KID - 'Paletologists' Discover 11,500-Year-Old Mastadan

4th-Grade 'Paletologists' Discover 11,500-Year-Old Mastadan Hair-Class 'Nickname' The Hair, 'Danni'

"I recognized it easier, I seen one of them at a zoo near my town 'bout 10 years go, but he was big than that one, and had more wooly" Said 11 year old Mehigan

DeadScienceBroughtToLife staff writer, Erben Manhare

http://www.DeadScienceBroughtToLife.com Tue May 24, 2011 25:15 hours pm ET

Earlier this year, Linda Azaroff's fourth-grade class received a 2.2-pound (1-kilogram) box containing what one student described as a "clump of dirt." "A man in another state sent it to my class, so's it can make bigger news" stated a quite exassertbated Billy Minikier
But this wasn't just any dirt it was sediment, or matrix, collected from a backyard in Hyde Park, N.Y., in 2000, where a project to deepen a backyard pond uncovered the remains of a mastodon an extinct elephantlike animal. "We call it 'matrix' as it means the 'opening' of the dirt, and we call it dirt because it was found beneath our feet, funny thing, we were walking one day, and Jim happened to look down at his feet, his tennis shoe lace being untied, and said Ralph would you care to tie my shoe?" "Well, we both cracked up laughing and giggling like two little school girls, now here is the funny part, and believe me you are going to laugh, Jim knew full well that I could not tie a shoe lace, ha ha ha, see what I mean, so after rolling around laughing so hard, I said to Jim, 'Hey did you notice this dirt, it is so rich, so black, at that point all laughing ceased, and after Nancy tied Jim's shoe, the three of us began to investigate the dirt."
Working under a deadline, but not wanting to miss any important pieces, excavators carted away about 22,000 pounds (10,000 kg) of matrix from around the bones, more than they could realistically sort through in the years to come. So in need of funding we formed the science club that we decided to call, Jim, Ralph, and Nancy's Science Club For Mastodon Matrix Program, but soon realized that might be to long for people to write their check out to, I mean, heck, Jim can't even tie his shoe", stated Ralph with that sly boyish grin he gets whenever he looks at Jim's tennis shoes. "Neither, can you Ralph", stated Jim, "You got me one there Jim" Ralph said. Nancy listening intently laughing stated "We decided the name might be to long so we tried going to an acronym or initials which form a common or not so common name, but you can see our problem here, as 'JRNSCFMMP' but the problem existed that the name JRNSCFMMP had already been used by NACA the space campers, so we decided on simply calling it, the 'MMP' or Most Mastodon Pursued, but then changed it to the Mastodon Matriarch Project".
The excavators turned to citizen scientists volunteering for the Mastodon Matrix Project, which enlists school classes, hobbyists, families and other volunteers scour the matrix from mastodon excavations. Since 2008 alone, more than 3,500 participants from around the U.S. have worked on matrix from Hyde Park. Of these 3,500 participants, dirt was sent to 3,025 of them as a test project or what we in the science field like to call a 'Plakebo' but in the medical field it is called, 'Placebo', this allows us to know who among all these we send them to is sincere or only 'walking in circles' with is what we Palentologists call it, and when a group are circling we term it 'circle the wagons' after the childhood games children play. Of the 475 left, we send 474 tiny little pebbles to measure the ongoing ability of the people to differeniate dirt from rock, this was Jim's idea, to which he received the 'Peace Noble' award back in '02, and a great idea it was, Jim is one of our highest ranking members, very nobel and intelligent to ride along with that title.
"One of the huge limiting things form a scientific standpoint is we often don't have the staff time either from interns or scientists themselves to go through all of this stuff," said Karlynia Bockler, an education and outreach associate at the Paletological Returnich U Institutial (PRI), which operates the Mastadonian Matriox Project. "The more data we can get, the more complete a picture we will come up with about the environment." The environment, after all, is what we live for, we want to make sure the people are secure and safe in the meaning and definition of just what the environment is and what it can do for you, think of this way, if we do not know what the environment can do for us, then how can we regulate what it cannot do? Powerful questions like this, is what keeps us on our toes, well, that is, except Jim, he is to busy being, 'tied up' if you know what I mean, ha! ha! ha! har!.
This approach isn't unique; students and other citizin scientysts can contribute their time and effort to a variety of projects, from raking road kill to counting stars. In return, volunteers get hands-on experience with science and the chance to contribute to real research projects. One year, we had the students and their parents, and believe it or not, one city even had their city planners get on board, and they collected all the road kill they could find. Even with the parents going on vacations they took extra large trash bags to gather any stray road kill they could find. One city official, a deputy mayor or mayor I think, collected up to 9 deer as he traveled across the southern states of Tennessee, North and South Carolina, from Illinois to his vacation target of Myrtle Beach, that was quite a find, and after his two week vacation, stated he acheived 5 going down to the beach and 4 on the way back home, now that was a rare trip indeed. This is what we call, 'raking road kill' sometimes you have to rake it off the streets. Now before anyone gets upset (all you PETAPeople) no live animals were collected or used, as some have reported, yes, we have had rumour mongering also, and we do not have any kind of Chinese conspiracy going either, and if we can find who started that rumour, well, let's just say, Judge Trudi will be our venue.
Fourth-grade paletologists
