One of the world’s leading ocean explorers,  Sylvia Earle received the 2010 Roy Chapman Andrews Distinguished Explorer award Friday, February 5, at Eaton Chapel on the Beloit College campus.

Her acceptance lecture, “Exploring the Deep Frontier” emphasized the fragile nature of the ocean which serves as a life support system for us all.

Dr. Earle’s visit included a presentation to area students titled “The World Is Blue” at Beloit Memorial High School. She also met with Beloit College students and attended a celebratory dinner with members and friends of the Roy Chapman Andrews Society.

According to Earle, Beloit native Roy Chapman Andrews was a “personal hero since childhood.” Following Andrews’ example, she has led expeditions throughout the world  and shares her discoveries with millions of people via print and electronic media.

Raised on a small farm in New Jersey, Sylvia Earle grew up exploring the nearby woods and studying plants and wildlife. She received scholarships for college and eventually earned a Ph.D. from Duke University. Now a world leader in ocean exploration and conservation, she has been called a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, “Hero for the Planet” by Time magazine, and “Her Deepness” by The New York Times and The New Yorker magazine. She has received numerous scientific and environmental awards and prizes, honorary degrees, and TV profiles.

Sylvia Earle is passionately concerned with conservation and protection of the seas. She states that we are all connected to the sea: “our fate and the ocean are one.” Yet degradation, overfishing, and pollution are causing massive damage to the oceans, the world’s “life-support systems.” According to Earle, “there’s still time—but not a lot—to turn things around.” Protected areas such as marine sanctuaries constitute less than one percent of the ocean area, but further exploration, research, and preservation provide hope for the future.

The Distinguished Explorer Award program is a principal focus of the Roy Chapman Andrews Society. Founded in 1998, the Society’s mission is to honor the legacy of one of the most celebrated explorers of the 20th century by educating the public about Andrews’ life, work, and adventures; promoting the value of scientific exploration and discovery; and emphasizing Andrews’ lifetime ties to Beloit.

Contact the Roy Chapman Andrews Society via e-mail

Check out Sylvia Earle’s Facebook Fan Page.

After leading over 60 ocean expeditions worldwide and logging more than 7,000 hours underwater, explorer Sylvia Earle will come up for air in Beloit to receive the 2010 Roy Chapman Andrews Distinguished Explorer Award.

One of the world’s foremost ocean explorers, Dr Earle will receive the award and make a presentation at 4:30 p.m. in Eaton Chapel on the Beloit College campus. Highlighting the award program will be her acceptance lecture, “Exploring the Deep Frontier.” The program and lecture are open to the public at no charge. She will be the ninth explorer and second woman to receive the award.

A dinner open to the public in her honor will be held in Pearsons Hall on the campus following her presentation. Attendees will be able to meet and talk with Dr. Earle.

Dr. Earle’s visit to Beloit includes a presentation to area students titled “The World Is Blue” at Beloit Memorial High School. She will also meet with Beloit College classes and students and participate in a celebratory dinner with members and friends of the Roy Chapman Andrews Society.

According to Dr. Earle, Beloit native Roy Chapman Andrews was a “personal hero since childhood.” Following Andrews’ example, Dr. Earle leads expeditions to remote parts of the globe and shares her discoveries with millions of people via print and electronic media.

Bringing the ocean to the Internet, Dr. Earle led the Google Ocean Advisory Council, which added the Ocean layer to Google Earth. She founded Deep Ocean Exploration and Research, a company that designs and builds subsea vehicles. She also served as chief scientist for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and is currently explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society.

The Distinguished Explorer Award program is a principal focus of the Roy Chapman Andrews Society.

Raised on a small farm in New Jersey, Sylvia Earle grew up exploring the nearby woods and studying plants and wildlife. She received scholarships for college and eventually earned a Ph.D. from Duke University. Now a world leader in ocean exploration and conservation, Dr. Earle has been called a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, “Hero for the Planet” by Time magazine, and “Her Deepness” by The New York Times and The New Yorker magazine. She has received numerous scientific and environmental awards and prizes, honorary degrees, and TV profiles.

Dr. Earle is passionately concerned with conservation and protection of the seas. She states that we are all connected to the sea: “our fate and the oceans are one.” Yet degradation, overfishing, and pollution are causing massive damage to the oceans, the world’s “life-support systems.” According to Dr. Earle, “there’s still time—but not a lot—to turn things around.” Protected areas such as marine sanctuaries constitute less than one percent of the ocean area, but further exploration, research, and preservation provide hope for the future.

