laelaps | December 14, 2007Michael Lemonick hates science bloggers, or actually is maybe just a little jealous of how awesome we are. In the past, great popular science communicators like Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan brought science to the public in an understandable (and perhaps more importantly, enjoyable) way, but with the growing popularity and profusion of blogs more and more scientists are taking on the mantle of "popularizer" and bringing science to whomever has an interest. Indeed, there is something of a vicious myth that scientists are inherently bad communicators, but the existence of so many growing…
laelaps | December 14, 2007
If you see an Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) at a zoo, they'll probably be carrying around a large piece of cardboard or a blanket like the one from the Philadelphia Zoo pictured above. The reason for this seems to be that orangs normally live in a forested, enclosed habitat and prefer to have something over their heads, and if there are no trees they'll work with what they have. Chimpanzees, too, like to have cover over their heads in the wild and largely fear open spaces like savannas, the population at Mt. Assirik in Senegal being an exception as they move in large mixed-sex groups over the…
laelaps | December 13, 2007Over the past two decades there has been an explosion in the number of large theropods that have been discovered (or as we shall see, rediscovered) in Africa and South America, the predatory dinosaurs of what was once Gondwana being just as large and terrifying as their more famous Northern Hemisphere counterparts. Abelisaurids (i.e. Carnotaurus, Rugops, Majungasaurus), Spinosaurids (i.e. Baryonyx, Suchomimus, Irritator, and Spinosaurus), and Carcharodontosaurids (i.e. Giganotosaurus, Tyrannotitan, Mapusaurus, and Carcharodontosaurus) have all emerged from the rock at an alarming rate,…
laelaps | December 13, 2007As I promised the other day, here's the instructions for how to make one of my favorite meals, lime chicken & shrimp. It's just about the only thing that I can make that tastes halfway decent, although I unfortunately have no written down the exact proportion so if you try this it'll have to be on the fly (at the same time, though, it's hard to get wrong). Here's what you'll need to make it for at least two people;
Chicken (boneless breasts are best)
Peeled & cleaned shrimp (as many as desired)
Olive oil
10-15 limes or a bottle of non-concentrated lime juice
Basil
Oregano…
laelaps | December 13, 2007
I've already written something up about the infamous "Dinosauroid" previously, but it is funny how we're told that if the non-avian dinosaurs didn't become extinct 65 million years ago (preventing mammals as we know them from evolving, the clip says) humans would still have been around to take advantage of a warm Protoceratops omelettes, the dinosaurs themselves being essentially unchanged. Indeed, it seems that it's hard for us to imagine a world without something like ourselves in it, the dinosauroid being an extension of the somewhat teleological or vitalistic premise that humans are "…
laelaps | December 13, 2007
As of yesterday the fall semester came to an end, although I still have a bit of work set out before me. Aside from the final exams, I have on term paper due tomorrow for my African Prehistory seminar involving a topic of my choice, and my subject involves what the Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia) pictured above is doing: eating meat. Many of the books I read didn't discuss carnivory in our ancestors until it became more prevalent in Homo erectus, but obviously the behaviors had to start somewhere, and the more I thought about it the more the capture and consumption of small animal prey in the…
laelaps | December 12, 2007You know when you're out of touch when your own wife starts up a blog and you have to find out from sitemeter! I'm sure I would have heard about it soon anyway, but I sensed a disturbance in the interwebs and had to check it out. It's called The Olive Tree, and she's got her first post up here. She's a much better writer than I am, so check it out if you've got the time.
[My father-in-law took a brief foray into blogging as well (it was called Political Climate Change), although it seems to have slipped by the wayside.]
laelaps | December 12, 2007Update: I was able to get a copy of the Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis paper, I just need to school myself on allosaurids a little bit before I pot something about it.
So many fossils, so little time. For those of you with Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology subscriptions, there's a new paper out today describing a new species of theropod; Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis from Niger. That's not all, though. In the same issue of new species of glyptodont called Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis is described, so you'll definitely want to have a good look at the December issue. I haven't been…
laelaps | December 12, 2007
The Sloth Bear (Melursus ursinus) is quite unusual, indeed; up until two years ago I had never even heard of this nocturnal bear from India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. It is a bit mysterious why this bear is called the "Sloth Bear," however, although it does resemble anteaters (another member of the Xenarthra) in some of its habits. Sloth Bears do eat a variety of foods including meat and fruit, but some of their primary food sources are social insect nests like those of bees and termites, this bear sometimes being known as the "honey bear" because of its affinity for the sticky stuff. These…
laelaps | December 11, 2007Page 3.14 here on Sb has asked readers to share their language preferences so the further conquest enlightenment of the science blogosphere can continue. If you've got a second, please go over and answer the questions to help the folks who run this place out!
