laelaps | February 13, 2008
"It is little wonder, then, why this great creature failed to continue its lineage: with no ears, it could not sustain a top hat upon its head, and thereby expired from lack of common dignity." A cartoon featuring Koch's "Hydrarchos," cobbled together from several Basilosaurus skeletons. [Update: I've been told that this cartoon is from Married to the Sea, whereas I had assumed that it was so old that it was public domain (I just had it sitting around in my pictures file and I don't remember where it came from). I'll err on the side of caution: Married to the Sea.]
Yesterday was the…
laelaps | February 13, 2008If you've got a spare second (and would like a chance to win a new iPod nano), head over to Page 3.14 and take a quick, anonymous survey that will help out my benevolent masters.
laelaps | February 13, 2008
Paleontological reconstruction can often be a bit of a gamble, especially if the specimen you're working with is incomplete. In most of the newer books about prehistoric animals I had when I was young, Pakicetus was often reconstructed as a stubby, seal-like creature, and the AMNH reconstruction followed the trend. Fortunately for paleontologists, more complete material has come out of the ground in recent years, causing a total revision of what Pakicetus looked like.
While still not entirely complete, the newer skull material shows that the reconstruction pictured above is incorrect on a…
laelaps | February 12, 2008I'm starting the wonder if I should change the name of this blog to "The Ornery Undergraduate" given my experience at Rutgers. Today there was a snow/ice storm, and I had little choice but to walk home in it. I can somewhat understand why Rutgers did not close down the university this afternoon, but as night fell traffic ground to a near-halt and the snow gave way to ice. I knew things weren't going to be pleasant when I heard the tapping of ice crystals against the window during my human osteology lecture, but by the time I got at 8:00 out things were pretty bad.
The city, for whatever…
laelaps | February 12, 2008
199 years ago today, Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England at the home of his family (known as the Mount). By pure coincidence, Charles would have published one of the most important books ever written 50 years later in 1859, and next year will mark not only the bicentennial of Darwin's birth but also the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection. Indeed, next year will give us cause for raucous celebration, but this year I have been asking myself why Darwin's work is important enough to still get excited about it nearly a century and a…
laelaps | February 12, 2008Bora's got an interview with yours truly over at A Blog Around the Clock.
laelaps | February 12, 2008I tried to come up with something witty to say about this old Levi's commercial, but words fail me. It best speaks for itself;
Update: In the comments Ian says "I wonder if any major advertiser would use such blatantly pro-evolution thinking these days..." Maybe not here in America, but Guinness had a particular commercial that's still one of my favorites;
laelaps | February 12, 2008
Before I knew very much at all about ancient marine reptiles, I had only encountered two names for the long-necked plesiosaurs (Plesiosaurus & Elasmosaurus) and had assumed that the incredibly long skeleton hanging from the 4th floor ceiling of the AMNH was a representative of the latter. I wasn't right, but I wasn't far off; it was a skeleton of Thalassomedon haningtoni, and elasmosaurid and close relative of Elasmosaurus.
While not scientifically accurate, today's photo reminded me of Will Cuppy's sketch of "The Plesiosaur" collected in How to Become Extinct (just remember that this is…
laelaps | February 11, 2008Well, it appears as if that's what he's going to do, anyway. In all seriousness, though, it's a pretty neat painting and the post also includes a time-lapse movie of the evolution of the piece. There's lots more where that came from so be sure to browse around for similar paintings via the Shardcore frontpage.
[Hat-tip to Kevin Z]
laelaps | February 11, 2008If Huckabee shows up for Science Debate 2008, maybe he should spend a little time at the Academy of Natural Sciences (just a stone's throw away from the Franklin Institute); he might just learn something about paleontology & evolution. Then again, he might be inspired to engage in some revisionist history... [see the middle panel]
[Hat-tip to RedMolly]
laelaps | February 11, 2008
Given that tomorrow is Darwin Day, I've been trying to think of something original to write that will not merely be an echo of what my fellow bloggers have already written about Charles Darwin. Unfortunately, I have to brave the cold to attend classes for the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening, but I thought I would post something to illustrate just how much Darwin's perspective of natural history changed between the time he traveled the world on the Beagle to the time he published On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection. Writing in his diary during the Beagle voyage (…
laelaps | February 11, 2008At the 2nd Annual Science Blogging Conference held a few weeks ago, fellow Scibling Chris Mooney mentioned that there was some news about Science Debate 2008 to get excited about, although he wouldn't tip his hand as to what that news might be. Now the cat is out of the bag; Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Barack Obama have all been invited to participate in a debate scheduled for this coming April at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
The candidates still have to respond to the invitation and there is a lot of work to do, but I have to admit that the initiative is a lot…
laelaps | February 11, 2008
Right now it's about 10 degrees Fahrenheit here in New Jersey, and the last time I remember it being this cold was on a day last year when I decided to visit the Bronx Zoo. Being that it was so cold there weren't many people around at 10 AM, but the Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) were up and active. The female pictured above was named Zeff (she was about 13 years old when I took the photo), and it seemed that I caught her attention for a moment or two. It's a bit disconcerting to have a tiger staring at you while she scratches her claws on a log, but as cold as it was I would much…
laelaps | February 10, 2008
Today is Evolution Sunday, and as part of the "festivities" I headed up north to speak to the Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Morris County about evolution. I had an absolutely wonderful experience (I felt very welcomed by the group and they had terrific questions), and although I do not have a transcript of the events, I hope I can accurately sum-up the lecture and following discussion here.
The lecture I delivered today focused on a topic that is a common one on this blog; contingency. In trying to make sense of the unity and diversity of life on earth over time, I tried to pick out…
laelaps | February 9, 2008Tonight I finished Rudwick's Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes, and I certainly feel that I have a better understand of Cuvier's work than I did previously (although the subject of his embranchments and debates with Geoffrey only received a fleeting mention). What is truly curious, though, is that Cuvier was not a biblical literalist and yet did not seem to favor a mechanism by which the various unique fossil taxa he described could have come into existence. He noted that an "age of reptiles" likely preceded an "age of mammals" (divided by a catastrophic revolution…
laelaps | February 9, 2008Tomorrow is Evolution Sunday and I'll be presenting a lecture called "Unlikely Humans" to the Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Morris County. Regular readers of this blog probably already know what I'm going to say, but I've tried to combine some old material and some things that I've only just learned, so I'm hoping that it'll be an interesting look at the evolutionary changes that have have resulted in our species attaining its present form.
Given that it's a ppt lecture there there isn't a good way to directly transfer what I'm going to say to this blog afterwards, but it might…
laelaps | February 9, 2008
Given the diversity of lemurs on the island of Madagascar, it's not surprising that some of them have more specialized diets. Bamboo lemurs (Hapalemur sp.) are among the specialist species, their diet consisting almost entirely of bamboo. This diet results in them ingesting a considerable amount of cyanide, although the reason for their immunity to the effects of cyanide is still unknown. There are several species, the most common being Hapalemur griseus, and compared to other lemurs this species appears to be at less risk of extinction. The IUCN entry for H. griseus notes that the status of…