laelaps | February 4, 2009
California sea lions (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
laelaps | February 3, 2009
The extinct whale Dorudon, from the new PLoS One paper.
When the English anatomist William H. Flower proposed that whales had evolved from terrestrial ungulates in 1883 he cast doubt upon the notion that the direct ancestors of early whales chiefly used their limbs for swimming. If they did, Flower reasoned, whales would not have evolved their distinctive method of aquatic locomotion, typified by vertical oscillations of their fluked tails. Instead Flower suggested that the stock that gave rise to whales would have had broad, flat tails that paved the way for cetacean locomotion as we know…
laelaps | February 3, 2009From his instance that human evolution has halted to his rather crummy review of Stephen Jay Gould: Reflections on His View of Life (see my thoughts on the book here), Steve Jones has been raising the hackles of his colleagues more than usual lately. Given that I am not a scientist I cannot count myself among his frustrated peers, but I was aggravated by Jones' latest op-ed "Can we please forget about Charles Darwin?"
Jones is worried that this year's celebration of Darwin's work will overshadow modern evolutionary science. Jones writes;
I hope that, by its end, its subject's beard, his…
laelaps | February 3, 2009
A North American river otter (Lontra canadensis), photographed at the North Carolina Zoo.
laelaps | February 2, 2009
The right hip of Basilosaurus as seen in Lucas' 1900 description.
If you were a 19th century American paleontologist and you wanted a Basilosaurus skeleton there was only one place to look; Alabama. Even though fossils of the ancient whale had been found elsewhere their bones were most abundant in Alabama, and S.B. Buckley, Albert Koch, and others exhumed multiple specimens of the extinct whale from the southern state. Unfortunately, however, most of the skeletons were fragmentary. Even though long chains of vertebrae were often found intact other parts of the skeleton, most notably the…
laelaps | January 31, 2009
A California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the North Carolina Zoo.
laelaps | January 30, 2009
G.J. Romanes
With the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth just two weeks away there is sure to be a spike in articles, lectures, and other events meant to honor the great naturalist. These homages to Darwin can be instructive, but they lack a personal touch; what we know of Darwin comes from his books, letters, and the numerous biographies of his life.
The scientist George John Romanes, however, did know Darwin and was among the youngest of the Darwinists. Even though we often speak of Huxley, Hooker, Gray, and Lyell as being among Darwin's closest friends, Romanes also had a very…
laelaps | January 30, 2009
A North American river otter (Lontra canadensis), photographed at the North Carolina Zoo.
"Laelaps", seen photographing an otter at the North Carolina Zoo.
laelaps | January 29, 2009
When the Cardiff Giant was making its first public appearance in the fall of 1869 the earliest ancestors of humans were still unknown. That our species had evolved and had its own fossil record was implied by Charles Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, but the fossil remains of our ancient ancestors was still missing. Human fossils had been found in Europe, like those of the Cro Magnons in France and the fossils from the Neander Valley, but these were so similar to the skeletons of modern humans that, at best, many scientists felt that they only…
laelaps | January 29, 2009
A California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the North Carolina Zoo.
laelaps | January 28, 2009
The Giant of Cardiff. Note the leaf placed to protect viewer's sensibilities.
Given the speed at which information travels these days it is not surprising how quickly we forget hoaxes and humbugs. Every year people get their 15 minutes of fame by claiming to have seen ghosts, aliens, or fanciful creatures, but these far-out tales quickly fade away. This past summer, for instance, Matt Whitton, Rick Dyer, and "professional Bigfoot hunter" Tom Biscardi claimed to have in their possession the corpse of a Sasquatch.
Media outlets, particularly FOX News, picked up the story and ran with it but…
laelaps | January 27, 2009It is another busy day, and since I am again left with little time to write here I have decided to post another "follow-up" excerpt from my book.**
A few days ago I mentioned that many paleontologists were skeptical that humans had lived alongside extinct mammals until discoveries made in Europe between 1858-1859 convinced them otherwise. Below is a brief summary of how the scientific consensus began to change on this issue;
The plan of Brixham Cave, from Geology: Chemical, Physical, and Stratigraphical by Joseph Prestwich.
Several months after Koch's presentation, and over 4,000 miles…
laelaps | January 26, 2009
A porpoise, or "sea-hog", from Appletons' Annual Cycloaedia.
I do not have much time to write today, so rather than type something from scratch I have decided to share an excerpt from my book (still in-progress).
In my recent post "Ancient Armored Whales" I briefly drew attention to a quote from Richard Lydekker deriding William Flower's hypothesis that whales may have evolved from ungulates. Presented below in the passage on this subject as it presently appears in the chapter "As Monstrous as a Whale";
A lack of other transitional forms had stirred debate about the place of Basilosaurus…
laelaps | January 26, 2009
A female Hamadryas baboon (Papio hamadryas), photographed at the North Carolina Zoo.
laelaps | January 25, 2009
The AMNH mount of the Warren Mastodon. From The American Museum Journal.
Glendon's session on Art & Science last weekend inspired me to intensify my search for bits of paleontological art, and I have been fortunate enough to uncover some more verses about a prehistoric beast. Here is Hannah F. Gould's "The Mastodon", published in the prosaically-titled New Poems in 1850;
THE MASTODON.
Thou ponderous truth, from thy long night's sleep
Through the unrecorded eras
Awaked, and come from their darkness deep
To this day of light chimeras! --
What wast thou, when thy mountain form
Stood forth…
laelaps | January 25, 2009
A ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta), photographed at the Duke Lemur Center.