In December 2005, National Geographic magazine ran a story with gripping  computer-generated graphics of extinct marine reptiles, such as the nothosaur above. The story was six years in the making. © National Geographic

While weaving through the crowds of paleontologists at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology’s annual meeting in Austin, Texas today I had one of those “blast from the past” moments. It happened when I ran into Robin O’Keefe, an expert on plesiosaurs, a group of ocean-going reptiles that look a lot like the Loch Ness monster. I hadn’t seen Robin in six years or so, and seeing him reminded me of the long chain of events that led to the creation of National Geographic’s Sea Monsters IMAX movie that is now playing in theaters.

It all started way back in 1999 when the magazine decided it wanted to do a story on marine reptiles, the sea monsters that ruled the ocean while the dinosaurs ruled the land during the Mesozoic era (248 to 65 million years ago). This happened largely because we had just run a series of dinosaur stories and I felt that it was time to get other life forms into our paleontology mix. I convinced the Editor-in-Chief that we should break tradition and prepare all the artwork using state-of-the art computer graphics. This would be the first time that the magazine did not use paint to recreate prehistoric creatures. One argument I used was that after the success of Jurassic Park in bringing dinosaurs to life our audience might be enjoy seeing sea monsters in as realistic a way as possible, as if a natural history photographer had gone out and photographed them alive. The other argument was that computer graphics-generated animals would allow us to repurpose the animals for other media, including television, movies, the web, and books.

One of the first things we did was search our records to see what scientists National Geographic’s Committee for Research and Exploration had funded to do research on life in the oceans during the Mesozoic era. Quite a few names came up, including Olivier Rieppel, Betsy Nichols, Hans-Dieter Sues, Ryosuke Motani, Zulma Gasparini, and Robin O’Keefe. Our researchers, photo editors, and writers descended on these folks like a swarm of bees to get the project off to a good start and didn’t let up until our magazine article was finally printed as a cover story in December of 2005.

Right: In the speaker's preparation room at the SVP meeting in Austin, Robin O'Keefe points to a CT image of the gut contents of a plesiosaur that contains the remains of a juvenile icthyosaur, a dolphin-like marine reptile. Evidence of marine reptiles preying on other marine reptiles is extremely rare. Photo by author.

Robin had the distinction of being one of the first scientists we roped into helping us recreate digital models of the marine reptiles we selected. He and I flew to a computer graphics studio in Utah to check progress on the project. He spent a day or two helping the computer graphics guys input limits to the range of motion of limbs, spines, necks, and tails. Little did we know at that time how much work it was going to be before we had images we could print in National Geographic. It was arduous for everyone involved, but I have to say, looking back, that it was a great experience. The article was well-received and many of the art pieces won awards, including the difficult-to-win Lanzendorf Prize for paleo art from the Soceity of Vertebrate Paleontology. And it is also rewarding to see that those sea monster models that Robin and I worked on in Utah, even though they underwent many technical evolutions, have now fulfilled their full mission by appearing in the National Geographic Society’s full suite of media offerings, which includes print, television, the web, books, and now, seven years after the original concept was initiated, an IMAX film.

Did you see the movie? I’d love to hear your comments.

Right: Chang Mee-Mann and the author at the SVP annual meeting in Austin, October 18, 2007. Mee-Mann’s role in promoting excellence in Chinese paleontology deserves wider recognition. Photo by author.

It is great to see a large Chinese delegation here in Austin at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology’s annual meeting. There’s clearly a lot of good science going on in China and I would venture to say that the spirit of cooperation and collaboration between Chinese scientists and scientists from other countries has never been better.

It is a little known story outside dinosaur circles that much of this success should be credited to veteran paleontologist Chang Mee-Mann, who is also attending this year. When Ji Qiang, Xu Xing, Zhou Zhonghe (all National Geographic Society grantees) and other Chinese scientists hit the paleontology news scene with feathered dinosaur and bird fossils in the late 1990s, the stage had already been set by Mee-Mann for a new generation of Chinese paleontologists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paeloanthropology (IVPP) to play on the world stage as equals with their foreign colleagues.

