laelaps | August 11, 2008see more pwn and owned pictures
Growing up I spent a fair amount of time watching cheesy b-movies, mostly "revenge of nature" stuff. There was the walking commentary on the a-bomb known as Godzilla, the parable about dumping biomedical waste in Alligator, a mercury-created walking salami in The Prophecy, and many others, but the take home message was always "Don't mess with Nature." It's usually a rehash of the misunderstood Frankenstein mythos, offending "Mother Nature" instead of breaking the boundaries of "what God intended," and the atrocious film The Happening being only the latest…
laelaps | August 11, 2008Many thanks to everyone who introduced themselves on this blog over the weekend. (If you missed it, don't be shy. Feel free to add to the thread.) Community is a major part of what science blogging is all about and I certainly appreciate all the questions, comments, and criticisms left here since I started last October. Hell, without help and advice from many of you I definitely would not have achieved what I have this past year alone, and I think it is wonderful how science bloggers can help each other.
Following ScienceWoman's lead, then, I thought it was only right to post my own quick bio…
laelaps | August 11, 2008After a long hiatus The Boneyard will return here tomorrow. If you've got a paleo-post from the last month to contribute send it to me (evogeek AT gmail DOT com) sometime today. I'm looking forward to bringing this carnival back so please send in your contributions as soon as you can.
laelaps | August 11, 2008
The head of the Tyrannosaurus mount at the AMNH. Photographed August 9th, 2008.
laelaps | August 10, 2008
One of my favorite prehistoric creatures, Amphicyon. Photographed August 9th, 2008 at the AMNH.
laelaps | August 10, 2008
The oversized "night light" across the river from where I was staying.
I just made it back from NYC and I had a great time. It was wonderful meeting so many new people and catching up with writers I hadn't seen since the January conference, and my only regret is that I had to miss a few of last night's festivities due to a minor medical mishap. (Don't worry, everything's fine.) Nevermind that every time I turned on the news it seemed that the world was going to hell in a handbasket between John Edwards' affair, the death of Bernie Mac, the murder in China, and the war between Russia and…
laelaps | August 9, 2008more cat pictures
This afternoon I'll be hanging out with the NYC Skeptics and ScienceBlogs fans in New York but I know that many of you (for obvious reasons) can't be there. In lieu of a meet-up in meatspace, then, why not introduce yourself here?
Each blog is a little community unto itself, and even if you don't normally write I would encourage you to leave a comment about who you are and why you like to read this blog. If the last de-lurking day is any indication this blog attracts readers like a hapless Tenontosaurus lures hungry Deinonychus, everyone from professional paleontologists to…
laelaps | August 8, 2008Was Charles Darwin a genius? He certainly was extremely bright, but if we are to call him a genius on the basis of coming up with the theory of evolution by natural selection then we must recognize the genius of A.R. Wallace (and perhaps William Wells, Patrick Matthew, and Edward Blyth), as well. Although the idea of natural selection has developed independently several times in the past it was Darwin and Wallace who grasped the power of the theory as a driver for evolution, but even then it is Darwin who is the focal point of so many discussions about "transmutation." While there are…
laelaps | August 8, 2008
Snow leopards (Panthera uncia), photographed at the Bronx zoo on July 23, 2008.
For those of you who know more about photography than I do, I have a question. I've been shooting in the raw NEF format and many of my photographs have come out looking very vibrant. When I convert the image to a format I can use on the web, however, (like jpg) they lose much of that great color and take on a sickly shade of green (like the ones above, unfortunately). Do you have any recommendations about how to convert NEF files to a web-friendly format without sacrificing too much quality?
