A Special NOVA: Evolution Screening Event
Trace the epic journey of animal life, from a single cell to the amazing variety alive today.
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.
Evolution premieres Wednesdays, October 14 – November 11 at 8pm MT on NMPBS and will also be available for streaming via NMPBS Passport, pbs.org/NOVA, and the PBS app.
PANEL MODERATOR:
Christopher C. Witt
Professor, Dept. of Biology, University of New Mexico
Curator of Birds, Museum of Southwestern Biology
Dr. 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. Dr. 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, NM 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 Museum of Southwestern Biology at the University of New Mexico 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 (Amphibians and Reptiles, Birds, Fish, Insects, Invertebrates, and Mammals).
Felisa Smith
Distinguished Professor, UNM Dept of Biology
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
Dr. 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 Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. 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.
