Daniel Barta is a Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Biology at the Richard
Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History. He grew up in
Helena, Montana, and hold Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Earth Sciences
from Montana State University. Broadly, He us interested in vertebrate
reproduction, growth, and development. His research integrates fieldwork with
phylogenetic, histological, and taphonomic techniques to better understand the
evolution of ontogenetic trajectories, eggs, and nesting strategies of extinct
animals and their living relatives. Fieldwork in the western United States,
China, and Mongolia shapes my interests in the faunal evolution and
biostratigraphy of the Cretaceous of Asia and North America. Currently he focuses on the post-hatching growth and development of basal theropod and ornithischian
dinosaurs. The exceptional sample sizes available at the American Museum of
Natural History can provide important insight into dinosaur growth rates and
anatomical transformations during development, thereby establishing an
essential context for understanding both individual morphological variation and
the evolution of the extreme growth and metabolic rates achieved by dinosaurs’
bird descendants. He is passionate about sharing through outreach the thrill of
the scientific process and our evolutionary history that it reveals.
Question 1: Let’s start from the beginning. What was your earliest sign of interest in
paleontology that you can remember?
DB: I’m from Helena, Montana, and my earliest sign of interest
came from a family visit to Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, when I
was about four years old.
Question 2: Did you have any professionals or family members
who served as role models when you were younger? Do you still have any now?
DB: My family members, especially my parents, greatly encouraged
my interest in the natural world and in paleontology specifically. I still look
up to them, and also to so many of my mentors and colleagues who have made
great contributions to the natural sciences—there truly are too many to list
here!
Question 4: Was there anything you did or learned as you
were on your way to your current career that you feel got you to where you
are? By this I mean any sort of field
experience, a class, networking with the right people, or possibly something
different or all three?
DB: I’ll highlight three experiences chronologically. The earliest
was a “job shadow” experience in sixth grade, when I got to work alongside
Jamie Jette, a fossil preparator at the Museum of the Rockies, and learned more
about what working with fossils is actually like as a career. This helped
solidify my decision to attend Montana State University for my undergraduate
studies. The second was my undergraduate research experience in China with Dr.
Dave Varricchio of MSU, who later became my master’s thesis advisor. And the
third would be a collections visit to the American Museum of Natural History
during my master’s research with Dave that introduced me to my current Ph.D.
advisor, Dr. Mark Norell, for the first time.
Question 5: You do a lot of work with dinosaur eggs,
particularly birdlike theropod eggs. Did
you have a prior interest in this branch of paleontology prior to starting your
career? Did it choose you?
DB: It was a little of both. Growing up, I’d always been
interested in dinosaur eggs and parental care from reading books and news
stories about both Montana’s Egg Mountain locality and the discoveries in the
Gobi Desert by AMNH and other expeditions. I thought that they were both just
really interesting scientific stories. However, my desire to devote much of my
studies so far to dinosaur eggs really grew out of the undergraduate research
that I mentioned earlier. I found that there’s a lot of work still to be done
to understand the evolution of eggshell microstructure and what fossil egg
assemblages can tell us about the biology of the animals that laid them.
Question 6: What was or is your favorite project in
paleontology so far? Would you be able
to tell us about some of your current projects?
DB: This is really hard to pick, as I’ve enjoyed all the
projects that I’ve been involved with, but I’ll highlight two projects here.
I’m really proud of the paper in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica that I
co-authored with Dave Varricchio on some Mongolian Cretaceous bird eggs that we
named Styloolithus sabathi. It’s not every day that you get to help describe a
new type of fossil egg, and I think the paper stands as a nice tribute to the
late Karol Sabath of the Polish Academy of Sciences, who made key contributions
to the study of fossil eggs. The specimens in our study help to reveal the very
non-avian dinosaur-like reproductive mode of early birds, and may also hold
implications for why these early birds went extinct along with the non-avian
dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous.
My other favorite project is one of my dissertation chapters
that I just recently submitted for review, and though I can’t say too much
about it here, it involves anatomical study of the hands and wrists of early
dinosaurs. I also recently worked on a couple of egg-citing projects related to
dinosaur eggshell, but again, you’ll have to wait for the papers to hear more
about those!
