles are encountered whenever private citizens, or ‘amateurs’, are the driving force behind the big discovery – as opposed to when those with formal training, and who are deemed to be ‘the experts’ on a subject, are the ones’ discovering it. There are many precedents where this can be demonstrated to have occurred in the past, but one in particular stands out like a particularly-strong dèja vu. In 1987, a fossil enthusiast by the name of Jerry MacDonald discovers a world-class trackway occurrence in the Robledo Mountains of New Mexico: a find that was immediately recognized and hailed by experts at federal institutions outside of New Mexico, but marginalized and doubted by the scientific community inside the state itself. Mr. MacDonald has succeeded in promoting his finds to the world, and the United States government recognized their importance by an Act of Congress, transforming the Robledo tracksites into the Paleozoic Trackways Monument. Jerry’s story is the subject of his 1994 book “Earth’s First Steps” (Johnson Printing; Boulder, Colorado), in which he reflects on his discoveries, on the reactions to his claims, and on the resulting conflict between his camp and that of the local scientific clique.

 

Earth's First Steps - Jerry MacDonald

 

At the time when Jerry MacDonald made his first discoveries in the Robledos he was involved in obtaining his Master’s Degree in Sociology, and was torn between devoting time to sociology, or to his excavation in the Robledos. Upon hearing of Jerry’s decision to return to his work in New Mexico, at least for the time being, his advisor at the university gave him the following piece of advice, “Look for valuable sociological information everywhere. In everything. City reactions, community responses, museum involvement. How they work together, how they don’t”.

Using this opportunity to view the evolution of his discovery from a sociologist’s point of view, Jerry was able to document a fascinating example of how the conflicts arise, and what motivations are at play that causes the non-supporters to take on the roles they take. One is always reminded that these same discoveries, if made by the experts instead of by private individuals, would receive immediate acclaim. Throughout the process, between 1987 and 1990, Jerry would comment wryly that “what seemed so horrible to me as a palaeontologist would be fascinating if I was a sociologist – something that gave him great comfort during the struggle.

Nicholas Hotton III was an early supporter of the Robledos discoveries who worked at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and he often heard Jerry lament about the trouble he was having with the New Mexico scientists in validating his claims that the site was of great importance, and what they were saying about him and his work. Hotton tells him this kind of thing happens all the time, and in fact it sometimes got worse. He said “What was said about [you] would have been said about anybody who had done what you had done.”

The parallels between the case study of the Robledos and the new Blue Beach discoveries are remarkable in their many similarities. In both cases the respective areas had previously undergone studies by professionals, and none of those studies had recognized the fossil treasures therein for what they were. The existence of a Blue Beach ‘motherlode’ was never seriously believed – and its eventual discovery as such came from an amateur and happened in an area that professionals had studied well.

 

Motivation for the suggestions we are ‘mavericks’, or that the Blue Beach discoveries are of only ‘minor’ importance, are not based on scientific reasoning. We hesitate to say “sour grapes”, but the fossil richness of Blue Beach was not known to any of these scientists – many of whom had already expressed scepticism of the site’s significance. That the discoveries were being revealed by a husband and wife team, and not by a large team from a major museum, university, or government agency. Of equal impressiveness, the finds and museum enterprise of the ‘upstarts’ at Blue Beach have been accomplished despite the fact that the resistance still exists after 18 years, demonstrating amazing stamina and persistence that would make the Jerry MacDonald struggle look short and sweet. That the Blue Beach discoveries are arguably even more important than the Robledos phenomenon makes this resistance seem even less logical. But nonetheless, as Jerry indicated in his story, the consensus was to adopt a ‘wait and see’ attitude. Those who were not happy with our discoveries believed we could sustain the museum project and the research all by ourselves. To this day there is no direct financial aid to the home-based Blue Beach Fossil Museum at the site today, and the research is still largely dependant on the work of the unpaid, un-reimbursed husband and wife team.

 

Christopher F. Mansky and Sonja E. Wood

 

The question now is obvious. When is the politician, who rides in on his white horse, marking the completion of phase three, going to get it? It’s not for lack of trying, because the Blue Beach project and its many supporters have continuously appealed to their MLA’s, MP’s, to the many levels of the great bureaucracy, and to private enterprise. Given the evidence, and all the validation we have garnered from every expert you could ever need to validate the this effort, we can only say shame on that. You have ignored the obvious for six-times as long as the New Mexican authorities ignored Jerry MacDonald. One final note: who are the main champions behind us at Blue Beach today? Why, they would be The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, of course. They have gained an appreciation of their past mistakes, and they remember well the lessons of Jerry MacDonald. 

Famous Geo-Heritage Tourism Property For Sale
 

Thank you for reading!