The Distinguished Explorer Award program is a principal focus of the Roy Chapman Andrews Society. Founded in 1998, the Society’s mission is to honor the legacy of one of the most celebrated explorers of the 20th century by educating the public about Andrews’s life, work, and adventures; promoting the value of scientific exploration and discovery; and emphasizing Andrews’s lifetime ties to Beloit.

Sylvia Earle, Ph. D.
Dr. Earle is passionately concerned with conservation and protection of the seas. She states that we are all connected to the sea: “our fate and the oceans are one.” Yet degradation, overfishing, and pollution are causing massive damage to the oceans, the world’s “life-support systems.”

Dr. Sylvia Earle – Website

Dr. Sylvia Earle’s Deep Search Foundation

.For information about tickets for the dinner and reserved seating at the award ceremony, contact the Roy Chapman Andrews Society c/o Visit Beloit, 608-365-4838.

Dear,Very Very Dear Roy Chapman Andrews:

My warm, mad eighteen-year-old heart beats furiously as I write your name and I am trembling as I did when, from a distance, I watched you come down the gangplank of the Mauretania after your long “trek” in China. This longing to know you is more than I can well endure. In these pulsing years of eighteen, to be near you would be to live a dream which has “you” for the hero and us” for the theme.

You are going away again they tell me, crowned with greater honors and other medals. I despair of knowing you in person unless I cut the conventionality and ask you frankly to meet me for tea a Pierre’s on Wednesday, March Eighteenth at five o’clock. I shall be in the reception room wearing a Skipper Blue Costume with silver fox furs and three rose orchids on my left shoulder. I am tall, blonde and slim with Skipper blue eyes that would be glad to be filled with the sight of you.

I should like to tell you from my heart the worship I have had for you all these years. I have all your pictures from the Artgravures in a scrapbook; all your books, Saturday Evening Post and other magazine stories; all the press notices that concern you and one very special distinguished photograph which I stole from a friend of yours and keep with me always beside me on the pillow.

It is the last face I see before the night light is extinguished and the first in the morning when day wrenches the dream of you from me.

I shall never be content until I meet you. The thought drives me to restlessness. As an explorer, there is no one in the world like you; no one half so fascinatingly ideal. You have had the splendid courage to put your dreams to the test.

You have willed; you have worked and you have achieved.

I am so certain there can be no other man more tender.yes”> You are so witty, so wise, so worldly. I think to be loved by you would be to know and experience the very essence of the love of all men in one being.

Your very name in all its beautiful resonance of syllables has the power to make my pulses thrill with delight. How much greater could this ecstasy be if I had the intense joy of being near you with your sensitive fingers so close to mine – I am well nigh fainting with the imagery.

Surely when I care so much, you cannot go away from me without consummating this meeting. I do not live at the Ritz-Carlton, but a note left there will be called for. If I do not hear from you, I shall be waiting at Pierre’s on Wednesday at five.

Please, please, please say you will not fail me.

Toujours a toi

[Name Withheld], The Ritz Carlton, New York, March Fifteenth

In five short years the Roy Chapman Andrews Society has grown from the kernel of an idea into a vibrant and innovative organization. Under the direction of a small and dedicated all-volunteer board, the Society is on its way to becoming, as it promises in its vision statement, “the recognized authority on, resource for, and promoter of the life, work, and adventures of Roy Chapman Andrews and his lifetime ties to Beloit, Wisconsin,” his hometown.

The Society, which was incorporated in 1999, began accepting memberships in January of 2001. Within two years and thanks to the support of its members and other sponsors, the Society launched what has become a signature program for the organization, the Roy Chapman Andrews Society Distinguished Explorer Award. Previous recipients of the award are paleontologist Michael Novacek (2003), ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin (2004), and marine explorer Robert Ballard (2005).

On February 10, 2006, Mars explorer Steve Squyres received the fourth casting of this bronze award and its accompanying $5,000 cash prize. His award was presented in an afternoon ceremony at Eaton Chapel on the campus of Beloit College, Andrews’s alma mater. Squyres, who directs ongoing scientific research on Mars by using twin remote-control rovers (see story), presented a wonderfully informative, and sometimes animated acceptance lecture at the ceremony called “Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity and the Exploration of the Red Planet.” After the award presentation he graciously signed copies of a book by the same title.

Members and friends of the Society joined in the celebratory dinner that will followed. This year’s festive event featured a bonus program about some of the exploring adventures of Andrews, an expedition leader during the first decades of the 20th century for the American Museum of Natural History. Items of Society and Andrews memorabilia were sold through a silent auction that evening, as well.

