Portraits
The Bearded Lady Project: Challenging the Face of Science’s mission is twofold. First, to celebrate the inspirational and adventurous women who have chosen to dedicate their lives in the search of clues to the history of life on earth. Second, to educate the public on the inequities and prejudices that exist in the sciences, with special emphasis on paleontology. What our project sets out to do is to engage an interdisciplinary audience through two creative and interactive mediums: filmmaking and photography.
The images below are a selection of the portraits made during a two-year period where our team traveled the nation (and to the United Kingdom) to interview, take a bearded portrait of, and document over one hundred scientists working in the field and in their labs.
If you are a venue interested in hosting “The Bearded Lady Project” exhibition, please contact us.
DR. CATHERINE BADGLEY, Paleoecologist, University of Michigan: Badgley studies the ecology and geographic diversity patterns of mammals in relation to changing environmental gradients. She and her students document the paleoenvironments of regions with rich mammalian fossil assemblages and analyze changes in diversity and ecological attributes of mammals over time and across landscapes. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. ANDREA HAWKES, Micropaleontologist, University of North Carolina Wilmington: Hawkes reconstructs the frequency and magnitude of coastal hazards (tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, sea level) using fossil single-celled marine organism (foraminifera) found in salt marsh sediments up to 10,000 years old. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
LECKIE LAB, University of Massachusetts Amherst (L-R): Adriane R. Lam, PhD candidate in micropaleontology; Raquel Bryant, MS student of micropaleontology; Serena Dameron, PhD candidate in micropaleontology. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
PROF. CAROLE S. HICKMAN, Invertebrate paleontologist, University of California, Berkeley: Hickman has devoted more than 50 years to field and laboratory investigations of fossil and living marine mollusks in an effort to develop general principles of animal architecture and evolution. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
JENNA KAEMPFER, PhD candidate in geochemistry and tectonics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Kaempfer's current research focuses on developing low temperature thermochronometers to help understand the uplift of mountain belts. She is using these novel techniques to understand the history of the Laramide basement uplifts across Wyoming. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. ELLEN CURRANO, Paleobotanist, University of Wyoming: Currano studies how ancient forest communities in Wyoming and Ethiopia responded to global warming. She excavates fossil leaves and examines them for bug bites in order to understand how plant-insect interactions change as Earth warms and cools. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. CINDY LOOY, Paleobotanist, University of California, Berkeley: Looy is a plant ecologist who examines changes in fossil plants communities during periods of global climate change and mass extinction and warming (esp. 300-250 million years ago). She collects and studies fossil plants and their pollen and spores in order to find out how life was shaped by these upheavals, and how plant life affected these events. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
ISABEL HONG, PhD candidate in paleoseismology, Rutgers University: Hong studies how coastlines respond to geologic hazards. She collects fossil phytoplankton and sediment to understand how much land movement is caused by earthquakes. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. KAY BEHRENSMEYER, Vertebrate paleontologist, Smithsonian Institution: Behrensmeyer investigates how vertebrate remains become fossilized and what fossils tell us about ancient ecology. She studies processes that preserve and destroy modern bones in East Africa and uses this information to help her decipher stories told by fossil bones. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. CLAIRE BELCHER, Wildfire paleontologist, University of Exeter: Belcher studies how evolutionary changes to ecosystems and wildfires influenced the Earth system in the past. She aims to understand the flammability of Earth’s ecosystems, and she considers flammability over a range of timescales, from instantaneous asteroid impacts to variations in atmospheric oxygen over million-year timescales. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. DENISE SU, Paleoecologist, Cleveland Museum of Natural History: Su studies the environment of our earliest ancestors. She looks for the fossil remains of our ancestors and of the plants and animals that lived alongside them and examines the clues they left behind to understand their environment and ecology. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. KAREN CHIN, Paleoecologist, University of Colorado: Chin studies the ancient ecosystems inhabited by the dinosaurs. Who lived with the extinct dinosaurs (animals, plants, fungi etc.) and how did those organisms interact with each other? She tackles these questions by examining fossilized dinosaur dung and other fossil evidence. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. KATE BULINSKI, Invertebrate paleoecologist, Bellarmine University: Bulinski studies ancient sea creatures that lived on the shallow ocean floor that is preserved in the rocks of the American Midwest. She examines fossils and the rocks that contain them to figure out how changes in the environment affected how the animals lived. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
