laelaps | January 17, 2008
It's barely Friday, but I need to put today's PotD up early since I'm literally about to leave for North Carolina. I shouldn't be seeing any sunrise for a few hours yet, but I'm sure I'll see all the bars letting out as I pass through New Brunswick on the way to the Turnpike.
laelaps | January 17, 2008I haven't had the chance to fully read it over yet, but there's a new paper in PLoS about chimpanzees sharing foods raided from local farmers, the behavior potentially showing some parallels with meat-sharing behaviors seen in other populations of chimpanzees. I'll soon write something a little more detailed, but I will say that I think the paper is a little out of order (materials and methods should come before the results and discussion/conclusion). Likewise, be sure to look at some of the criticisms and caveats introduced by other primate researchers in the comments section, especially…
laelaps | January 17, 2008At about 2 AM tomorrow morning I'll be hopping in the car to head down to North Carolina for the 2nd Annual Science Blogging Conference (and I'll even be speaking with some other wonderful student bloggers), but never fear, dear reader; I'll be bringing my clunky old laptop with me to write about things whenever I can. My old rust-bucket of a car is fixed up, I've downloaded some new tunes for the 7 hour drive, and I'm all booked at the hotel, and I'm definitely excited for the events this weekend. I hope to make some time to head over to the natural history museum in Raleigh while I'm there…
laelaps | January 17, 2008I don't know very much about plants, but this is too cool not to mention; [A]n absolutely massive new genus of palm tree has been described from Madagascar that puts nearly all its energy into fruiting, dying after an explosion of flowers and fruit. The new genus is described in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society (unfortunately I do not have access), and LiveScience has a short piece on the discovery.
You can check out some more details about this fascinating new palm at Further Thoughts.
[Thanks to a kind reader I now have the paper and will have something up about it soon. The…
laelaps | January 17, 2008Yesterday I received my review copy of Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs: Soft Tissues and Hard Science by Phillip Manning (supposedly all about the hadrosaur mummy "Dakota"), and while I usually try to keep quiet about my thoughts on a book until I've finished it I just can't keep my trap shut this time. I will write a full review very soon (I'm more than halfway through the book), but I am extremely disappointed with this piece. The book contains no index, no bibliography/references, and there are virtually no pictures of the dinosaur the book is supposed to focus on (save for a scan of a segment…
laelaps | January 17, 2008Darren has announced that there will soon be a conference over in the UK called "Dinosaurs - A Historical Perspective," and it sounds like it'll be one of the most fantastic meetings to take place in paleontology this year. I can't go (have debt, won't travel), but if you can I would highly encourage you to do so, especially if you've got something you can submit for the conference. The deadline for abstracts is January 28th, though, so you'll need to get working if you've got something to submit, but it sounds like just the sort of thing I'd love to contribute to if I had the chance (see…
laelaps | January 17, 2008
I know most of you have seen this one before, but it's still one of my favorites. It was taken during sunrise on July 15th, 2007 at Cape May, NJ, and there were a number of large, expired cnidarians floating around in the surf. I have no idea what species this is, but it did make for a beautiful photograph.
laelaps | January 16, 2008I heard about this on NPR last night and I think it's a great idea; Mark Bent has invented a solar-powered flashlight, and when you buy one someone in an impoverished area that lacks electricity for lights at night also will receive one (and you get to pick where your contribution goes). From what I heard last night the battery in the bogo lights last for about two years (considering you use it every night), so it's definitely a worthwhile investment rather than continuing to buy battery-eating flashlights. From what I've read it seems that solar-powered flashlights aren't the end of the…
laelaps | January 16, 2008
Dinner inside the belly of Iguanodon.
My fellow scibling Jonah Lehrer has a new piece in SEED extending the argument from the end of his book Proust Was a Neuroscientist called "The Future of Science... Is Art?" It's pretty interesting, exploring the relation between physics and neuroscience to art, but biology (outside of the biology of the brain) is left out. I can't speak about fields like genetics and microbiology, areas where I lack expertise and a sense of history for the discipline, but as far of my own interests (particularly zoology and paleontology) art has often been essential…
laelaps | January 16, 2008
Thanks to conservation efforts, gray wolves in various parts of the United States have made a comeback, enough to potentially be removed from the endangered species list, but not everyone is happy that the wolves are doing so well. Indeed, if plans move forward to remove the protected status of wolves in the Northern Rockies region of the U.S., at least three states (Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana) are planning on setting up public hunts with rock-bottom prices for permits, possibly reducing the population back down to 300. Some members of Congress have protested the potential removal of the…
laelaps | January 16, 2008Just a reminder that the next edition of the geology-centered blog carnival The Accretionary Wedge is going to be up at Green Gabbro on Jan. 23rd (the day after I start the spring semester, oh joy...). The topics are your (least) favorite geological misconceptions and geology & pie (mmm... strata), so if you've got something cooking send it on over. Being that I've read When Life Nearly Died, T. rex and the Crater of Doom, and Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle recently (as well as started in on The Cuvier-Geoffrey Debate), I think I'll try to cover the perceived debate between uniformitarianism…
laelaps | January 16, 2008
A capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) at the Cape May Zoo. Josephoartigasia dwarfs this animal, the largest of the living rodents.