laelaps | August 7, 2008Thanks to those who offered suggestions about what books to pick up. I didn't choose any of the suggested titles (sorry!) but I was able to find cheap used copies of some that I've been meaning to pick up for quite some time;
Elephants: A Short Account of Their Natural History, Evolution, and Influence on Mankind
Dynamics of Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Giants
Fundamentalism and American Culture
Reinventing Darwin
Life's Splendid Drama
The Metaphysics of Apes
Hunter and Hunted: Relationships between Carnivores and People
Your Inner Fish
The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the…
laelaps | August 7, 2008 Hadrosaurs are often called the "cows of the Cretaceous." They were common, had few defenses compared to their armored ornithischian kin, and were a favorite prey for predatory dinosaurs. Natural selection appears to have applied sufficient pressure for at least one genus of hadrosaur, Hypacrosaurus, to change, however. It did not develop horns or spikes or a club, but instead ontogenetically outpaced their predators.
The key to determining how theropods and Hypacrosaurus grew can be found inside their bones, and a new study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B using histological…
laelaps | August 7, 2008Will of The Dragon's Tales is heading a group called Team Phoenicia, their aim being the construction of a lunar lander as part of the Lunar Lander Challenge and the Google Lunar X Prize. You can find out more about the project here, and the team certainly could use some donations to keep the project moving along. Keep checking their blog for updates, too, as I expect that we will hear great things from Will and his team as the challenge progresses.
laelaps | August 7, 2008
Eastern tiger swallowtail butterflies (Papilio glaucus) on a butterfly bush in central New Jersey. Photographed August 2, 2008.
laelaps | August 6, 2008I didn't get a chance to see last night's Jurassic Fight Club (you can see my thoughts on the first episode here) but someone has put the "main event" up on the web. I don't know whether to laugh or cry;
I know I promised to try to be more even-handed in reviewing science media but there are some real howlers in that clip. First is that it has yet to be conclusively established that Nanotyrannus was an actual distinct genus of tyrannosaurid; the fossils attributed to the "pygmy tyrant" may just be young Tyrannosaurus. The debate is ongoing, and I hope that this point was made in the show.…
laelaps | August 6, 2008I won't make excuses; I left The Boneyard in disrepair for too long. Now I'm bringing it back, and even though there are a few minor changes (it will now be on the first Tuesday of every month) I'm hoping that I will be able to keep it consistently running from here on out.
Since we have already passed the first Tuesday of the month I'll improvise and hold The Boneyard XXII next week. That means if you want in you'll have to send me your submissions (anything from the last month will do) by Monday evening. Once the carnival has a foothold here it will move elsewhere in September, so leave a…
laelaps | August 6, 2008Popularizers of science are faced with a daunting problem when it comes to communicating their enthusiasm for nature; their audience doesn't speak the same language. I don't mean this to say that scientists are inherently poor communicators or all deliver jargon-packed lectures that extinguish interest. Rather, many people don't have a grasp of the basic "alphabet" of science, and it is sometimes difficult to keep in mind that what you or I might consider a "basic" fact is something that is not so easily grasped to someone who hasn't heard it before. This is made all the more difficult when…
laelaps | August 6, 2008
Anyone who keeps domesticated felids knows what it's like to be awakened in the middle of the night by a paw to the face or small feet running over the bed, but Jacquie and Mack Anderson were surprised to find a much larger cat in their house. According to an AP report they had left the french doors to their home open during the night, allowing a cougar (Puma concolor) to sneak inside their bedroom and nab their Labrador retriever. Neither the lab nor the other dog in the room barked and the Andersons didn't even know what had happened until the cougar had their dog. All they saw was the…
laelaps | August 6, 2008
A praying mantis, photographed this past weekend in central NJ. I do not know the genus and species, however, so if anyone has a clue feel free to speak up in the comments (I would just look through the genus and species listing but it is far too large).
laelaps | August 5, 2008
This past weekend I accidentally startled a white-tailed deer fawn (Odocoileus virginianus) that was resting in some tall grass. I was able to snap a few shots before it ran off into the woods (I think the third one is the most impressive).
I also found a femur and part of the hip of a small deer in the same area, which reminds me that I need to check in on that skull I collected a few months ago.