laelaps | February 8, 2008
The American mastodon (Mammut americanum), illustrated in one of Cuvier's memoirs.
When I taking biology in high school science seemed so simple. Lyell was a uniformitarian hero, Cuvier was a brillant anatomist (but sadly a narrow-minded catastrophist), Charles Darwin was the hero of all biology, and Lamarck was the official whipping boy of evolutionary science, the deconstruction of his ideas receiving more time than Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection! In the years following my graduation in 2001 I didn't think too much about the issue, the work of naturalists who lived…
laelaps | February 8, 2008It's been a while since I've posted a meme here, but I was recently tagged by Dr. Vector and I simply must continue this one. Indeed, I've been hit with the Writing Meme, which says that I should;
1. List 3 writing tips
2.Tag 3 people whose writing style you admire.
When Matt tagged me he wrote "I want to know how he writes so damn much all the time. It's embarrassing!" so I'll use that as a starting point;
1. Coming up with little gimmicks like "Photo of the Day" or "Osteometric Point of the Day" help to keep me consistent. (I nearly wrote "help to keep my regular," but I don't want to…
laelaps | February 8, 2008
Over the past few years I've made a number of trips to the Bronx Zoo to photograph the animals there, and if I didn't know better I would swear that the melanistic leopards (Panthera pardus) in the"Jungle World" exhibit are statues. They're always asleep and I've never seen one so much as twitch, but then again, they're cats. When I first saw them I thought that they were melanistic jaguars (Panthera onca), but the faintly visible spot patterns and their more gracile features (especially the head) proved them to be leopards.
laelaps | February 7, 2008I've generally avoided putting up these commercials so far, but I think I've run through just about every other paleo-advert I've been able to find lately. I remember most of these spots from Saturday mornings (and I've thrown in two dinosaur-themed cartoon intros), and I expect some of you might have some flashbacks, as well;
I apologize; I will never post so much obnoxious material all in one place ever again.
laelaps | February 7, 2008Even though they'll never admit it, I imagine the creationists allied with the Disco institute are hurting pretty bad right now. Other bloggers have already covered the carnage so I'll just put up some links rather than write up a summary of what's already been said, but the beating ID has received over the past few days has been nearly painful to watch;
Casey Luskin stole the BPR3 icon and is now crying discrimination by evil Darwinistas even though he clearly didn't pay attention to the requirements of using the icon. I smell a bit of a fake-out (Luskin creating a trap for himself by…
laelaps | February 7, 2008I know today has been a little light on posts (I've been working on a lab report and on a presentation I'll be giving on "Evolution Sunday"), but I thought I would write up something. Given that I'm taking a course in Human Osteology, osteometric points on the skull are important to know and are essential to making measurements, so I'm pondering putting up a brief description of an osteometric point every once in a while.
Today's point is Bregma (b), a point right along the midline on the outside of the skull where the coronal and sagittal sutures intersect. The bones at this intersection are…
laelaps | February 7, 2008Bioephemera is now live on ScienceBlogs; head on over and give Jessica a warm welcome. I hope her presence here on Sb is anything but ephemeral.
laelaps | February 7, 2008
This is a photo I took a little less than a year ago of Tai Shan, a giant panda cub (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. You can see the pandas at the National Zoo via a webcam on the official website.
laelaps | February 6, 2008Update: Michael has been kind enough to track down a copy of A Discourse on the revolutions of the surface of the globe..., although it looks like I'm going to have to learn French if I want to read Researches on fossil bones.
