1 00:00:00,360 --> 00:00:06,960 Hello. My name is Elaine Charvet. I'm a doctoral researcher at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. 2 00:00:07,800 --> 00:00:15,750 On my first day at the museum, I was given an enormous bunch of keys and told I could open every cupboard and door. 3 00:00:16,290 --> 00:00:19,200 That was one of the best days in my life. 4 00:00:19,890 --> 00:00:26,490 And these podcasts I want to share with you some of the treasures I've encountered on my many forays into attics and cellars, 5 00:00:26,760 --> 00:00:33,630 cupboards and storerooms. I've also been very privileged to meet many experts who do research, 6 00:00:33,720 --> 00:00:38,880 look after collections and the visitors, and turn the museum into a living organism. 7 00:00:39,030 --> 00:00:44,690 We can all be part of. But looking at the crowds, visiting the museum every day. 8 00:00:45,220 --> 00:00:53,190 Here's a chance to create a microcosm of nature and science, to celebrate you and biodiversity, 9 00:00:54,090 --> 00:01:03,030 but also to talk about hugely important topics such as the loss of biodiversity, the climate emergency and manmade extinctions. 10 00:01:04,110 --> 00:01:13,350 This series of podcasts takes a close look at some fascinating and surprising objects in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. 11 00:01:14,280 --> 00:01:21,720 Is a kind of fringe event to go hand in hand with a major display happening at the museum in 2022. 12 00:01:22,770 --> 00:01:27,870 Each podcast is a journey of discovery through the nooks and crannies of the museum. 13 00:01:28,080 --> 00:01:30,500 Talking to researchers and experts on the way, 14 00:01:30,810 --> 00:01:41,100 they will seek out the rarely seen or heard about enigmatic objects in the museum and their stories scientific, historical and personal. 15 00:01:41,880 --> 00:01:51,540 These objects can be specimens, natural objects, artefacts, tools, or even may seem in turn, such as conservation fluids. 16 00:01:52,470 --> 00:01:58,050 What they all have in common is that they speak to us about ecology and biodiversity. 17 00:01:58,560 --> 00:02:03,510 Both terms are linked with our constantly evolving ecological relationships. 18 00:02:03,720 --> 00:02:10,970 There is no biodiversity. Is there even such a thing as biodiverse objects? 19 00:02:11,780 --> 00:02:23,620 Well, let's find out. Hello and welcome to our third and final podcast, Biodiversity on the Rocks. 20 00:02:23,980 --> 00:02:28,000 Joining the dots between animate and inanimate. 21 00:02:29,200 --> 00:02:39,130 This podcast explores some of the countless relationships between biology, biodiversity and geology, past and present. 22 00:02:39,700 --> 00:02:45,759 I want to find out how geological processes on a large and on a small scale have 23 00:02:45,760 --> 00:02:51,490 influenced life from its beginnings and continue to affect biodiversity today. 24 00:02:52,360 --> 00:02:56,740 Along the way, we will also have a peek at the physics of patterns. 25 00:02:58,050 --> 00:03:04,890 I am standing in front of one of the beautifully carved wooden doors on the gallery, 26 00:03:05,520 --> 00:03:12,000 and just a stone's throw away are stunning gems and minerals exhibits. 27 00:03:12,060 --> 00:03:16,290 So opals, diamonds, emeralds, you name it. 28 00:03:17,190 --> 00:03:20,400 But we are here to look at some hidden treasures. 29 00:03:20,580 --> 00:03:25,200 And just behind the door is the home of the mineralogy collection. 30 00:03:25,980 --> 00:03:29,070 The doors opening. We are being expected. 31 00:03:29,520 --> 00:03:35,970 Let's go in. Funnily enough, it smells of rotten eggs. 32 00:03:37,170 --> 00:03:40,260 Sulphur. We are on the right track. 33 00:03:40,500 --> 00:03:49,230 I think. Hello, Duncan. Dr. Duncan Murdoch is a collections manager in Earth Collections. 34 00:03:49,620 --> 00:03:58,379 He looks after the museum's rocks and minerals. He's also responsible for one of the more unusual new exhibits to take pride of 35 00:03:58,380 --> 00:04:02,760 place in the central court of the Museum as part of the great free display. 36 00:04:03,000 --> 00:04:07,050 Thank you so much for giving us this sneak preview. 37 00:04:07,740 --> 00:04:11,970 Wow. Please describe this amazing object for us. 38 00:04:12,510 --> 00:04:16,720 To me, it looks like a slightly mishap and mini Will Cain. 39 00:04:17,850 --> 00:04:22,560 So we're looking at a black smoke vent chimney or a hydrothermal vent. 40 00:04:23,130 --> 00:04:27,830 So they're effectively underwater volcanoes where it's breading ridges. 41 00:04:27,840 --> 00:04:35,430 You get hot water that's come from deep down in the earth's crust that erupt out. 42 00:04:35,970 --> 00:04:43,410 It contains lots of minerals that get dissolved in the hot water up to around 400 degrees centigrade. 43 00:04:43,860 --> 00:04:52,890 And as they meet that cold water, these minerals precipitate out to form these chimney like structures made out of sulphide minerals. 44 00:04:53,700 --> 00:04:57,330 Wow. Yes, it definitely smells organic. 45 00:04:58,470 --> 00:05:03,510 Where was this amazing object collected and how? 46 00:05:04,610 --> 00:05:07,370 This one comes from the mid-Atlantic ridge, 47 00:05:07,380 --> 00:05:16,460 from the lucky strike vent field around 37 degrees north and was collected at a depth of around 1700 metres. 48 00:05:17,000 --> 00:05:27,590 So these things get collected by deep sea submersibles that are remote controlled submersibles because the pressure is very, 49 00:05:27,590 --> 00:05:36,070 very high when you get deep down in the ocean. I've also heard deep sea vents being referred to as smokers. 50 00:05:36,080 --> 00:05:39,290 So black smokers or white smokers. 51 00:05:39,920 --> 00:05:44,630 So is this one a black or white one? And what is the difference? 52 00:05:45,890 --> 00:05:58,400 So a black smoker is made out of Sulphites and they come from these very hot waters that dissolve the sulphide from deep down in the earth. 53 00:05:58,880 --> 00:06:06,530 White smokers typically form further away from the ridges, and they tend to be made of all the minerals like barium, 54 00:06:06,860 --> 00:06:12,590 calcium and silicon, as can be guessed to just from the smell. 55 00:06:12,830 --> 00:06:21,290 The environment around deep sea vents is an incredibly challenging one, and yet they are biodiversity hotspots. 56 00:06:21,620 --> 00:06:34,160 How is this possible? The sulphur that is present in the water is what forms the centre of complex ecosystems that form around these vents. 57 00:06:34,400 --> 00:06:40,190 So sulphur oxidising bacteria use the sulphides as a. 58 00:06:40,460 --> 00:06:50,330 Instead of using oxygen to produce energy. And then other animals have these symbionts within their tissues to produce energy for them. 59 00:06:50,540 --> 00:06:57,860 So you get these complex ecosystems being formed with things like mussels, giant tubeworms, 60 00:06:58,340 --> 00:07:03,740 hot crabs, shrimp or even octopus have been known to be found around these vents. 61 00:07:03,980 --> 00:07:12,590 Some scientists argue that deep sea vents could be our most likely candidates for the beginning of organic life on Earth. 62 00:07:13,430 --> 00:07:21,380 How can something turn from basically underwater rocks, boiling temperatures with a few minerals and chemicals thrown in? 63 00:07:22,190 --> 00:07:24,170 How can this turn into life? 64 00:07:25,040 --> 00:07:32,960 These kinds of environments, we think, have persisted on Earth for a long time and definitely pre-date oxygenated seawater. 65 00:07:33,590 --> 00:07:39,380 So it may be that life itself originated around places like hydrothermal vents. 66 00:07:39,830 --> 00:07:47,210 So you need a source of heat, you need liquid water, and you need some chemical that can be used as a chemical fuel. 67 00:07:48,110 --> 00:07:57,469 And Sulphides have been around for much longer as a free element in seawater than oxygen has. 68 00:07:57,470 --> 00:08:05,840 So it predates photosynthesis. And it's very interesting that these ecosystems exist with no direct input from sunlight. 