{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/9s1kh0gv34/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Bonnie Jacobs"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/713/original/aviary_default_logo.png?1751992923","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eJacobs, Bonnie. Interview by Christina Hardman. \u003cem\u003ePaluxysaurus jonesi\u003c/em\u003e. August 7, 2025. Paleontological Oral History Program/Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. Fort Worth, Texas.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Duration"]},"value":{"en":["00:42:01"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["Fort Worth Museum of Science and History"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Dr. Bonnie Jacobs (Interviewee)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2025-08-07 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eProfessor Emeritus at SMU's Department of Earth Sciences. Dr. Jacobs recounts her career path from studying pollen and spores to reconstruct past climates in Arizona to collaborating on paleobotanical research in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. She describes her work on fossil plant remains, including conifers found at the Jones Ranch site, and how this research has contributed to understanding past environments and climate change. \u003c/p\u003e (abstract)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["MP4"]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["FWMSHPOHBJ001 (other)"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eProfessor Emeritus at SMU's Department of Earth Sciences. Dr. Jacobs recounts her career path from studying pollen and spores to reconstruct past climates in Arizona to collaborating on paleobotanical research in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. She describes her work on fossil plant remains, including conifers found at the Jones Ranch site, and how this research has contributed to understanding past environments and climate change.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]},"provider":[{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Fort Worth Museum of Science and History"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Fort Worth Museum of Science and History"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/713/original/aviary_default_logo.png?1751992923","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/304/653/small/data?1773422951","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - FWMSH Paleontological Oral History Program: Dr. Bonnie Jacobs"]},"duration":2521.0,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/304/653/small/data?1773422951","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfLo81mgezc","type":"Video","format":"video/youtube","duration":2521.0,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Dr. Bonnie Jacobs [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"AVIARY TRANSCRIPT\r\n\r\nTRANSCRIPTION BEGINS","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=0.0,0.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Introduction: The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, Fort Worth Texas. An interview with Dr. Bonnie Jacobs, August 7, 2025. Paleontological Oral History Program.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=0.0,8.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: Okay, well...I'm Bonnie Jacobs, I am a professor emeritus at SMU, Department of Earth Sciences. I was born and raised in Queens, New York. So, I'm a huge fan of museums, and that's what, it's one of the several things that got me interested in fossils.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=8.0,32.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer: Can you talk about your career path and what you are working on now?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=32.0,43.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: Yeah, so I'm a paleobotanist. I guess I should have said that already. And I've worked, started out at the University of Arizona, which is where I met Louis. We were fellow students. We were never even in the same classroom, but we met in grad school. And so, I was working on a project using pollen and spores to reconstruct past climate and environments along…on the Colorado Plateau in Arizona. That was my PhD work. I did my master's and PhD, but my master was involved in paleontology in West Mexico. And so, I always had an interest in tropical things, but I was really enjoying my PhD Work. So, when I got to Arizona, I was starting a master's and Louis had finished his master's, and he was already onto his PhD. By the time I finished my master's he was finishing his PhD, so he took his first job at Northern Arizona. And then he had the opportunity to become the head of paleontology at the National Museums of Kenya. He was offered that job by Richard Leakey, so we were not married yet. And so there was a big... A big fork in the road happening here. So we decided to get married and I would take my research with me, my PhD work involving Arizona, and I will take it with me to Nairobi and then work on it there, which was very scary and very, at the time I thought it was extremely risky because I didn't have…there was no internet, it was going to be no library for me. No colleagues, no advisors. But the short story of it, the short earth story of it, I guess it's not really a short story. But we did find a place for me to work on an amazing microscope. My samples were prepared already. It all involved microscope work, because this was pollen, and so actually, the microscope I was using was probably even better than the one I was using in Arizona. The lab was run by a, he was retired from Harvard. He was a biologist, and they were doing research on tick-borne diseases in animals. And so, they had electron microscopy. Anyway, so that actually worked out quite well. It slowed me down a little bit, but not too much. And so being in Kenya, of course, clearly it was an opportunity to learn about Kenya, about Africa, become involved with people who were working on projects, all of which had to do with vertebrate fossils for human evolution, which are also vertebrates, you