As far back as 1987, when she participated in the Sino-Canadian Dinosaur Project with Phil Currie, Dale Russell, and others, Mee-Mann was convinced that Chinese scientists deserved center stage when it came to Chinese fossil material. Since then, she has pushed for scientific excellence at the IVPP and thus paved the way for a new generation of now-internationally recognized Chinese scientists. But while she herself has not been in the media spotlight, she was by no means quiet or inactive. She was Director of the IVPP and became a member of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences. And she did all this while continuing her own research on the evolution of fish (for which she received a National Geographic grant in 2000). I can say that National Geographic members have benefited greatly from the efforts of Chang Mee-Mann through the many stories we’ve been able to print on Chinese fossil treasures. Thank you, Mee-Mann.

Dr. Zahi Hawass reveals the mummified remains of Pharaoh Tutankhamun to the media before it was CT scanned in 2005. Photo by Kenneth Garrett.

Pharaoh Tutankhamun will soon be on display, according to Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. Fortunately this will occur within the tomb itself and under state-of-the-art climatic control. God knows where they are going to place this in Tut’s tomb (it is one of the smallest ones in the Valley of the Kings) and manage to squeeze in a good portion of the nine thousand tourists that may visit DAILY. Is that really 4.8 seconds per tourist? Someone, please check my math and tell me I’m wrong! Anyway, if anyone can pull it off it is Dr. Hawass.

Amazed as I am with the Tut situation, that’s not why I’m writing. I’m writing because of a concern for mummies in general. I attended the Mummy Congress in the Canary Islands last February. What became clear to me at the conference was that while some of the Egyptian pharaohs have the luxury of being encapsulated in wonderful Getty-designed display cabinets in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, thousands of other mummies, or should I say, dead people, are stored in horrible conditions all over the world. Many of them are crumbling to nothing. And for what? One might wonder why we dig them up if we cannot protect them for scientific study.

Well, one reason is that if they’re not dug up they’ll be covered over with a parking lot or be weathered into oblivion by sandstorms in some godforsaken desert. The big problem is that many places where mummies are found do not have the glamour appeal and huge tourist industry that Egypt has. When was the last time you went to Xinjiang, China or Arica in Chile, two places that have some of the coolest mummies on the planet? Scientists in places like these work in not-so-great conditions and do the best they can to preserve the mummies. But without big budgets it is difficult to give the mummies the attention they deserve as part of our world heritage.

Right: Johan Reinhard in the Andes with the mummy of an Inca child. These mummies are unique records of our past. Photo by Maria Stenzel.

Are the mummies actually worth the cost of preserving them? Of course they are. They are our ancestors, a unique record of our past. And there is so much to be learned from them. Alan Wilson and his colleagues just showed how a year or two of diet may be read from strands of hair from the mummified remains of Inca children. Geneticist Spencer Wells (National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence) and many others are extracting DNA from mummies to study human migration. These are just two examples of hundreds of studies, many related to disease prevention, which mummy scientists are involved in.

If mummies are so important why not do more to save them? UNESCO can designate World Heritage sites  to preserve the past, why not extend the protection to mummies? How about a UNIMF, a United Nations International Mummy Fund? That may not fly, but how about a more grassroots approach? It is almost Halloween. What if between now and next year we organized an Adopt-a-Mummy campaign? Get schools involved, the whole bit. However we do it, we need to raise awareness of the problem. We need to find ways to get money to where it is needed most.

Right: Zeresenay Alemseged with a reconstruction of Selam, a juvenile australopith he discovered in Ethiopia.

