色吧亚洲

In studying dinosaur discards, CU 色吧亚洲 scientist Karen Chin has gained expertise recently honored with the Bromery Award and detailed in a new children鈥檚 book

It was never Karen Chin鈥檚 plan to become the poop lady.

In fact, she started out as a naturalist, leading national park visitors on journeys of discovery via tiny, iridescent insect wings and soaring, ancient conifers, and everything in between.

鈥淚 wasn鈥檛 just interested in mammals or birds or plants; I was interested in how everything fit together, even the soil and the insects and the fungi and everything like that,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 realized that dung, it has such an ignominious reputation, but it really reflects the transfer of carbon resources throughout the ecosystem, which powers everything.

鈥淐arbon resources are like money in the natural world鈥攖hey鈥檙e how things are transferred back and forth. How carbon goes back into the ecosystem is very important, and dung provides a record of that. Fossil dung, which I study, provides a record of how that happened in the prehistoric world.鈥�

From her initial curiosity about ecosystems to finding clues in dung, Chin, a University of Colorado 色吧亚洲 professor of geological sciences, has become a preeminent authority on dinosaur diets and the resulting dung that, some 75 million years later, is called a coprolite because it鈥檚 now fossilized.

In recognition of her contributions to science, not only was she recently recognized with the Geological Society of America鈥檚 , but her story is featured in the newly published children鈥檚 book 鈥溙齌he book recently was awarded the National Science Teaching Association's award for听.

The book details her journey from being a child who loved nature but not dinosaurs, and who learned to love science from her father, to a researcher and educator who emphasizes that science is for everyone and open to all.

鈥淚 was very lucky because my father was a scientist, so I, myself, never doubted that I could be one, too,鈥� she explains. 鈥淚 could watch him and see that he did well. When you鈥檙e a child, you鈥檙e not thinking of discrimination so much, but now I know that he likely faced some. But growing up I thought, 鈥楳y dad鈥檚 a scientist, so I can be one.鈥�

鈥淚 realize how fortunate I was, because not everyone who has brown skin has a scientist in their family. So, for children who have aspirations to be a scientist and maybe don鈥檛 have scientist role models in their family, if they see me, a scientist of color, I hope that tells them it鈥檚 a possibility for them, too.鈥�

Poop wasn鈥檛 the plan

But back to the poop: It was not the original plan.

Growing up in California, she was mesmerized by the natural world, memorizing the names of plants and insects and spending hours quietly watching the subtle changes in the life all around her. Her father, a former Tuskegee Airman, was a materials scientist who supported her love for science, even though women in science were few, and women of color even fewer.

In college, she dreamed of working for the National Park Service and before graduating was hired as a seasonal interpretive ranger at Kings Canyon National Park in California. They had no official women鈥檚 uniforms when she received the job offer.

After working as a park interpreter for several summer seasons, she realized she wanted to get deeper into the science and accepted a job preparing dinosaur bones. One day, writing exhibit text for her boss, noted paleontologist Jack Horner, she learned that people had discovered fossil feces 鈥渁nd I thought that was the silliest thing,鈥� Chin recalls. 鈥淗ow could soft material fossilize? I ran to Jack and said, 鈥楧id you know people say they found fossil dung?鈥�

鈥淛ack is kind of taciturn and he said, 鈥榊ep, and I found some, too.鈥� I asked, 鈥榃here? Where?鈥� He showed me what he thought was fossil dung, and studying those fossils turned into my doctoral dissertation. When I made a thin section of it鈥擨 ground it very, very thin so I could look at it through a light microscope鈥擨 could see plant cells from 75 million years ago that had gone through the dinosaur. That blew my mind, and I realized that this was a real window on dinosaur-plant interactions and the world they lived in.鈥�

Studying coprolites is one of the more challenging areas of paleontology because unlike, say, vertebrate paleontology鈥攊n which scientists find a bone, it鈥檚 obviously a bone and they can tell you the dinosaur to which it belonged鈥攃oprolites look like rocks. Often, there鈥檚 nothing obviously indicating that it came out the back end of a dinosaur tens of millions of years ago, Chin says.

鈥淔irst I have to say, 鈥業 suspect this is a coprolite鈥� and then offer the evidence for why I think it is,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hen I need to explain what it can tell us about the ancient world, even though I may not be able to tell you who produced the feces.

