Key

Players

Dr. Ian Miller

Home Town
Denver

Current Profession
Chief Science & Innovation Officer, National Geographic Society

Profession during Snowmass Discovery
Curator of Paleontology and Chair of the Earth Sciences at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

How did you become involved and what was your role with the Snowmass Ice Age Discovery?
I helped lead the project with Kirk Johnson — I was there through the entire project! 

What is your favorite memory from the Snowmass Ice Age Discovery?
That’s an impossible question! But, for these purposes I’ll share “being able to run a project that was being watched by the globe (literally!) with my family (almost all members of my family worked on the project) and close colleagues.” 

How did the Snowmass Ice Age Discovery impact your career or your life?
It propelled my thinking about how to organize and run a huge project. I had the opportunity to do this again at DMNS a couple of times and it in no uncertain terms led to my eventual hire at National Geographic! 

Is there anything else you would like to share about your experience with the Discovery? (Exciting research outcomes, other personal experiences, anything else you feel is important to your story)
The science that came out of the project was phenomenal and is still leading to new work even today. Even though this is happening, there is still SO much to be learned by studying this incredible site! 

Dr. Joe Sertich

What is your Hometown?
None

What is your profession currently?
Paleontologist

What was your profession during the Snowmass Ice Age Excavation? (2010-2011)
DMNS Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology

How did you become involved and what was your role with the Snowmass Ice Age Discovery?
Joined the DMNS team in May 2011 as a new curator and one of the project leaders. Previously, my experience was in the discovery and excavations of large dinosaur fossils, so I was tasked with leading the safe extraction of the enormous quantity of bones from the site. After the excavation, I led the research team studying the animals discovered at the site, leading a publication of all known vertebrates recovered, from tiny fish and voles to huge mastodon and mammoth.

What is your favorite memory from the Snowmass Ice Age Discovery?
The excavation was incredibly stressful because of time limits imposed by the construction project and the scale of the excavation. My favorite memory is the huge upwelling of support to save the fossils and the scientific knowledge preserved alongside them. Hundreds of volunteers, scientists, artists, politicians, members of the media, and others rallied around a common goal and worked together.

How did the Snowmass Ice Age Discovery impact your career or your life?
This was my first huge excavation under such immense pressure. I was able to learn valuable lessons at Snowmass that I was able to apply to large-scale campaigns to discover dinosaurs all around the world. No challenge was too large after Snowmass.

Is there anything else you would like to share about your experience with the Discovery? (Exciting research outcomes, other personal experiences, anything else you feel is important to your story)
The story of Snowmass is still just beginning. There are still thousands of unstudied fossils and piles of data. Plus, the site still preserves 90% of the fossils, as only about 10% of the area of the ancient lake was excavated. It is a 100,000-year-old time capsule waiting for new generations to make their own discoveries.

Dr. Gussie Maccracken

What is your Hometown?
Lancaster, OH

What is your profession currently?
Curator of Paleobotany, Denver Museum of Nature & Science

What was your profession during the Snowmass Ice Age Excavation? (2010-2011)
Intern #9

How did you become involved and what was your role with the Snowmass Ice Age Discovery?
I was a paleobotany intern with the Denver Museum of Nature & Science while I was a student at Colorado College. In 2011 I graduated and drove up to Snowmass the next day to start an internship at Snowmastodon.

What is your favorite memory from the Snowmass Ice Age Discovery?
My favorite memory was of one evening, watching the sun go down while standing at the edge of the dig and looking into the enormous dirt pit. My main job as Intern #9 was to help build field jackets, which are structures of plaster and burlap that encase large and delicate fossils to then transport them safely to the museum. As the ‘jacketers’, we were often the last out each day and we were able to see each day’s new discoveries and really measure the progress of the day. I have a mental snapshot of standing there in the golden light, seeing freshly jacketed mastodon tusks, limb bones, and skulls, and just taking in the enormity and beauty of this high-elevation discovery.

How did the Snowmass Ice Age Discovery impact your career or your life?
Snowmastodon was instrumental in my success as a paleontologist! Being an intern was my first job out of college and after the dig ended, I was hired by DMNS to work in their preparation lab to clean, fix, and build support structures (plaster cradles) for the Snowmastodon specimens. While working on the Snowmastodon project in the field and at DMNS I was mentored by numerous scientists and colleagues, including the former Curators of Paleobotany: Ian Miller (now Chief Scientist at National Geographic Society) and Kirk Johnson (now Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History). They nurtured my love for paleobotany and encouraged me to go earn my PhD. Now I’m lucky to have my dream job- Curator of Paleobotany at DMNS and I can continue to teach people about the amazing discovery of ice age fossils found in Snowmass Village, CO!

Is there anything else you would like to share about your experience with the Discovery? (Exciting research outcomes, other personal experiences, anything else you feel is important to your story)
I also loved working at the Snowmass Village tourism center, preparing mastodon tusks while chatting with visitors about the Snowmastodon discovery. I worked with the most amazing volunteers and really fell in love with the community. 

Georgina Levey

What is your Hometown?
Aspen

What is your profession currently?
Mentor/Challenge Coordinator at Aspen Middle School

What was your profession during the Snowmass Ice Age Excavation? (2010-2011)
5th grade teacher 

How did you become involved and what was your role with the Snowmass Ice Age Discovery?
The opportunity to participate in the dig was opened up to local teachers.

What is your favorite memory from the Snowmass Ice Age Discovery?
My past teacher (pre-school teacher at Wildwood) and lifelong mentor, Chris Faison, found Ziggy’s skull and the day that happened was pretty special. But just being able to do the dig with him was such an incredible gift because of our relationship and because he took so much of what he was learning back to his own students at Aspen Community School. 

From my personal perspective, I was really surprised how much I loved doing the micro finds… sifting through tons of dirt and sediment to find the really small bones and artifacts. I never would have expected that I would enjoy it so much. However, I loved it so much, that I asked DMNS for and was given sediment after the dig was over to keep sifting with my own 5th graders at the time. We then returned our finds to the museum. It was so powerful to be doing real-life science with them that contributed to the bigger picture of the Snowmaston story.

How did the Snowmass Ice Age Discovery impact your career or your life?
I think I captured it fairly well above, but I am an experiential learner and teach with as much of this foundational pedagogy as I can. The dig gave me another opportunity to do field studies that mattered to our local community and to the State in general. My PhD work (service learning) is based entirely on this idea, and I just finished that degree a year before the dig. Now I get to use all of this as the basis for my full-time job, once again, with local 5th-8th graders. With this in mind, I am very open to working with you to help connect the school to your project directly. 

Is there anything else you would like to share about your experience with the Discovery? (Exciting research outcomes, other personal experiences, anything else you feel is important to your story)
Most of it was shared above.