Robert R. Gaines

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Bob Gaines
Rrgaines.jpg
Gaines on a geology field trip in the Nopah Range Wilderness Area, California
Born
Robert R. Gaines

1973
Columbus, Mississippi
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions Pomona College
Thesis Dissecting a Cambrian Lagerstätte: Insights from the Wheeler Formation, Utah  (2003)

Robert Riepma Gaines (born 1973) is an American geologist who teaches at Pomona College in Claremont, California. From July 2019 to June 2022, he served as the Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the college. He is known for his research on fossils in Burgess Shale-type deposits, having been a member of two teams that made two of the most important fossil discoveries in recent decades, one in Kootenay National Park in British Columbia, Canada and the other in the Yangtze Gorges area in South China. [1] [2]

Contents

Biography

Early life

Gaines was born in 1973 in Columbus, Mississippi, to Robert Anderson and Elizabeth Blair Gaines. His father was born in 1942 in Roanoke, Virginia. His mother was born in 1945 in Chevy Chase, Maryland. His father was teaching at Mississippi University for Women at the time. Shortly after Gaines's sister Elizabeth was born, the family moved to Montgomery, Alabama.

Once in Montgomery, Gaines's father taught theatre history and acting at a satellite of Auburn University, eventually becoming head of the Theatre Department. His mother taught journalism, public relations and mass communication at the same university. Gaines and his sister both talked before they walked, growing up in an academic house that valued words and ideas. Gaines first became interested in paleontology when he was in preschool, when his mom brought him a trilobite as a souvenir from a trip to Utah. [3] He announced to his preschool class on career day that he wanted to be a paleontologist.

His mother had a passion for Ancient Egypt, and Gaines considered a career in Archeology, participating in several digs in Alabama in his teenage years. [3] In high school, he participated in a dig at an Etruscan site in Italy. Thanks to his dad's passion for theater, he also tried his hand at acting, participating in productions in community theatre all the way up to a professional role at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in 1986. Gaines and his wife now live with two cats, Floriano and Pascal.

Education

Gaines attended The Montgomery Academy in Montgomery, Alabama, from grade school on and graduated in 1991. Following in his parents’ footsteps he attended the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and received a Bachelor of Science in Geology in 1995. While at William & Mary his love for fossils grew. He testified before the Virginia State Legislature to help name Chesapecten Jeffersonius , an ancient scallop, the state fossil of Virginia. [4] He took a road trip with a faculty member to the House Range in Utah, where he found the source of his very first trilobite fossil that his mother had given him. [3] The House Range was to become one of his favorite places on earth, [5] and he went on to do his PhD on Cambrian ecosystems there.

For a master's degree in geology, Gaines attended the University of Cincinnati. He took a class with his future PhD advisor, Dr. Mary L. Droser, on sabbatical from UC Riverside, who further instilled his passion for fossils and ancient ecosystems. [3] After graduating with his masters in 1998, he decided to work with Droser at University of California, Riverside, in the department of Earth Sciences. In 2003 he completed his dissertation titled: "Dissecting a Cambrian Lagerstätte: Insights from the Wheeler Formation, Utah."

During his first year at University of Cincinnati Gaines met his wife, Maria Prokopenko. They were married in Malibu in 2002. She is also a professor at Pomona in the geology department. She researches marine biogeochemical cycles. Similar to him, she is interested in the intersection of biology and geology, looking to identify and characterize the links between biologically driven fluxes and physical processes in the ocean. [6]

Career

Gaines arrived at Pomona College in 2003 as a visiting professor and was hired on the tenure-track only a year later. [7] He was tenured in 2009.[ citation needed ] He is the Edwin F. and Martha Hahn Professor of Geology, teaching core courses such as Sedimentology and Earth History, while also offering introductory courses or electives on topics such as Carbonates, Climate Change, and Paleontology. [8] He was twice awarded the Pomona College Wig Award for Teaching. He ensures that his students are engaged with research, from bringing students along to his field camp in British Columbia, [9] to turning class field trips into sample collection opportunities. [10] He received multiple grants from government and private agencies for substantial expansion of the analytical facilities of the college and Geology Department. Working in collaboration with Pomona College professors David M. Tanenbaum, Mark Los Huertos and Jade Star Lackey, they established the David W. and Claire B. Oxtoby Environmental Isotope Lab and purchased an ICP-MS, IRMS, SEM, XRF spectrometer, and XRD.