69 00:08:05,840 --> 00:08:15,740 There's no energy coming from the sun. It's all coming from directly from the earth via the heat, produced by the spreading at mid-ocean ridges. 70 00:08:16,220 --> 00:08:27,170 Last but not least, the sneak preview question How are you going to display this complex and absolutely fascinating object? 71 00:08:27,500 --> 00:08:32,420 What exactly are the visitors going to be able to see? 72 00:08:32,600 --> 00:08:38,690 So these hydrothermal vent chimneys, they look like a chimney, a sort of roof, chimney shape, 73 00:08:39,200 --> 00:08:46,640 and they're formed from these layers of sulphide minerals that build up over time, precipitating out of the hot water. 74 00:08:47,510 --> 00:08:52,790 So now we have just part of the top of a chimney that's broken into. 75 00:08:53,270 --> 00:09:01,250 And you can see yellow sulphur on the surface as well as shiny sulphide minerals and sometimes even in rings. 76 00:09:01,940 --> 00:09:11,750 And also now lots of the surface is covered with rusty iron oxides that are produced by the reaction with oxygen in the water, in the atmosphere. 77 00:09:13,310 --> 00:09:20,360 And this specimen is going to be part of a new display that's being installed this summer. 78 00:09:21,050 --> 00:09:28,700 This display is going to centre around the intimate relationship between the origin of life and the origin of liquid water on the planet. 79 00:09:29,030 --> 00:09:34,730 Because we know that liquid water is a prerequisite for life to emerge. 80 00:09:35,090 --> 00:09:40,219 And one of the first environments where we have liquid water and heat and the 81 00:09:40,220 --> 00:09:45,410 nutrients required to make life is around these deep sea hydrothermal vents. 82 00:09:45,860 --> 00:09:50,960 So we're going to have this specimen and another two smaller pieces of vent material 83 00:09:51,470 --> 00:09:56,090 that will be mounted on a on a backdrop with silhouettes of these chimneys. 84 00:09:56,420 --> 00:10:03,080 Some people say they look like the spires of cathedrals emerging from the seabed. 85 00:10:03,710 --> 00:10:09,860 And then these will be accompanied by some examples of the kinds of organisms that live there today. 86 00:10:10,130 --> 00:10:18,290 So we have these amazing battery modulus muscles that are covered in this rusty red iron sort of dust. 87 00:10:18,770 --> 00:10:23,659 And they occur in these huge colonies where we get lots of different sizes from very, 88 00:10:23,660 --> 00:10:29,870 very small examples, just a few millimetres to these very large up to nearly ten centimetres in size. 89 00:10:30,680 --> 00:10:37,800 We're also going to have some spirit specimens of some of the crustaceans and that occur around the vents around the world. 90 00:10:39,020 --> 00:10:45,290 We have the scaly foot snail that actually builds its parts of its shell using iron armour. 91 00:10:46,950 --> 00:10:54,569 And we have some clay models of the tubeworms that can reach several metres in length and they 92 00:10:54,570 --> 00:11:00,990 have these bright red gill structures that emerge from there and from the tube that house, 93 00:11:01,230 --> 00:11:07,380 these bacteria, they sulphur oxidising bacteria that are the basis of the entire food chain. 94 00:11:08,280 --> 00:11:13,980 And then these will be accompanied by some geological evidence of the very first liquid water. 95 00:11:15,000 --> 00:11:20,280 So we have rocks from Greenland that are sediments that must have been laid down in water, 96 00:11:20,280 --> 00:11:27,150 that are now been metamorphosed and also basalts that were erupted into water and 97 00:11:28,110 --> 00:11:32,350 demonstrate that we had liquid water going back very early in Earth's history. 98 00:11:33,000 --> 00:11:38,100 Deep sea vents as the cathedrals of early life on Earth. 99 00:11:38,250 --> 00:11:42,390 I just love that. Thank you so much, Duncan. 100 00:11:43,680 --> 00:11:50,280 But you also mentioned basalt, which is really interesting. 101 00:11:50,760 --> 00:11:55,700 Puzzled, formed in the very early days of our planet. 102 00:11:55,770 --> 00:12:02,999 So we are still talking about beginnings and not even beginnings of life. 103 00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:08,430 But much earlier we talking about the beginnings of our planet itself. 104 00:12:10,120 --> 00:12:15,190 There is another gem waiting for us in the Earth collections. 105 00:12:15,670 --> 00:12:24,070 And at first glance, this looks a bit like some of the elaborate Victorian architectural features in the Great Hall of the Museum. 106 00:12:24,850 --> 00:12:39,820 A broken column, perhaps. It is very regular, a perfectly hexagonal shape, and but it is in fact part of a natural puzzle column. 107 00:12:40,450 --> 00:12:50,890 And I love objects that make processes visible, often presenting a mix of geological, chemical and evolutionary processes. 108 00:12:51,460 --> 00:12:59,580 And this one here has a hexagonal shape, like a cell in honeycombs built by bees. 109 00:13:00,220 --> 00:13:06,879 And in this case, the shape is due to processes affecting the larva when it cools. 110 00:13:06,880 --> 00:13:12,630 So the upper layers of larva cool more quickly than the layers below. 111 00:13:12,880 --> 00:13:17,140 So the appelé shrinks and cracks. 112 00:13:17,140 --> 00:13:26,170 And if the conditions are right, if the composition of the lava flow and the temperatures are evenly distributed during cooling, 113 00:13:26,800 --> 00:13:33,890 this distribution of off stress is is also regular in angles of 120 degrees. 114 00:13:33,970 --> 00:13:37,840 And the next thing you get is irregular hexagons. 115 00:13:38,260 --> 00:13:48,010 And this is repeated below. And the lower layers as they cool and the resulting hexagonal columns can grow higher than trees. 116 00:13:48,460 --> 00:13:54,150 Speaking of trees, we can see something similar happening there. 117 00:13:54,160 --> 00:14:07,690 So the tree grows, which we can tell by its growth rings, and then the bark comes under stress with the growing tree inside and it cracks. 118 00:14:07,810 --> 00:14:17,740 And in some trees like oaks, the bark cracks forming beautiful regular patterns, just like the lava. 119 00:14:18,220 --> 00:14:27,600 And I'm quickly running over to next door to the office of my Cornell Life Collections Manager to ask him a few questions. 120 00:14:27,600 --> 00:14:36,130 So along the corridor past the they trying not to look at the wonderful banana bread I'm absolutely addicted to. 121 00:14:36,610 --> 00:14:40,720 And here we are. Hello, Mark. 122 00:14:40,930 --> 00:14:49,900 Sorry to disturb you. I remember seeing a large Nautilus shell in your office on one of the trolleys. 123 00:14:50,080 --> 00:14:53,620 Oh, yeah, it is. I can see it. Great. 124 00:14:54,790 --> 00:15:03,130 The shell of the Nautilus is amazing, but is it really the perfect logarithmic spiral? 125 00:15:03,340 --> 00:15:09,150 It is often set to be. What we can see is that it is self similar. 126 00:15:09,160 --> 00:15:20,810 So from the tiniest beginning, at the very centre of the shell to its biggest newest additions to its shell furthest away from the centre. 127 00:15:20,950 --> 00:15:29,890 So the proportions seem to remain the same, always in harmony with themselves when the shell grows. 128 00:15:30,460 --> 00:15:42,790 So this golden mean proportion is arguably one reason why the Nautilus shell seems so beautiful to us. 129 00:15:43,360 --> 00:15:48,670 Mark, what is your take on our quest for patterns and our love of symmetry? 130 00:15:49,480 --> 00:15:58,150 So there are lots of beautiful shows we have in the collections, and in particular we have lots of these on display and the cephalopods. 131 00:15:58,150 --> 00:16:00,850 So Ammonites and Nautilus. 132 00:16:01,330 --> 00:16:08,680 And so looking at a Nautilus shell, one of the reasons it is very well known animal is because it has this beautiful symmetry. 