Question 7: Where have you travelled for your career? Do you have a favorite destination when it
comes to fossils? Why?
DB: I’ve been really fortunate to travel a lot for my career.
I’ve done fieldwork in Montana, China, and Mongolia, and collections visits and
conferences have taken me to Europe, Asia, and South America. Mongolia is my
favorite fieldwork destination. The quality of preservation and abundance of
fossils there really can’t be beat, and we have some wonderful Mongolian
colleagues who are incredibly fun to work with.
Question 9: Do you ever get criticized on any of your
work? How do you handle it?
DB: The criticism of my work that I've faced has, without
exception, helped to sharpen my thinking and improve the final manuscripts.
I’ve been really lucky in my short career not to have encountered anything
directed at me that I would consider unfair or mean-spirited. I think it’s
really important for everyone in science to work to ensure a collegial academic
environment.
Question 10: Jurassic Park and Land Before Time (opposite
ends of the spectrum, I know) were just two of the programs I remember as a kid
that helped fuel my obsession with paleontology. Did you have favorite shows, movies, or even
toys growing up that fueled your passion?
DB: Those were two important ones for me as well! I also
discovered many of the older dinosaur movies, like "The Land that Time
Forgot,” pretty early on and still have a real fondness for those. Another
thing that helped spark my initial interest was a blue Brontosaurus toy that my
parents bought for me when I was about four (around the same time as my first
visit to a museum).
Question 11: One of my pet peeves is when people assume
paleontology doesn’t really do any real good in the grand scheme of things and
is just a “for fun” science. Do you
think paleontology has a bigger part to than this? How?
DB: Paleontology provides us with our only direct record of past
biodiversity. Many people say that the current biodiversity crisis represents a
sixth mass extinction, and we wouldn’t have any context for understanding what
a “mass extinction” is without studying fossils. We would know very little
about our modern world and even less about how to predict its future without
studying past environments and the life that inhabited them.
Question 12: Who was the first paleontologist you met? How was that interaction?
DB: The first paleontologist I met was Dr. Jack Horner. I
attended a talk that he gave at an elementary school in Helena, and I later got
to interview him during my sixth grade “job shadow” experience that I
mentioned. Both were tremendously inspiring experiences for me as a young
student.
Question 13: Why do you think prehistoric animals are so
influential to us today?
DB: Prehistoric animals are ambassadors from a succession of
alien worlds ( our own Earth at different points in its past), and as such, are
both tantalizingly familiar and startlingly strange. I think they provide one
of the most accessible “hooks” for people of all ages to learn about the
scientific process.
Question 15: What is your favorite prehistoric animal? Was it different when you were younger?
DB: My favorite prehistoric animals now tend to be whichever
ones I’ve studied scientifically, so currently the early carnivorous dinosaur
Coelophysis bauri is one of my favorites. Like a lot of people, I was enamored
with
Tyrannosaurus rex when I was younger, and still am.
Question 16: If you could use a time machine to go back and
pick only one prehistoric animal to bring back from history and observe alive
and in person, which would it be and why?
DB: I think any of the
whole range of extinct reptiles, mammals, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates
for which we have no obvious modern analogues would be fascinating to observe,
as a time machine might be the only way that we would ever be able to answer
basic questions about their structures, functions, and behaviors. Among
dinosaurs, I would of course love to answer my questions about Coelophysis
growth in real time.
Question 17: Back to the time machine. This time you can go back to any place and
time period and have a look at what the environment was really like. Which one would you pick and why?
DB: I would pick any time and place during the Triassic Period.
One could examine not only the ecologies of the range of bizarre, extinct
reptile groups, but also see how the components of the “modern” fauna were
becoming established.
Question 18: Which is your favorite museum? Why?
DB: Based on my answers above, this will probably not come as a
surprise: my two favorite museums are the American Museum of Natural History
and Museum of the Rockies, as they’ve both contributed immensely to the
development of my ideas and interests, setting the direction of my professional
life.
Question 19: What hobbies do you have? (Don’t have to be paleo-related.)
DB: I enjoy hiking, bird-watching, spending time with family and
friends, and learning about history, music, and the visual arts.