Skeleton

• BOUNTIFUL, Utah, May 8, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Viewmont High School students learned a powerful lesson April 25.
• That day, the Bountiful, Utah students heard how to chase their dreams, despite any obstacles.
• That's the heart of what we do at Hope of a Billion Foundation – empowering lives, one dream at a time."
• Maloney teaches a course on English language development, which consists of multilingual learners who have recently moved to Utah.

• Approved by the pope on March 25, 2024, the Vatican declaration asserts the Vatican’s opposition to gender-affirming surgery and surrogacy.
• Even in the ancient Roman Empire, individuals could transgress traditional conceptions of gender roles in various ways.
• As a scholar of Greek and Latin literature, I have studied the “Galli,” male followers of the goddess Cybele.

Cybele: Mother of the gods

In the philosophical treatise “Hymn to the Mother of the Gods,” Julian the Philosopher, the last pagan emperor of the Roman empire, writes about the history of the cult of Cybele. In this treatise, he describes the cult’s main figures and how some of its rites were performed.

• Often referred to as the Mother of the Gods, Cybele was first worshiped in Anatolia.
• Cybele’s cult gave rise to a group of male followers, or attendants, known as Galli.
• Among the surviving material evidence related to their existence are sculptures, as well as a Roman burial of an individual Gallus discovered in Northern England.

Attis: Cybele’s human companion

A statue from Ostia, Rome’s port city, depicts a reclining Attis, Cybele’s youthful male human companion.

• In their tellings of Cybele’s myth, Greek and Roman authors give differing versions for Attis’ self-castration.
• The Roman poet Catullus describes how Cybele puts Attis into a state of frenzy, during which he castrates himself.

Material evidence for the Galli

A relief sculpture from Lanuvium, now at the Musei Capitolini in Rome and dated to the second century C.E, is one of the few surviving representations of a Gallus.

• The sculpted figure is adorned with an elaborate headdress or crown, a torque necklace and a small breastplate, as well as ornate clothing.
• At Cataractonium, a Roman fort in Northern England, a skeleton was uncovered in the necropolis of Bainesse during excavations in 1981-82.
• An examination of the bones, however, revealed that the remains were those of a young man – likely in his early twenties.

Respect for Galli

• Galli, unlike other men in Rome or its empire, were able to openly present themselves or live as women, regardless of their assigned sex or how they identified.
• Catullus’ poem and comments by other authors indicate that they perceived the gender of the Galli as differing from Roman concepts of masculinity.
• However, the Galli were also, reluctantly, respected for the role they played in Cybele’s cult.
• It is tempting to see the Galli as nonbinary or transgender individuals, even though the Romans did not know or use concepts such as nonbinary or transgender.

Tina Chronopoulos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• “It could be the death of the museum,” says renowned mammalogist Tim Flannery, a former director of the museum.
• “To say research isn’t important to what a museum does – it’s sending shock waves across the world,” she says.

What’s the plan?

• According to the museum’s website, this skeleton crew will focus on “converting new discoveries and research into the visitor experience”.
• Others have tackled global questions such as the evolution of birds from dinosaurs, how eyes evolved in Cambrian fossils, and Antarctic biodiversity.

What’s so special about a museum?

• Their remits are different, says University of Adelaide botanist Andy Lowe, who was the museum’s acting director in 2013 and 2014.
• Unlike universities, he says, the museum was “established by government, to carry out science for the development of the state”.

• “They’re crucial for what goes on above; you need experts not second-hand translators,” says University of Adelaide geologist Alan Collins.
• He wonders what will happen the next time a youngster comes into the museum asking to identify a rock.
• The museum’s Phillip Jones now uses this collection in his research, delivering more than 30 exhibitions, books and academic papers.

Continuity and community

• Without attentive curation and the life blood of research, the collections are doomed to “wither and die”, says Flannery.
• That raises the issue of continuity.
• In Flannery’s words, the job of a museum curator:
  is like being a high priest in a temple.

• Over Jones’ four decades at the museum, his relationships with Indigenous elders have also been critical to returning sacred objects to their traditional owners.
• Besides the priestly “chain of care”, there’s something else at risk in the museum netherworld: a uniquely productive ecosystem feeding on the collections.
• Here you’ll find PhD students mingling with retired academics; curators mingling with scientists; museum folk with university folk.
• In the year ending 2023 for instance, joint museum and university grants amounted to A$3.7 million.

DNA and biodiversity

• The museum has also declared it will no longer support a DNA sequencing lab it funds jointly with the University of Adelaide.
• “No other institute in South Australia does this type of biodiversity research,” says Andrew Austin, chair of Taxonomy Australia and emeritus professor at the University of Adelaide.
• “It’s the job of the museum.” The cuts come while the SA government plans new laws to protect biodiversity.

Elizabeth Finkel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• A strange and enormous jawbone was discovered on the English coastline eight years ago, but my team was hesitant to identify it as a new species until more specimens came to light.
• Now, with the discovery of a second giant jawbone several years later, we have named a new species of ichthyosaur, an ancient marine reptile.
• In 2016, prolific fossil hunter Paul de la Salle, unearthed a giant jawbone on the beach at Lilstock in Somerset.
• My team, including De la Salle, studied this discovery and published our findings in 2018 in the journal PLOS One.

• The preservation and fine detail provided new information that also helped us to better reinterpret De la Salle’s original bone.
• We therefore erected a new genus (taxonomic rank) and species of giant ichthyosaur that we called Ichthyotitan severnensis, meaning “giant fish lizard of the Severn”.

Blue whale-sized giants

• Using a basic formula called a simple scaling factor, we can estimate that our ichthyosaur was up to 26 metres long, about the size of a blue whale.
• Comparisons with the same bone in other ichthyosaurs suggests that Ichthyotitan was between 20 and 26 metres in length.
• We have to be careful with such estimations due to differences among species, such as those with long or short snouts.
• At 202 million years old, the fossils narrowly predate a global extinction event that eradicated these giants – and marine reptiles would never reach such a size again.

Anyone can make a contribution

• I asked them whether they would like to join my team to study this fossil and they agreed.
• Ruby Reynolds is now a published scientist who not only found but also helped to name a gigantic prehistoric reptile.
• Palaeontology is one of those sciences where anybody can make a significant contribution.

Dean Lomax worked with Paul de la Salle, Marcello Perillo, Justin and Ruby Reynolds and Jimmy Waldron of the Dinosaurs Will Always Be Awesome Museum on the referenced research. He dedicates the work to Paul de la Salle who found the first surangular in 2016.