He was an active member of the community beyond the Geology department, serving on multiple committees such as the strategic planning steering committee, research committee, faculty position advisory committee and faculty executive committee. [7]

In July 2019, Gaines was appointed vice president and Dean of the college. Even as dean, he has not ceased to instill excitement in students and faculty alike regarding Earth's history. In his convocation speech to start the 2019–20 school year he gave every student in the class of 2023 504 million-year-old trilobite fossils, offering them an interesting scale in which to place their four years of college and inspiring them to take advantage of their time at Pomona. [5]

He has been an active voice in making Pomona a more environmentally sustainable institution, and as dean has advocated for vegetarian-only catering, Meatless Mondays for all school cafeterias, and reusable tableware at school events. He has taught a class on Climate Change which for spring 2017 he revised to be an introductory geology class attracting over 50 students, far more than the average class size at Pomona. [11] [12]

Research

Gaines's area of expertise lies at the intersection of geology and biology. Most broadly, his research topics include burgess shale-type deposits, the Cambrian explosion, and microbial mineral interactions. He works on ancient sedimentary rocks all across the northern hemisphere; in British Columbia, South China, and American Great Basin. [13]

His work in British Columbia received global attention when, in 2012, their team discovered a new Burgess Shale fossil site in Kootenay National Park, some 40 km south of where the Burgess Shale outcrop was first discovered in 1909. The discovery of this new site was hailed the most important fossil finding of recent decades. [2] [13] [14] The leader of this team is Jean-Bernard Caron, curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. They work together with other paleontologists and graduate students. The treasure trove of fossils they have discovered continues to contribute to the rapidly developing understanding of the Cambrian and evolutionary history as each fossil species gets placed into their respective taxonomic groups. Gaines's work in Kootenay National Park has been featured as a cover story for Science Magazine in 2018, [15] as well as on the CBC series The Nature of Things, episode “First Animals.” [16]

Gaines was part of yet another historical discovery of a Burgess Shale-type site in Southern China. He is the only American on a team of Chinese scientists, invited to work on their team because of his expertise on Burgess Shale-type deposits. [1] [17] The site is located on a bank of the Danshui River close to its intersection with the Qinjiang River in Hubei Province, around 1000 km northeast of Chengjiang, another Lagerstätte of Burgess Shale-type fossils. The discovery includes a large proportion of new taxa across much taxonomic diversity, and is characterized by pristine fossil preservation. According to Science, this was the most significant Cambrian fossil discovery in modern times. [9]

Gaines also works on Burgess Shale-type fossil assemblages in the Wheeler formation in House Range, UT. [18] With his work around the world on the Burgess Shale he is helping to resolve one of the great mysteries relating to the Cambrian Explosion; the mechanism for the precise preservation of these fossils. By collecting geochemical data from the many sites he has worked, he hypothesized that a combination of calcium carbonate deposits and lower levels of oxygen and sulfur in the Cambrian seas prevented the degradation of the fossils by microbes. [13] [19] [20]

Gaines's hypothesis with Shanan Peters relating the Cambrian Explosion to the Great Unconformity was featured on the cover of Nature in 2012. [21] Using geochemical and stratigraphic data from 830 locations across North America they found evidence that the Great Unconformity affected ocean chemistry such that it may have triggered the evolution of Biomineralization, an essential factor of diversification of the Cambrian Explosion. [22]

In 2021, Gaines's work on the fossil records of early animal life was honored by the official naming of a species of hurdiid radiodont he helped to discover, Titanokorys gainesi . This bizarre species of stem-arthropod lived approximately 508 million years ago and was one of the largest animals known to have existed in its time. It was dubbed "the mothership" by the press because of the animals massive frontal carapace (which covered almost half of the animals body). [23] [24] The findings were published in the peer-reviewed Journal, Royal Society Open Science. [24]

Awards, honors, fellowships, and grants

InstitutionTitleYear
Awards Pomona College Wig Distinguished Professorship Award for Excellence in Teaching2007 & 2013
National Science Foundation Sedimentary Geology & Paleobiology Award

RUI: An Integrative Paleontological And Paleoenvironmental Study Of The Middle Cambrian Spence, Wheeler, And Marjum Soft-Bodied Faunas

2005-2007

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Burgess Shale</span> Fossil-bearing rock formation in the Canadian Rockies

The Burgess Shale is a fossil-bearing deposit exposed in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, Canada. It is famous for the exceptional preservation of the soft parts of its fossils. At 508 million years old, it is one of the earliest fossil beds containing soft-part imprints.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maotianshan Shales</span> Series of Early Cambrian deposits in the Chiungchussu Formation

The Maotianshan Shales (帽天山页岩) are a series of Early Cambrian sedimentary deposits in the Chiungchussu Formation, famous for their Konservat Lagerstätten, deposits known for the exceptional preservation of fossilized organisms or traces. The Maotianshan Shales form one of some forty Cambrian fossil locations worldwide exhibiting exquisite preservation of rarely preserved, non-mineralized soft tissue, comparable to the fossils of the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, Canada. They take their name from Maotianshan Hill in Chengjiang County, Yunnan Province, China.

