Paleontologist on her love of natural history and AR Wallace
KUCHING: Professor Patricia Vickers-Rich decided to spend the last of her Malaysian currency on a bead necklace on display in the hotel’s display cabinet.
“It looks a little like bone,” she said of the feature bead, while the hotel staff went to retrieve a key.
And bones, specifically old ones, are a matter of interest to this American- born Australian paleontologist and geologist who, together with her husband and fellow paleontologist Tom Rich, discovered a number of fossils in Australia’s Dinosaur Cove.
Two of them – Leaellynausaura and Timimus – were named after their children. Quantassaurrus was named after the Australian national airline, while Atlascopcosaurus was named after a manufacturer of mining equipment.
“Dinosaurs attract kids! And then, you can tell them about science,” she said later during her talk at The Waterfront Hotel on Sunday.
Vickers-Rich was not in Kuching to look for dinosaurs, although she would love to find one for the reason stated above. She was in town just in time to give one of the first talks held under What About Kuching (WAK) 2017.
Her talk, ‘Chasing Butterflies and Other Unknowns: The Work of AR Wallace’, attracted a good number of enthusiasts, researchers, and members of the public.
She saw plenty of butterflies during her time in Kuching, having gone to explore the jungles of Mount Sadong and Mount Santubong the day before with a very young friend.
“I was with a little boy who was a friend. He and I were looking at butterflies, scorpions and anything. I love natural history and life,” she told The Borneo Post, adding that they saw about 10 to 11 species of butterflies and ants.
Her interest in biodiversity started at a very young age. A story she likes to tell was when her uncle built her a dollhouse, which she proceeded to fill with shelves that showed off her collection of dead insects displayed in jars.
A shared interest in natural history and biodiversity is why Vickers- Rich is following the footsteps of Alfred Russel Wallace and working on a documentary on the legendary British naturalist, of which attendees of her talk earlier this month had a chance to preview.
Being part of Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia meant she will be able to make visits to their campus in Kuching and pursue her interest in Wallace and his longtime assistant Ali.
“I’m trying to see where Wallace and Ali had worked. I’m hoping to bring an exhibition on Wallace and Ali here with the new museum. I want people to know more about them because they were really important.”
Among the things that Wallace and Ali could not explain in their time was the vast difference between the flora and fauna of Asia and Australasia, separated by the Wallace Line which runs through Indonesia, between Borneo and Sulawesi, and between Bali and Lombok.
“You can literally see Lombok from Bali, and yet things on both sides are so different. It’s as different from Africa and South America. You got the Atlantic Ocean in between those so you can understand why they are different, but why is it so different over the Lombok Strait, a short bit of water?”
Wallace never solved this, but then again moving continents was not part of the scientific understanding. Continental drift only came into knowledge in the 1960’s or 1970’s.
“It’s very recent that we began to understand that continents had actually moved. That explains why those two areas are so close, but have such different animals and plants,” said Vickers-Rich.
She recalled being astounded by this when she started her PhD in the sixties.
“Even though we humans have done our best to wipe out a lot of the stuff since Wallace was around, you still can see those differences,” said Vickers-Rich, adding she also observed this difference between Australia and Java.
She could also appreciate the friendship between Wallace and Charles Darwin, who both independently came up with the idea of natural selection but did not fight over ownership of it, nor spent most of their time writing grant proposals and doing other paperwork.
“Trying to get funding to do things is killing science as far as I’m concerned,” she remarked.
She and her husband are using their own money to fund their research so that they will actually have time to do their research instead of frittering it away on writing grants and seeking money.
“This is not so good that this has to happen. In Australia, you have a better chance of getting a big grant than if you asked for a small grant. And we don’t need a lot of money to do our work. A grant of A$ 20,000 to A$ 30,000 will allow us to do a lot of things.”
Her fellow researchers and colleagues help each other out by sharing their expertise for either nothing or next to nothing.
A colleague in the Senckenberg Museum in Dresden, Germany dates rocks by looking at the crystals in volcanic rocks. Another colleague in the University of Maryland, Baltimore, USA, looks at elements in rock sequence to get an idea of what the ocean chemistry was like.
“We work together and we publish together, and that’s good because publications help if you’re trying to get some money in the future, but it’s becoming a real problem. What I really wish is that there were more small grants, instead of just funding huge million- dollar projects.”
As a scientist and researcher, it is really important to VickersRich to be able to do science and research, and take it to the public so that they know what she is doing.
She dislikes it when publicists asked if she could ‘dumb it down’ for the public and the kids.
“I don’t dumb things down. I talk in a language that they will understand. It is really silly to think about it like that.”
The next time she drops by, Vickers- Rich wants to hop on a boat from Kuching Waterfront and have it take her all the way to the sea, just to see how things look.
And while friends do suggest it to them, she and her husband, both in their early 70s, are not interested in vacations.
“We don’t go on vacations, we go to the field! Why would I go on vacation when I might find something new in Sarawak? That’s my vacation.”
Dinosaurs attract kids! And then, you can tell them about science. Professor Patricia Vickers-Rich