ABSTRACT LiveSci in the Valley of the Last Dinosaurs ( http://lastdinos.livesci.org/ ) was a website and social media presence that provided the global online community with unprecedented access to the exciting paleontological research happening in the remote badlands of North Dakota and Montana in the summer of 2016. A collaborative team of researchers, students, and citizen scientists from around the world excavated some of the last dinosaurs that ever walked the Earth, mapped the K/Pg boundary in high resolution, and uncovered fossils that show us how life recovered after the extinction of the dinosaurs. To engage the public in the ongoing process of scientific discovery, dedicated project staff and participating researchers posted videos, photos, blog entries, and social media content nearly every day during the seven-week field season. Researchers and science educators from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Denver Museum of Nature & Science, along with collaborators from Brooklyn College, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Yale Peabody Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the Marmarth Research Foundation, were joined by young scientists and citizen scientist volunteers of all ages. The production team consisted of high school and college interns, public science outreach professionals, and research scientists. To expand the reach of the project, a bilingual intern maintained a parallel Spanish website. Hundreds of thousands of online viewers watched, contributed, and shared these authentic experiences with their communities during the live portion of the project, and many more continue to access the archived website and social media content. This project exemplifies how social media and real-time interaction with scientists have the potential to connect the public to science as it unfolds, removing myths and stereotypes about how science happens and who scientists are. Initiatives such as this one help to create citizens who are more connected to the process of science and who can use that understanding in their lives through more informed decision making.

Rapid characterization of tephra from ongoing explosive eruptions can provide valuable insights into eruptive mechanisms, especially when integrated with data from other monitoring systems. Here we gain perspective on Stromboli's eruptive processes by linking the characteristics of ash collected in real-time with videos of each explosion. A 3 day, multifaceted field campaign at Stromboli was undertaken by Italy's Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia in October 2009. At this time, activity was at a moderately intense level, with the occurrence of an average of 4–5 explosions per hour at each of the SW and NE craters. Eight ash samples were analyzed using binocular and scanning electron microscopes to gain data on the components, grain size and morphology distributions, and surface chemistry of ash particles within each sample. Monitoring video of each explosion enabled an estimation of the duration and height of each sampled explosion. In each sample, the proportion of fluidal, glassy sideromelane (as opposed to blocky, microcrystalline tachylite plus lithics), the degree of “chemical freshness” (as opposed to alteration), and the average size of particles appear to correlate with the explosion “type” described in previous studies, and the maximum launch height of the corresponding explosion. Our observations suggest that more violent explosions (i.e., those driven by the liberation of larger and/or more pressurized gas volumes) can be associated with type 2a conditions and the fragmentation of hot and low-viscosity magma, while weaker type 2b explosions erupt predominantly ash-sized particles derived from the fragmentation of colder, more outgassed magma and passive integration of lithic wall debris. The formation of fluidal sideromelane ash particles (up to Pele's hair) requires the aerodynamic deformation of a relatively low-viscosity magma and demonstrates unequivocally that ash at Stromboli is not derived entirely from wall rock and/or brittle fragmentation of stagnant magma. We suggest that this ash-sized material forms through rapid acceleration and breakup of larger magma fragments, as supported by evidence from high-speed video of two of the sampled explosions.