I've been reading a lot about Cuvier as of late, but I realized that I haven't actually read much of Cuvier's own work (not being able to read French is a general impediment). I was wondering, then, if any of you know of available English translations of Discours sur les revolutions du globe (
A discourse on the revolutions of the surface of the globe, and the changes…
laelaps | February 6, 2008
Following one of the great "rules" of paleontological fieldwork, a team of paleontologists and volunteers from the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Illinois, came across the toe bones of a theropod dinosaur at the very end of their field season. With no time to dig out the specimen, they reluctantly had to cover the remains up and hope that no one else would come across the fossil before they could get to it the next year. Fortunately for them, the specimen was still intact and proved to be one of the most amazing fossil finds of recent years; a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex named…
laelaps | February 6, 2008Bora just notified everyone to a bit of a paleontological challenge; the blog A natural history of Runswick Bay has an enigmatic fossil that seems to be reminiscent of a belemnite with a surrounding body impression, but the experts contacted about the fossil were unable to figure out what it might be. (I'm not suggesting that it is in any way related, but the fossil does remind me of Dickinsonia, an enigmatic fossil that's been interpreted in a number of ways by various researchers.) If you think you know what it is, though, head on over to A natural history of Runswick Bay and throw in your…
laelaps | February 6, 2008
"Toucan Sam" might be the most famous toucan, but the Toco Toucan (Ramphastos toco) is the one you're most likely to see during a visit to the zoo. This particular species prefers more open habitats than other related species which prefer closed forest, and it may be that the toco toucan ultimately benefits from reductions in closed forest. This isn't to say that we should stop caring about South American rain forests, only that some species will certainly take advantage of the changing situation. The pair pictured above were photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
laelaps | February 5, 2008Update: The paper this post discusses is available online and is open access. It can be found here.
A new ScienceDaily piece reports on new molecular clock data that suggests modern birds have an "ancient origin" about 100 million years ago. My first thought upon reading the brief article was "This is news?" yet the details of what the paper actually says is going to be important in any discussion of the results.
I haven't read the actual paper yet, but article notes that the authors are referring to the diversification of modern birds, or Neornithes (see comments below, & thank you to…
laelaps | February 5, 2008
Yesterday was a good day as far as books went; I read G.G. Simpson's Splendid Isolation from cover-to-cover, two review copies arrived in the mail, and a book I've long been wanting to read also arrived at my door. That book is Johannes Weigelt's Recent Vertebrate Carcasses and their Paleobiological Implications, first published in 1927 but translated by Judith Schaefer and re-released in 1989. I haven't gotten a chance to dive into it yet, but it is an absolutely beautiful book, and even though the subject matter may be a bit macabe it has already inspired me.
Lately I've been thinking of…
laelaps | February 5, 2008I didn't think it was going to air so early in the year, but apparently David Attenborough's latest program (and last in the "Life of..." series), Life in Cold Blood, is now airing in the UK. The Telegraph recently published an article about the joy of watching Attenborough's documentaries, and I was able to find one clip from the show already online. It features the Panamanian golden frog (Atelopus zeteki), a species that is critically endangered if not already extinct in the wild;
Previously it had been said that this was going to be Attenborough's last project, but according to the…
laelaps | February 5, 2008
One member of a three-cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) coalition at the Philadelphia Zoo.
laelaps | February 4, 2008
The new crocodylian Montealtosuchus arrudacamposi. [Image source].
Living crocodylians have often been referred to as "living fossils," creatures that have survived "virtually unchanged" for hundreds of millions of years. In truth, crocodylians as we recognize them today (i.e. aquatic ambush predators) first appear in the fossil record during the Jurassic (see comment below), but there was a much wider diversity of crocodylians during past epochs that were just as interesting (and even terrifying) as any dinosaur.* In the Bauru Basin of Brazil, for instance, the remains of at least five…
laelaps | February 4, 2008
The grey-faced sengi (Rhynchocyon udzungwensis). From Rovero, et al. (2008).
Several years ago, while on a visit to the Philadelphia Zoo, I first saw a creature I had never heard of before; the black and rufus sengi (Rhynchocyon petersi). The exhibit caption simply called it a giant elephant shrew, and even though I was familiar with smaller members of the Macroscelididae like the short-eared elephant shrew (Macroscelides proboscideus), I had never seen their giant relatives. This perhaps represents my own ignorance of the group known as Afrotheria, but the discovery of a new species of…
laelaps | February 4, 2008
The above photograph is of the forelimb claws of the giant ground sloth Megalonyx wheatleyi, first named by E.D. Cope in 1871. The genus name for this animal was assigned to a similar animal at the close of the previous century, however, Megalonyx first being assigned to fossils that first found their way into the possession of Thomas Jefferson around 1797. Jefferson first inferred the giant claws to be from some gigantic, ancient big cat,* but shortly after he formally described the find it was compared with the giant sloth Megatherium that Cuvier had described earlier. The similarities…