- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Bzdyk is garnering widespread news coverage for discovering a 15-million-year-old dolphin skull along the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Calvert County, Maryland.
Bzdyk, a volunteer at the Calvert Marine Museum on Solomons Island, said she was combing the shores along the Calvert Cliffs on Saturday, Aug. 5, when she noticed what appeared to be a two-foot-long fossil bone in the shallow water.
It turned out to be a fossil from the Miocene Epoch, the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period. The Miocene epoch extends from about 23.03 to 5.333 million years ago.
Stephen Groff, manager of the Calvert Marine Museum's fossil collection, described it as “a really impressive find,” noting that “it's rare to find a skull in such good condition.”
Bzdyk estimated it will probably take a few months for her to clean the silt and clay from the fossil and prepare it for permanent public display at the museum. Visitors to the museum (open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.) are watching her clean the fossil.
“I've been fossil hunting for about a year and a half and I have thousands of shark teeth and other things in my collection,” said Bzdyk, who received her master's degree in entomology from UC Davis in 2012, studying with UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology. At UC Davis, "I focused on a taxonomic revision of the subgenus Litomegachile leafcutter bees with a description of a new species and a key to current species."
Bzdyk returned to SMCM in 2016 as a visiting instructor of biology. She served as an adjunct faculty member until May 2019.
Her friends says she has an eagle eye for discoveries. She credits her entomological training with that. "Many years in entomology didn't hurt!"
NBCWashington.com headlined her fossil discovery as "Big Win: Woman Finds 15 Million-Year-Old Dolphin Skull Along Chesapeake Bay."
Mike Murillo of WTOP News, which serves the Washington, D.C., area, said that the "Dolphin fossil found in Calvert County could help 'write the books' on ancient marine mammals...It is not uncommon to find fossils from marine mammals. Dolphin skulls are typically found twice a year in southern Maryland. But this find, according to Groff, stands to be the most intact of the finds. It could also turn out to be a species that was previously not known about."
In addition to her interests in biology, entomology and paleontology, Bzdyk enjoys incorporating her scientific illustration and photography skills in her work. She served as a scientific illustration intern at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2008.
Bzdyk shares her interests in her blog, "Sentimental Entomologist" (Thoughts about insects, birds, nature and life) at http://sentimentalentomologist.blogspot.com/.
In her blog profile, she describes herself as: "I have always loved insects and I studied them in graduate school. Bees, to be precise. I focused my thesis on Litomegachile, a subgenus of Megachile leafcutter bees. I discovered a new species of bee, and published one paper on these bees before I hung up my scientist hat to become a stay at home mom. But that won't stop insects from finding their way into my life."
She also maintains an Instagram account on her discoveries at https://instagram.com/hastalishunter.
Bzdyk is a 2010 alumna of the globally recognized The Bee Course, an annual 10-day workshop sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and held at the Southwestern Research Station, Portal, Ariz. One of her instructors was noted bee authority Robbin Thorp 1933-2019), UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology. Thorp and Professor Neal Williams of the Department of Entomology and Nematology served on her guidance committee, along with research entomologist Tom Zavortink of the Bohart Museum.
Her husband, Troy Townsend, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at SMCM, received his doctorate in inorganic chemistry in 2013 from UC Davis. He studied biology and chemistry at SMCM, obtaining his undergraduate degree in 2007. The couple has two daughters, ages 6 and 9.
![UC Davis alumna Emily Bzdyk with the 15-million-year-old dolphin skull fossil she found on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay, Calvert County, Maryland. UC Davis alumna Emily Bzdyk with the 15-million-year-old dolphin skull fossil she found on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay, Calvert County, Maryland.](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/entomology/blogfiles/101344.jpg)
![Emily Bzdyk at the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Calvert County, Maryland. Emily Bzdyk at the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Calvert County, Maryland.](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/entomology/blogfiles/101345.jpg)
![Entomologist Emily Bzdyk, being filmed by the news media as she cleans a 15-million-year-old dolphin skull fossil. (Calvert Marine Museum) Entomologist Emily Bzdyk, being filmed by the news media as she cleans a 15-million-year-old dolphin skull fossil. (Calvert Marine Museum)](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/entomology/blogfiles/101346.jpg)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Their work, drawing global attention, is newly published in the journal Insects.
The researchers examined 13 individual male fossilized ants that lived during the Miocene epoch and identified them as a new genus of primordial ants. The team used the X-ray light source PETRA III at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, aided by state-of-the-art imaging technology. The name given to the new species and genus: "†Desyopone hereon gen. et sp. nov," to honor the two research institutions involved--DESY and Hereon.
