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A traditional restoration of Platybelodon as seen in H.F. Osborn's 1936 elephant monograph. From Lambert (1992).
Whenever I visit the American Museum of Natural History in New York I make sure to at least pass through the fourth-floor fossil halls before I leave, and one of my favorite displays features the shovel-mouthed proboscidean Platybelodon. In a glass case in the shadow of a mammoth skeleton is a growth series showing the development of the Platybelodon jaw, from juvenile to adult. Like many AMNH displays, however, this series was not a product of the renovation of the fossil halls…
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If you are going to be around Brooklyn, New York tomorrow night and don't already have plans you might want to stop by JLA Studios to check outGeeking Out, hosted by Gelf Magazine. Among the guests will be paleoartist Viktor Deak, the man responsible for the beautiful hominid restorations in the "Lucy's Legacy" exhibition and the book The Last Human. Even if you cannot make it, though, you can still check out this interview with Deak.
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If it were not for my wife, Tracey, this blog would probably not exist.
What you see here every day are the end-products of my efforts. What you do not see are the hours of research and writing that go into producing that material, and I could not do it without Tracey. She usually hears my ideas first, be it about an exciting new discovery or some scientific statement that has ruffled my feathers, and I truly cherish the fact that we can "speak geek" to one another. She also gives me the space to write and has not tried to discourage me from turning our apartment into a small library.
More…
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An illustration of Albert Koch's reconstructed "Missourium", or an American mastodon with a few extra bones.
Even though I find modern creationism to be intensely aggravating I occasionally like to browse older creationist texts. It is amusing to see how old creationist arguments have been recycled ad naseum, refitted for new uses (i.e. acceptance of evolution is responsible for [insert social ill here]), or given up entirely over time. In this latter category falls the assertion of the 19th century biblical literalist Mary Roberts that God had purposefully created, and subsequently…
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Hippopotamus amphibius, photographed at the Philadelphia Zoo.
Have you ever tried to walk along the bottom of a pool while fully submerged? It isn't easy. Keeping your feet on the bottom is enough of a task, and you would probably need a weight belt to take an underwater stroll. Hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius), though, walk and even prance along the bottom of lakes and rivers with ease. How do they do it?
When compared to a whale or even a manatee (the latter of which I will address a bit later on) a hippo does not look especially well-adapted to life in the water. It has a low, squat…
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A double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) (?), photographed in Westchester County, NY.
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Life restoration of the head of Armadillosuchus. From Marinho and Carvalho (2009).
When I was trying to come up with a title for this post I almost went with "Armadillosuchus: An armored crocodyliform you wouldn't want to mess with." Obviously I changed my mind. Not only was the title too long, but it was redundant to boot. All crocodyliformes (which includes living crocodylians) are "armored" in that they have little bony plates called osteoderms (primarily on the dorsal, or top, side of their bodies) beneath their scales, which in turn overlay a layer of bony plates called osteoscutes.…
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I have tried to avoid too much navel gazing here during the past few months, but a new paper published in the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach by Adam Goldstein has raised the question "Of what use are evolution blogs?"
Before we can answer this question, of course, we have to ask "What is an evolution blog?" There is not a simple answer. Goldstein considers an evolution blog to be a science blog that is intended "to provide information [about evolution], steering away from the controversies over creationism and intelligent design." The extent to which a blog must "steer away" from…
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A female widow skimmer (Libellula luctuosa), photographed in Mount Kisco, NY. Thanks to Rich for the identification.
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A beautiful artistic reconstruction of Indohyus by Carl Buell.
During the last 30 years paleontologists have uncovered a startling amount of fossil evidence which has illuminated the early evolution of whales. The earliest members of the cetacea looked nothing like the marine mammals we are familiar with today, and in December of 2007 a paper in Nature identified a small hoofed mammal called Indohyus as one of the closest relatives to the earliest whales. This hypothesis was supported by a subsequent study published a few months ago in the same journal.
One of the most interesting aspects…
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In my review of Joshua Blu Buhs' new book Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend I wrote;
As with many legendary creatures, advocates Bigfoot's existence often claim that the creature has been known for hundreds or even thousands of years. How could so many cultures in so many parts of the world have stories about "wild men of the woods" if none actually existed? An entire volume could be devoted to this question alone (for starters, see the chapters on "yeren" in The People's Peking Man) ...
Given that both books (Bigfoot and The People's Peking Man) were published by the University of…
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Parts of the skull, including the upper jaws (maxillae), of Eritherium azzouzorum as seen from the front (top) and below (bottom). From Gheerbrant (2009).
Yesterday I blogged about the ~27 million year old elephantimorph Eritreum, a creature that stood only about four feet high at the shoulder, but there were once even smaller proboscideans. About sixty million years ago in what is now Morocco there lived a rabbit-sized (~5 kg) hoofed mammal that is one of the earliest known relatives of the modern behemoths of Africa and Asia. Called Eritherium azzouzorum, it was a small mammal that…