133 00:16:09,010 --> 00:16:14,650 Some people suggest, and I've seen it still used in in various levels of teaching, 134 00:16:15,040 --> 00:16:24,040 that this bar is a golden spiral which has, you know, this really pleasing mathematical formula behind it. 135 00:16:24,490 --> 00:16:28,870 And that's not quite true. They are grown by these organisms. 136 00:16:29,200 --> 00:16:32,140 And so they don't grow in this perfect and this perfect way. 137 00:16:32,360 --> 00:16:42,550 There's differences when they are young and they grow the shell and egg, and also because they are biological organisms, the rate of growth changes. 138 00:16:42,790 --> 00:16:47,560 It depends on the environment and the species and the individual animals, how well nourished is. 139 00:16:48,130 --> 00:16:53,860 And there's evidence to suggest that the shell is eroded a bit as well as it grows. 140 00:16:54,190 --> 00:16:57,340 So depends on whether or not this is living. Hmm. 141 00:16:57,360 --> 00:17:00,920 So it's just roughly that it corresponds to this perfect golden. 142 00:17:01,470 --> 00:17:08,950 Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's kind of where it's got this association and the shells cephalopods. 143 00:17:09,490 --> 00:17:13,860 So cephalopods includes octopus, squid, nautilus and things like extinct. 144 00:17:14,230 --> 00:17:20,290 I'm annoyed and annoyed. The story of show evolution is really the key to that group. 145 00:17:20,410 --> 00:17:26,590 So one story of cephalopod evolution is the story of show evolution, modification and loss. 146 00:17:26,950 --> 00:17:31,960 And within those groups, within North Stories and Ammonites, as well as various other groups, which I'm not mentioned, 147 00:17:32,290 --> 00:17:38,410 it's a huge diversity and show that some fossil not loads had to show, which essentially looks like a big snail. 148 00:17:38,470 --> 00:17:46,240 Some not light and some. I'm had a straight show submission that, you know, unfurled the show and it's like a huge ice cream cone. 149 00:17:46,480 --> 00:17:48,760 So, yeah, it's it's something that as a group, 150 00:17:49,600 --> 00:17:56,710 we see a lot of diversity of and due to the way that these animals are living in different environments and evolved through time. 151 00:17:57,070 --> 00:18:01,870 So you could infer in theory, if you look at a shell in real detail, 152 00:18:01,870 --> 00:18:08,630 could you infer like what the environment might have been like or what the individual was exposed to or to? 153 00:18:08,850 --> 00:18:18,249 To a certain extent. I mean, some shows, particularly of what we call hetero more ammonites, which is an artificial group of species, 154 00:18:18,250 --> 00:18:24,310 to have a nice, appealing, coiled shell, really beg the question of what they were doing. 155 00:18:24,880 --> 00:18:31,540 So there are some which are shaped like a giant paperclip in know they have sometimes a two, three, four kinks in them. 156 00:18:31,920 --> 00:18:37,959 And as the animal grows, it would be a vastly different shape. And at some point, you know, it's almost like it's very young. 157 00:18:37,960 --> 00:18:43,360 It's almost like a rectangle. Which just begs the question of, you know, how is the animal living? 158 00:18:43,960 --> 00:18:48,700 Does it go? Does it have different ecologies and habitats and habitats? 159 00:18:48,700 --> 00:18:53,690 Sorry, depending on where the shell is, is a really beautiful cephalopod record. 160 00:18:54,160 --> 00:19:05,290 It's from Japan. And unlike, you know, the aesthetically pleasing coil of anemone that doesn't it's like a contorted knot loops over itself. 161 00:19:05,410 --> 00:19:13,240 Really? It's like, yeah, like a ball of yarn that if you've met someone with the contorted knot of the nineties, 162 00:19:13,510 --> 00:19:18,850 you know, it's looking at one of those fossils really makes you think, how did this organism live? 163 00:19:19,420 --> 00:19:26,140 Was it something lived on the bottom of the ocean? Did it somehow with its soft tissue, which we know very little about for extinct cephalopods? 164 00:19:26,320 --> 00:19:32,250 Yeah. Maintained buoyancy with an eye to beautiful arms or tentacles. 165 00:19:32,260 --> 00:19:39,430 Something like a blanket octopus. Or was it something that found a hole or buried itself in the sediment? 166 00:19:39,790 --> 00:19:44,230 Yeah. That diversity just within that one group is really quite amazing. 167 00:19:45,040 --> 00:19:53,590 So just looking for this very, geometrically pleasing shape may not be the most interesting thing about them. 168 00:19:53,860 --> 00:19:55,600 Yeah, I'd argue. I don't always argue this. 169 00:19:55,900 --> 00:20:02,560 It's always the weirdos which tell us something more fundamentally interesting and often fundamentally true about biodiversity. 170 00:20:03,310 --> 00:20:12,550 Thank you, Mark, for this reality check. I think both symmetry and variations can tell us a lot about nature. 171 00:20:12,580 --> 00:20:17,440 The logarithmic spiral seems to pop up in all sorts of unexpected places. 172 00:20:17,680 --> 00:20:20,950 Goat's horns, for instance, can also show this growth. 173 00:20:20,950 --> 00:20:31,420 Pattern patterns determined by physics and biology described by mathematics, can link the animal, vegetable and the mineral. 174 00:20:31,810 --> 00:20:40,780 The mathematical principles are quite complex, but you you don't need to know the maths to appreciate the effect. 175 00:20:40,800 --> 00:20:54,370 So the beauty of the logarithmic spiral and there is even music that has the same effect or rather uses also the same principles. 176 00:20:54,370 --> 00:21:00,969 Say, for instance, there is Johann Sebastian Bach stressful temper due to Columbia, 177 00:21:00,970 --> 00:21:11,680 which which is really a collection of various pieces and some of it really he uses a similar idea. 178 00:21:13,030 --> 00:21:20,200 See here what you've seen and if you can picture Logarithmic Spiral. 179 00:21:20,500 --> 00:21:30,580 This is a good friend of mine, the wonderful pianist and singer Lita is playing from Johann Sebastian Bach does Well-Tempered Clavier. 180 00:23:49,610 --> 00:23:53,220 So beautiful. Thank you very much. 181 00:23:53,240 --> 00:23:57,410 Later, back to the beginnings, back to Mineralogy. 182 00:23:58,100 --> 00:24:03,800 So someone almost obsessed with puzzles was William Buckland. 183 00:24:03,980 --> 00:24:11,330 And you may say that Buckland has discovered things that are a lot more exciting than basalt in particular, 184 00:24:11,330 --> 00:24:18,140 of course, the lower jaw piece of the first ever scientifically described and named Dinosaur. 185 00:24:18,530 --> 00:24:28,040 But Buckland, of course, in 1824, the mega Allosaurus, the iconic jaw with its prominent tooth, is on display in the museum. 186 00:24:28,490 --> 00:24:35,930 And well, it's somewhat ironic to know that Buckland discovered the jaw in the Christchurch College Anatomy Collection, 187 00:24:35,930 --> 00:24:40,910 where it's probably been sitting around for about 20 years without getting much notice. 188 00:24:41,030 --> 00:24:42,890 This still happens to this day. 189 00:24:43,370 --> 00:24:53,510 An astonishing number of new species, be it fossils or modern organisms, are still being discovered not in the field, but in museum collections. 190 00:24:53,680 --> 00:25:03,670 Well, there are just enough experts to work through huge backlogs of specimens and decades can pass between deposits and assessment, right? 191 00:25:03,680 --> 00:25:09,240 Buckland's puzzled. So to Buckland, puzzled was clearly very important. 192 00:25:09,260 --> 00:25:12,979 It is depicted with many items from Buckland's collections, 193 00:25:12,980 --> 00:25:24,740 including a grinning ichthyosaur skull and a famous contemporary illustration of one of his geology lectures in 1823 at Oxford University. 194 00:25:25,340 --> 00:25:32,630 So let's look again past the age of the dinosaurs to the very early days of our planet. 