laelaps | December 10, 2007
The Boat-Billed Heron (Cochlearius cochlearius) is a somewhat strange member of the family Ardeidae, although it was previously placed in its own family, the Cochlearidae. As you can tell from the above photograph taken at the "Aquatic Bird House" at the Bronx Zoo, the bill of this type of bird is oddly shaped, making it somewhat difficult to place among other living herons.
laelaps | December 9, 2007
A Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus) playing with a plastic drum at the Philadelphia Zoo. This isn't much of a post, but I should probably note that this is my 200th post here on ScienceBlogs (time sure does fly, huh?), and you readers have left nearly 900 comments thus far. More posts should be coming up today, including a review of The Loch Ness Horror and the continuation of a meme. I guess I'm just so fascinating that people keep wanting to know 7 things about me...
laelaps | December 7, 2007
I have to wonder if whoever was put in charge of the Golden Compass reviews page on RottenTomatoes.com has something against the film; it's listed as receiving a 44% approval rating but some of the reviews seem more positive then negative when I actually read some of them. I don't need to ask a reviewer how it was though since I just got in from seeing it, and I have to say that it was very enjoyable.
I won't go on too long as I don't want to inadvertently spoil anything, but what's funny about the religious brouhaha surrounding the film is that many evangelicals are doing the very thing…
laelaps | December 7, 2007
Paleontologist Jack Horner has proposed that the pachycephalosaurs Dracorex (upper left) and Stygimoloch (upper right) are really growth stages in the species Pachycephalosaurus (lower center), as presented in the November 23rd, 2007 issue of Science
Pachycephalosaurus was always introduced to me as the ancient equivalent of a Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis), always looking for some excuse to bang their heads together. As I grew older I didn't really buy the head-to-head butting hypothesis, especially since the heads of these dinosaurs were domed and did not provide a wide, flat space to…
laelaps | December 7, 2007Note: As Larry Moran rightly points out in the comments everything isn't all about putting out papers and us science bloggers should put out graphs of our own publication rates, as well. For my own part, I've contributed nothing so I couldn't even make a graph, but I know there has been some discussion about some of the leading spokesmen for evolution and their publication rates (Dawkins and Gould, for example, have put out plenty of popular works, but how did that affect the amount of technical work they accomplished?). The point that jumping on the ID bandwagon adversely affects…
laelaps | December 7, 2007Every time I think I'm finally going to get down to writing a nice, juicy epic post there's some new dinosaur news or discovery that comes up and throws me off the rails. I'm still working on the sailbacks piece (hopefully I'll finish it this weekend; my term paper took precedence during the week, understandably), but for now here's some fun paleo stuff to check out on the web;
There's a biographical piece about paleontologist Thomas Holtz in the Washington Post called "Geeking Out on Dinosaurs." And being that Christmas is quickly approaching, keep in mind that Dr. Holtz's new book…
laelaps | December 7, 2007Yesterday was a little light on posts as I was in transit for most of the day to a lecture at NYU by Kevin Hunt of Indiana University called "The inferred forest home of the earliest hominins: Firm foundation or house of cards?" The talk was much more narrow in scope than what it might sound like from the title however, and there were good points and relatively weak points made throughout the presentation. Here I present a few thoughts from notes I took during the lecture and conversations with the Rutgers professors and grad students that also attended after the lecture;
When I hear the term…
laelaps | December 7, 2007
Can you find the Eyelash Viper (Bothriechis schlegelii)? It's generally good to see them before you stumble upon them in the Central and South American rainforest, as this small pit viper has a venomous bite. The one in the photo is green, but they can take on a variety of colors (yellow, pink, brown, green), and they get their name from enlarged, upright scales around their eyes that look like eyelashes. Primarily an ambush predator, this species of snake may even return to the same spot annually during bird migrations to try and snag some avian prey.
laelaps | December 6, 2007I'm going to be out most of the day as I'm going to attend a lecture in New York on how useful (or not) living primates are in reconstructing the lifeways of extinct hominins (with a new copy of Peter Bowler's Monkey Trials and Gorillas Sermons to keep me occupied during the trip), but if you're looking for something good to listen to check out an interview on NPR with Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth about their new book Baboon Metaphysics. Included in the discussion is a mention of the creationism/evolution culture war and a story (originally related to me by my primatology professor, a…
laelaps | December 6, 2007
There are few creatures that are as charming as otters; their lithe forms are amusingly awkward on land but incredibly graceful in the water, and they are always a joy to behold. Their energetic playfulness makes them difficult to photograph, however, although this particular North American River Otter (Lontra canadensis) at the National Zoo stayed still long enough to allow for a few portraits. While not endangered over its entire range, the otter has been hunted out of some areas for its soft yet thick coat, which helps keep in warm during its amphibious pursuits, sometimes fetching…
laelaps | December 5, 2007
A crude evolutionary tree drawn by Charles Darwin in his first "transmutation" notebook around July 1837.