<i>Opabinia</i> Extinct stem-arthropod species found in Cambrian fossil deposits

Opabinia regalis is an extinct, stem group arthropod found in the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale Lagerstätte of British Columbia. Opabinia was a soft-bodied animal, measuring up to 7 cm in body length, and its segmented trunk had flaps along the sides and a fan-shaped tail. The head shows unusual features: five eyes, a mouth under the head and facing backwards, and a clawed proboscis that probably passed food to the mouth. Opabinia probably lived on the seafloor, using the proboscis to seek out small, soft food. Fewer than twenty good specimens have been described; 3 specimens of Opabinia are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they constitute less than 0.1% of the community.

<i>Wiwaxia</i> Genus of Cambrian animals

Wiwaxia is a genus of soft-bodied animals that were covered in carbonaceous scales and spines that protected it from predators. Wiwaxia fossils—mainly isolated scales, but sometimes complete, articulated fossils—are known from early Cambrian and middle Cambrian fossil deposits across the globe. The living animal would have measured up to 5 centimetres (2 in) when fully grown, although a range of juvenile specimens are known, the smallest being 2 millimetres (0.08 in) long.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sirius Passet</span> Cambrian Lagerstätte in Greenland

Sirius Passet is a Cambrian Lagerstätte in Peary Land, Greenland. The Sirius Passet Lagerstätte was named after the Sirius sledge patrol that operates in North Greenland. It comprises six places in Nansen Land, on the east shore of J.P. Koch Fjord in the far north of Greenland. It was discovered in 1984 by A. Higgins of the Geological Survey of Greenland. A preliminary account was published by Simon Conway Morris and others in 1987 and expeditions led by J. S. Peel and Conway Morris have returned to the site several times between 1989 and the present. A field collection of perhaps 10,000 fossil specimens has been amassed. It is a part of the Buen Formation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emu Bay Shale</span> Geological formation in South Australia

The Emu Bay Shale is a geological formation in Emu Bay, South Australia, containing a major Konservat-Lagerstätte. It is one of two in the world containing Redlichiidan trilobites. The Emu Bay Shale is dated as Cambrian Series 2, Stage 4, correlated with the upper Botomian Stage of the Lower Cambrian.

<i>Anomalocaris</i> Extinct genus of cambrian radiodont

Anomalocaris is an extinct genus of radiodont, an order of early-diverging stem-group arthropods.

<i>Waptia</i> Cambrian arthropod

Waptia is an extinct genus of arthropod from the Middle Cambrian of North America. It grew to a length of 6.65 cm (3 in), and had a large bivalved carapace and a segmented body terminating into a pair of tail flaps. It was an active swimmer and likely a predator of soft-bodied prey. It is also one of the oldest animals with direct evidence of brood care. Waptia fieldensis is the only species classified under the genus Waptia, and is known from the Burgess Shale Lagerstätte of British Columbia, Canada. Specimens of Waptia are also known from the Spence Shale of Utah, United States.

The Burgess Shale of British Columbia is famous for its exceptional preservation of mid-Cambrian organisms. Around 69 other sites have been discovered of a similar age, with soft tissues preserved in a similar, though not identical, fashion. Additional sites with a similar form of preservation are known from the Ediacaran and Ordovician periods.

A number of assemblages bear fossil assemblages similar in character to that of the Burgess Shale. While many are also preserved in a similar fashion to the Burgess Shale, the term "Burgess Shale-type fauna" covers assemblages based on taxonomic criteria only.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wheeler Shale</span> Geologic formation in Utah notable for trilobite fossils

The Wheeler Shale is a Cambrian (c. 507 Ma) fossil locality world-famous for prolific agnostid and Elrathia kingii trilobite remains and represents a Konzentrat-Lagerstätte. Varied soft bodied organisms are locally preserved, a fauna and preservation style normally associated with the more famous Burgess Shale. As such, the Wheeler Shale also represents a Konservat-Lagerstätten.

The Cambrian explosion is an interval of time approximately 538.8 million years ago in the Cambrian period of the early Paleozoic when a sudden radiation of complex life occurred, and practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil record. It lasted for about 13 to 25 million years and resulted in the divergence of most modern metazoan phyla. The event was accompanied by major diversification in other groups of organisms as well.