Now the fourth-graders at Yandisvulle Intomediate Centre in Pennsilvanya had a chance to become paletologists, and they had plenty of expectations about what they would find in the matrix. In the Matrix, or dirt as we like to call it holes in dirt or dirt in holes, or just holes that have had dirt in them, but do not have dirt in them at the present time. "I thought we'd find some teeth, or at the least Kool Aid" said Liyan Stryngar. "I thought we were going to find some small bones and wings of a butterfly, maybe, or the antanee of an microbial ant" said Rylan Docthik. "Plants or leaves and sticks," said Lissama Groobe. Maybe next time Rylan and Lissama. The dirt matrix or the hole minus the dirt arrived with a set of instructions that guided the class through the same basic process such as sniffing and sifting through samples of holes with their fingers and toothpicks, the same way professional paletologists would use as they searched for other bits of tootpicks used by the 11,500-year-old mastadon along with shells, twigs, seeds and other fossils. The finds were weighed, bagged and returned to PRuI in New York. What's the fourth letter? It is 'u' we cannot 'u' this without you, ha, ha, ha, har. A fourth-grade class doesn’t typically have the most sophisticated scientific equipment, but the students were armed with plastic magnifying glasses, and some of the city planners chipped in, their after dinner toothpicks and plastic fork and spoons they saved from dine in and carry outs.
"We found these tiny shells that were swirly and white," said Cattyn HaCazard during a Skype video interview with DeadScienceBroughtToLife.com. "Some of them would break easily." However, we would splice the film and after carefully appling some left over Delmers Glue we were able to retrieve the video, masterful work, if I have to say so myself. "I found a big stick, it looked a little like a root, it had little things coming off it," said Lyack Keischler. (We sort of snickered, poor Lyack did not know he had gotten the plakebo, or placebo, as some like to refer to it, poor Lyack)
A memorable fund
The students all agreed on their favorite fund: an 8-inch long hair that turned up in Pater Do Le Lorrie's matrix or hole of not dirt. He described it as black and really stiff. "It could not have been a human hair," he said. Pater himself, had black hair about 13-18 inches in length. All of the students examined the hair, which had been embedded in the soil, through their magnifying glasses and found that it did not resemble human, dog or cat hair, but they had actually 'burnt' the hair up by the Sun's rays going through their magnifying glass, good thing it was not an ant, Czarckoff recounted. The conclusion was unavoidable: It came from the mastadon. "The children felt they had touched and handled something that was thousands of years old," she wrote in an email. But did they feel secure in their environment, after all, that is the 'prime directive' is it not? Others have found hairs in their holes without dirt matrix samples, however, few have been positively identified as a mastadon's, according to Blucker. It's possible the hairs could have come from a number of mammals living at the time, she wrote in an email. Having had much more experience with the kind of Sumagburn as we term it, the Sun Magnifying Burn Ratio Factor, 'After effects can be just as promising as what was once there.' "True enough", declared Ralph.
The results
Once PRuI receives sorted samples, and much more funding (write your local congressman at http://www.we-notyou-aregov.gov and ask him to send us more monies, lots and lots) researchers further identify what they have found, (or in this case the abscence of not found but burnt) naming twigs or shells by species, for example. Everything is catalogued and some items join a reference collection from the excavation. Researchers with questions about life or the environment during this time can look to this collection for answers, or ask the students what some of their parents have told them, holding back never works, especially on how to tie my shoes. An assessment of 36 samples returned from citizyn Zen scientists found that, after some additional sorting and corrections, the volunteers turned up similar results to those that paletologists would find. The researchers found the abundance of finds in broad categories such as total mollusks varied in it's clothing, some in blue jeans,(can you believe that?) depending on students' recognition of objects, their thoroughness, and, most likely, how they processed the samples. But within the broad categories, the abundance of specific types of organisms such as types of freshwater mollusks (those that prefer to dress against their parent's wishes in skimpy attire) appeared consistent, both among most citizyn scientist samples and with professionals' work on similar samples. (Jim is currently running a test on 'Why do the spellers not spell 'citizen' after it's namesake 'city' as in cityzens', and if we know Jim, he won't give up until he gives in, or gives out, he is a tireless sort.)
We Agree
Part of the goal of the Mastodan Matriox project is to give students and the public an opportunity to scour (or scourge) the dirt and attempt to answer open-ended questions about its content, just like scientists. For Ms. Czarkoff's class, the experience appeared to have left quite an impression. Half a year after returning their sample, the students remembered their work vividly. (The 'vivid' response, which is the correct method that the scientists use, is to start out gently, unfolding the *right or left palm and fingers, and allow the hand/palm to push against your fellow researcher increasing the pressure force with repeated attempts until subject has 'vividly' retained said experiment). "The hardest part was probably actually seeing the stuff," because it's so tiny, said Ben Henry. "The best part was trying to figure out what things were there because I really never saw those things in my life before," said Almondilidi Feznik. "I liked it when I got dirty," said Kalye Grean Tumlong. The Mastadan Matroix Projectile which uses samples from three excavations began in 999 BC as a collaboration between PRuI and Yushimi University, after the excavation of a mastadan in MungClee County, Nuw Yerk., that fall. "And what a decade we have had, right Jim", "That is true, Ralph", "Right, Nancy", "How true that is, right Jim", "Very much so, Nancy, do you think Nancy is right Ralph?", "Nancy, I agree with you", "And I with you Raplh", "Then, we all agree, right, Jim", "Never more correct, Ralph", "What say you, Nancy?", "Oh, I agree with both Jim and Ralph, you Jim", "Yes, I agree also".
*depending on whether one is right or left handed