195 00:25:33,990 --> 00:25:39,270 In the beginning was fire or water. 196 00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:45,240 In the late 18th century, scientists were not yet discussing the origin of species, 197 00:25:45,330 --> 00:25:54,780 but of rocks having been formed when vast, primaeval oceans evaporated all through the Earth's fire. 198 00:25:55,230 --> 00:26:04,590 These two opposing worldviews were named eventually Neptune ism after Neptune, the God of the oceans and volcanism. 199 00:26:05,250 --> 00:26:09,629 Puzzled was quite a stone of contention between Neptune. 200 00:26:09,630 --> 00:26:17,610 This wall consists until the great basalt controversy was basalt, volcanic, 201 00:26:17,610 --> 00:26:23,820 essentially cold lava, all created by water and sedimentation as the ineptness maintained. 202 00:26:24,060 --> 00:26:33,480 Why did it matter? Well, as a very common type of rock forming most of the Earth's crust and often very ancient. 203 00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:44,880 Unlocking the secret of its genesis would also shed light on how the earth was formed or created, as it was, of course, commonly maintained. 204 00:26:45,090 --> 00:26:48,300 Suddenly, everybody became obsessed with basalt. 205 00:26:48,660 --> 00:26:53,729 The huge, beautiful structures of puzzle columns found, for instance, 206 00:26:53,730 --> 00:26:59,730 at the Giant's Causeway on the coast of Northern Ireland, have always fascinated people. 207 00:27:00,270 --> 00:27:05,310 Oxford University's William Buckland absolutely became obsessed, too. 208 00:27:05,550 --> 00:27:15,480 Buckland visited Germany in 1816 and he also met with Neptune first and Germany's most famous writer, Johann Wolfgang von Good. 209 00:27:15,780 --> 00:27:22,200 Buckland is often referred to as a catastrophist rather than an opportunist or a volcanism, 210 00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:29,070 which I absolutely love, because I've been often told I'm always expecting the worst. 211 00:27:29,220 --> 00:27:37,230 In this case, it means explaining current geology through various catastrophic events, including flooding, 212 00:27:37,230 --> 00:27:43,620 which happened in the past, and which at least at first Buckland equated with the biblical flood. 213 00:27:43,770 --> 00:27:55,500 But catastrophe was in fact already a sort of compromise between the warring factions and was able to explain observable geological evidence. 214 00:27:56,340 --> 00:28:04,890 Soon you is a doctor, a researcher at the museum, and she's been exploring the many contexts of Buckland's collections. 215 00:28:05,310 --> 00:28:16,920 She also became intrigued by Buckland's journey, and I asked her about what made this particular journey so fascinating. 216 00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:25,800 And we got chatting and looking at objects in the collections, and of course we were talking about basalt. 217 00:28:25,920 --> 00:28:30,720 When Buckland travelled to Germany and in fact the continent. 218 00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:38,100 He also visited Mount Bocca in northern Italy, well-known side for puzzled. 219 00:28:38,520 --> 00:28:45,540 And there's a wonderful ink drawing which shows him basically in the field. 220 00:28:45,910 --> 00:28:57,270 He is riding on a donkey, brandishing a huge geological hammer, riding past basalt columns that almost seem to stand to attention and salute him. 221 00:28:57,870 --> 00:29:08,260 This large round is on a small, local, large scale, and the local guide, who's obviously leading the donkey and, you know, 222 00:29:08,350 --> 00:29:16,139 one of those many kind of artisans who we didn't know anything about of actually who contributed in their own way to geology, 223 00:29:16,140 --> 00:29:24,540 was at the time to the making of the signs and all visible underneath and is in the corner of the view. 224 00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:27,600 There's this these, these amazing basaltic columns. 225 00:29:27,930 --> 00:29:36,600 And so that was no doubt, you know, importance as stopping off place this this particular site at Montepulciano in northern Italy. 226 00:29:36,940 --> 00:29:42,000 Phil Buckland and his geological companions on that particular field trip. 227 00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:47,930 So that is one of the series of drawings by his his his Viennese friend, Pamplona. 228 00:29:48,150 --> 00:29:58,770 An 1847 guidebook calls it the largest and most singular deposit of fossil fishes yet discovered this combination of fossils, 229 00:29:58,950 --> 00:30:06,360 especially fish, one imagines, and puzzled, fuelled the beliefs of opportunists and catastrophe like Buckland. 230 00:30:06,540 --> 00:30:12,779 One of the most important arguments of the Neptune ists was that fossils could indeed, 231 00:30:12,780 --> 00:30:18,480 if very rarely be found in basalt, and therefore it had to be a sediment. 232 00:30:18,990 --> 00:30:22,860 If it was just called lava, there could be no fossils contained in it. 233 00:30:23,370 --> 00:30:24,750 Wokeness, however, 234 00:30:25,050 --> 00:30:33,300 understood the fossils too have been incorporated into the basalt when the nearly cold lava settled over an already existing landscape. 235 00:30:33,830 --> 00:30:35,840 Complete with rocks and fossils. 236 00:30:36,350 --> 00:30:46,590 Sue and I looked at a curious publication held in the museum archives, which is called Basaltic Mountains, Caverns and Causeways. 237 00:30:46,610 --> 00:30:58,910 50 Plates, A Bit of a Magpie publication published in 1825 from a variety of often older sources compiling 50 illustrations featuring basalt. 238 00:30:59,090 --> 00:31:04,610 True to form, the book has a marble cover, making it look like, well, pinkish marble. 239 00:31:05,300 --> 00:31:12,490 One of the plates shows fossils allegedly found in basalt, mainly shells, but then had a copy of this. 240 00:31:12,500 --> 00:31:16,430 I mean, there's a wonderful matter where he writes to one of his Geological Society colleagues, 241 00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:25,850 very excited, saying he's seen a copy of this for sale. And in the bookshop, in the window of a bookshop in London and a pretty girl. 242 00:31:25,850 --> 00:31:32,570 And just it's a great thing for him because he was obviously an Oxford and he would pay him when he when he next visited London. 243 00:31:32,900 --> 00:31:36,530 Oh he was really keen to get his hands on that one. 244 00:31:36,530 --> 00:31:44,749 Yeah he was, he was very keen. Yeah. I mean this copy here was actually given to the museum later that present library. 245 00:31:44,750 --> 00:31:51,440 So he was, was with. So actually there are some live copies of these plates as well. 246 00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:58,129 And which is which is really nice because I think it shows that he was probably using them in his lectures. 247 00:31:58,130 --> 00:32:06,830 And in fact, you can just see in the wonderful geological lecture the prints that show up there and teaching. 248 00:32:06,830 --> 00:32:12,440 It's a really famous print for me anyway, of my for my project. 249 00:32:14,270 --> 00:32:18,830 You can just see some prints on the walls, which I think actually are from this. 250 00:32:19,760 --> 00:32:25,430 Amazing. Yeah. So yeah, that is why it was important at the time. 251 00:32:25,790 --> 00:32:35,480 And there are two, two pieces of puzzles in those beautiful prints, Joy, to see quite a substantial sort of colourful result. 252 00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:43,489 And I'm sure that it was something that Buckland collected on one of his early trips to Northern Ireland himself. 253 00:32:43,490 --> 00:32:51,290 I mean, obviously not something to be recommended these days, you know, but I think things were a bit more relaxed. 