I’ve known Zeresenay Alemseged for about five years now. When he first came to National Geographic headquarters I was convinced that Ethiopia was finally coming into its own regarding the development of native-born scientists who could talk to the public about the country’s amazing paleoanthropological riches. He was articulate in several languages, highly trained in paleontology, and most promising of all, wanted to rise above the squabbling which has embroiled so many scientists working in Ethiopia. Much credit should go to Dr. Donald Johanson of Arizona State University’s Institute of Human Origins and Yves Coppens of  the College of France in Paris for seeing Zeray through the academic process (not to underplay Zeresenay’s own ferocious tenacity). He went on to become a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2005 and I had the pleasure of working with him extensively in developing and ultimately writing the cover story of National Geographic’s November 2006 issue. I was very pleased to see that the TED conference featured him as a speaker. His talk was excellent and can be found on their website. To see Zeresenay's flawless performance on the world stage of the TED conference made me feel that Ethiopian scientists have now really arrived.

Bravo also for Sileshi Semaw of the Stone Age Institute of Indiana State University and Yohannes Haile-Selassie for similar achievements. Both are National Geographic grantees and their recent discoveries are featured in the anthropology section (in Ethiopia) on our National Geographic in Action Map. Check it out.

Above: Hiram Bingham photographed this excavation of a human skeleton in a cave at Machu Picchu during the Yale University and National Geographic Society-funded expedtion of 1912.

In the last few days two major contentious situations involving estranged antiquities were more or less resolved. I’m talking about the agreement between the Italian Cultural Ministry and the J. Paul Getty Museum of Los Angeles which arranged the return to Italy of 40 artifacts and the agreement between Yale University and the Government of Peru to return what Hiram Bingham III collected at Machu Picchu almost one hundred years ago.

National Geographic gave its first archaeological grant to Bingham in 1912 to fund his return to Machu Picchu and continued to fund him for several years. What the Society got out of it was a highly popular April 1913 National Geographic Magazine article and a longstanding fruitful relationship with Peru and scientists working there. What Yale got was over 380 museum quality specimens and thousands of other artifacts that it displayed at the Peabody Museum or used for research.

It wasn’t until recently that National Geographic became aware that the Machu Picchu collection at the Yale Peabody Museum was a loan and should have been returned to Peru. Terry Garcia, an executive vice president of the Society, investigated the terms of the agreement with Peru and Yale and one could say he was responsible for triggering a lengthy cascade of events that finally led to the recent agreement.

It took seven years for Yale to come around. Why? Admittedly there are complexities in all cases involving antiquities. In the Getty case, for example, the 40 objects came from different sources and the Getty wasn’t about to hand over objects worth millions without checking to make sure of the facts. But still, it appears that Italy had to threaten to break relations with the Getty Museum before there was action. And Peru had to threaten to sue Yale.

There are numerous other examples of countries that have been less successful in retrieving their heritage, despite threats. The “Elgin” Parthenon Marbles are still in London, aren’t they? And Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, still has not managed the return of the Nefertiti bust from Berlin. These prominent cases may be resolved some day through agreements like the ones reported above.

Another controversial case involves the Persepolis Fortification Archive (see map), a collection of thousands of cuneiform tablets from Iran that are in the U.S. for research. Victims of a 1997 Hamas terror bombing in Jerusalem argue that since Hamas was funded by Iran, the tablets should be seized and sold to raise the $400 million in damages awarded by a court (with Iran not present to contest). National Geographic is funding the scanning of the tablets to facilitate their return to Iran as soon as possible, but at this moment Iran is fearful that its cultural heritage, loaned in good faith to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in 1936, will never come home.

All of these situations have a common denominator: the artifacts left their country of origin. In some cases, this occurred illegally and in others there were clear agreements in place. The UNESCO convention (Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property) establishes guidelines which should, in principal, protect the cultural heritage of countries from illegal antiquities trade going forward. There are still problems implementing this, as the Getty situation illustrates, but what about cultural property that left countries illegally or under murky circumstances before 1972, when the convention was ratified? If 114 ratifying countries now agree that “…the transfer of ownership of cultural property is one of the main causes of the impoverishment of the cultural heritage of the countries of origin of such property,” then perhaps more countries and institutions holding such “transferred” artifacts should be more helpful in facilitating the return of cultural material when it is requested.

If you know of any cultural material that should really get back home, let’s hear about it. If you have pix, send them to stonesbonesnthings@gmail.com.