know, but let's focus on that. And, um... So, I did, so I started working on that as the same time I was finishing my PhD on Arizona material, which was much, much younger. So, this was a whole new academic field for a graduate student who I hadn't even graduated yet with a PhD. But it was so amazing, so interesting, that I started to do what I could on some things that were already known from, they're not published, but people knew about these particular fossils in an ash bed in the area where our friend and colleague was working. So that was kind of like, here you are. So that set me on a path. And so, I did, when I was ready to defend, I went back to Tucson, I wrote my dissertation. Defended the dissertation and by that time, this was already, you know, I went there in ‘80 with Louis and then he got the job in ‘83 in Dallas and I defended in ‘83. We came to Dallas and I applied for grant money. One was for expanding my PhD work into New Mexico and doing a project there. And I was applying to a private foundation. And then the other, I applied to the National Science Foundation to do the work in Kenya. And if anybody watching this in the years to come would say, wow, probably she got funded by the private foundation because it's so hard to get funding from the NSF, which it always has been, but not quite as hard as it is today. Believe it or not, I got turned down by the private foundation. And I was funded by the National Science Foundation. And that just set me on that path, even more so, so that I then had money to go back and I had money too to do the work. And so, yeah, I began working on that project. It was incredibly interesting. It was very exciting. I worked with a botanist from the National Museum. She was the head of the herbarium there. And, uh, and she kind of had this Rolodex, if you…what’s a Rolodex…she had an index in her head, an image index in head, a database that was basically the tropical plants of Africa. And we worked together figuring out several of those specimens from that site. And then I also worked with Dale Winkler we did a little project that looked at taphonomy which is the circumstances of preservation of those fossils, because the ash had encased this forest in place, and some of the small plants, the herbaceous plants, were encased in that ash upright, and you could look at the bottom and their stems were coming out, and yeah, it was really fun. It's a really fun, fun project. So, yeah, and then the rest of it is complicated, but went well. And part of our life here in Dallas involved Jones Ranch. And that included me, but most of my work, almost all my work continued to be on fossils from Africa. So, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=43.0,458.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer: You have been doing work in Ethiopia for quite some time.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=458.0,468.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: Mm-hmm, yeah. That was a long project, and I'm still working, that's, oh you asked me what I'm working on now. Yeah, that still, I'm, still doing that, I am still doing, I do…Well, so in, once I began publishing on material from Kenya, then I got invitations to work with mainly paleoanthropologists who are always looking for environments of deposition, environments of hominid and hominoid evolution, and if they came across any plant fossils, “I’m the plant person in here.” And I was invited to work on a project in Tanzania first, and that actually was much older than even hominoids. This person was looking for primates, so the age of the place is 46 million, and very, very…in fact, it's perhaps the only fully collected Eocene site, plant site in Africa. So, it's an interesting and important place. So, we did that, and then I was invited to work in Ethiopia. And once I got there, I saw that there was amazing potential. The place I was taken to by the vertebrate paleontologist - because, you know, you all have different search images -  was like there were some bits of fossil wood lying about, but when I saw that there were beautifully preserved, organically preserved plant remains that they had missed. Not to throw shade on them, it's just that you're looking for different things. And that turned out to be a really nice locality with incredible plants and preservation. Then around that time, SMU hired me in a tenure-track position. So, I got a grad student who was interested in tropical paleobotany, and that was his dissertation location. And then I had another PhD student who came and worked there as well, and a master's student, and that project was beautiful. I also had a post-doc who came to work at that site. That site's called Chilga, and it's 27 million years old. We worked with a, at the time, fellow grad student who was Ethiopian, and he began working on other sites in Ethiopia after he finished his PhD at UT Austin. He went back and he invited us to a place called Mush, which is the name of the village. And that site was the most amazing place I've ever worked. So there, it can, it's, it’s 21.7 million years old. And the fossils there are preserved in organically rich shale deposits. So, it's an ancient lake. Turns out it's a crater lake. And you can, you know, pop open the layers and you have complete leaves preserved organically. So, their surfaces are preserved. Cuticles, you can look at the stomata and the cells and see. Minute details of venation and margins, and its really beautiful material. So that became a very long project, because we had lots to be identified, which we have done several of. And we also still, there's still pollen work being done, and we have colleagues at the University of Vienna working on that. There are fossil frogs there in all states of preservation and development. So not states of preserve…well, variation in states of presentation. So, tadpoles that are just squashed in organics, see their eyeballs and their optic nerves. And yeah. And then the development of bones in their metamorphosis and then adult forms. There are molecules preserved there. There are biomolecules. There are biomarkers indicating environments within the lake. So, it's an amazing place. So that's really what prompted this long-term work and collaboration with a lot of people on that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=468.0,744.