Laelaps is back up and running at my author website, http://brianswitek.com. Go there for new posts and updates on where this blog will ultimately settle. - Brian Update (09/14/10): After a few months of blogging on my own, I'm proud to say that Laelaps has made the jump over to the new WIRED Science blogging network. Click here to check it out.

Important Update: The time has come to close things up here. I will no longer be blogging for ScienceBlogs.com. I am not sure where Laelaps will end up - perhaps back on Wordpress, perhaps elsewhere - but you can be sure that I will keep on writing about saber-toothed cats, whales that walked, early humans, and other cool bits of paleontology. With any luck, I will be able to confirm my plans in a few days. Keep your eyes on my author website or follow me on Twitter to find out where I'll be headed next. This is not farewell - just a brief break in transmission. By now you have probably heard…

A normal giant gliding ant (left) and an infested ant (right). The red color of the gaster is not caused by a pigment, but thinning of the exoskeleton combined with the color of the nematode eggs. From Yanoviak et al, 2008. In one of my favorite episodes of the animated TV show Futurama, the chief protagonist - delivery boy Philip J. Fry - becomes infested with worms after eating a dodgy egg-salad sandwich purchased from the restroom of an interstellar truck stop. Lucky for Fry, the parasites are beneficial - they repair his injuries and greatly enhance his cognitive abilities. ("Of all…

A collared brown lemur (Eulemur collaris) baby, photographed at the Bronx Zoo.

"Worker Bee" by Motion City Soundtrack I have been writing here at ScienceBlogs.com for about two years and nine months now. Some of you have been reading my posts since I started here (thank you for sticking with me!), but readers come and go over time, and so I am jumping on board with the "Who are you?" meme recently restarted by DrugMonkey, Pal, Janet, Bora, and Jason. Everyone is asking different questions of their readers - some more detailed ones than others - but I think I'll keep it relatively simple: who are you (feel free to comment anonymously or under a pseud, and be as…

Rock formations near the "Natural Bridge" turnout in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah..

A toe bone from a Cretaceous ornithischian dinosaur, just laying on the ground. Photographed at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah.

The trailer for Shaun of the Dead. Not all zombies are created equal. The most popular zombie archetype is a shambling, brain-eating member of the recently deceased, but, in recent films from 28 Days Later to Zombieland, the definition of what a zombie is or isn't has become more complicated. Does a zombie have to be a cannibal corpse, or can a zombie be someone infected with a virus which turns them into a blood-crazed, fast-running monster? For my own part, I have always preferred the classic George Romero zombies from the original Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead films (as well as…

My contribution to the Sb-wide Zombie Day will soon be posted, but if you need something to sink your teeth into before then, check out today's new issue of the Times of London science magazine Eureka (included inside the Times, for UK readers). Inside you will find two stories by me - one on paleobiology in the 21st century and the other on our changing view of tyrannosaurs - and you can access them online behind a free registration wall. It was a wonderful opportunity to write for Eureka, and I am indebted to editors Mark Henderson and Antonia Senior for their support and the freedom to…

Out on the grassy plains of Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve, a group of six female topi antelope (Damaliscus lunatus) walk across the savanna. It is the time of the annual rut - a one and a half month period in which most males control small patches of land and try to attract adult females which, for one day, are in estrus. The small group walks by one of the lone males, but just as they reach the edge of his territory he snorts an alarm. It means that somewhere, out ahead of them, a predator waits to pounce on any topi foolish enough to blunder towards it, and so the females stay close…

A lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.

Disclaimer: I write the following post as a private citizen. Even though I am a research associate at the museum, my work is done on a volunteer basis in cooperation with museum staff. I am not employed by the museum, and my views do not necessarily represent those of any New Jersey State Museum employee. After months of uncertainty, the short-term fate of the New Jersey State Museum has finally been revealed. Despite plans proposed by Republican governor Chris Christie that the museum (along with the State Library and Thomas Edison College) be folded into Rutgers University, it was recently…

The skeleton of the Hundsheim rhinoceros, Stephanorhinus hundsheimensis. From Kahlke and Kaiser, 2010. In any given environment, it might be expected that a generalized or unspecialized species might be less prone to extinction than one which depends upon a narrow temperature range, a peculiar kind of food, or other aspect of natural history which is key to its survival. An herbivorous mammal which can subsist on a variety of grasses, leaves, and other plant foods, for example, may be more likely to survive an ecological disruption than a species tied to foliage which might die back during…

A bufflehead duck (Bucephala albeola), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.

Photographed at Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah.

Even though I sometimes feel quite anxious about the publication of Written in Stone, the positive comments the manuscript has received so far have helped to relieve my apprehension. Professional reviews will not show up for another few months, of course, but during the process of composing the book - from pitching to my agent to asking my wife to read the completed copyedit-ready draft - I am glad to say that the early responses have been overwhelmingly positive. Nevertheless, when the time came to ask scientists and science writers for blurbs, my nervousness spiked again. These are people…

The nearly complete skeleton of a Steller's sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) - it is missing bones from the wrist and hand. From Woodward, 1885. It did not take long for the last remaining population of Steller's sea cow to be driven into extinction. Discovered by the German naturalist Georg Steller around the Bering Sea's Commander Islands in 1741, this enormous and peculiar sirenian became an easy target for Russian hunters. By 1768, it was gone. (The marine mammal would not be scientifically described until 1780, and today it is formally known as Hydrodamalis gigas.) Yet, despite the clear…

The skeletons of Lucy (left) and Kadanuumuu (right). Both belong to the early human species Australopithecus afarensis. (Images not to scale.) I never fully appreciated how small Lucy was until I saw her bones for myself. Photographs and restorations of her and her kin within the species Australopithecus afarensis had never really given me a proper sense of scale, and when I looked over her incomplete skeleton - formally known as specimen A.L. 288-1 - I was struck by her diminutive proportions. In life she would have only been about three and a half feet tall. Her physical stature seemed…

A few weeks ago I started prep work on a Tyrannosaurus rex toe bone recovered from Montana's Hell Creek Formation and kept at the New Jersey State Museum. This is how the gypsum-encrusted bone looked when I started... ... and this is how it looked at the end of last week. There's still a lot of work to do, but it is encouraging when you start seeing more bone than gypsum.

Three-dimensional models of hominoid skulls used in the study - (a) Hylobates lar; (b) Pongo pygmaeus; (c) Pan troglodytes; (d) Gorilla gorilla; (e) Australopithecus africanus; (f ) Paranthropus boisei; (g) Homo sapiens. They have been scaled to the same surface area, and the colors denote areas of stress (blue = minimal stress, pink = high stress). From Wroe et al, 2010. It is all too easy to think of human evolution in linear terms. From our 21st century vantage point we can look back through Deep Time for the first glimmerings of the traits we see in ourselves, and despite what we have…