laelaps | November 14, 2009
A group of silvered leaf monkeys (Trachypithecus cristatus), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
laelaps | November 13, 2009
If anything, the 19th century English paleontologist Gideon Mantell is known for his contributions to our understanding of dinosaurs. His most famous accomplishment was the description of Iguanodon, but Mantell has another legacy that is not as well-known. It was his last contribution to science, though it was not made willingly.
Like many other early paleontologists Mantell had to carve out his own career, and he studied fossils when not busy with his duties as a surgeon in the Lewes countryside. As Mantell began to gain recognition for his work on fossils, though, his passion for…
laelaps | November 12, 2009
A black-and-white colobus monkey (Colobus guereza), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
laelaps | November 11, 2009
The "Dinosauroid", the human-like product of a thought experiment about what the descendants of the dinosaur Troodon would look like today if the theropod had survived the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, is back. This time it has been invoked as an "I'm just sayin'..." defense by Richard Dawkins in a discussion about what life might be like on other planets. The article itself is here, but be sure to check out Darren's excellent take-down.
My own thoughts on the Dinosauroid will be featured in the conclusion of my forthcoming book Written in Stone.
laelaps | November 10, 2009
A mammoth as restored in Gosse's Omphalos. In Gosse's view of history, however, such a scene never actually existed. The bones of the mammoth existed in the earth from the time of Creation and had never given form to a living animal.
Without a doubt, Philip Henry Gosse's Omphalos is one of the strangest books I have ever read. Published in 1857, two years before Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species would cause the public and academics alike to take evolution more seriously, Gosse's book was an attempt to rescue Creation itself from the perceived threat of science denuded of Christian…
laelaps | November 10, 2009
North American river otters (Lontra canadensis), photographed in the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone National Park.
laelaps | November 9, 2009
A very lion-like Smilodon, from Ernest Ingersoll's The Life of Animals (1907).
For decades after its discovery the saber-toothed cat Smilodon fatalis was depicted as little more than a lion with a short tail and long fangs. Given its size and habits as a large carnivore the connection appeared to make sense, but recent studies have suggested that Smilodon was quite different from the "king of the beasts." Not only did Smilodon have a face that probably would have looked a bit saggy when compared to modern lions, but a new study published in the Journal of Zoology suggests that male and…
laelaps | November 8, 2009
Sand flies (black bits) and brine shrimp (pink bits) at the edge of the Great Salt Lake. Photographed at Antelope Island, Utah.
laelaps | November 8, 2009
A rock squirrel (Spermophilus variegatus), photographed at Dinosaur National Monument, Utah.
laelaps | November 7, 2009
American avocets (Recurvirostra americana), photographed at Antelope Island, Utah.
laelaps | November 6, 2009
The skeleton of a dire wolf (Canis dirus), photographed at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City.
laelaps | November 5, 2009
Almost every time I get into a discussion about woolly mammoths with someone the conversation eventually steers towards the topic of cloning a mammoth. "Wouldn't it be fascinating?", they often say. And with a little extra genetic engineering, many of my friends hope, maybe someone could create a breed of domesticated mini-mammoths that would definitely be in the running for the title of "Cutest Pet Ever" (at least until they left a mess on the carpet).
The possibility of housebroken mammoths, or at least mammoths in public zoos, seemed within reach in the spring of 1984. It was at that time…
laelaps | November 5, 2009
The skeleton of a giant bison (Bison latifrons), photographed at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City.
laelaps | November 4, 2009
A simplified, silhouette version of the "March of Progress."
The "March of Progress", the iconic evolutionary image of an ancestral ape transforming into a proud, tool-wielding human, is not going anywhere. There is perhaps no other illustration that is as immediately recognizable as representing evolution, but the tragedy of this is that it conveys a view of life that does not resemble our present understanding of life's history. Stephen Jay Gould addressed this two decades ago in his book Wonderful Life, in which he wrote;
Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the…
laelaps | November 4, 2009
A restoration of the crocodyliform Goniopholis scavenging a stegosaur carcass. Photographed at the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point, Utah.
laelaps | November 3, 2009
A stand of dead trees near Artists Paint Pots in Yellowstone National Park.
laelaps | November 2, 2009
It has been a little more than a month since I announced my forthcoming book on paleontology and evolution, Written in Stone, and I have been hard at work on the manuscript. As it stands now the book is about 3/4 complete. Provided everything stays on schedule I should have a first draft of the whole book finished in about a month.
But finishing the manuscript, while of primary importance, is not my only concern. I am a virtually unknown science writer publishing my first book through a relatively small house. That means that I cannot sit idly by and expect lots of people to take interest in…