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer: How did you become involved with the work at Jones Ranch?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=744.0,752.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: Backing up a little…Jones Ranch became a project because the volunteers were finding the remains of cones. And once they found cones, and I looked at those cones, I thought, wow, that has got to be done. And it was so surprising because the matrix is not the kind of matrix you expect to find delicate things preserved in. As Louis was saying, it's very hard, it almost crystallized, or maybe it is crystallized. But yet there would be these pockets of organic rich plant remains in there. So it was, again, a whole new area for me because it was very old, [unintelligible] obviously. Conifers, which I wasn't used to, but it was very exciting because they were beautiful specimens. And so, I got in touch with a colleague, a paleobotanist colleague, who did his dissertation on a specific family of conifers that we thought this belonged to. So, he and I collaborated, and we did the research. We found pollen inside the cones, we found shoots and, you know, minute leaves. We found cuticles with the surfaces again, with the stomata. And very typical for this whole... Actually, it's an order, an extinct order of conifers. And typical for this is a very thick cuticle and these stomatal openings that have little papillae overarching the openings to help prevent water loss through evaporation. And we found wood, the logs, the log jam, these wood specimens, we looked at those. And we also found other volunteers found, and we studied both male and female cones. So, the cones that had the pollen and the cones would have had the seeds. We didn't actually find the seeds, but we did find some organic matter on a few of the cones. So that was a really fun project for me, and the collaborator's name is Brian Axsmith, and we published the paper, Axsmith and Jacobs, in 2005, a long time ago. And very, very sadly, Brian succumbed very early on to COVID. Yeah, it was terrible.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=752.0,913.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer: Was this the paper titled “Paleoenvironments and the Paluxy Formation?”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=913.0,922.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: I don't know, it would…it would probably have had Frenelopsis in the title. Yeah. It was interesting because I think the majority of what is preserved there in terms of plants, maybe all of what's preserved there, is this Frenelopsis ramosissima, and it had been known only before that time from the East Coast section of Potomac group fossils. It had not been found in the West, well, as far west as this. So, it was unusual in that way. Oh, one other thing about how unusual it was is that it was thought at the time when the remains were found on the East Coast that it was a very small tree or shrub. But of course, we know from Jones Ranch that it was a big tree.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=922.0,973.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer: Paleontology gives us a better understanding of the past. Can you talk about how it helps us understand current and future trends?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=973.0,982.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: Well, uh...There are a couple of different ways of looking at it. One way is to use the circumstances of the past and the effects of environmental, especially climate change, on ecosystems in the past. Ecosystems, you can look at it at the level of plant community and see if you have independent information about that climate change. You can see, you get a feel for the sensitivity of plant communities to climate change. So if you go through time, if you through a section, and let's say you have a lot of time control and slow enough sedimentation that you can get a smaller package of time during which climate change has taken place, you can get pretty good understanding of ecological change that goes through time. And also even, you know, of course, if you have a longer package, evolutionary change goes through time. So, there is a lot to be learned from the past about how the abiotic environment climate and the physical factors affect the biotic environment, which is what you're finding out about from the plants directly. The other thing is you can use the plants to reconstruct the climate, and you can do that because there are certain aspects, there are characteristics of plants that relate to climate. So just on a very huge scale, I always do this with kids where, you know, you say to them, well, think about a rain forest. What do you see around you? What does it look like? And then think about the desert. What you see around you, what does it looks like? They realize right away that they're in different plant environments. They don't think plants. They think, when they think fossils, they think animals. But, you know, the plants are very different. So, you can do it on a broad scale like that. You can do on a smaller scale. And people are developing more and more methods of relating specific parts of plant fossils to specific attributes, physical attributes in the environment, amount of sunlight, the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere, maximum temperatures, minimum temperatures, seasonality of temperatures, and rainfall. Yeah, you can use the plants themselves to reconstruct climate. Once you do that, other people can use your reconstruction, of course, and test it using other data, but also you can have a climate record that can then be compared with climate models. And models are the only way we can tell into the future. So if you run a model, and the model tells you that by 2100, CO₂ will be fill in the blank, and global average temperature will be whatever, and you test that model to see its accuracy and look at it, what is it saying about the world one week from now? And it turns out that that model looks pretty good. And you think the reason at 2100, it's going to be because of double CO₂, let's say. You can go to the past, you can run your model backwards using all of the parameters that you can know from all kinds of different records, from geochemistry, from geophysics, from isotope geochemistry, for example, paleosol. And then you can say that, well, the plant record says it was very dry in the eastern part of this continent at this time. Our climate model says there was a rainforest there, so something's wrong. So yeah, you can use it as a kind of a test material. And the more that's known for each time period about the past through paleontology, and this goes for all fossils, the better situation you have for testing your models.