March 11, 1997Arts and events
Thomas N. Taylor, Roy A. Roberts distinguished professor of botany will speak on "The Lush and Green Vegetation of the Continent of Antarctica" in his inaugural lecture at 5:30 p.m. March 20 in Alderson Auditorium, Kansas Union.
"Today more than 95 percent of Antarctica is covered by ice and snow. The other 5 percent is rock," Taylor said. "But between 200 million and 240 million years ago, there was lush growth on the continent."
Taylor, one of the nation's leading paleobotanists, has studied Antarctica's "lush growth" for many years. He has visited the continent 10 times, each time returning, he said, with "tons" of fossil plants.
Taylor and his wife, Edith L. Taylor, KU professor of biological sciences, join colleagues and camp on the continent while searching for the fossilized plants. The cells in the ancient plants can still be studied.
"When leaves and other plant parts 200 million years fell into a stream they became entombed with the mineral silica," Taylor said. "The silica seeped into the cells of the leaves, preserving the cells and tissue systems."
According to Taylor, the mineral kept the cells from becoming compressed. The fossilized leaves offer evidence of the life of plants long ago.
"We examine the biology of plants from that era and determine how they differ from those of today," he said. "Antarctica had a pretty lush vegetation, with trees that were more than 100 feet tall. And these plants had to adapt to Antarctica's seasons, living with six months of 24 hours of daylight every day and six months of 24 hours of darkness."
Taylor said his talk would focus on more than research. He will include a "traveler's dialogue" covering aspects of the continent and his training for life in the Antarctic "summer," including camping in two-person tents for long periods.
Taylor joined KU's Department of Botany in 1996. He came from Ohio State University, Columbus, where he had taught plant biology and paleobotany for more than 20 years and had been a senior research scientist at the Byrd Polar Research Center.
"I had been at Ohio State quite a while, but when KU offered positions to my wife and me, we loaded a quarter-million fossil plants in nine Ryder trucks and moved our fossils to Lawrence," he said. "KU has a first-rate Division of Biological Sciences and Natural History Museum, so it wasn't that hard of a decision."
Among Taylor's honors and awards are membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 1994, the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Award from 1994 to 1996 and the Birbal Sahni Centenary Medal for Scientific Excellence in 1992.
Taylor is co-author of several books, including the 1995 textbook with his wife, "The Biology and Evolution of Fossil Plants." He is also author of more than 290 articles published in leading scientific journals.
He earned his bachelor's degree in botany and geology at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and his doctorate in paleobotany at the University of Illinois, Urbana. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Story by Dann Hayes, (785) 864-8855