Hosted by: Alice Gage

Guests: Professor Kris Helgen, Dr Patrick Smith, Dr Tim O’Hara and the scientists aboard the CSIRO RV Investigator.




No one knows how many animal species are on the planet today. It might be something like two million, it might be something like 10 million, maybe even more. The scientists of the Australian Museum Research Institute are hard at work investigating Earth’s biodiversity – which sometimes means discovering animals not previously known to science. These discoveries teach us what has come before us, and what we need to protect for the generations that will come after us.

In the final episode of Explore season one, we head out into the field – from the deepest ocean trenches to the peaks of the Himalayas – to discover how the Australian Museum’s Chief Scientist Professor Kris Helgen and palaeontologist Dr Patrick Smith identify new species, and what it means to add new branches to the Tree of Life.



About the guests

Professor Kristofer Helgen

Professor Kristofer Helgen is Chief Scientist and Director of the Australian Museum Research Institute. He is responsible for a team of more than 100 staff, including research scientists, collection scientists, collection officers and more than 130 associates, fellows and students, who research and explore the natural world. Kris was most recently Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Adelaide.



He has focused his research primarily on fieldwork with living animals and research in museum collections to document the richness of life, understand global change, and contribute to important problems in biomedicine.

Originally from Minnesota, Kris gained his undergraduate degree in Biology at Harvard University and his Ph.D. in Zoology as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Adelaide. From 2008-2017 he served as Curator-in-Charge of Mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Kris has conducted research in more than 50 countries documenting some 100 previously overlooked species of living mammals.


Professor Kristofer M. Helgen
Professor Kris Helgen is Director and Chief Scientist of the Australian Museum Research Institute (AMRI). Image: University of Adelaide
© University of Adelaide

Dr Patrick Smith

Dr Patrick Smith is a technical officer in the Palaeontology Collection at the Australian Museum Research Institute. He obtained a PhD at Macquarie University looking at Middle Cambrian (500–510 million year old) marine invertebrates from Ross River Gorge near Alice Springs in central Australia.



He also was a previous curator at the Richmond Marine Fossil Museum (Kronosaurus Korner) in far northwest Queensland and a technical officer in the geology department at the University of New South Wales. Currently he is working to database the Australian Museum’s entire Palaeontology Collection. This includes all the material onsite, as well as the material at the museum offsite storage facility.


Dr Patrick Smith standing atop fossilised Early Cambrian (520 million year old) stromatolites at Ross River Gorge
Dr Patrick Smith standing atop fossilised Early Cambrian (520 million year old) stromatolites at Ross River Gorge. Image: Dr Patrick Smith
© Australian Museum

Dr Tim O'Hara


Dr Tim O'Hara is the Senior Curator, Marine Zoology, at Museums Victoria. He uses museum collections to answer large-scale questions about the distribution of seafloor animals around the globe.

This research includes aspects of biogeography, macroecology, phylogeny, and phylogeography. Tim's taxonomic speciality is the Ophiurodea (brittle-stars), a class of echinoderms that are a dominant component of the seafloor fauna.


Dr Tim O'Hara is the Senior Curator, Marine Zoology, at Museums Victoria.
Dr Tim O'Hara is the Senior Curator, Marine Zoology, at Museums Victoria. Image: Supplied
© Tim O'Hara

Host


Alice Gage is the producer, writer and host of the Australian Museum’s Explore podcast, and editor of Explore, its biannual magazine.

Alice is an editor, project manager and content creator with 15 years' experience in print and digital storytelling. She is a passionate communicator of science, intersections of culture, climate change, the arts and parenting, working across a broad range of formats. She founded and published cult art journal Ampersand Magazine from 2009-2013.

Alice lives on Bidjigal Country with her husband and their two little redheads. She holds an MA in Communications from Melbourne University and a BA in English from Sydney University.


Alice Gage - Digital Communications Coordinator
Alice Gage is the producer, writer and host of the Australian Museum’s Explore podcast, and editor of Explore, its biannual magazine. Image: Supplied
© Alice Gage