Welcome, dear reader, to the second edition of the taxonomically-oriented blog carnival Linnaeus' Legacy, founded by fellow science blogger Christopher Taylor. Here's the "view from the top" as to what science bloggers have been saying about taxonomy and systematics this month;
Just like old rock stars, naturalists of old still go on tour, or at least some of their prestigious works do. Michael Barton of the Dispersal of Darwin tells us of Linnaeus' personal copy of Systema Naturae…
laelaps | December 5, 2007Later this afternoon I'll be hosting the taxonomic blog carnival Linnaeus' Legacy. If you have a post you'd like to be included (or know of another post that should be included), please send it to me before 3 P.M. Eastern Time.
laelaps | December 5, 2007
In honor of the presentation I'm delivering today (which comprises about half the subject of my term paper), here is the skull of a baboon (Papio sp.), baboons sometimes eating meat when they can get it. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), however, incorporate much more meat into their diet and have been known to steal kills from baboons at Gombe, the famous location in Tanzania. There is a problem with these observations, though, and that is that the events took place in the provisioning area where chimpanzees and baboons often had antagonistic interactions and don't try to steal baboon kills…
laelaps | December 4, 2007
It's always a good day when a new book arrives at the door, but I've been a little worried lately as a number of books that were shipped weeks ago hadn't turned up. With only one or two exceptions they all came today (pictured above beneath the Christmas tree), and four of them are review copies that I'll be writing about soon. Being that I'm in the middle of Michael Novacek's newest book Terra it might take me a little while to get to some of the heftier titles in the stack, but here's what came and what you can expect to be featured here soon;
Wolf Empire: An Intimate Portrait of a…
laelaps | December 4, 2007
George and Charles H. Sternberg's "Trachodon" (=Edmontosaurus) mummy, discovered in Wyoming in 1908. Image from Osborn, H.F. (1912) "Integument of the iguanodont dinosaur Trachodon", Memoirs of the AMNH ; new ser., v. 1, pt. 1-2.
Dinosaur "mummies," specimens that have undergone unusual preservation and retain some skin impressions along with the bones, are always exciting when announced, one of the most famous being the "teenage" Brachylophosaurus dubbed "Leonardo." (See here for information from Kodak on Leonardo, as well as this page from the Judith River Dinosaur Institute) This…
laelaps | December 4, 2007
A Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus). Via Wikipedia.
In 1921, people who had milk delivered to their door in Swaythling, England had a mystery on their hands; someone was drinking all the cream out of their milk bottles. Local youths and other potential culprits were named, but the phenomenon began to spread across the country, no one being quite sure who was behind the theft of the high-butterfat layer. Eventually, however, the freeloaders were identified; Blue Tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) were opening the tops of the bottles and skimming off the best part of the un-homogenized milk. Various…
laelaps | December 4, 2007Ben Stein is out and about flogging his upcoming farce of a documentary, Expelled, and he recently repeatedly shot himself in the foot during a recent appearance on Glenn Beck's self-aggrandizing CNN show. If you can stomach it, here's the video;
Hearing what Stein said during this brief interview, he has certainly confirmed what the scientific community has been saying all along, and they have every right to call him a fool. I'm not sure I would call the first slip-up a mistake though, perhaps it's honesty, but it significantly weakens Stein's entire premise. Beck says "Tell me about…
laelaps | December 4, 2007
These three Reticulated Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata) were very intent on getting a free handout, and all lined up for this shot. Chances are that if you see a giraffe at a zoo, it's a Reticulated Giraffe, and out of these three the male is the darker, knobbly giraffe to the far right and the other two are females. There was also a young juvenile in this enclosure, and every year many zoos announce the birth of a new baby giraffe as they are very easy to breed in captivity. While I don't know of any specific breeding programs, the ease at which these animals breed in captivity…
laelaps | December 3, 2007A few weeks ago I mentioned that the school board in Polk County, Florida looked like they were going to try and get creationism into the classroom when the school science standards are revised in January of 2008, and now it looks like some of the members of the Texas Education Agency might be gearing up to try the same thing. By now I'm sure that most of you have heard of how the Texas Education Agency's director of science, Christine Comer, was forced to resign after forwarding a message about a Nov. 2 lecture by philosopher Barbara Forrest on called "Inside Creationisms Trojan Horse" to a…