The fossils of the Burgess Shale, like the Burgess Shale itself, are fossils that formed around 505 million years ago in the mid-Cambrian period. They were discovered in Canada in 1886, and Charles Doolittle Walcott collected over 65,000 specimens in a series of field trips up to the alpine site from 1909 to 1924. After a period of neglect from the 1930s to the early 1960s, new excavations and re-examinations of Walcott's collection continue to reveal new species, and statistical analysis suggests that additional discoveries will continue for the foreseeable future. Stephen Jay Gould's 1989 book Wonderful Life describes the history of discovery up to the early 1980s, although his analysis of the implications for evolution has been contested.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Burgess Shale</span>

The Burgess Shale, a series of fossil beds in the Canadian Rockies, was first noticed in 1886 by Richard McConnell of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC). His and subsequent finds, all from the Mount Stephen area, came to the attention of palaeontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott, who in 1907 found time to reconnoitre the area. He opened a quarry in 1910 and in a series of field trips brought back 65,000 specimens, which he identified as Middle Cambrian in age. Due to the quantity of fossils and the pressures of his other duties at the Smithsonian Institution, Walcott was only able to publish a series of "preliminary" papers, in which he classified the fossils within taxa that were already established. In a series of visits beginning in 1924, Harvard University professor Percy Raymond collected further fossils from Walcott's quarry and higher up on Fossil Ridge, where slightly different fossils were preserved.

The Phyllopod bed, designated by USNM locality number 35k, is the most famous fossil-bearing member of the Burgess Shale fossil Lagerstätte. It was quarried by Charles Walcott from 1911–1917, and was the source of 95% of the fossils he collected during this time; tens of thousands of soft-bodied fossils representing over 150 genera have been recovered from the Phyllopod bed alone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qingjiang biota</span>

The Qingjiang biota are a major discovery of fossilized remains dating from the early Cambrian period approximately 518 million years ago. The remains consist at least 20,000 individual specimens, and were discovered near the Danshui River in the Hubei province of China in 2019. The site is particularly notable due to both the large proportion of new taxa represented, and due to the large amount of soft-body tissue of the ancient specimens that was preserved, likely due to the organisms being rapidly covered in sediment prior to fossilization, that allowed for the detailed preservation of even fragile, soft-bodied creatures such as worms and jellyfish. Shelly fossils found at the site include trilobites, anomalocaridids, lobopods, bradoriids, brachiopods, hyolithids, mollusks, chancelloriids, kinorhynchs, priapulids, and articulated sponge spicules.

<i>Titanokorys</i> Extinct genus of giant hurdiid radiodont

Titanokorys is a genus of extinct hurdiid (peytoiid) radiodont that existed during the mid Cambrian. It is the largest member of its family from the Cambrian, with a body length of 50 cm (20 in) long, making it one of the largest animals of the time. It bears a resemblance to the related genus Cambroraster. Fossils of T. gainesi were first found within Marble Canyon in 2018. The fossils were not named until 2021 because they were assumed to be giant specimens of Cambroraster.

<i>Acinocricus</i> Extinct genus of lobopodians

Acinocricus is a genus of extinct panarthropod belonging to the group Lobopodia and known from the middle Cambrian Spence Shale of Utah, United States. As a monotypic genus, it has one species Acinocricus stichus. The only lobopodian discovered from the Spence Shale, it was described by Simon Conway Morris and Richard A. Robison in 1988. Owing to the original fragmentary fossils discovered since 1982, it was initially classified as an alga, but later realised to be an animal belonging to Cambrian fauna.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hallucigeniidae</span> Extinct family of lobopodian worms

Hallucigeniidae is a family of extinct worms belonging to the group Lobopodia that originated during the Cambrian explosion. It is based on the species Hallucigenia sparsa, the fossil of which was discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott in 1911 from the Burgess Shale of British Columbia. The name Hallucigenia was created by Simon Conway Morris in 1977, from which the family was erected after discoveries of other hallucigeniid worms from other parts of the world. Classification of these lobopods and their relatives are still controversial, and the family consists of at least four genera.

Carbotubulus is a genus of extinct worm belonging to the group Lobopodia and known from the Carboniferous Carbondale Formation of the Mazon Creek area in Illinois, US. A monotypic genus, it contains one species Carbotubulus waloszeki. It was discovered and described by Joachim T. Haug, Georg Mayer, Carolin Haug, and Derek E.G. Briggs in 2012. With an age of about 300 million years, it is the first long-legged lobopodian discovered after the period of Cambrian explosion.

