Math professor donates large petrified wood collection to Department of EES

Tuesday, Nov 05, 2024 • Greg Pederson :

Barbara Shipman holds a specimen from the collection of petrified wood that she donated to the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. The collection is now on display in the EES Building.

Barbara Shipman is a mathematician who studies differential geometry and Lorentzian systems, but she has also always had a love of the natural world. This led her to start collecting petrified wood and other fossils almost two decades ago.

Shipman, an associate professor of mathematics at The University of Texas at Arlington, eventually amassed a collection numbering more than 250 specimens. She wanted to one day create an exhibit to share the collection’s beauty with others.

Last summer she had the idea of donating pieces to the UTA Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences with the hope that they could be used for teaching. She was delighted when Arne Winguth, professor and EES department chair, offered to display the specimens in the EES Building.  She worked with Winguth to create space in some of the display cases in the building’s hallways and spent much of the summer bringing specimens to campus and arranging them for display. The department named the pieces the Barbara Shipman Collection in her honor.

The collection is now on permanent display in the EES Building, in 12 display cases on the first and second floors. Many of the specimens have spectacular colors due to the process of mineralization, where groundwater rich in minerals flows through the sediment and through the dead tree, whose woody remains are replaced over time by the water’s minerals.

Shipman will discuss the collection at a Department of EES seminar at 12 p.m. Friday, Nov. 8 in EES Room 100.  There will be a roundtable and pizza with students in EES Room 105 at 11:30 a.m. Her talk will be titled “A Window to the World of Petrified Wood” and will include specimens from the collection.

“I see the beautiful structures of nature as made by God, and I’m excited to be able to share these wonders with other people,” Shipman said. “I’ve had all these pieces in storage at home and I thought it would be great if there was some simple way that they could be viewable by the public.

“I was overjoyed by the opportunity to put them in the EES Building in the display cases, and it seemed like the perfect place for them. Dr. Winguth was very supportive. He was enthusiastic about it and did a lot of work in preparing the display cases for the specimens.”

A specimen of microbialite, Marra Mamba Tiger Eye, features spectacular colors. The piece is from Mount Brockman in western Australia and dates to the Neoarchean era, around 2.7 billion years ago. It is one of the 250 specimens from the Barbara Shipmen Collection on display in the EES Building.

The collection includes specimens from as close by as Brazos County, Texas, and from as far away as Indonesia, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Brazil, and Australia. The oldest specimens are microbial mats from the North Pole Dome and Strelley Pool locations in Australia, which date to the Paleoarchean era, ranging from around 3.49 billion to 3.4 billion years ago. Microbial mats are sheets of microorganisms that form layered structures and are important due to their ancient fossil record.

There are also microbialite specimens from Mount Brockman in Western Australia which date to the Neoarchean era, around 2.7 billion years ago. The largest and most colorful specimens are Araucaria tree sections from the Chinle Formation near Holbrook, Arizona. They date from the Triassic period, around 225 million years ago. Some are 2½ feet in diameter and have an amazing mixture of colors.

“We’re grateful to Dr. Shipman for the donation of this excellent collection of petrified wood,” Winguth said. “She spent endless hours during the summer to arrange these samples in the EES showcase display cases and we hope that this collection will attract more students to geology and the sciences.”

Shipman grew up in Arizona, home to Petrified Forest National Park. She began collecting specimens in earnest in 2006, purchasing more than 50 pieces from Frank Daniels, a fossil wood expert and collector and author of the book Ancient Forests: A Closer Look at Fossil Wood. She acquired more than 100 specimens from Steve Speer, a petrified wood expert who lives in Oregon. In total, there are 250 pieces from the collection displayed in the EES showcases.

Shipman earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Arizona in 1995. She came to UTA in 1998 and has earned numerous accolades for her teaching. She received the University of Texas System’s Regents Outstanding Teaching Award in 2010 and in 2016 she was named a Fellow of the UT System Academy of Distinguished Teachers.

She was named to the UTA Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 2006 and in 2003 she received the College of Science Excellence in Teaching Award. In 2023 she was named Professor of the Year by the UTA Student Chapter of the Mathematical Association of America.

--

The UTA College of Science, a Carnegie R1 research institution, is preparing the next generation of leaders in science through innovative education and hands-on research and offers programs in Biology, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Data Science, Earth & Environmental Sciences, Health Professions, Mathematics, Physics and Psychology. To support educational and research efforts visit the giving page, or if you're a prospective student interested in beginning your #MaverickScience journey visit our future students page.