Trace the epic journey of animal life, from a single cell to the amazing variety alive today in a Special NOVA: Evolution screening event, Tuesday, Oct. 27 from 6 to 8 p.m. (MDT) at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.
At the event, clips from all five episodes of NOVA’s Evolution series will be shown, followed by a compelling panel featuring local scientists discussing the frontiers of evolutionary science.
Sign language interpretation will be provided. Admission is free, but reservations are required. For more information, visit NOVA: Evolution Screening.
PANELIST BIOS
Panel Moderator:
Christopher C. Witt
Professor, Department of Biology, University of New Mexico
Curator of Birds, Museum of Southwestern Biology
Christopher C. Witt is an evolutionary ornithologist who studies how birds adapt to their environments. His research combines ecology, physiology, and genomics to understand how climate and other environmental factors shape evolution. Much of his work focuses on birds distributed across environmental gradients, from hummingbirds living at different elevations in the Andes to Sandhill Cranes breeding across the latitudes of North America.
He earned his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Louisiana State University in 2004 and completed postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. Witt is professor of Biology at the University of New Mexico and Curator of Birds at UNM’s Museum of Southwestern Biology. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society and serves on the New Mexico Wildlife Commission.
DISCUSSION PANELISTS:
Jason Malaney
Biosciences Curator, New Mexico Museum of Natural History
Jason Malaney is the curator of Biosciences at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science and an associate curator and associate research professor at the UNM Museum of Southwestern Biology where he is part of the CUERVO Lab (Center for Understanding Evolutionary Relationships of Various Organisms). At the NMMNH&S he oversees the research, educational activities, and exhibits using specimens of six research collections including amphibians and reptiles, birds, fish, insects, invertebrates and mammals).
Felisa Smith
Distinguished Professor, Department of Biology, UNM
Felisa Smith is a distinguished professor in the department of Biology at UNM. A conservation paleoecologist, she integrates modern, historic and fossil mammal records to investigate pressing environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss. Over her career she has worked on organisms from microbes to mammoth but vastly prefers the latter.
Most recently, Smith has been using the terminal Pleistocene megafauna extinction as a proxy for understanding modern mammal biodiversity loss. In addition to 3 books, she has written >120 papers/book chapters in a wide variety of scientific journals and taught scientific blogging at UNM.
Ian Wallace
Associate Professor, Evolutionary Anthropology, UNM
Ian Wallace is an evolutionary anthropologist specializing in human evolutionary physiology, physical activity, and musculoskeletal biology. He earned his Ph.D. in Anthropological Sciences from Stony Brook University in 2013 and was subsequently a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University until 2020, when he joined the faculty of the UNM Department of Anthropology.
His research is diverse and includes studies of ancient fossils, laboratory experiments with humans and other animals, and ethnographic and biomedical research among contemporary hunter-gatherers and other small-scale subsistence societies.
Geoffrey West
Geoffrey West, distinguished professor and former president of the Santa Fe Institute, previously at Stanford and Los Alamos, is a theoretical physicist who has worked across the physical, biological and social sciences ranging from quarks and cells to cities, and from growth and mortality to innovation and global sustainability. Most recently, he is best known for his work on scaling, the metabolic theory of ecology and of the science of cities. West has been featured at many high profile events including TED, Davos and the Venice Biennale. He is the author of the best-selling book Scale and was named to Time magazine’s list of 100 in 2007.
Evolution, the series, premieres Wednesdays, Oct. 14 – Nov. 11 at 8 p.m. MT on NMPBS and will also be available for streaming via NMPBS Passport, pbs.org/NOVA, and the PBS app.