The males resemble species of the relictual lineage Aneuretinae, "but which effectively belong to the Ponerinae, as revealed by advanced 3D-imaging technology (synchrotron radiation micro-computed tomography, SR-µ-CT)," the authors wrote. "We subsequently propose a revision of ant classification at the subfamily level. We also recognize that the new species belongs to a new genus based on recent phylogenomic results that have clarified the generic boundaries of Ponerini ants. Our work, therefore, represents an example of reciprocal illumination between phenomic and genomic data."
"The study was really pleasing from a scientific perspective, as we were able to pass through the whole cycle of hypothesis induction based on the original light microscopy, then deductive prediction for structures we then tested using synchrotron radiation, which allowed us to reject the initial hypothesis—and to go even further!" said Boudinot, an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Institute of Zoology and Evolutionary Research at Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
"There are a couple of important elements to the study," Boudinot said. "Based on this discovery, we had to redefine two ant subfamilies and two tribes, and we demonstrate the value of the oft-neglected male ants for understanding evolution through the comparison of mandibles of male and females across the phylogeny, revealing a major trend in mandible evolution. In the bigger picture, what I think is significant is that this work marks a boundary for ant paleontology, where we will increasingly be able to use x-ray micro-computed tomography (µ-CT) to generate 3D models for study and quantitative analysis. Soon, we will be able to analyze these phenomic data simultaneously with genomic data. The study of ant morphology and paleontology is transforming and becoming 'big data'! There will be lots more work to come."
The team, in addition to researchers from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, included scientists from the University of Rennes in France, the University of Gdansk in Poland, and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon in Geesthacht, Germany.
In a University of Jena news release, Vincent Perrichot from the University of Rennes explained: "The piece with these ants is from the only amber deposit in Africa so far that has featured fossil organisms in inclusions. Altogether, there are only a few fossil insects from this continent. Although amber has long been used as jewelry by locals in the region, its scientific significance has only become clear to researchers in the last 10 years or so. The specimen therefore offers what is currently a unique insight into an ancient forest ecosystem in Africa.” Its complicated dating was possible only indirectly, by determining the age of the fossil palynomorphs--the spores and pollen--enclosed in the amber, he added.
"Research results such as these are only possible through the use of state-of-the-art technology," according to the University of Jena news release. "As the genetic material of fossils cannot be analyzed, precise data and observations on the morphology of animals are particularly important. Comprehensive data can be obtained using high-resolution imaging techniques, such as micro-computed tomography (CT), in which X-rays are used to look through all layers of the sample."
A quote from Jörg Hammel from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon: “Since the ants enclosed in amber that are to be examined are very small and only show a very weak contrast in classical CT, we carried out the CT at our measuring station, which specializes in such micro-tomography. This provided the researchers with a stack of images that basically showed the sample that was being studied slice by slice.”
"Put together, these produced detailed three-dimensional images of the internal structure of the animals, which the researchers could use to reconstruct the anatomy with precision," the news release related. "This was the only way to exactly identify the details that ultimately led to the new species and genus being determined."
Boudinot, a two-year Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow, recently was awarded a Peter S. Buck Research Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and will begin his fellowship there early next year.
Boudinot received his doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 2020, working with major professor Phil Ward. During his years at UC Davis, Boudinot received the John Henry Comstock Award from the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America, the highest ESA graduate student honor.
![From left: Martin Müller, director of the Institute for Materials Physics at Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, and Christian Schroer, leading scientist of DESY's X-ray source PETRA III, accept a model of the newly identified ant from lead author Brendon Boudinot of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, and co-author Jörg Hammel, beamline scientist at the Hereon measurement station at PETRA III, where the research took place. (Photo courtesy of Marta Meyer, DESY) From left: Martin Müller, director of the Institute for Materials Physics at Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, and Christian Schroer, leading scientist of DESY's X-ray source PETRA III, accept a model of the newly identified ant from lead author Brendon Boudinot of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, and co-author Jörg Hammel, beamline scientist at the Hereon measurement station at PETRA III, where the research took place. (Photo courtesy of Marta Meyer, DESY)](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/entomology/blogfiles/94701.jpg)
![UC Davis doctoral alumnus Brendon Boudinot, an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Institute of Zoology and Evolutionary Research at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, shows a 3D image of the newly discovered ant species named UC Davis doctoral alumnus Brendon Boudinot, an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Institute of Zoology and Evolutionary Research at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, shows a 3D image of the newly discovered ant species named](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/entomology/blogfiles/94702.jpg)