Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are cosmopolitan apex predators that interact with numerous species, including sharks, skates, and rays (subclass Elasmobranchii). Interactions between killer whales and elasmobranchs have garnered attention from the scientific community, but the dynamics of these events are poorly understood, as interactions are often challenging to observe. In this study, we collated imagery of interactions between killer whales and elasmobranchs to create the first image-based repository of interspecific interactions between marine predators. A total of 320 photos and videos from 82 unique interactions were collected from 12 countries. A minimum of 18 elasmobranch species across 16 genera were identified from the imagery. Furthermore, 10 different interaction types were documented, encompassing both predatory and non-predatory behavior. This dataset can provide insight into various research topics, including killer whale predation techniques, elasmobranch behavior, and the identification of individual killer whales that specialize in elasmobranch prey. As a new and openly accessible resource, this dataset provides the foundation to support future ecological and behavioral research on killer whale and elasmobranch interactions.

ABSTRACT The addition of a unique group of negatives to The Metropolitan Museum of Art's (The Met) photography collection in 2013 offered conservators an opportunity to explore innovative solutions to conserve delaminated gelatin glass plate negatives. These negatives by Ernest J. Bellocq portray the New Orleans’ red-light district in the 1910s. Although no original prints have survived, the images were revealed to the public in 1970 owing to New York photographer Lee Friedlander's modern photographic prints made from the original Bellocq glass plates. Following the Met's acquisition, when the 88 photographic negatives became available for investigation, they were found to present numerous breaks and a significant delamination of the gelatin layer from the glass support. This paper presents the research conducted during the author’s 3-year fellowship, which aimed to identify suitable methods to stabilize the delamination. After a comprehensive literature review, conservation-grade gelatin was selected as a suitable adhesive. Hands-on tests were conducted to compare different application methods, which helped identify appropriate approaches for each type of delamination identified in the collection. Finally, the paper describes the custom housing method designed to address the issue of the breaks in the glass and allow safe access to individual negatives.

In 2014 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) received a gift of thirty-six wooden ceiling panels from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). The panels, which had been installed in the university's Faculty Club, were rumored to have once been owned by the American media mogul and renowned collector William Randolph Hearst, but little was known about them beyond this local legend. This article reconstructs the ceilings' itinerant histories, particularly the early-and mid-twentieth-century American context in which they were purchased, circulated, and used by their previous owners. From their initial construction to their sale and reuse in two separate contexts, the LACMA ceilings were appropriated into several projects that sought to convey new national, local, and personal identities informed by an imagined Spanish past.

Abstract The oldest macaw specimen in Pre‐Hispanic Mexico and the southwestern United States was recovered in Cueva de Avendaños, Chihuahua, Mexico, at the base of the Sierra Madre Occidental. It dates to the Late Archaic/Early Agricultural period (1929–2057 cal BP). The head is the only preserved element of the macaw and it was mummified through natural causes. Research on this specimen examines its sex identification and its geographical range, questioning whether this specimen belongs to a local population living in the vicinity of the cave. A species distribution model over the last 2000 years was elaborated to ascertain the presence of military macaw in the study area. Our results show that the macaw was non‐local, sustaining the idea that the practice of early animal husbandry existed in the early stages of the Pre‐Hispanic world, and also suggest that a significant and rapid climate changes characterized the Holocene, affecting the military macaw's distributional range.

Appendix 1. Recording of sounds produced by killer whales feeding on a pygmy sperm whale 370 km west of Monterey, California. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.

We report late Quaternary fossils of the hind limb (tibiotarsus, tarsometatarsus, hallux, pedal phalanges) of an extinct species of eagle (Accipitridae) from Hispaniola (Haiti, Dominican Republic). We are unable to refer these 24 fossils with confidence to any Accipitrid genus, living or extinct. Among living genera, the Hispaniolan fossils are most similar in nonquantitative characters to leg elements in Geranoaetus Kaup 1844, as represented in our comparisons by the South American species Black-chested Buzzard-Eagle (G. melanoleucus Vieillot 1819). Although it may be that Geranoaetus eventually will be found to accommodate the Hispaniolan eagle and perhaps other large, extinct species of West Indian eagles (from Cuba and Bahamas), the fossil material available at this time is inadequate. Generic assignment is complicated further by uncertain generic limits among surviving New World buteonine/buteogalline hawks and eagles, which themselves also are not well represented in scientific collections. Measures of the tibiotarsus suggest the Hispaniolan eagle was 15–30% larger than the extant Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos). It is likely that the large Hispaniolan eagle went extinct along with, and potentially as a consequence of, the extinction of most endemic species of large- and medium-sized mammals (primates, rodents, and sloths) that once served as prey.