URI researchers journey to Australia to unlock the hidden life historical past of leopard seals – Rhody Immediately

KINGSTON, R.I. – Aug. 17, 2026 – The skulls have been sitting on museum cabinets for greater than a century. Many nonetheless carry handwritten tags and notes from the scientists and explorers who collected them within the late 1800s and early 1900s. These specimens protect clues inside their bones and enamel concerning the animals they got here from—together with their intercourse, age at demise, and weight-reduction plan. Now, University of Rhode Island researchers are utilizing these clues to handle longstanding questions on leopard seal biology.

This summer season, Emily Sperou, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in URI’s Comparative Ecophysiology of Animals Lab (CEAL), and Sarah Kienle, Ph.D., assistant professor of wildlife biology and director of the CEAL lab, traveled to 4 museums throughout Australia, photographing, scanning, and amassing samples from about 100 leopard seal skulls.

The work is a component of a bigger worldwide undertaking aimed toward filling essential information gaps about one in all Antarctica’s high predators: the leopard seal.

A lab inside a museum

The CEAL crew recognized museums world wide with a number of the largest leopard seal collections and contacted every establishment to safe permission to gather small samples from the skulls—a course of that took years. “Almost all of the museums we have reached out to have been very generous and want to work with us to support the leopard seal project,” Sperou stated.

Their Australian itinerary included visiting the Queen Victoria Museum in Launceston, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart, the Melbourne Museum (a part of Museums Victoria) in Melbourne, and the Australian Museum in Sydney.

At every cease, the researchers reworked behind-the-scenes museum workspaces into non permanent laboratories. “We bring a suitcase worth of gear,” Kienle stated. “Dental tools, drill bits, vials for samples, 3D scanners, and accessories.”

They adopted a meticulous course of with each cranium. First got here high-resolution images for measurements. Next, they spent as much as 90 minutes creating an in depth 3D scan. Then they drilled into the occipital condyle to gather a gram of bone powder via a gap no bigger than a pencil eraser, earlier than fastidiously extracting a single canine tooth.

Each pattern reveals a special piece of the animal’s life historical past. The 3D scans reveal variations in cranium form and measurement; the enamel present clues about age, lifespan, sexual maturity, dietary specialization, and modifications in hormones via time; and bone samples assist decide intercourse and lifelong dietary patterns.

Together, these information will assist reply surprisingly primary questions nonetheless unknown about leopard seals, reminiscent of what number of pups they’ve of their lifetime and what age they attain sexual maturity.

A time capsule for conservation

Beyond the scientific information, the century-old specimens inform tales of their very own.

“I think one of the best surprises is seeing some of the very historical samples and the notes left about the specimen from the original collector,” Sperou stated. “Some of these skulls are from the 1800s and had different species names during that time.”

Kienle shares that fascination. “I love looking at the tags on the animals to see people’s handwriting, the scientific names that were used, and seeing names I’ve read about in old papers,” she stated. “I am always surprised by the injuries that animals clearly survived—like a broken jaw or extremely worn teeth. It makes me wish I could go back in time and see the animal in action.”

The undertaking will profit the museums, too. Many historic specimens lack primary data such because the animal’s age or intercourse. By analyzing the samples, the URI researchers will be capable of present that lacking data so museum information will be up to date.

“Museum collections are invaluable,” Kienle stated. “They are an irreplaceable time capsule of data on species—both living and extinct—that can help us understand how species survived in the past, inform our understanding of the present, and help us make predictions about their survival in the future.”

Sperou agrees that museum collections make it attainable to reply questions that fieldwork alone by no means may. “Without museum collections, many of these questions could never be answered using only live animals,” she stated. “They are an invaluable resource for understanding how species have changed over time.”

Ultimately, the crew hopes these findings will present the organic basis wanted to grasp how leopard seals could reply as local weather change reshapes their setting.

This story was written by Anna Gray in URI’s College of the Environment and Life Sciences.