Aura Highsmith could have gone to Mexico for sun and fun.
Instead, the Jersey City resident and Newark public school art teacher went there last month to dig up fossils and learn about continental biostratigraphy, a branch of geology that compares and dates rock strata based on the fossils found within them.
Highsmith was a volunteer from July 12 to July 18, along with nine other people from the United States, for a project organized by the Boston-based environmental nonprofit organization Earthwatch (www.earthwatch.org). The group organizes research projects in over 30 countries.
The “Mexican Megafauna” project focused on the mass migration of ancient animals between North and South America after the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama. The fossil excavations provided a wealth of information on the paleontological and geological history of the Transmexican Volcanic Belt and the migration between the two continents that dates back about five million years.
The volunteers worked in the San Miguel de Allende area of Central Mexico’s Guanajuato State, a four-hour drive from Mexico City, where they uncovered everything from horse teeth to a complete mammoth skeleton.
Highsmith said the trip was an eye-opening experience that she hopes to impart to her students when classes begin.
“I came home from my Earthwatch expedition feeling a profound respect for our own time in life and connection to the world, and I realized that you do not have to be a science or history person to have a love of culture and the past,” Highsmith said. “Even as an art teacher, my role and attention for detail can be of great value to a team and furthermore expand the views of my students.”
Time to study another time
Highsmith said she was researching fellowships for teachers on the internet when she came across the Earthwatch volunteer opportunity. She applied for a volunteer slot, not knowing where she would be stationed. But she did not mind.
“I was happy, I was ecstatic,” Highsmith said. “I always wanted to do research.”
“When you volunteer to help others, you are helping yourself.” – Aura Highsmith
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Every day, with her volunteer research team working under the supervision of Dr. Oscar Carranza Casteneda of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and his staff, they started excavating by hand at 9 a.m. for a four-hour period until lunch at 1 p.m. Then after a half-hour lunch, it was back to more digging until 5 p.m. The fossils after each dig were wrapped and brought to a lab for further study.
“There was a lot of gentleness involved,” Highsmith said. “Once something is broken, it’s broken.”
While it was hard work at times, Highsmith employed her sense of adventure and a sense of humor to get through.
“The first day I was there, I started making jokes that I was the ‘Queen of Rocks’ because every time I thought I found something, I would be told ‘that’s not a bone; that’s a rock,’ Highsmith said. “On the second day, I called myself the ‘Tooth Fairy’ because I was finding all these teeth.”
Being adventurous
Highsmith said she would like to travel again on another Earthwatch expedition or at least another fellowship allowing her to study other cultures. She definitely wants to continue volunteering.
“When you volunteer to help others, you are helping yourself,” Highsmith said.
She was previously a recipient of the 2007 Japan-Fulbright Memorial Fund for teachers, and spent three weeks in seminars in Japan to further broaden inter-cultural relations between the cultures of Japan and inner city youth. She was also awarded the 2008 Geraldine R. Dodge Fellowship, on which she studied Eastern European culture in Croatia last summer.
To learn more about the expedition that Highsmith undertook, visit http://www.earthwatch.org/exped/carranzamega.html.
Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com.