254 00:32:51,290 --> 00:32:58,750 And if you have people to carry your luggage on the I guess or donkey or because they are heavy but I mean 255 00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:07,670 still I mean you were still trying to look at only his actual specimens of basil are shown in the picture. 256 00:33:07,730 --> 00:33:15,590 But there's one piece that's come out which is recorded in having been given by Hopkins friends to the Ashley, 257 00:33:15,590 --> 00:33:26,240 and that was the piece given by Professor Adoboli, the chemistry professor at Oxford, and but it's labelled as the base of the sundial. 258 00:33:26,510 --> 00:33:30,290 So it was right. 259 00:33:30,410 --> 00:33:35,630 And there is a piece in the collection which doesn't look as if it possibly could have been that that piece. 260 00:33:35,900 --> 00:33:45,590 I think the last word on the great puzzle controversy and the arguments between the Neptune estate and the volcanoes should go to Buckland, 261 00:33:45,830 --> 00:33:49,190 the last word only in the sense of asking questions. 262 00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:58,069 And Buckland was really a modern scientist in the sense he asked the right questions and wasn't afraid to ruffle feathers. 263 00:33:58,070 --> 00:34:10,880 Yes. I mean, I think no Buckland iconic band, you know, visited Northern Ireland twice and the basalt formations at John's Causeway. 264 00:34:12,630 --> 00:34:21,060 And then Buckland was very tall. The article about his that was published a bit later in 1862. 265 00:34:21,290 --> 00:34:25,940 But you know, in that old school, they they did this immensely, though. 266 00:34:28,850 --> 00:34:37,640 So proving, you know, in their terms that the origin of basalt would leave me for not inquisitive, 267 00:34:37,850 --> 00:34:45,219 as they say, and they sort of get through very carefully all the various answers and all the various points. 268 00:34:45,220 --> 00:34:56,360 So encountering those points, he sort of was very and I think this is for the love of this followers, very scientific, remote reasoning. 269 00:34:56,660 --> 00:35:09,889 So you look really looks at the evidence and doesn't have doesn't let ideology or preconceived worldviews getting in the way of evidence. 270 00:35:09,890 --> 00:35:14,950 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's absolutely passion. 271 00:35:14,960 --> 00:35:20,180 And I think, you know, people who tried to pigeonhole him, I think they they, you know, 272 00:35:20,180 --> 00:35:33,170 when they really start to look at what he wrote and what he was endorsing in his teaching, then then, you know, that's it's he's he's come. 273 00:35:33,770 --> 00:35:41,540 As you say, he's very invested in doing good science, that the scientific method is important to him. 274 00:35:42,260 --> 00:35:48,889 She reads a lot of the correspondence to some of his sort of staff students who became really 275 00:35:48,890 --> 00:35:54,890 his kind of field researchers at one remove in different parts of the country where they were. 276 00:35:56,120 --> 00:36:00,620 I mean, he's really sort of holding them to task all the time. 277 00:36:01,040 --> 00:36:04,669 Thanks very much for the questions. You didn't tell me why you got in. 278 00:36:04,670 --> 00:36:10,440 You don't tell me exactly what it is. You don't tell me the situation in. 279 00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:16,670 When are you going to tell me? General Mills, Supervisor. 280 00:36:17,780 --> 00:36:22,160 Thank you very much, Sue, for taking us on a field trip with Professor Buckland. 281 00:36:22,550 --> 00:36:27,350 There is another less striking piece of puzzle in the collections and it just 282 00:36:27,350 --> 00:36:32,239 looks like a lump of black rock collected by Buckland during his Neptune, 283 00:36:32,240 --> 00:36:38,690 his trip to Germany and the continent. And if it looks common, that's because that's what it is. 284 00:36:39,200 --> 00:36:47,600 We now know that basalt is not only very common on earth, making up the crust and the sea floors, but also common in our solar system. 285 00:36:47,870 --> 00:36:51,290 Found, for instance, on the moon, Mars and Venus. 286 00:36:52,130 --> 00:37:02,570 So often in science, the common is actually more interesting than the rare and remarkable scientists think that much of the biomass potential, 287 00:37:02,810 --> 00:37:09,770 the beginning of organic life, derives from chemical processes around deep sea vents, as we've already learnt. 288 00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:17,540 But these processes can happen. Wait for it with the help of basalt, which hosts hydrothermal fluids. 289 00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:21,470 And this also links to the question of fossils and basalt. 290 00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:26,180 It seems that there are plenty if we look with our much improved methods. 291 00:37:26,630 --> 00:37:32,480 Indeed, some scientists have recently argued that microfossils contained in igneous rocks, 292 00:37:32,480 --> 00:37:39,350 including basalt, can provide important clues to the earliest evolution of our planet's biodiversity. 293 00:37:39,920 --> 00:37:47,420 They call them crustal habitats and the deep biosphere and argue that these are essential to complement the picture. 294 00:37:47,420 --> 00:37:52,790 We've been puzzling together from fossils in sedimentary rocks since the 18th century. 295 00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:58,970 We only very recently discovered deep sea vents like Duncan's and the significance. 296 00:37:59,540 --> 00:38:11,240 And so how did scientists in the 19th century think organic life evolved after Charles Darwin's publication of his On The Origin of Species in 1859, 297 00:38:11,450 --> 00:38:21,170 the race was on to establish how life forms were related to each other in the Tree of Life and to find the earliest ancestor of all complex life. 298 00:38:21,830 --> 00:38:26,900 In fact, here is a little packet of a 19th century candidate for the origin of life. 299 00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:33,840 Meet the deep sea ooze. If you already thought the puzzle wasn't very exciting. 300 00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:36,840 While this is even less so. 301 00:38:37,110 --> 00:38:42,990 It just looks like a little bit of sand mud. 302 00:38:43,490 --> 00:38:46,560 So yeah, I think the name is a give away. 303 00:38:47,040 --> 00:38:53,100 Ooze doesn't lend itself to being very exciting, but it is. 304 00:38:53,490 --> 00:39:00,120 In the mid-nineteenth century, the bottom of the deep sea was disturbed by people for the first time, 305 00:39:00,630 --> 00:39:05,640 dredging for underwater telegraph cabling and also expeditions like the Challenger 306 00:39:05,640 --> 00:39:14,010 expedition from 1872 to 1876 brought to light riches of life that no one had expected in 307 00:39:14,010 --> 00:39:20,489 the deep sea that oozed slime from the bottom of the seafloor was brought up in huge 308 00:39:20,490 --> 00:39:27,000 quantities and was considered a likely candidate for the cradle of all life on earth. 309 00:39:28,160 --> 00:39:40,220 In his 1893 poem, The Deep Sea Cables, Kipling celebrated this idea and associated the ooze of the deep sea with the womb of the world. 310 00:39:40,850 --> 00:39:47,210 Scientists close to Charles Darwin, like Thomas Henry Huxley and Charles Will Thomson, were excited. 311 00:39:47,510 --> 00:39:55,070 They believed they had found the primordial slime predicted by German zoologist and Darwinist steckel. 312 00:39:55,100 --> 00:40:00,950 From this heck argued, all life had evolved according to Darwinian principles. 313 00:40:01,460 --> 00:40:06,800 In Haeckel's honour, Huxley named the new discovery the primordial slime. 314 00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:19,520 But so Byers happily, Heckel was indeed a great expert, not only on deep sea slime, but on my nude marine creatures. 