Cave diving is often thought of as an extreme and dangerous sport where people squeeze through tight spaces in rocks with dark water obscuring their vision. But CMU Professor Zachary Klukkert and his team work in large caves with an opening in the roof to the open air—not for sport, but for research into fossils of the recent past.
When he was studying about evolution and primates at City University of New York, Klukkert said he learned little about recently extinct species. He says now he wants to better understand the recent past: what humans just missed.
For example, the small carnivore fossa hunts lemurs in Madagascar. You might remember them from the animated film. Today they’re small animals, but Klukkert said he’s found fossils suggesting they had been much bigger.
“Now, you know, with a little imagination and extrapolation, we can picture a pack of sixty-pound mountain lions hunting down a 400-pound gorilla-sized lemur, and taking it down," he said. "All of the sudden Madagascar is a much more violent, but exciting place.”
His team on the surface can be as much as a dozen people, but underwater it's just him and a few assistants.
"Once we enter the water, all the noise of a hundred voices go quiet and it’s really just a small team of us exploring these underwater caves in the darkness," he said.
Though he conducts research in places not many people get a chance to see, Klukkert’s day-job is on solid ground.
Klukkert has been scuba diving for twelve years. He’s been teaching at CMU for one. Walking into his office, you notice dozens of 3D-printed fossils. They’re copies of skulls he found while diving, arranged like a regiment of soldiers on his desk.
Turning around, you see a huge underwater scooter adorning the “lab” portion–he said it’s one of the fastest on the consumer market.
“I get to go to the Caribbean, and scuba dive, and be able to find some amazing fossils so there’s very little downside to this research," Klukkert said.
But there is a downside. In the past, researchers would take advantage of the generosity of countries and take the fossils and other artifacts they found home, he said. His team is aware of this and only takes a fossil out of the country if they have to conduct lab tests. When they’re done, they return the artifact to the native country. And as a way of showing appreciation, they work with local scientific groups and educate the people who live there.
The world needs more education about recently extinct species, Klukkert said. They not only merge paleontology and history together, but also allow a look at the trajectory humans are on.
“When you see on the news and you see ads to help Rainforest Alliance (asking to) contribute a little bit of money. Your Amazon Prime option is to benefit this charity or that to help a rainforest," Klukkert said. "Well, this stuff really isn’t preventable. We’ve already passed the threshold. We’ve already seen a decline in biodiversity. But I don’t feel like a lot of people understand that–frankly the scientific community doesn’t really have a handle on it.”
More than any scientific breakthrough he could fantasize about, Klukkert said he wants professors to teach about recently extinct species as if they were alive. It would inspire people to think of the loss of the giant lemur and prowling fossa as a warning.
And in their absence, he said maybe more people would try to safeguard this era’s wonders.