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=982.0,1239.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer: Are these types of studies becoming more common with regard to climate change?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=1239.0,1249.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: Yes, it's, it, it became part of the forefront, I'd say, already what year is this, probably at least 20 years ago, maybe more. So, and most of that funding, I mean, there are a lot of places where funding can come from, but not much of that majority would come from the National Science Foundation.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=1249.0,1271.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer: What do you recall about Bill and Decie Jones?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=1271.0,1281.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: So, you know, I didn't spend as much time on those field trips as, of course, the others who were excavating the bones did, but I was there several times at least. And I just remember them as being completely hospitable, so happy that we were all there, very interested in talking about things, especially Mr. Jones. He always wanted to know more. He was very interested and knowing about plant fossils. Decie was just... Is just a down-to-earth good person. That's how I think of her. And we saw her not too long ago. It was great to see her, because she just seems the same as ever. You know, she's doing great. I'm so glad about that. We had great fun at the campfires. Jim Diffily would throw tons of wood on. He would really love to make a big bonfire. That was like his, you know, it was really fun to do that. And of course, you know, all the food, there was always a lot of people bringing all kinds of goodies to eat and enjoy in the morning. Jim was always kind of like the camp master, I felt like. And he loved it. And that was contagious. You know, that was kind of nice. We brought our kids there. We had a few kids. And I think that's where they enjoyed camping. Melissa, our son is older, our daughter's younger. I think she probably spent more time out there than he did. Maybe because of school activities or friends or what have you, right? Didn't Melissa spend more time? I remember her just loving the whole thing. She liked to be at the campfire. We brought our dog there. Jim used to bring his dog, who was a Corgi. And so, the Corgi used to herd everybody. And when we brought our dog there, the Corgi wanted to herd our dog, which was not a welcome thing from our dog. And so that was always kind of funny. And our dog was Midnight. He had a very funny personality. And he liked that he was a mix of all kinds of things, Chow and Lab. So as people were digging, they would throw the dirt, and he would like go to fetch. So, he wanted to fetch the dirt. Uh, yeah, who knows, um, yeah it was just a, it was just a really fun place, it was a beautiful place to be too, uh, beautiful pecan trees, uh one year we were there, I don't think it was for an excavation, it was just the reunion, there were reunions every year for many many many years, and this was I think a reunion year of camping in the fall and there was an overnight freeze or dip down in temperature. And when we woke up, the pecan leaves were just floating down, yellow, yellow. It was like a rain of yellow leaves. It was beautiful. First time I ever saw live armadillos was there. Not roadkill. Yeah, I mean, it was fun.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=1281.0,1487.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer What was unique about Jones Ranch that preserved so much of the fossil record, including other animals and plants?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=1487.0,1496.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: I think what's unique about it is the, is what and how things are preserved there. Plants especially. I mean, you don't…you very rarely find organically preserved remains of plants or anything with bones, especially in that kind of matrix. So, with bones, the bones are being replaced mineralogically. And organically preserved plants are not replaced specimens. So, it's not so unusual to find wood, because that's replacement process usually. But to have…these plants must have been sealed off very quickly and very securely, so that they did not oxidize. So, what you get with the mineral infiltration into the bones and then also with the preservation of, you know, mineralized wood is you have to have some kind of oxidation, but oxidation destroys organic matter. So the stuff you use like lye and other things that you use to clean clothes and stuff that’s supposed to break down organic matter and has this really like sort of slimy feel to it if you get it on your hands and if you get enough of it on your hands, you know, you I noticed that there's a little bit of, you know, effect on your skin, on the surface of your skin. So that's an oxidizer. And, you know if it's a strong oxidizer, you'll just dissolve the organic matter away. And with time that happens in a lot of places. And if it’s that oxidizing, you eventually don't get any pollen preserved either. And pollen is very resistant to decay. Here you have not just, you know you've got pollen grains inside cones inside the matrix. That's really unusual. I've never seen anything like that before. I've not read of this particular