315 00:40:20,150 --> 00:40:29,390 Let's have a quick look in the museum's library and heckles book about protists say these are primitive organisms. 316 00:40:30,020 --> 00:40:40,310 The book was published in 1878 and the illustrations of these primitive marine newly discovered organisms. 317 00:40:40,670 --> 00:40:50,000 The illustrations are exquisitely and very delicately drawn and printed, and they show what the ooze is really about. 318 00:40:50,420 --> 00:40:54,590 Its remains, skeletons rather than origins. 319 00:40:55,430 --> 00:41:03,139 But to Heckel, they were living proof of Darwin's theory of evolution and for its own belief that morphology so 320 00:41:03,140 --> 00:41:11,870 the shape of living creatures was really the key to understand the actual processes of evolution. 321 00:41:12,140 --> 00:41:20,510 Catching it in the act, many of the minute creatures dredged from the deep sea floors towards the end 322 00:41:20,510 --> 00:41:27,560 of the 19th century were in fact species of Foraminifera and Roger Larrea. 323 00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:37,159 They have definitely been around for a long time and I guess made good candidates for the beginning of of complex life. 324 00:41:37,160 --> 00:41:44,660 So they may be found as fossils dating from Cambrian Times, say, around 500 million years ago. 325 00:41:44,840 --> 00:41:48,440 Right up to living specimens today. So they're very successful. 326 00:41:48,860 --> 00:41:55,639 And the various species are seen as potential indicators of ecological changes. 327 00:41:55,640 --> 00:41:57,830 So we can actually look at their shape. 328 00:41:57,840 --> 00:42:08,270 So in a way, hackers write morphology is very important, but in this case, to record and to understand climate change. 329 00:42:08,270 --> 00:42:16,520 So with the forum infra climate change temperature changes can manifest in the variations of the shapes. 330 00:42:16,940 --> 00:42:26,030 So this, in a way, really builds on the work of the 19th century naturalists on morphology, although of course the focus is now different. 331 00:42:26,600 --> 00:42:34,250 So as an example, the there's a forum called Neo Global Quadrennial Pachyderm. 332 00:42:34,700 --> 00:42:43,190 I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing this correctly is an excellent recorder of climatic temperatures through geological time. 333 00:42:43,430 --> 00:42:49,040 So when the earth experiences periods of relatively cold temperatures, 334 00:42:49,340 --> 00:43:00,500 ocean waters are cooler and this particular species of forum and forms its test, its shell that it coils to the left. 335 00:43:00,740 --> 00:43:07,130 And alternatively, during periods of relatively warm temperatures when ocean waters are warmer. 336 00:43:07,550 --> 00:43:14,390 The same forum and the same species constructs its shell with a coiling direction to the right. 337 00:43:14,690 --> 00:43:18,919 So this is quite amazing. And so you can really use that. 338 00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:25,640 And if you can date them, you have an emerging picture of the changing temperatures of our planet. 339 00:43:26,240 --> 00:43:34,700 These mind creatures really also bring us back to the issue of physics patterns in nature. 340 00:43:35,570 --> 00:43:40,280 D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson was a Scottish biologist. 341 00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:43,550 He was born in 1860 and died in 1948. 342 00:43:43,820 --> 00:43:54,620 He he was not only a biologist but also a mathematician, and he published his monumental work on growth and form in 1917. 343 00:43:54,980 --> 00:44:02,540 And in it he argued that mathematical patterns and physical laws, rather than natural selection, 344 00:44:02,750 --> 00:44:08,480 were at work in creating the huge variety of forms in nature observed today. 345 00:44:08,810 --> 00:44:19,790 And this really set him against the grain of the then very strong, strongly present Darwinian theory. 346 00:44:20,090 --> 00:44:26,530 If you look at specimens of actual four islands and Rudyard Laurier today, it becomes clear why. 347 00:44:26,540 --> 00:44:30,920 19th century. Natural history, museums faced a dilemma. 348 00:44:31,340 --> 00:44:39,500 These were the biggest discoveries of their time, so it was clear that they needed to be displayed in the museum. 349 00:44:40,010 --> 00:44:44,870 But they were so tiny. You need a microscope to really see them. 350 00:44:44,960 --> 00:44:52,370 Therefore, enlarged models were made from plaster or papier maché to display them. 351 00:44:52,730 --> 00:44:57,110 And some of these models have survived in in the museum's collections. 352 00:44:57,110 --> 00:45:01,880 And there is evidence that they they were on display for for quite some time. 353 00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:05,149 I've got specimens all for them. 354 00:45:05,150 --> 00:45:13,430 And if here and these were actually collected during the 1870s deep sea challenge expeditions. 355 00:45:13,430 --> 00:45:18,890 So they are they're quite special and important, but they don't look it. 356 00:45:18,920 --> 00:45:27,770 It's very hard even to understand what you're looking at if you're just using your eyes. 357 00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:37,730 Do have a look at either 19th century illustrations or Freeman's and fragile aria, or even today's microscopic images. 358 00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:47,570 They are truly mind blowing. You can really see why they inspired artists and especially architects, 359 00:45:47,780 --> 00:45:53,840 especially art nouveau, that was very much inspired by natural forms and patterns. 360 00:45:54,020 --> 00:46:02,270 One example would be the monumental gate at the 1900 Exposition Universal in Paris, 361 00:46:02,750 --> 00:46:08,270 which was inspired by illustrations and also models of Freudian aria. 362 00:46:08,870 --> 00:46:21,290 Speaking of models, we are back downstairs now in the court of the museum and I'm walking along one side of the central court, 363 00:46:21,710 --> 00:46:26,600 and if we look up here, we can spot some more models. 364 00:46:27,140 --> 00:46:39,290 And these these look like more like dioramas scenes modelled from papier maché or plaster and painted to look like realistic 3D paintings. 365 00:46:39,710 --> 00:46:43,460 But in this case, of particular geological features. 366 00:46:44,090 --> 00:46:48,350 So here we are back with geology and our friend Buckland. 367 00:46:48,690 --> 00:46:58,250 They were in fact his models, and they were made by the naturalist, collector, showman and dealer William Bullock in the 1800s. 368 00:46:58,580 --> 00:47:03,140 And one of them shows hexagonal basalt columns. 369 00:47:04,010 --> 00:47:10,430 It's not the Jones Causeway, but these are found on the Ocean Isles of Scotland. 370 00:47:10,880 --> 00:47:22,430 Cliffs, Caves, Islands. I think it is clear that geology influences the development and the richness of species and of biodiversity. 371 00:47:22,820 --> 00:47:25,910 These are all biodiversity hotspots. 372 00:47:26,240 --> 00:47:33,890 And looking at Buckland's geological models, I'm wondering what our modern versions of these models would be. 373 00:47:34,100 --> 00:47:45,740 And if modern versions can actually account for this relationship between geology and evolutionary biology, how do life and landscapes co-evolved? 374 00:47:46,190 --> 00:47:55,640 What is the connexion between geological processes like uplift the volcanic formation of islands, erosion and speciation? 375 00:47:55,820 --> 00:48:01,610 So the development and the richness of species of biodiversity. 376 00:48:01,910 --> 00:48:09,170 Earlier this month I visited the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, near Berlin in Germany. 