References

  1. 1 2 Fu, Dongjing; Tong, Guanghui; Dai, Tao; Liu, Wei; Yang, Yuning; Zhang, Yuan; Cui, Linhao; Li, Luoyang; Yun, Hao; Wu, Yu; Sun, Ao; Liu, Cong; Pei, Wenrui; Gaines, Robert R. (22 March 2019). "The Qingjiang biota—A Burgess Shale–type fossil Lagerstätte from the early Cambrian of South China". Science. 363 (6433): 1338–1342. Bibcode:2019Sci...363.1338F. doi: 10.1126/science.aau8800 . PMID   30898931. S2CID   85448914.
  2. 1 2 "ROM Researchers discover 'epic' new Burgess Shale site in Canada's Kootenay National Park". Royal Ontario Museum. 11 Feb 2014. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Wood, Mark (4 March 2020). "How to Become Dean of Pomona College". Pomona College. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  4. ↑ Saville, Kirk (February 1993). "After 4 Million Years, VA May Finally Get State Fossil".
  5. 1 2 "Robert Gaines Convocation Speech 2019". YouTube . Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  6. ↑ "Maria Prokopenko". Pomona College Directory. 10 August 2015.
  7. 1 2 Kendall, Mark (2020). "Geologist Robert Gaines Named Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College". Pomona College. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
  8. ↑ "Pomona College Course Catalog".
  9. 1 2 Guerrero, Carla (Nov 2018). "Science Magazine Cover Story Features Professor Robert Gaines' Geology Discovery". Pomona College.
  10. ↑ Reinen, Linda; Grosfils, Eric; Gaines, Robert; Hazlett, Richard (2006). "CURfocus". CUR Quarterly.
  11. ↑ "Fact Sheet". Pomona College in Claremont, California - Pomona College. 21 May 2015.
  12. ↑ "Program: New and Revised Courses - Pomona College - Acalog ACMS™". Pomona College Catalog.
  13. 1 2 3 "Robert R. Gaines". Pomona College Directory. 17 June 2015.
  14. ↑ Sokol, Joshua (23 Nov 2018). "Cracking the Cambrian". Science. 362 (6417): 880–884. Bibcode:2018Sci...362..880S. doi:10.1126/science.362.6417.880. PMID   30467152. S2CID   53780541.
  15. ↑ Sokol, Joshua (2018-11-23). "Cracking the Cambrian". Science. 362 (6417): 880–884. Bibcode:2018Sci...362..880S. doi:10.1126/science.362.6417.880. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   30467152. S2CID   53780541.
  16. ↑ Suzuki, David. "The Nature of Things". CBC.
  17. ↑ Guerrero, Carla (21 March 2019). "Professor Robert Gaines Helps Make Historic Discovery of 500 Million-Year-Old Fossil Site in South China". Pomona College.
  18. ↑ Gaines, Robert; Kennedy, Martin; Droser, Mary L. (May 2005). "A new hypothesis for organic preservation of Burgess Shale taxa in the middle Cambrian Wheeler Formation, House Range, Utah". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 220 (1–2): 193–205. Bibcode:2005PPP...220..193G. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2004.07.034.
  19. ↑ Gaines, Robert (2014). Burgess Shale-type preservation and its distribution in space and time. The Paleontological Society.
  20. ↑ Gaines, R.R.; Hammarlund, E.U.; Hou, X.; Qi, C.; Gabbott, S.E.; Zhao, Y.; Peng, J.; Canfield, D.E. (2012). "Mechanism for Burgess Shale-type Preservation". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109 (14): 5180–5184. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1111784109 . PMC   3325652 . PMID   22392974. S2CID   27437558.
  21. ↑ "Volume 484 Issue 7394, 19 April 2012". www.nature.com. 18 April 2012. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  22. ↑ Peters, Shanan; Gaines, Robert (2012). "Formation of the 'Great Unconformity' as a trigger for the Cambrian explosion". Nature. 484 (7394): 363–366. Bibcode:2012Natur.484..363P. doi:10.1038/nature10969. PMID   22517163. S2CID   4423007.
  23. ↑ "Massive new animal species discovered in half-billion-year-old Burgess Shale". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2021-09-23.
  24. 1 2 Caron, J.-B.; Moysiuk, J. (2021). "A giant nektobenthic radiodont from the Burgess Shale and the significance of hurdiid carapace diversity". Royal Society Open Science. 8 (9): 210664. Bibcode:2021RSOS....810664C. doi:10.1098/rsos.210664. PMC   8424305 . PMID   34527273.
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