Something a little different this week ...
Steppe Polecat, Mustela eversmanni Lesson 1827.
I spent three years of my life measuring mustelid skulls. I kind of miss it.
Who am I?
John M. Lynch is an Honors Faculty Fellow at Barrett the Honors College at Arizona State University. He's also affiliated with ASU's Center for Biology & Society. When he's not an historian of anti-evolutionism, he's an evolutionary morphologist. Much to his surprise, in 2007 he was named the Arizona Professor of the Year. No doubt his students were surprised as well.
Search
Social Networking
Currently Reading
Always Reading
Recent Posts
- And the lights go out ... sort of.
- Friday Felid #2
- And it’s Mississippi’s turn …
- John makes a confession and reads a book
- SkeptiCamp Phoenix 2009
- Am I a bad person …
- Update on the Flannery (& Dembski) Wallace Book
- More Wallace … this time with added Dembski.
- Darwin and Wallace … here we go again.
- Oklahoma wins in the 2009 race to destroy science education
Recent Comments
- Jon Saboe on ID rap (seriously!)
- John Lynch on John makes a confession and reads a book
- Michael Robinson on John makes a confession and reads a book
- DLC on Update on the Flannery (& Dembski) Wallace Book
- michael fugate on John makes a confession and reads a book
- John Lynch on John makes a confession and reads a book
- Michael Robinson on John makes a confession and reads a book
- Dave H on John makes a confession and reads a book
- Davey J on Am I a bad person …
- The skepTick on Am I a bad person …
Categories
- Anti-evolution
- Biology
- Bits and Pieces
- Books
- Earth and Planetary Sciences
- History and Philosophy (often of Science)
- Humor
- Math and Physics
- Politics
- Pseudoscience
- Science Education
- Technology
- The Life Academic
- The Panda's Thumb (cross posts)
Archives
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
Bloggers I have met
- Adventures in Ethics and Science Janet Stemwedel
- Aetiology Tara Smith
- evolgen RPM
- Evolving Thoughts John Wilkins
- hpb etc. Rob Skipper
- The Intersection Chris Mooney
- Lippardblog Jim Lippard
- Living the Scientific Life GrrlScientist
- Neurotopia Evil Monkey
- Pharyngula PZ Myers
- Ragesoss Sage Ross
- Systematics & Biogeography Malte Ebach & David Williams
- Time to Eat the Dogs Michael Robinson
- Unscrewing the Inscrutable Brent Rasmussen
- The Voltage Gate Jeremy Bruno
- The World's Fair David Ng and Ben Cohen
- Warning! PhD in Progress Jessica Joganic
Fighting the Good Fight
- Panda's Thumb The source for information on evolutionary biology and anti-evolutionism.
- Sunbeams from Cucumbers Steve Reuland, a fellow PTer.
- De Rerum Natura Reed Cartwright, another PTer.
- Austringer Wes Elsberry, yet another PTer.
- Astroblog Ian Musgrave is also a PTer.
- Thoughts in a Haystack John Pieret edits the Talk Origins Quote Mine project.
- Playing Chess with Pigeons Troy Britain is a talk.origins regular.
Other Stuff
Subscribe via Email
Stay abreast of your favorite bloggers' latest and greatest via e-mail, via a daily digest.
« HSS 2008 | Main | Monday Mustelid #38 »
Monday Mustelid #37
Category: Monday Mustelid
Posted on: November 10, 2008 1:59 AM, by John Lynch
Find more posts in: 
Life Science
Comments
Nice. I do so love bones, their strength, resiliency, artistic lines made even more poignant by their functionality. I love, too, how rife a bone is with information, skulls especially. There's an entire encyclopedia in a skull.
Posted by: Morning Angel | November 10, 2008 11:57 AM
Hi John,
What did you do with all of these mustelid measurements? Were they on living species or extinct ones as well? Michael
Posted by: Michael Robinson | November 14, 2008 1:33 PM
Michael,
Extant species. They formed the data for my PhD dissertation. You can find copies of resultant papers at http://www.public.asu.edu/~jmlynch/publications.html - scroll down to 1997 and work backwards.
No explorers died (or dogs eaten) in the making of my research :)
Posted by: John Lynch | November 14, 2008 2:43 PM
Curious why the skull is annotated/labeled in Russian. Do you know anything about the specimen?
Posted by: ChrisTheRed | November 15, 2008 8:27 PM
The skull reads:
Из колл. С. У. Стро
ганова (From the collection of S. U. Stroganov)
южн-Прибал. (south-Pribal.)
[possibly Pribaltiysky: southern Baltic region]
The rest I'm just unsure of.
I did some searching on S.U. Stroganov, and it appears there was a fellow of the Western Siberian branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences by this name; this table of contents shows him as the author of the first three monographs:
"Materials on the systematics of Siberian mammals"
"(A) new view of the shrew for Siberian fauna"
"Materals to(ward) the knowledge of Siberian mammalians (notes on nomenclature and systematics)"
Same guy? If so, interesting.
Posted by: ChrisTheRed | November 15, 2008 9:54 PM
Interesting stuff, but a little quibble on ChrisTheRed's translations: It reads 'Stroganova' as far as I can ascertain, indicating that S.U. is/was a lady (female).
Just for the records.
Posted by: shonny | November 21, 2008 8:59 PM
Genitive of male surnames is the -a phoneme (genitive because it's the collection OF Stroganov), which is the same as the feminine nominal case. If it were a woman's name, it would be Из колл. С. У. Строганови. Iz koll(ektsii) S.U. Stroganovi.
Posted by: ChrisTheRed | November 30, 2008 9:41 AM