14 Scientists and Activists Who Are Changing the World

21 September 2010

Molecular biologist Beth Shapiro.

STEVE EMBER: I’m Steve Ember.

BARBARA KLEIN: And I’m Barbara Klein with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Once a year, the National Geographic Society honors a group of scientists, activists, wildlife experts and artists for their work as explorers and thinkers. Honorees receive a ten thousand dollar award to help them continue their research and projects. Today we tell about this year’s fourteen Emerging Explorers and talk to two of them.

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STEVE EMBER: Three of this year’s Emerging Explorers study the ancient past.

BETH SHAPIRO: “I am interested to understand why some animals went extinct and others animals didn’t at the end of the last Ice Age.”

That is Beth Shapiro, a molecular biologist at Pennsylvania State University. She studies the genetic information found in the remains of ancient animals in order to learn about the climate and environment of long ago.

Beth Shapiro takes pieces of ancient bones, teeth and hair found mostly in the high Arctic area. Then, she studies the DNA in these samples to learn how animal populations have grown and shrunk over the last hundred thousand years. Her findings help show how evolution takes place over time and in an area.

This DNA testing is helping to change long held theories about animals such as the bison.