laelaps | April 22, 2010
A Madagascar sucker-footed bat (Myzopoda aurita).
In the tropical forests of Madagascar, there lives a very peculiar kind of bat. While most bats roost by hanging upside-down from cave ceilings or tree branches, the Madagascar sucker-footed bat (Myzopoda aurita) holds itself head-up thanks to a set of adhesive pads on its wings. Nor is it the only bat to do so. Thousands of miles away in the jungles of Central and South America, Spix's disk-winged bat (Thyroptera tricolor) does the same thing, but how do their sucker pads work, and why do they choose to roost in a different way from all…
laelaps | April 21, 2010
In a clip from the recent BBC program Museum of Life, visitors to London's Natural History Museum try to identify what kind of animal Megatherium was. Paleo fans will know it as one of the largest ground sloths to have ever lived (as well as one of the first to be described), but if I didn't know that and had no background in paleo, I might think it was a dinosaur, too!
laelaps | April 20, 2010
For much of the past 130 million years South America was an island continent, and on it organisms evolved in "splendid isolation." Mammals, especially, evolved into forms not seen anywhere else, and while some mammalian immigrants made their way to South America during the past 30 million years it was not until about three million years ago, with the closing of the isthmus of Panama, that large animals from North and South America began to wander across the new landbridge and mix with the endemic faunas. This is why there were elephants in South America and giant ground sloths in North…
laelaps | April 19, 2010
Two giant anteaters fight it out. On the left, the individuals lash out at each other with their enormous claws, and on the right they posture at each other (with the dominant animal, with the upright and puffed-out tail, on the right). From Kruetz et al 2009.
In the northern state of Roraima in Brazil, small plantations of the black wattle tree (Acacia mangium) serve up plenty of food to carpenter ants and other insects, and the variety of six-legged pests has attracted numerous giant anteaters. The trouble is that these immense xenarthrans don't typically get along very well.
As…
laelaps | April 19, 2010
Ask a Biologist is back! Go check it out at the new website.
There's a new T. rex in town, plus other cool science news. (Not Exactly Rocket Science)
Cobra rib muscles were co-opted to flare their hoods (ht @friendsofdarwin)
Julia got an awesome Camarasaurus tattoo. Check it out!
An amazing photo of a South Korean warship being raised from the depths.
Sometimes you photograph the bear, sometimes the bear runs over and steals your camera equipment (ht @NerdyChristie)
Bloggers vs. journalists (AGAIN *headdesk*) (by @mjrobbins)
The Thai Elephant Orchestra (via @edyong209)
A…
laelaps | April 17, 2010
What kind of social-insect-eating mammal is stranger than a numbat? Well, a pangolin, for one. From The Life of Mammals.
For more on the pangolin's prey, check out one of the newest additions to the ScienceBlogs family, Myrmecos.
laelaps | April 15, 2010
Top of the encrusted surface of a brachiopod shell, showing the "war" between an edrioasteroid (star-shaped organism at center) and a fast-growing bryozoan colony. From Sprinkle and Rodgers 2010.
Back in the early days of paleontology, when the meaning and origin of fossils was still in doubt, some naturalists believed that the shells, shark teeth, and other petrified curiosities were attempts by the rock to imitate life. Fossils were not true vestiges of history, it was believed, but instead the product of some "plastic virtue" suffused throughout the non-living Creation. As naturalists…
laelaps | April 14, 2010Off the top of your head, how many female paleontologists can you name?
Hopefully, thanks to the recent publication of The Fossil Hunter and Remarkable Creatures, the brilliant 19th century fossil collector Mary Anning should spring to mind, but it seems to me that women are underrepresented in discussions of paleontology. In books, documentaries, news reports, and other popularizations, male authorities (from Georges Cuvier and William Buckland to Bob Bakker and Jack Horner today) take center stage much more often than women, and this is despite the fact that there are (and have been) many…
laelaps | April 13, 2010
A red panda (Ailurus fulgens, left, photographed at the Bronx Zoo) and a giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca, right, photographed at the National Zoo).
As the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould observed in one of his most famous essays, the thumbs of giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) are nothing at all like the large digits on our own hands. Their accessory "thumbs", visible on the surface as a differentiated part of the pad on the "palm" of the hand, are modified sesamoid bones derived from the wrist. They are jury-rigged bits of anatomy which cast nature as an "excellent tinkerer, not…
laelaps | April 13, 2010
A sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), photographed at the National Zoo in Washington DC.
laelaps | April 12, 2010
An African wild dog (Lycaon pictus, left) compared to a spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta, right). Both photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
It never fails. Whenever I visit a zoo's African wild dog exhibit someone inevitably asks "Are those hyenas?", and when I visit spotted hyena enclosures I often hear the question "Are those dogs?" These carnivores, known to scientists as Lycaon pictus and Crocuta crocuta (respectively), are only distant cousins, but the vague similarities shared between them often cause people to confuse one with the other.
There are a few quick and dirty ways to tell them…
laelaps | April 12, 2010
Caterpillars must walk before they can anally scrape (Not Exactly Rocket Science)
Twitter taphonomy conversation reminded me of one of my favorite books, Recent Vertebrate Carcasses and Their Paleobiological Implications by Johannes Weigelt
Deep-sea scavengers risk low-oxygen levels to have ham for dinner (via @mjvinas)
The explosive chemistry of coal mines (by @deborahblum)
Lemur species rediscovered after 100 years (ht @dendroica)
Watch out for those falling blocks! - NYC gets destroyed, 8-bit style (ht @PD_Smith)
Creepy cadavers - photos of old school dissections (ht @…
laelaps | April 11, 2010
If you're going to have termites for lunch, you'll need the right kind of equipment. From The Life of Mammals.
laelaps | April 10, 2010
For deep sea scavengers, a dead tuna is an exquisite feast. For more on what happens to bodies which come to rest on the seafloor, see my post on bone-eating worms and this video of a whale fall.
laelaps | April 10, 2010
An eastern painted turtle (Chrysemys picta), photographed in suburban New Jersey.
laelaps | April 9, 2010
Now that the details about Australopithecus sediba have been published, I am faced with an important question - how am I going to fit the new hominin into Written in Stone?
When I started composing Written in Stone I was determined to make it as up-to-date as possible. This was not only out of a concern for accuracy, but also stemmed from a desire to present the public with some discoveries that they may not have heard about before. Given that new paleontological papers are being published every week, however, I have often been faced with the question of how to incorporate interesting new…
laelaps | April 8, 2010
A diagram of how the skeletons of Australopithecus sediba came to be preserved in the Malapa cave deposit. From Dirks et al, 2010.
A little less than two million years ago, in what is now South Africa, a torrential downpour washed the bodies of two humans into the deep recesses of a cave. Just how their remains came to be in the cave in the first place is a mystery. Perhaps they fell in through the gaping hole in the cave roof just as hyenas, saber-toothed cats, horses, and other animals had, but, however the humans entered the cave, their bones ultimately came to rest in a natural bowl…