An Unbelievable Discovery and an Opened Door

Another story we are looking at that may be of use in our new writing project. I may have posted it before. But I so love this story! Such an unbelievable discovery. Mary had to be brave to challenge the conventional experts. Sometimes it is really helpful to be dyslexic -- to see differently -- see what others cannot see -- to believe what you see with you own eyes -- even though others believe it is impossible. I so love this story! -- TGW

AN UNBELIEVABLE DISCOVERY AND AN OPENED DOOR—MARY SCHWEITZER

Mary had hardly slept for weeks. She was sure that no one would believe her. Maybe there was some mistake. She had checked and rechecked — but she found the same results. Mary had seen things that no one had ever seen before. She had seen the calcium deposits inside the fossil bone—the deposits normally stored within bird bones to provide calcium for the eggshells to be produced by a pregnant female.

But then she also saw the tiny flexible blood vessels and remnant red blood cells. All of this would not have been surprising for any biologist or ornithologist observing a modern bird. But this was not just any bird. This was the fossilized femur of a pregnant Tyrannosaurus rex — a bone that was 68 million years old — a bone that had once belonged to a kind of bird that had originally weighed tons.

Fossil bones are precious. No one had ever cut one in half. No one had ever thought that there would be anything of interest inside. No one would have guessed that tiny blood vessels, red blood cell remnants, and intact protein fragments might be there. This was impossible. There was no way for such things to be preserved for so long. It was clearly not possible. Everybody knew it. Yet, there it was.

Mary Higby Schweitzer, a former student of Jack Horner, had trained as a biologist before she studied paleontology. Most people in the field had studied geology—the rocks within which the bones were buried. Few had studied the biology of the living animals buried inside the rocks. Accordingly, Mary could easily recognize the calcium deposits inside the bone, in the medullary cavity.

Of course, it was partly a fortunate accident. In this case, the fossil bone had been found in a very remote part of the badlands of Montana. There was no road. The grad students had to walk in and work hard to remove the rock above the fossil. Once uncovered, the bone had to be encased in plaster to protect it during transportation.

But the whole mass was too heavy for the loaned helicopter to lift it. So it had to be cut in half. The cut was clean. Often fossil bones are painted with chemicals and clear coats to protect them from further decay. But these would introduce modern substances that would contaminate the fossil, especially at the molecular level. Mary had been given a clean specimen, entirely free of modern contamination.

Once it was made public, Mary’s discovery was not believed by many professionals in the field. Biochemists and paleontologists greeted her work with “howls of skepticism.” They could not believe that organic molecules “could survive for tens of millions of years.” So Schweitzer and her postdoc, Elena Schroeter, repeated their investigations with extreme care to avoid any possibility of contamination.

Very recently (February 2017), their new investigations were published—and they are now believed. One expert, who had been skeptical before, called Schweitzer’s recent paper a “milestone” and said he is now “fully convinced beyond a reasonable doubt the evidence is authentic.” Now that they have shown that ancient molecules can survive over very long time periods, a new path to scientific investigation has emerged -- “to pin down the evolutionary relationships among different dinosaurs, as well as among ancient mammals and other extinct creatures.” The Science magazine article concludes, “Says Schweitzer: ‘The door is now open.’”

The story of Mary Schweitzer’s discoveries and persistence provides us with a wonderful example of how major new information can come from seeing things differently, asking basic questions never asked before, taking risks and recognizing something unexpected, seeing something that others could not see — seeing something that could have been recognized by others. But they did not see it. It was Mary who saw what others could not see — or would not see.

(From Seeing What Others Cannot See, T. G. West, pages 130-132. Of course, it is significant that Mary Schweitzer is dyslexic, as is her professor and mentor, Jack Horner, science advisor for the four “Jurassic Park” films.)

Diversity in Time of Need

Here are some ideas from my third book, Seeing What Others Cannot See, that seem remarkably appropriate for today. Now working with an international group based in Sweden to draft a couple of updated articles along these lines. Your comments are invited and would be appreciated.  — TGW

DIVERSITY IN TIME OF NEED 

Throughout this book, we have been dealing with diversity and mixed talents in many different forms. However, there are some deep questions that seem to lie under all of our considerations. We want superiority. So why do we need diversity? Perhaps the simplest answer is that we need many kinds of superiority—and that we cannot have it all at once. It seems that we should encourage diversity not only to be civil, not only to be respectful, not only to be humane, not only to be just—but also because we have a particular stake in diversity that is rarely, if ever, fully articulated. 

We want there to be people who have abilities we do not yet know that we need, abilities that we have not ever tried to measure, because we do not know that we needed them—abilities that may be in no way associated with the conventional abilities and talents that we now measure by formal or informal means. 

As we have seen, adapting to change has been a major feature in human survival, as with all of life. We have made the point that as technology and other factors in the environment change, they sometimes substantially redefine the kinds of talents and abilities (and passions) that are wanted. 

The theory of multiple intelligences is very important in this discussion. If there is only one kind of intelligence (as many have been taught to believe), then you have only more of it or less of it. But if there are in fact many forms of intelligence, then the whole discussion is transformed.

Accordingly, in this context, the main idea is that changes in the environment often occur too quickly for either evolutionary or cultural adaptation to respond. We are capable of learning and adapting in many ways and at many levels, but it takes time.

What we want, therefore, is to find means to tolerate and cultivate the talents in a wide diversity of individuals—with supportive institutions and organizations, so that when we need a certain set of talents and abilities, it is already out there, ready to be brought into service—sometimes, perhaps often, at the last moment, when finally it is realized that the old leaders or the old ideas are no longer working. Time is short, and radical, perhaps even frightening, changes must be made, regardless of the risks. . . .

THINKING “OUT OF THE BOX” 

We need to assess the institutional changes required so that dyslexics and different thinkers with markedly mixed talents can still work within established larger institutional structures. We need studies of how this works and does not work. For example, as we have seen before, we can look at the relationship that dyslexic paleontologist John R. (Jack) Horner has with the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana.

The museum staff modified their procedures to do things in unconventional ways in order to allow Jack and his students to do high-level work, making dramatic discoveries, while designing new and highly innovative museum displays to communicate with the public. 

Because of his dyslexia, Horner had flunked out of the University of Montana seven times (as he once reminded me). But he came to be known as one of the two or three most important paleontologists in the world—known as an original and innovative interpreter of the fossil evidence.

Horner says he tries to teach his grad students “to think like a dyslexic” because that is where the “good stuff" comes from—learning to read the book of nature with fresh insight without being distracted by the theories of others. He says the rest is “just memorization.” 

One of Horner’s dyslexic students, as we noted, made discoveries thought “impossible”—finding red blood cells and flexible blood vessels inside a 68-million-year-old fossil bone. Horner pointed out that this discovery was never made before, because “all the books in the world” would say that it could not be done. Recall, he noted that it is easy for dyslexics “to think outside the box” because “they have never been in the box.” 

Finally, we need to be convinced that it is indeed time for substantial change. It is hard to see that, in a remarkable number of cases, true innovation in using the most advanced information visualization technologies comes, in fact, from those who have struggled most with the oldest technologies: reading and writing.

It is becoming increasingly clear that new tools and new ways of seeing and discovering will require new talents and, often, different kinds of brains. We need to see the truth of Horner’s observation that dyslexia is “certainly not something that needs to be fixed, or cured, or suppressed!” 

Indeed, we need to see that, as Jack says, “maybe it’s time for a revolution -- or at least -- it may be time to start something.”

Seeing What Others Cannot See, T.G. West, 2017, pp. 189 - 195.