377 00:48:09,530 --> 00:48:16,430 It is located on the historical science campus from the late 19th and early 20th century. 378 00:48:16,680 --> 00:48:23,270 Well, Albert Einstein had his own tower, which looks like a space rocket. 379 00:48:23,300 --> 00:48:28,910 It's really quite cool. And just opposite Einstein's tower is the great refractor. 380 00:48:29,120 --> 00:48:36,380 And this still houses one of the biggest telescopes of the late 19th century for observing the night skies. 381 00:48:36,770 --> 00:48:46,880 And underneath the dome and the seven ton telescope are now the offices of a team of scientists working on Earth's surface process modelling. 382 00:48:47,360 --> 00:48:57,200 And I met Dr. Esteban Acevedo today here, who is looking at how life and landscapes co-evolved. 383 00:48:57,620 --> 00:49:02,210 And he's modelling these processes on a grand scale. 384 00:49:02,900 --> 00:49:09,890 We were just talking about 19th century models and what are their modern incarnations. 385 00:49:10,040 --> 00:49:23,419 There is so much more data to be dealt with today than in the 19th century and it can get very complex if you try and build it into your calculations, 386 00:49:23,420 --> 00:49:27,470 into your models and trying to visualise all. 387 00:49:27,610 --> 00:49:39,190 These observations, measurements, all this data and the fact these isolated things that you're measuring have on a grand scale and over time, 388 00:49:39,430 --> 00:49:43,419 yeah, animations are good because you have a data. 389 00:49:43,420 --> 00:49:53,139 I mean all these numbers, I mean that is yeah, in the formulas you're using and all that is very specialist knowledge is very hard to follow. 390 00:49:53,140 --> 00:49:58,870 Yeah. So this is an example of, of more time that grows really fast. 391 00:49:58,960 --> 00:50:00,580 So very fast rate. 392 00:50:02,700 --> 00:50:13,959 And we normally start these type of simulations with a flat surface and then just the mountain grows and all of the geological logical processes, 393 00:50:13,960 --> 00:50:21,870 the place to start will be within the river channels, the bays, the drainage divide, all of these features of the the one observe. 394 00:50:22,450 --> 00:50:29,320 And then if the one of the population they put some guys here, maybe tiny like that. 395 00:50:29,590 --> 00:50:32,889 So what are they these black dots? They are individuals. 396 00:50:32,890 --> 00:50:36,100 Individuals of plants, for instance. Okay. 397 00:50:36,520 --> 00:50:39,610 Any any life or any organism. Okay. 398 00:50:39,760 --> 00:50:43,540 That is characterised by two traits. Okay. So trait one and three. 399 00:50:43,540 --> 00:50:51,579 Two, what are they? And the trait could be anything but a set of patterns. 400 00:50:51,580 --> 00:50:56,470 You will see the tax and richness. Of course they can vary with a parameter, 401 00:50:56,680 --> 00:51:06,069 the distance with respect to the traits and the ancestry value that they have in order to create more or less a species. 402 00:51:06,070 --> 00:51:14,590 But as we think there is going to be an on the bottom, you will see the the abundance, the number of individuals that you would have in that system. 403 00:51:15,190 --> 00:51:25,329 Yeah. And that's over time. That is one example. So you see that with the one thing grows really fast, you see like, wow, yeah, it does go up. 404 00:51:25,330 --> 00:51:28,330 Yeah it was really, really taxon richness. Yeah. 405 00:51:29,620 --> 00:51:32,690 Goes up very quickly but then kind of plateaus doesn't it. 406 00:51:32,710 --> 00:51:44,770 Yeah. Because no the demand end is like the maximal or the size and it reaches this steady state so the organisms move around and adapt. 407 00:51:44,920 --> 00:51:54,400 If you have a guy that is similar with your trait values and leans very close to you, the competition is higher there and which means that they can. 408 00:51:54,520 --> 00:52:02,829 It is very likely that one of today's if the if the distance is far away or the trade values are very different for each other, 409 00:52:02,830 --> 00:52:07,900 so the competition is less. So that is affected in basically wow. 410 00:52:08,860 --> 00:52:16,750 Wow. When you have a treatment in competition, I see how that's a regional also these traits are. 411 00:52:17,050 --> 00:52:20,350 So this is the one that is low competition. Exactly. 412 00:52:20,350 --> 00:52:24,760 Without competition, you know, that is totally with ours and that is with with. 413 00:52:25,120 --> 00:52:28,870 Wow. That does mean that you can really see the differences. 414 00:52:29,860 --> 00:52:33,790 So with a lot of competition, basically you get a lot more richness. 415 00:52:33,800 --> 00:52:38,650 Yeah, that makes sense. That makes wow, 416 00:52:38,860 --> 00:52:45,790 people go into into the lab or into the field and measure traits of groups of organisms along the 417 00:52:45,790 --> 00:52:53,559 environmental grading and then tells us the ones that we do the model there is this relationship 418 00:52:53,560 --> 00:53:02,860 between a plant hide and the seed size and then and is a negative relationship and there is this 419 00:53:02,860 --> 00:53:09,280 all the relationship between the size of the organisms and the and the optic rate of energy, 420 00:53:09,300 --> 00:53:14,800 for example. So they find these trade offs and then you put this trade, you put them in in the model, 421 00:53:15,250 --> 00:53:20,760 and then you can you can get the outcomes that resemble to what we observe right now in nature. 422 00:53:21,070 --> 00:53:29,920 But with these, what it does is that the trade of emerges from the changes in environmental these and the changes in the environment. 423 00:53:30,040 --> 00:53:38,259 Wow, that is really cool because they were only thinking, they were only looking at the organisms and this is what they were observing. 424 00:53:38,260 --> 00:53:45,730 But actually it's it is happening because it is interrelated to what's happening with the with the landscape. 425 00:53:46,030 --> 00:53:54,129 When you see these aspects interact in a, in, in a complex system where you have only the zoo rules, 426 00:53:54,130 --> 00:54:02,320 I want to explore to what extent I can I can have this tree to have or not if we need to 427 00:54:02,320 --> 00:54:07,600 change some of the of the conditions or even if I make the environment even more complex, 428 00:54:08,470 --> 00:54:11,980 because right now they're only changing along the elevation of green. 429 00:54:12,370 --> 00:54:15,760 But if they have the changing, for example, precipitation, yeah, 430 00:54:15,930 --> 00:54:27,240 they have a certain precipitation and with and without the trade of because if you also have only one tree by one, a one part of the gradient. 431 00:54:27,310 --> 00:54:35,650 So it's it's all of these aspects that could be very fascinating to explore from the ecological point. 432 00:54:35,860 --> 00:54:40,810 So he designed five set of environments we have. 433 00:54:41,110 --> 00:54:46,840 And and one thing that grows really slow and I wanted to grow super fast with people, 434 00:54:47,200 --> 00:54:53,140 although there are different rates, you see that the more it is, it show the same pattern. 435 00:54:54,820 --> 00:55:04,300 So we remain drainage divide in the middle and some basins they call it like these drainage basins which are big. 436 00:55:04,720 --> 00:55:09,549 And then trying to see whether there is a pattern to what you see is that when 437 00:55:09,550 --> 00:55:15,400 the basically this slow growing one thing reached the highest diversity. 438 00:55:15,420 --> 00:55:24,309 Yeah. Wallis With the uplift the with uplift and is really cool because you see that the that like they show 439 00:55:24,310 --> 00:55:30,550 you before so this slow growing one thing is the one that they do have a the highest in they face. 440 00:55:30,760 --> 00:55:38,960 Yeah that's interesting because with the with a fast growing one you get very fast you get a steep green, 441 00:55:39,010 --> 00:55:42,489 very steep and then it's a plateau if they stick. 