kind of preservation where you get these beautifully preserved plants in with such a hard matrix and a coarse matrix and these bones at the same time. Now part of what may have helped this long is that this group of plants, as I said, has those little papillae overarching the stomata. So, the cuticle, which is already a kind of a…It's a waxy coating. So, it's already a little bit resistant to decay. And it is less likely to be oxidized than something that's very delicate. So that probably helped the situation. You know, it didn't decay immediately. And at Doss Ranch, interestingly, one of Louis’ students….was it…I don't know if it was Yuong-Nam Lee or it was Junchang, but one of the students tried to dissolve the matrix and sieve it out for very small vertebrate fossils, which I believe he did not find. However, he had a lot of organic matter, little tiny bits and pieces of the same kind of plant that you find at Jones Ranch. Yeah, and again, it's got that same kind of thick cuticle coating. So, the idea is that this thick cuticle coating was probably for, you know, to prevent water loss. There is also a possibility there are other places like on the East Coast of the US where these plants are found in shoreline conditions, maybe somewhat saltwater conditions or, you know, brackish water conditions.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=1496.0,1736.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer: Did you work with any of the teachers through the Lone Star Dinosaur Institute?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=1736.0,1745.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: I was, I was…Yeah, no. What were the years, what were the years spanning the Lone Star Dinosaur Institute? I mean, I may have visited once or twice and said that when they came to SMU and they had their thing going on.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=1745.0,1764.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer: Did you bring SMU students out to the excavation site?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=1764.0,1772.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: Yeah, yeah. I participated whenever I could, or whenever I was asked to. That was, you know, for sure. I'm trying to recall. I think we brought the…did I bring the Boy Scouts out there one time or was that another place? [dialogue offscreen] I also brought colleagues, there was a paleobotanist down at Texas State, San Marcos, and I think, we brought Gary out there and showed him around. Gosh, I don't even know if I brought Brian out there though, but because…You know, once you get into your own, it's hard to do things that are vastly different at the same time, at least it was for me. And I felt like we did the work on the plant fossils there. And so, I'd be happy to talk about it at any time to anybody. But there wasn't more research I was doing at the place. And so mainly when I went there, it was for fun.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=1772.0,1846.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer: Did either of your children go into the paleontology field?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=1846.0,1855.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: No, our children...So our son…I mean, they both were into science. They both have been into science, and they still are. So, Matthew became a doctor. He's an anesthesiologist and also specializes in critical care, which is ICU. And they live in Minneapolis, and that's why we're going there. Uh, and…But it took him a while to get to that. He wasn't sure what he was doing for a little bit, and then he ended up doing this. He's very happy doing that. Melissa also changed her mind several times because she has a lot of interests. So, for a few minutes, she was an astronomy major, and then she was a biology major. And then she loved her sociology professor and ended up with a sociology degree. And, um...Then she worked for tech companies in Austin. And then she went to graduate school for library science and information technology. And then, she was in St. Louis now. And she works for a company called Hungry Root. Have you heard of that? Yeah. So, it's a food provisioning kind of company. Yeah, and she does digital library sort of work for them. So, she's helping them do that. But she's still…she still loves science, yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=1855.0,1953.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer: What advice would you give to someone wanting to work in paleontology or in a museum setting?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=1953.0,1962.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: From my own personal experience, I took a very circuitous route all along. I started out thinking archeology and then earth science and then archeology earth science together, which is I made up my own major at the University of Buffalo. In graduate school, that's how I started, was geology of archeological sites. And so, yeah, I've taken this crazy route, and then, you know, there were personal developments, like having children. And so that was a whole kind of path that I had to navigate, and we did come here for Louis’ job, so it took a long time, together with having children and getting a tenure track job here. So, I always would tell people, you have to follow your nose, you know, which means that what interests you and what you feel is the important thing to do at the time you're doing it. Follow that and it'll work out. That's kind of idealistic, I realize. And sometimes people do that, and they run out of time, or they run out of money, or whatever it is. So then you go back to the foundational advice, same advice Louis gave, which is to get as solid and broad an education as you can in science, so that then you have the tools, as many tools as possible, to go into any kind of a field, that while you're following your nose, you can get to. Yeah, and that's what I would say. Like an example is right now at the Perot Museum over in Dallas, they are now working with interns. Interns who have lots of really wonderful experience in paleontology and there were a lot of job applicants for summer interns there. So, you know, they may have had visions when they were 10 years old of, you know, being the next whoever, but they're thrilled to be doing what they're doing now, not that it's a fallback, but that it is, you know, yes, I'm really doing something with fossils and who knows where that will lead. So, it's really a combination of those things. Don't ignore the basics and the fundamentals that you have through the hard work. It's not easy. It's hard work to do all those courses and then also always put in the hard work. You know, you have to give it your all so that you’re ready.