KATHERINE LOUGHNEY, PhD student in vertebrate paleontology, University of Michigan: Loughney studies environmental conditions that contribute to the accumulation and preservation of vertebrate fossils on land. She studies the sedimentological context of fossil localities and the physical features of fossil bones to reconstruct past environments that preserve animal remains. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
HLUSKO LAB, University of California, Berkeley (L-R): Tesla Monson, PhD candidate in paleoanthropology and evolutionary biology; Whitney B. Reiner, PhD candidate in vertebrate paleontology & paleoanthropology; and Dr. Leslea J. Hlusko, Paleoanthropologist. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. LISA BOUCHER, Paleobotanist, University of Texas at Austin: Boucher reconstructs past landscapes using fossil leaves and wood from sites in southwestern North America and the Southern Hemisphere. She studies how plant distributions influenced the direction of plant evolution resulting in the flora we see today. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. LISA WHITE, Micropaleontologist and science educator University of California Museum of Paleontology: White studies fossil diatoms - single celled plants with a silica shell - with a focus on their evolutionary history and their application to deciphering geological time and past ocean history. At the University of California Museum of Paleontology, White develops teaching and learning materials on the fossil record, evolution, and global climate change while overseeing a variety of public programming at the museum. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
MARIEKE DECHESNE, Geologist, United States Geological Survey: Dechesne researches the interaction between tectonics, sedimentation, and climate in the Rocky Mountain basins. She incorporates outcrop observations, subsurface data, fossil information, and radiometric dating to interpret timing of uplift, sediment accumulation rates, paleoenvironments, and paleogeography. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. PATRICIA HOLROYD, Vertebrate paleontologist, University of California Museum of Paleontology: Holroyd studies how mammals and reptiles respond to both climate change and catastrophes in earth history. She looks at teeth and bones to discover how many and what kinds of animals lived in the past, trace their evolutionary histories, and understand how they lived. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. PATRICIA KELLEY, Invertebrate paleontologist, University of North Carolina Wilmington: Kelley studies the role of biological factors in evolution, using fossils of carnivorous shell-drilling moonsnails and their mollusk victims up to 80 million years old from the southeast US. The fossils also help her answer questions about biodiversity conservation. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. VICTORIA HUDSPITH, Wildfire paleontologist, University of Exeter: Hudspith studies charcoal that is produced by burning vegetation in the lab. She uses observations of charcoal formation and production to figure out what could be missing from the fossil record, in order to improve our understanding of past wildfires. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. REBECCA HUNT-FOSTER, Vertebrate paleontologist, Bureau of Land Management - Utah: Hunt-Foster typically studies Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived in southeastern Utah and western Colorado. She is currently working on ornithomimid, or 'ostrich-like', dinosaurs that lived in the Early Cretaceous of North America, from Utah to Maryland. © 2017 Draper White
DR. KINUYO KANAMARU, Paleoclimatologist and paleotempestologist, Amherst College: Kanamaru's research specialization is in the reconstruction of prehistoric climate change along with identification of past natural disasters including tropical storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis in Japan and Korea. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. PENNY HIGGINS, Vertebrate paleontologist and geochemist, University of Rochester: Penny uses the chemistry of fossils - specifically stable isotopes of carbon and oxygen from fossilized teeth, shells, and other fossilized skeletal materials - to examine weather and climate patterns of the remote past. © 2017 Kelsey Vance
DR. SARA B. PRUSS, Paleontologist, Smith College: Pruss studies ancient interactions between animals and their environment, during evolutionary events and mass extinctions. In her work, she pursues questions like: "why did organisms first make shells?” and “what happened to Earth when ~90% of the animals died?" © 2017 Kelsey Vance
