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Bushy-tailed Woodrats, a.k.a. Packrats

Ron Klinger from Kays and Wilson's Mammals of North America

6/1/14 & 6/2/14: This week on "Fieldnotes:" "Packrats," written by Sandra Murphy, read by Caroline Kurtz.

"Researchers have discovered that the middens of bushy-tailed woodrats, with their embalmed plant fragments, hold a key to understanding long-term environmental changes in the West. By identifying and radiocarbon-dating each layer of trapped pollen, leaves and seeds, researchers can create chronological pictures of the vegetation surrounding the midden since it first began accumulating. Packrat middens illuminate the effects of climatic change on the Western landscape over the last 40,000 years."

Beth Anne Austein has been spinning tunes on the air (The Folk Show, Dancing With Tradition, Freeforms), as well as recording, editing and mixing audio for Montana Public Radio and Montana PBS, since the Clinton Administration. She’s jockeyed faders or "fixed it in post” for The Plant Detective; Listeners Bookstall; Fieldnotes; Musicians Spotlight; The Write Question; Storycorps; Selected Shorts; Bill Raoul’s music series; orchestral and chamber concerts; lecture series; news interviews; and outside producers’ programs about topics ranging from philosophy to ticks.
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