laelaps | October 8, 2009
In the middle of the summer of 2008 the ScienceBlogs cat herders relayed some exciting news to my blogging colleagues and I. Randy Olson, creator of the documentary Flock of Dodos, had created a new movie called Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy and wanted to send us all screener copies for a coordinated review "party". It sounded like a fun opportunity at the time, but little did I know what a headache the movie release would become.
Even though I enjoyed Flock of Dodos, there was one aspect of it that didn't sit right with me. Part of Randy's thesis was that scientists fail at helping the…
laelaps | October 7, 2009
I have often been teased for my habit of carrying a science book wherever I go. ("That's such a Brian thing," an acquaintance once remarked.) If I am going to be waiting for someone or have a few minutes to spare here or there I like to have something to read to fill up the time. It's either that or fiddle around with Tetris on my cell phone. Some people have told me that this manifestation of bibliophilia makes me seem antisocial,* but I cannot break the habit. I have been toting around science stuff wherever I go from a very young age.
*[My favorite instance was when I was told to "Make…
laelaps | October 7, 2009
A male pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), photographed at Antelope Island, Utah.
laelaps | October 6, 2009When I wrote about the public unveiling of Ardipithecus ramidus (or "Ardi" to the public) last week I contrasted the description of the hominin with the bombastic rollout given to the lemur-like fossil primate "Ida" (Darwinius masillae) this past May. In the latter case it was clear that a media production company rushed the scientific process and overhyped the conclusions presented to the public, but now there are questions about the relationship between the scientists who described "Ardi" and the Discovery Channel.
This coming Sunday the Discovery Channel will air a special called "…
laelaps | October 6, 2009
A coyote (Canis latrans), photographed near Grizzly Lookout in Yellowstone National Park.
laelaps | October 5, 2009Last month everyone was all a-twitter about the big screen Charles Darwin biopic, Creation. The film, based upon the biography Annie's Box, was released in England with great fanfare, but whether it would come to the United States was another question altogether. A U.S. distributor was hard to come by, and speculation was rife about why this was so. Was the popularity of creationism in America making distributors wary, or did they just think that the film was too boring?
Fortunately for us Darwin fans on the other side of the Atlantic the film finally landed a distributor and should debut…
laelaps | October 5, 2009
Roaring Mountain, a ridge dotted with steam vents and fumaroles, in Yellowstone National Park.
laelaps | October 4, 2009
A ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) enjoying a lunch of salad greens. Photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
When I first walked into the Bronx Zoo's recently-constructed Madagascar exhibit I was greeted by an unpleasant, but not unfamiliar, odor. It smelled like the ancient gym mats of my old high school's "wrestling room"; foam rubber pads that contained the sweat of several generations of pubescent grapplers. Yet the pungent stench in the zoo came from an entirely different kind of primate; lemurs.
Scents mean a lot to lemurs. They are strepsirrhine primates, or have wet, dog-like nostrils, and…
laelaps | October 4, 2009
Heated water from the Norris Geyser Basin empties into a nearby river. Photographed in Yellowstone National Park.
laelaps | October 3, 2009
A trio of dinosaurs at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City, Utah. An Allosaurus (left) attacks a Camptosaurus (right) while another Allosaurus looms in the background.
laelaps | October 2, 2009
Two restorations of "Ardi", a 45% complete skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus published in this week's issue of Science. Restorations (including the full skeletal restoration below) by artist Jay Matternes.
The stories of "Ida" and "Ardi" could hardly be more different.
Ida was a lemur-like primate that lived 47 million years ago in an area that is now Messel, Germany. Ardi was much closer to us; she was one of the earliest hominins and lived 4.4 million years ago in what would become known as Ethiopia.
When the bones of Ida were discovered they were held in a private collection for years…
laelaps | October 1, 2009It's Ardipithecus day! No, not that one, but the other one, Ardipithecus ramidus, which paleoanthropologists have been studying for the past 15 years. Over 45% of the skeleton of this hominin was found in the early 1990's, but outside of a brief initial description no further details about Ardipithecus ramidus had been published until today.
Later this afternoon Science will launch a webpage containing multiple print articles and online features chock-full of details about this early hominin. (Word has it that an entire University of California Press volume will be devoted to Ardipithecus…
laelaps | October 1, 2009
Not long after I wrote about how creationists got paleontologists Simon Conway Morris and James Valentine to appear in the anti-evolution film Darwin's Dilemma I received a message from someone at the Faraday Institute. Conway Morris had done an interview with them about science and religion for a miniseries called Test of Faith, they said; would I be interested in receiving a copy of the DVD? I said "Sure" and the film came in the mail last week. I cannot say I was very impressed.
For those who have not heard of it before, the Faraday Institute is a John Templeton Foundation-funded group…
laelaps | October 1, 2009
The Yellowstone River, photographed near Tower Falls in Yellowstone National Park.
laelaps | September 30, 2009
Anemone Geyser, a small but frequently-erupting geyser in Yellowstone's Upper Geyser Basin.
laelaps | September 29, 2009
I have been a little tied up with other writing duties today, so in lieu of a "normal" post here is another snapshot from my trip to the Bronx Zoo last weekend. It is of a young male gelada baboon (Theropithecus gelada) that came down to the moat to drink. He had just been involved in a major altercation. The entire troop went running after another young male who had gotten a little too close to a female spoken for by a larger male. The "fight" was more of a chase than anything else, though, and soon afterward most of the geladas went back to what they do best; eating grass.
laelaps | September 29, 2009
Three pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), an adult female and two juveniles, photographed in Grand Teton National Park.
laelaps | September 28, 2009
As some of you may recall, last week I posted a list of new and forthcoming books written by science bloggers. I tried to include all the authors and titles I could think of, but there was one book that I intentionally left off the list; my own.
I am now proud to announce that my first book, Written in Stone, will be released by Bellevue Literary Press in the fall of 2010. In it I tell the stories of some of the most magnificent evolutionary transitions in the vertebrate fossil record, such as the evolution of birds from feathered theropod dinosaurs and whales from land-dwelling ancestors,…