laelaps | April 22, 2009Of all the evolutionary transitions that have ever taken place few have received as much attention as the origin of whales. (See here, here, here, here,and here for a few of my posts on the subject.) The story of how terrestrial hoofed mammals gave rise to the exclusively aquatic leviathans has been highlighted in headlines over and over again, but other marine mammals have not received the same amount of public attention. In the case of pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and walruses) this may be at least partially due to the fact that their origins have been difficult to tease out.
It has long…
laelaps | April 21, 2009I rarely ever go to a place like Barnes and Noble to buy books, but a few months ago I had a gift card that burning a hole in my pocket. The question was what to buy. As always I browsed through the science section and didn't see much of interest. Most of the titles available were about subjects I was already familiar with or didn't strike my fancy.
I was just about to head home when I spotted Mary Roach's book SPOOK. It wasn't typical reading fare for me, but I remembered hearing good things about it. When I got home I started in on it and could not put it down. I even read the whole thing…
laelaps | April 20, 2009
A giraffe, photographed at the Bronx zoo.
Why do giraffes have long necks? We know that modern giraffes must have evolved gradually, but figuring out what selection pressures influenced giraffe evolution is another story altogether. One of the most popular recent explanations is that giraffes have long necks as a result of sexual selection.
The "necks for sex" hypothesis is primarily inspired by the contests between male giraffes. In these duels the males stand side by side and whack each other with their necks and ossicones ("horns"). This can be seen in the video below;
What does this…
laelaps | April 20, 2009
A garter snake (Thamnophis sp.) getting away through the undergrowth. It was sunning itself on the middle of the trail but my camera battery was too low for me to take a picture. By the time I changed it the snake was getting away.
laelaps | April 19, 2009A few photos from yesterday afternoon;
A raccoon skull I found on a hike yesterday. It is now a part of my bone collection.
A white-tailed deer leg found on the same hike. It was a little gooey still so I decided to leave it alone.
Hayley, an Australian cattle dog belonging to my in-laws.
I do not know what kind they were, but there was an explosion of these flowers along the trail.
Three new foster kittens. Caption this one as you like.
laelaps | April 18, 2009I am moving to a new apartment in less than a month, and towards that end I have been going through my stuff to see if there is anything I don't want to take with me. I have listed the items I no longer need, primarily books and XBox games, on Half.com. I appreciate the help of anyone who makes a purchase.
laelaps | April 17, 2009One of the most maddening aspects of my college education was that despite the dull and useless nature of many of my required courses I had no choice but to take them. You just can't buck tradition, everyone said, even if no one quite remembers why the tradition was started in the first place. Charles Darwin felt much the same during his time at the University of Edinburgh, and he too tried to only attend lectures that were of interest to him. Charles' father did not care for his son's lackadaisical attitude towards school, though, and in an 1826 letter Charles' sister Susan Elizabeth relayed…
laelaps | April 15, 2009
A somewhat thrown-together illustration about camel evolution. The series should be read C-D-E-F for the evolution of the forelimb and G-H-I-J for the hind limb. Compare this to more famous diagrams of horse evolution, like this one. From A text-book of geology for universities.
For more than a century fossil horses have stood as some of the most iconic examples of evolutionary change. From about 1870 onward it seemed that the ancestry of modern horses was represented by a nearly complete fossil series, but this is not to say that we have always perfectly understood these remains. Even…
laelaps | April 15, 2009
Rokan the Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae). photographed at the National Zoo.
laelaps | April 14, 2009Evolutionary anthropology is a subject that has traditionally been dominated by a focus on males, or at least "masculine" behaviors like hunting. The most popular images of our own ancestors have often been of a group of males setting out for a hunt or crouched over a freshly-killed carcass. It is as if our evolution was driven by male ambition. Such tendencies have triggered some backlash, from the relatively absurd (i.e. the aquatic ape hypothesis) to more reasoned critiques (i.e. Woman the Gatherer), but it is clear that our understanding of our own history is most certainly biased by…
laelaps | April 14, 2009
The skeletons of a few apes (from the right: Pan troglodytes, Gorilla gorilla, and Homo sapiens), photographed at the National Museum of Natural History.
laelaps | April 13, 2009I really admire folks like those at the NCSE who keep up with the latest schemes of creationists. Not only is their service valuable to protecting science in the United States, but I just don't think I could match their endurance when it comes to listening to creationist nonsense. Creationism is just so dull! Not only is there an unsatisfying blanket explanation for everything ("Because God said so.") but creationists make a business out of repeating themselves. If you have read one tract you have generally read them all.
Young earth creationism in its present manifestation hatched during the…