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=1962.0,2131.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer: Do you have additional advice or encouragement for women who want to work in the sciences?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=2131.0,2141.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. I feel very encouraged right now because things are very different now than they were. Despite you know the overall…whatever overall political things are happening in the country. When you come down to it, I think that things are different now, which is in a good way. I think that the big challenge always for women is trying or wanting to do everything and number one thinking they should do everything at the same time. Which is there is a “should” there and perhaps may not be the best for every individual but also if that's your your view you have to have or it's best to have a fully committed partner in that personal goal. And that takes some kind of sacrifice on the part of both of you for the children and for the two careers. That's very challenging to navigate sometimes, even now. Because still, there are so many people, maybe, I hope not the majority, but maybe it is the majority in America, who grow up in an environment in where the example, and even sometimes the verbal fuse and lessons are that the priority is for the man to, you know, do their career, their goal, whatever they want to do, whatever it is. And that the bendable part is the mom. If there are no children, it makes it so much easier. But there's still the challenge of the two-body problem. You have two careers. They're very similar. How do you get two jobs in the same institution? But there are other things that people can do. So, there are museums. There are universities. There are educational routes at museums and universities, too, that could help. And I think that part of what has changed and what I'm not quite sure about in terms of how I think about it, is the tendency now to feel that if you want to love your life in a certain field, you just don't have children. And people did think that. I knew people who thought that when I was…when I was coming up too, and they made a very conscious decision about choosing one or the other. I think now it fits into a bigger picture of I want to live a really full life and I don't want to sacrifice what it takes to have children, and if that's really the way you feel, that's fine. I'm not making that decision for another person. They make that and that's important, but I think there is some...There is some message in there. I don't know where it is or when it'll come out, but I think there's some message somewhere knitted into that that if you want to fully, you know, what is it called when you fulfill yourself? When you fully realize yourself, you're a fully realized person in terms of your career and your academic, whatever your career goals are. It is better if you just skip the whole children thing. I could be wrong, but that's kind of the feeling I have. So, you have to have a supportive environment to do it. You have to realize that it sacrifices on both sides. And just be prepared for that. And it's all worth it to me. To me, it was worth it. It's worth it if it's what you want. Put it that way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=2141.0,2396.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer: What is your favorite memory of working on the Paluxysaurus excavation?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=2396.0,2404.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: Oh, I think my favorite…actually, my favorite memory, I mean, aside just from having fun at the campsite, was getting pollen out of the male cone. Actually, Brian was visiting, Brian Axsmith was visiting in Dallas. We were figuring out what we had, how we were going to go about this. We were talking about how we really think that this is in the family, Cheirolepidiaceae, that's the name of the family. And then he said, well, you know, really, the clincher is the pollen. Because it is unique to this whole group of plants. So, we took one of the male cone cross-sections, I went in the lab, I came back like 20 minutes later, we put the stuff on a slide, and there it was. It was so great, it was so fun, because even though I'd worked with pollen lots and lots before, I'd never done that kind of specific preparation to get out individual pollen grains from something like that. You know, these are microscopic, of course. So that was really really fun, yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=2404.0,2471.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interviewer: Is there anything else that you would like people to know about your work on the project?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=2471.0,2480.0"},{"id":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653/transcript/92293/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bonnie Jacobs: I want to say how much of a privilege it was for me to work on this project, and how much I appreciated, because of finding things like that, learning what I did from the work. And I'm very, very proud of what the whole Lone Star Dinosaur Institute did. I'm very proud of that, of Louis and Jim Diffily and Dale and the Joneses for how they supported that. I think that's really amazing.\r\n\r\nTRANSCRIPTION ENDS","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://fortworthmuseumofscienceandhistory.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3545/collection_resources/166452/file/304653#t=2480.0,2521.0"}]}]}]}