Annual Report 2001-2002 - Western Australian Museum - The ...

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Western Australian Museum–
Science and Culture
Dr Wells undertook two trips overseas as part of the task of organising the World Congress of
Malacology, Perth 2004. He presented scientific papers and talks on the conference at meetings
in Charlestown, South Carolina, USA, Vigo, Spain and Manila, Philippines. Dr Wells also visited
Thailand to assist in setting up the field program for his PhD student, Kitithorn Sunpanich. Mr
Sunpanich worked at the WA Museum for more than two months in early 2003 and participated
in the Esperance workshop.
Diana Jones acted as a consultant regarding the purchase of the Freycinet Collection by the
State Government. Several sections of the Baudin Exhibition, developed by Ms Jones, were
used in the resulting Freycinet Exhibition at the State Library. As an executive member of the
WA Terra Australia 2000 Committee, Ms Jones attended the unveiling of Baudin Busts at Albany
and Shark Bay and the launch of the Baudin History School Kit at Government House.
Dr Jane Fromont attended the sixth International Sponge Conference in Rapallo, Italy in October
2002, presented two papers, and was a co-author of two other papers and a poster.
Melissa Hewitt participated in a beach walk along Cottesloe Beach with the Naturalist Club, as
an expert crustacean specialist. She and Mark Salotti also led an exploring intertidal reef program
at Rottnest Island as part of the Sea Week celebrations.
Earth and Planetary Sciences
Dr Ken McNamara was invited to give the second annual Leverhulme Lecture on the role of
heterochrony in vertebrate evolution by the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolution at the
University of Cambridge. He also lectured on the role of hox genes (genes that regulate
development) in trilobite evolution in the university’s Department of Earth Sciences and gave
lectures at UWA and Curtin University, and to several community organisations.
The very popular Earth and Planetary Sciences Visiting Scientist Seminar Series continued with
seven seminars presented by visitors from Australia and overseas.
Dr John Long gave 34 public lectures, reaching directly some 2,380 people, including talks to
school groups during Childrens’ Book Week, (19–23 August 2002), and public talks and workshop
sessions during the Perth Writers Festival (February 2002), focusing on the boundaries between
scientific research and science writing. He also spoke in Bunbury, Kalgoorlie, Broome and
Beijing, China.
Dr Alex Bevan and Professor John de Laeter were finalists in the prestigious Eureka Science
Book prize for 2002 for their critically acclaimed Meteorites: a journey through space and time.
Dr Bevan lectured to first-year students at UWA’s Department of Geology and Geophysics and
Curtin University’s Department of Geology, and presented public talks, including one in the
museum@work series, on meteorites and the origin of the solar system.
Dr Geoff Deacon has been conducting public programs in association with the Education
Department since October 2002. To date, 19 Diamonds to Dinosaurs fossil and dinosaur classes
have been completed with 600 children from pre-primary to Year 6 attending.
The Dinosaur Club continued to expand. Currently, the membership for DinoNews 18 (released
in August 2002) is 510 locally with a similar number of members in the Eastern States. DinoNews
19 will be printed in the very near future.
Terrestrial Invertebrates
The Department produced 11 research publications, a book, an interactive CD-ROM, six popular
publications and 12 conference papers and unpublished reports during the year.
Mark Harvey, with co-authors Robert Raven and Barbara Baehr of the Queensland Museum,
published the most significant identification tool for Australian spiders yet produced. The CD-
WESTERN AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM ANNUAL REPORT 2002–2003