laelaps | December 11, 2007The power of the evolution idea is that it directly affects every creature that has ever lived on this planet and ever will, for that matter. It does not apply only to mussels and marmosets, dinosaurs and date palms, or penguins and porgies; Homo sapiens is as much a product of evolution as the most basic of bacteria or most monstrous of whales. Not everyone readily accepts this basic fact, however, and even before Charles Darwin's landmark work On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection appeared in 1859 many people were threatened by the idea that life (and most of all human life) could…
laelaps | December 11, 2007
A mount of Plateosaurus. [Source]
When I was first becoming acquainted with dinosaurs, the origin of the gigantic Jurassic sauropods seemed pretty straightforward. There was Plateosaurus (see above) from the Late Triassic of Europe, and it almost seemed certain that it was the ancestor to behemoths like Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus that were present in every dinosaur book I owned. What has become apparent, however, is that the evolution of sauropodmorph dinosaurs is not nearly so simple, and the animals once considered to be the ancestors of the later "earth shakers" are more likely a…
laelaps | December 11, 2007
This photograph of a Maned Wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) unfortunately looks as if it were taken in someone's yard, but these South American canids are fascinating all the same. I will tread lightly here as Anne-Marie is the expert round these parts, but there is at least one interesting story to tell about these animals. Like many other canids they mark their territory with urine, urine that has a very distinctive smell (like hops or marijuana) in the case of the Maned Wolf. So close is the scent that the police once were looking for who was smoking pot at the Rotterdam Zoo only to discover…
laelaps | December 10, 2007America is a strange country indeed; we want to know about what our future leaders are going to do about the economy, terrorism, and various social issues, but we don't ask that they be scientifically literate. In the ever-growing mass of debates held this year, it was even revealed that a number of republican candidates do not accept one of the most fundamental concepts in biology, and while liberal candidates often pay lip service to the threat of global climate change (and potential partial solutions in alternative energy sources), they have not demonstrated a firm grasp on science to date…
laelaps | December 10, 2007If you fail at everything else in life, you could always try to work for a scientific organization, reveal that you're a creationist, and then land a job as a professor at Liberty University. That's just what Nathaniel Abraham did, and now he's suing the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute because as they didn't want a creationist working on a project that directly involved evolutionary concepts. PZ already covered this story when it initially came out, but now it seems to have emerged in wider media circles (it was on the Yahoo! front page when I logged on a few minutes ago). The…
laelaps | December 10, 2007I'm sure that many of you, like me, have added a number of books to your shelf in 2007 (or revisited ones that have already found a place there). My own selections have almost exclusively been in the area of natural history, both old and new, but before I write up a list of my favorite selections that I read this year, what are your favorites? The books could be new or old, but out of what you've read this year, what books rank among your favorites? (Replies can be left in the comments.)
laelaps | December 10, 2007For those of you in Germany (or can speak German, for that matter), the beta version of Scienceblogs.de is now available, featuring all-new blog content. Page 3.14 has the scoop.
laelaps | December 10, 2007There is certainly a glut of books out there about why people reject science, embrace superstition/pseudoscience, or both, and I've read a few of them over the past month or so (The Mismeasure of Man, Discarded Science, Science Talk, and Why People Believe Weird Things are the ones I read) to see if I could get a better handle on things like belief in witchcraft, UFOs, and Holocaust denial. Unfortunately, many of the books were disappointing, being good sources for basic information but either fizzling out or generally lacking in any sort of style or conclusion, and I'm sorry to say that…
laelaps | December 10, 2007The infamous "random things" meme is again making the rounds and I've been doubly tagged, first by Greg Laden and then by Mike Haubrich, so just as I've done in the past (see here and here) I'll pull double duty an try to come up with some original answers. I'll continue Greg's line first since he was the first to tag me, so here's my ancestry through that line;
Father: Greg Laden
Grandmother: The Ridger
Great Grandmother: Grrl Scientist
Great Great Grandmother: Tabor
Great Great Great Grandmother: Maya's Granny
Great Great Great Great Grandmother: Busha Full of Grace
I don't…
laelaps | December 10, 2007
A monster in Loch Ness, crazy old Scots, and Nazis; what else could you want? Well, a coherent movie, of course, but The Loch Ness Horror is so full of rolled "r"s and movie cheese that fun all the same. The movie starts off with Nessie spotting some Nazi activity over the lake, the information she anonymously leaked helping Allied forces during the closing days of the war. The fact that the monster breathes air and constantly is sculling about on the surface while still being referred to as an elusive legend must mean that she was under some sort of government witness protection program.…