laelaps | January 16, 2010
The skeleton of a blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), photographed at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. (Notice the foramina, or small holes, in the upper jaw. In life these housed blood vessels that nourished the whale's baleen plates. They are also useful anatomical clues in determining which fossil whales had baleen.)
laelaps | January 15, 2010If there is any problem with my upcoming panel discussion with Tom Levenson and Rebecca Skloot tomorrow morning it is that there is too much to talk about! There is no way to get to it all. In the spirit of the conference, then, we are going to let the questions of our audience guide the discussion rather than lecture our listeners about our experiences, but I did want to briefly comment an issue Tom brought up on his blog earlier today.Tom wrote;
[O]ne piece of advice I do have for writers planning to start blogs specifically to aid their upcoming book projects -- don't. At least don't…
laelaps | January 15, 2010
A turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) landing to scavenge a deer carcass. Photographed in suburban New Jersey.
laelaps | January 13, 2010
A California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
laelaps | January 13, 2010
I heard, but did not see, wolves when I visited Yellowstone National Park this past summer, but the Nature film team had better luck during a winter in the same park. The above clip is a portion of the footage they shot and will be featured in the upcoming documentary "Clash: Encounters of Bears and Wolves." It is set to premiere this coming Sunday on PBS.
laelaps | January 13, 2010For the third consecutive year I was surprised to find that one of my posts made it into the annual science blogging anthology The Open Laboratory. Not only was the number of submissions very high (760!), but my essays were up against some stiff competition (and I should know since I sifted through quite a few as a judge).* There was a good chance that none of my entries would make the cut, but I am proud to say that my essay on the early whale Maiacetus will be included in the 2009 anthology. Many thanks to those who nominated my posts on "Ida" and "Ardi", the judges, Bora, and Scicurious…
laelaps | January 13, 2010
An Atlantic ghost crab (Ocypode quadrata), photographed at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge, Delaware.
laelaps | January 12, 2010
Restoration of the skull of Thylacoleo. From The Ancient Life History of the Earth.
Thylacoleo was one strange mammal. A close relative of living koalas, kangaroos, and wombats, the largest species of Thylacoleo were lion-sized carnivores that stalked the Australian continent between 2 million and 45 thousand years ago. Despite its popular nickname "marsupial lion", however, Thylacoleo was quite different from any feline predator. Even though its long forelimbs were tipped with retractable claws its skull more closely resembled that of a koala, with curved incisors set in front of a pair…
laelaps | January 11, 2010
An eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina), photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
laelaps | January 11, 2010Just under three weeks. That is all the time I have left to finish my first book, Written in Stone. Although I must admit that I have had my share of "Oh crap, that paper is due today?" moments during my academic career, I am happy to say that I am fully prepared to meet my deadline for the book. The text of Written in Stone has been essentially complete for a few weeks now. It still needs some work, some rough patches need to be buffed out and some holes need to be spackled over, but all of the major parts are in place.
But this is not to say that I am devoid of anxiety. I have written a few…
laelaps | January 11, 2010Pterosaur fans, rejoice! Today marks the launch of Pterosaur.net, a website entirely dedicated to the famous flying reptiles. Put together by an all-star team of paleo bloggers, it is the best resource for information on pterosaurs available on the web. Go check it out!
laelaps | January 10, 2010
Zeff the Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
laelaps | January 9, 2010
A female mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), photographed in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.
laelaps | January 8, 2010
A comparison between the complete skull of a Glyptodon and the skull fragments of a fetal specimen. (From Zurita et al, 2009)
Early in 2009 a team of paleontologists led by Philip Gingerich announced the discovery of a baby archaeocete (early whale) embedded inside the skeleton of an adult of the same species. Since these fossils represented a new species of fossil whale to boot the story was immediately picked up by news outlets, but less well-publicized was another discovery made later the same year. In the pages of Comptes Rendus Palevol paleontologists Alfredo Zurita, Angel Mino-…
laelaps | January 8, 2010
A gull in the process of taking off. Photographed at Spring Lake, New Jersey.
laelaps | January 6, 2010
Lichen Moss growing on a tree at a turnout near Tower Falls in Yellowstone National Park. (Many thanks for the correction! Shows how much I know about plants...)
laelaps | January 6, 2010
Tiktaalik is practically a household name. Since its description in 2006 the flat-headed "fishapod" has appeared in books, on t-shirts, and has even starred in its own music video. Hailed as a "missing link", Tiktaalik has become a poster child fossil for evolution, but it is hardly the first such creature to be given this honor.
Way back in the 1840's, well over a decade before Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published, the Victorian anatomist Richard Owen was mulling over the concept of transitional forms. He was not so much thinking about actual fossils as the way anatomical…
laelaps | January 5, 2010
A restoration of Mammalodon by Brian Choo (published in Fitzgerald, 2009).
In the introduction to his 1883 lecture on whales, the English anatomist William Henry Flower said;
Few natural groups present so many remarkable, very obvious, and easily appreciated illustrations of several of the most important general laws which appear to have determined the structure of animal bodies, as that selected for my lecture this evening. We shall find the effects of the two opposing forces--that of heredity or conformation to ancestral characters, and that of adaptation to changed environment, whether…