One of the most interesting evolutionary patterns is an increase in the disparity of sizes in a group, small representatives persisting and changing even as some lineages get larger (I'll address this issue a bit more in a separate piece of Cope's Rule, if such a thing even truly exists). A new Pleistocene fossil rodent from Uruguay called Josephoartigasia monesi further elucidates this trend, being the largest fossil rodent yet discovered with an estimated…
laelaps | January 16, 2008The creationist propaganda piece Expelled has been in the pipe for a while now, but it seems to be more and more apparent that the people behind it are scrambling to prevent the film from being a direct-to-video style flop. Originally slated for Darwin Day (February 12), the film has been pushed back to April (I would assume the delay stems from a desire to include more about the Gonzalez tenure-denial kerfuffle), and it looks like the filmmakers are trying to "recruit" as many people as possible to see the film when it opens by throwing money at schools. According to a recent post up at the…
laelaps | January 16, 2008
The endangered Grevy's zebra (Equus grevyi) is the largest species of zebra, and while it hasn't undergone the same level of taxonomic reshuffling that its relative the plains zebra Equus quagga) has, it still has been difficult to place at times. According to the IUCN page for Grevy's zebra, this horse is largely suffering from competition with people, overgrazing by livestock being one of the primary reasons this species is in decline. As far as is currently known Grevy'z zebra do not appear to be increasing in number and populations will likely continue to shrink. The individual pictured…
laelaps | January 15, 2008You can see it over at One Good Move. Shubin's book, Your Inner Fish hit bookstores today.
laelaps | January 15, 2008Fossils are fragile, rare things; despite their abundance in some areas, we're pretty fortunate to have the remains of animals that lived and died in the distant past. One of the problems in modern paleontology (and in nearly any scientific discipline that requires fieldwork), though, is the bureaucratic red tape that can slow and even halt excavations of important finds. According to the Los Angeles Times, such is the problem with a Miocene baleen whale skull discovered by amateur paleontologist Daryll Hansen in Orange County, CA. The problem is that the remains (primarily what appears to be…
laelaps | January 15, 2008
A crocodile (I would assume Crocodylus niloticus) from William Cheselden's Osteographia.
laelaps | January 15, 2008
Plumulites bengtsoni. From Vinther, J.; Van Roy, P.; Briggs, D. (2008) "Machaeridians are Palaeozoic armoured annelids." Nature, Vol 451, pp. 185-188 doi:10.1038/nature06474
Last week I briefly mentioned a new paper in Nature about an "armored worm" called Plumulites bengtsoni, and I've finally gotten a chance to read a bit more about this strange Ordovician creature. Previously, fossils determined to belong to a group called the machaeridians were found in great abundance, but like conodont teeth before the discovery of a more complete organism, no one was sure what sort of animal the…
laelaps | January 15, 2008Some of you might already be aware of this, but whenever you click on one of the books I have in the "currently reading" section of this blog, my ridiculously-massive wishlist, or any other link to amazon.com and then buy something, I receive between 4% to 6% of the price of that sale. It doesn't cost you anything (so don't worry), but as a result I've been able to accumulate a fair amount of credit with amazon.com to further add to my bookshelves. In fact, I was able to acquire Carnivorous Nights, Schaller's classic The Serengeti Lion, and (a true bargain) a 1st edition copy of Francis…
laelaps | January 15, 2008Part of the reason why I love science blogging is that there are usually enough people with interest in a particular field that a lot more research gets covered over the whole blogosphere than any one author could accomplish alone. While I'm still mired in some papers I downloaded last week, Darren has posted a new (and fascinating) piece on "teenage pregnancy" in dinosaurs. You'll have to see Tetrapod Zoology for the details, but be sure to stop by PNAS and get the paper "Sexual maturity in growing dinosaurs does not fit reptilian growth models," by Lee and Werning, too. If you recall,…