Earlier in the day Squyres spoke to area school children, met with science majors at Beloit College, and toured Andrews historic sites. Additionally he met with members of the media at a news conference hosted by Forest City Gear in Roscoe, Illinois, a participating firm in the manufacturing of the rovers and a sponsor of the Squyres visit. Other visit sponsors included Ken and Diane Hendricks, the Logan Museum of Anthropology and Geology Department, Beloit College, Rotary Club of Beloit, Visit Beloit, and members of the Roy Chapman Andrews Society.

Paintings by Seattle-based artist (and Roy Chapman Andrews fan) Thom Ross provided the focus for the Andrews birthday celebration, with an exhibition of Ross’s work hanging in Beloit during the month of January. The “Explore Art” exhibit was a collaborative venture between the Society and the Beloit Fine Arts Incubator, the host of the exhibition. It marked the 121st anniversary of the explorer’s birth.

Ross’s paintings conveyed the breadth of Andrews’s Gobi expeditions and discoveries with a style at times reverent, at times whimsical. His works are based on the historical record of the explorer’s life and adventures.

The artist traveled to Beloit mid-way through the show to attend a birthday-party reception and celebration of the exhibition. The event was held Friday, January 14. Ross returned to the Arts Incubator the following day for a special youth program as part of the Society’s annual celebration of the explorer’s January 26, 1884 birth. The “Explore Art!” exhibit ran through February 28. (Click on photos below to see larger version.)

By Michael J. Novacek

In 2001, the American - Mongolian Academy of Sciences Team excavated this Tarbosaurus skeleton from a site in the Western Gobi

The American Museum of Natural History in New York has had a long attachment for a barren desert more than 8,000 miles away. In the early 1920′s, the legendary Roy Chapman Andrews led a team from the museum to the glories of the Flaming Cliffs and other spectacularly rich sites of the Gobi in Central Asia’s Mongolia. More than 60 years later the museum was invited back to continue the search, and follow in Roy Chapman Andrews’s footsteps to the Flaming Cliffs and other Gobi sites.

In 1993, the American Museum – Mongolian Academy of Sciences team found a site far richer than even the famous Flaming Cliffs. The site, called Ukhaa Tolgod (the local Mongolian words for “Brown Hills”) has produced over a hundred skeletons of dinosaurs such as Oviraptor, Protoceratops, dromaeosaurs, ankylosaurs, and also hundreds of skulls of mammals and lizards. The discovery opens a whole new chapter in our understanding of the dinosaur-dominated communities of Central Asia.

The American Museum - Mongolian Academy Team at the rich Gobi fossil site, Ukhaa Tolgod team members stand behind a newly excavated skeleton of an Ankylosaur - an armored dinosaur. Michael Novacek is third from the right.

In 2000 and 2001, we returned to Ukhaa Tolgod for more excavation and collecting of important fossils. Then we struck southwest some 80 miles to an area near Naran Bulak (“Sun Spring”) to look for some massive dinosaurs known to lie in the beds of the Nemegt Formation. Unlike the dinosaurs from the Flaming Cliffs and Ukhaa Tolgod, which actually occupied very sandy terrain, the Nemegt dinosaurs lived in a much wetter habitat, one laced with streams and covered with big trees.

At one of these localities, Tsagan Hsuhu, the team uncovered a beautiful 20-foot long skeleton of a young (“teenage!”) Tarbosaurus. In 2002, the expedition explored the eastern part of the Gobi where outcrops are not always so imposing, but good fossils are also abundant. This reconnaisance produced a series of good specimens of dinosaurs and mammals, and has enticed us to return in future seasons.

As Andrews appreciated, the Gobi is a big place – 500,000 square miles (about five Wyomings!) of gravel plains, sand dune fields, sculpted sandstone cliffs, and high mountains. There is still a lot to explore, and the next great bone strike could occur around the next bend of a canyon. Roy Chapman Andrews didn’t know of the fossil bounty of the Gobi when he first struck out for Central Asia 80 years ago. That his hunch paid off continues to offer tremendous opportunities for fossil discoveries today in this wild and lonely land.

Michael Novacek, who received the Society’s first Distinguished Explorer Award on February 21, 2003, is expedition leader for the American Museum – Mongolian Academy of Sciences Paleontological Expeditions that have occurred every year since 1990. He serves as curator of paleontology, senior vice-president, an provost of science for the American Museum of Natural History.