Whether it's lost languages, hope, or dinosaurs, restoration is an attempt to bring back what is lost. Join Ira Flatow on Science Friday as the talk turns to restoration--as it occurs in the art gallery, in a novel, and in the Mongolian desert. In this hour, Ira talks with an artist, a novelist, and a paleontologist about restoration.

Artist Rachel Berwick's 1998 installation 'May-por-é' featured live parrots that she had taught to speak the few known words of the lost Maypure people of South America. The Maypure, the story goes, had been massacred yet managed to pass on their vocabulary through pet parrots taken by the conquering tribe. That vocabulary was later recorded by explorer and naturalist Alexander Von Humboldt, who saw the parrots and phonetically copied down their vocalizations.

Novelist Leslie Forbes' latest book, 'Waking Raphael,' which centers on a mystery surrounding "La Muta," (The Silent Woman), a masterpiece by Raphael thought to have been painted around 1507. In the book, the main character is charged with supervising the painstaking restoration of the famous painting.

Paleontologist Michael Novacek of the American Museum of Natural History in New York has yet another view on the topic. He has led paleontological expeditions to Baja California, the Andes Mountains of Chile, the Yemen Arab Republic, and Gobi Desert of Mongolia in search of fossil dinosaurs and mammals. The Mongolian expeditions were the first return of a western scientific team to the country in over sixty years and have received worldwide scientific and public attention for their spectacular findings.

This broadcast is part of the Utah Science & Literature Symposium, taking place in Salt Lake City this week.Call in with your questions and comments at 1-800-989-8255 (3-4 Eastern). Teachers, find more information about using Science Friday as a classroom resource in the Kids' Connection.

Guests:
Rachel Berwick
Sculptor ( Represented by the Brent Sikkema Gallery in New York)
Associate Professor
Rhode Island School of Design
Providence, Rhode Island

Leslie Forbes
Author, "Waking Raphael " (Bantam, 2004)
Author, "Fish, Blood, and Bone" (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2001)
London, England

Michael Novacek
Author, "Time Traveler: In Search of Dinosaurs and Other Fossils from Montana to Mongolia" (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2003)
Curator of Paleontology, Provost of Science
American Museum of Natural History
New York, New York

Books/Articles Discussed:

"Time Traveler: In Search of Dinosaurs and Other Fossils from Montana to Mongolia," by Michael Novacek. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2003.

"Waking Raphael," by Leslie Forbes. Bantam, 2004.

(find books discussed on previous broadcasts)

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This segment produced by Karin Vergoth