442 00:55:42,490 --> 00:55:45,730 The results with all of these lines have reached their maximum. 443 00:55:46,850 --> 00:55:53,050 If I find something that is well known across in Hollywood and in the meet the main effect. 444 00:55:53,800 --> 00:56:01,000 So you see that even in the in the fast or in the slow growing one, things you see like this. 445 00:56:01,000 --> 00:56:04,280 M.C. Oh, the bell shape. Yeah. So it's true. 446 00:56:04,300 --> 00:56:08,080 It's the highest diversity at elevation. 447 00:56:08,080 --> 00:56:12,040 So at this stage, all of the mountains have reached the maximum, okay. 448 00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:16,770 But is still the most of the species occur in the intermediate levels. 449 00:56:16,780 --> 00:56:21,459 Wow. You could rate. Yeah, it's. But in a way it makes sense, doesn't it? 450 00:56:21,460 --> 00:56:27,070 Because the more extreme, you know, the higher up you are, the more extreme the environment is. 451 00:56:27,070 --> 00:56:32,050 And then you need to be specialised and there's only one or two niches maybe available, 452 00:56:32,380 --> 00:56:37,170 whereas in the mid-range this many metres, so you get more or different. 453 00:56:37,390 --> 00:56:41,950 It could be also just because of dispersion, so it is easier to go downhill. 454 00:56:41,950 --> 00:56:47,530 There was a double to the middle elevation and the ones in the bottom just to claim a little bit too much. 455 00:56:48,580 --> 00:56:53,950 But it would be as good to compete in those environment preferred. 456 00:56:55,120 --> 00:56:58,030 So it will it will limit the ranges. 457 00:56:58,120 --> 00:57:05,389 Yeah, I think that's something we really need to train ourselves to, to keep in mind that it is the landscapes form as well. 458 00:57:05,390 --> 00:57:08,920 They put barriers in and that often isn't looked at. 459 00:57:08,920 --> 00:57:11,960 I think that it could be really think they there. 460 00:57:11,980 --> 00:57:22,030 I may have noticed. I don't know. I mean this to me is mind blowing because I only see it through my models and dots and these type of things, 461 00:57:22,030 --> 00:57:29,640 that this is something that if it could be put here like a like a 3D model, 462 00:57:29,710 --> 00:57:40,130 even this aspect of the having without plans and with drones protecting the land against erosion and then the sea bodies land without any legs. 463 00:57:40,150 --> 00:57:45,390 Yeah, exactly. You could. Yeah, that'd be really interesting I guess, to simulate that. 464 00:57:45,460 --> 00:57:53,020 Yeah. I don't know how to do it, but it would be it will be perhaps a nice way to visualise these. 465 00:57:53,860 --> 00:57:57,549 I do have a feedback. Oh, of course. Yes, that's very important. 466 00:57:57,550 --> 00:58:03,070 The feedback loop even between the life and that is very important. 467 00:58:03,070 --> 00:58:06,219 Yeah. That is the very crucial thing missing. Yeah. 468 00:58:06,220 --> 00:58:11,300 True. The environment influence life and evolution, but not the other way around. 469 00:58:12,040 --> 00:58:19,840 But it does so. Yeah. So that's your work in that, you know, life is cool, is good. 470 00:58:19,870 --> 00:58:26,770 Excellent. Yeah. Thank you. I'll leave you a piece now. Thank you to thank you so much for your time. 471 00:58:26,790 --> 00:58:37,209 That was really, really interesting. We have covered again quite a lot of ground on Buckland and the 18th century to Darwin and Huxley in the 19th 472 00:58:37,210 --> 00:58:45,250 century to all current understanding and modelling of life processes in tandem with geological processes. 473 00:58:46,270 --> 00:58:52,780 As a random personal contribution to this, I want to share an object with you from my own collections. 474 00:58:53,410 --> 00:58:59,740 It is small and lies comfortably and surprisingly heavy in my hand. 475 00:59:00,070 --> 00:59:11,350 A regular x shaped object that looks like it is made from unfired rough clay, quite grainy with a large round hole on one end. 476 00:59:11,590 --> 00:59:16,450 And you can see that the object is hollow and has very thick walls. 477 00:59:17,020 --> 00:59:26,800 So this is a fossilised brute cell of a species, probably of solitary B on the Canary Island of flooded and tura, which is now extinct. 478 00:59:27,040 --> 00:59:34,479 Due to the climate and the environment having become progressively warmer and drier built into muddy cliffs by the B, 479 00:59:34,480 --> 00:59:39,010 this has been baked and turned into stone over thousands of years. 480 00:59:39,250 --> 00:59:47,740 Erosion and wind now uncovering such brood cells in the millions from ancient cliffs and dunes covered by more recent sand. 481 00:59:48,460 --> 00:59:50,830 But what intrigued me is when you look again. 482 00:59:51,130 --> 00:59:58,060 There appears to be a second smaller brood cell looking much fresher and greener within the fossilised brood cell. 483 00:59:58,690 --> 01:00:08,740 I only realised that when I took it from the container I had kept it in and an orange, black jewel of a wasp emerged. 484 01:00:09,610 --> 01:00:16,689 Entomologist James Hogan here at the museum kindly identified the wasp for me from a photograph and confirmed 485 01:00:16,690 --> 01:00:24,010 that this present day loss had in degree used the fossilised bee brood cell to build its own home inside. 486 01:00:24,610 --> 01:00:27,909 So it's a nice circle and animal. 487 01:00:27,910 --> 01:00:32,860 Thousands of years ago, using geological features, muddy cliffs, 488 01:00:32,860 --> 01:00:41,740 sand and organic material such as its own saliva to build a brute cell, which then fossilised over thousands of years. 489 01:00:41,890 --> 01:00:51,460 In effect, turning into a conveniently shaped stone with an opening which is then used by a contemporary Canary Island wasp as the perfect home. 490 01:00:51,880 --> 01:00:55,810 But the final word should be about this wonderful place. 491 01:00:55,940 --> 01:00:59,080 The Oxford University Museum of Natural History. 492 01:00:59,530 --> 01:01:07,330 It is indeed attempting the impossible to fit how we understand the natural world into one building. 493 01:01:07,690 --> 01:01:16,300 Natural history museums and a 19th century were all about knowledge and animals, including humans during the 20th century up to today. 494 01:01:16,510 --> 01:01:22,030 They are mainly about palaeontology and fossils, and dinosaurs are, of course, the biggest draw. 495 01:01:22,900 --> 01:01:28,600 How do you think in this amazing museum that has witnessed so many changes in 496 01:01:28,600 --> 01:01:34,630 the sciences and how we see the natural world in its 160 years plus history? 497 01:01:35,290 --> 01:01:44,950 How can we ensure a balance between the mineral plant and animal kingdoms showing them and all their rich interlinking connexions? 498 01:01:45,430 --> 01:01:50,980 Is that even possible? That's what the display is all about. 499 01:01:51,400 --> 01:01:55,059 When we were chatting about 3D models, 500 01:01:55,060 --> 01:02:09,490 Eastbourne mentioned artists and art and how it helps with visualising and displaying complex data and relationships. 501 01:02:09,760 --> 01:02:14,520 And this hasn't really changed since the 18th 19th century. 502 01:02:14,530 --> 01:02:23,439 It is still the case to me. Finding out about biodiverse objects was one step, maybe in the right direction, 503 01:02:23,440 --> 01:02:31,960 and not only finding out about their stories about science, but also sharing them with you. 504 01:02:32,230 --> 01:02:38,680 And I'm really interested and the museum is very interested to hear what you think. 505 01:02:38,950 --> 01:02:42,340 What are your favourite biodiverse objects? 506 01:02:42,910 --> 01:02:51,460 So please do get in touch via Twitter, Facebook, email and let us know. 507 01:02:51,820 --> 01:02:58,120 It would be wonderful to continue the conversation and to find more biodiverse objects.