鈥淚 see coprolite study as high-risk, high-reward research because it鈥檚 challenging and you don鈥檛 know whether some avenues you explore will tell you that much. Because it is challenging, I think people have shied away from studying coprolites, but you can discover some really amazing things.鈥�

Her research has included finding fossilized muscle tissue in a tyrannosaur coprolite (from an older relative of T. rex), a hugely exciting discovery, and revising what had previously been theorized about the diets of herbivorous dinosaurs. Studying coprolites revealed that at certain times of year some duck-billed dinosaurs ate wood, which doesn鈥檛 seem especially nutritious and Chin initially interpreted the woody content to be an inescapable consequence of eating conifers with tiny leaves.

However, Chin realized that the wood tissues were different because they鈥檇 been rotted by fungus before the dinosaur ingested them, 鈥渟o I needed to revise my interpretation,鈥� Chin says. 鈥淒inosaurs could have obtained cellulose from rotted wood, but if they were after cellulose, why not just eat leaves? Because we found these coprolites in the same horizon as nesting grounds, I hypothesized that when the dinosaurs were reproducing, they changed their diet to incorporate more protein. By feeding on rotted wood, which has lots of insects and crustaceans and snails hanging out in it, they were accessing a predictable source of protein.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 know if we鈥檒l ever be able to definitively prove this hypothesis, but the discovery was really exciting and has changed our views of dinosaurs. For a long time, we thought of herbivorous dinosaurs as only eating leaves, but through the coprolites we know they sometimes ate rotted wood and ingested invertebrates.鈥�

鈥楨veryone鈥檚 welcome in science鈥�

Not only is Chin recognized for her expertise in coprolites, but for her rare gift of drawing even the most science agnostic into fascinating prehistoric tableaus to roam with dinosaurs. Plus, dinosaurs and poop?

鈥淭hat鈥檚 the perfect marriage of two things kids find fascinating,鈥� says Oregon-based children鈥檚 author Jane Kurtz, who wrote 鈥淭he Clues Are in the Poo鈥� in collaboration with Chin. 鈥淚 remember thinking, 鈥榃ouldn鈥檛 it be fun to do something with dinosaur poo?鈥� Karen is quoted in a lot of other sources I鈥檇 been reading for a book I wrote about two early paleontologists who got in a bitter fight about identifying and naming Brontosaurus. So, just in that way that curious people do, and writers do, I was poking around and all roads seemed to lead to Karen.鈥�

Kurtz emailed Chin about writing a children鈥檚 book based on her life, that would celebrate science and curiosity and be the book that Kurtz wishes she鈥檇 had as a girl who loved bugs and frogs and needed a science role model.

When Kurtz asked Chin how she felt about possibly publishing a picture book that would feature her, she was initially reticent to promote herself, but added that 鈥溾�橧 know that young people of color really need to see themselves in this field鈥�,鈥� Kurtz recalls. 鈥淪o, she addressed that straight on, and I thought, wow, perfect, she鈥檚 absolutely right, and we鈥檙e in a time of children鈥檚 books where people are being very careful to think about voices that have been left out.

鈥淚 told her that I felt I was left out of the science conversation as child, and I have a feeling there were lots and lots of people like me. I think everyone has the capacity to be fascinated by science. There are lots of books about dinosaurs, but there aren鈥檛 that many books that focus on how we know what we know about dinosaurs. To me, that鈥檚 the really intriguing question.鈥�

That question also animates Chin鈥檚 passion for science and science education. She acknowledges that a lot of kids grow up loving dinosaurs and wanting to be paleontologists, which might explain why she often has English and physics and language majors in her upper-level paleobiology classes.

鈥淚 try to teach it so that everybody can get something out of it, but I also recognize that there are not that many jobs in paleontology and I think students realize that, too,鈥� Chin says. 鈥淪o, I tell the students that my goal is that if I run into you three years from now in 色吧亚洲 and I ask you a very technical thing鈥攆or example, what kind of animal is a bryozoan?鈥擨 won鈥檛 expect you to remember some of those details.听But I do hope you learned 鈥榟ow to learn鈥� and that you are committed to lifelong learning.

鈥淚 think one of the most important things I can teach is science literacy, so that when students see something鈥攕uch as an article that makes a claim鈥攖hey should be asking, 鈥極K, where鈥� the evidence?鈥� and thinking about whether the article presents a reasonable conclusion. You don鈥檛 have to pursue a career in science to be a part of it. Everyone鈥檚 welcome in science.鈥�

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