laelaps | June 14, 2008
The upturned, sand-filled remains of a horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus). Photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware on May 17, 2008.
laelaps | June 13, 2008As I once commented to Jennifer Ouellette, we science bloggers can be a funny bunch. We whine and complain about the way science is misrepresented in mass media, but many of us want to produce popular science pieces ourselves. Is is because we think that we can do better? (I know that's part of my own motivation, at least.) More specifically, I wonder how many of us have published/are working on books of our own? I've been tracking the progress on my own project, but plenty of other science bloggers are either working on their own books, have already published books, or both. Carl, Jennifer,…
laelaps | June 13, 2008[Note: I know I'm about a month late coming to this one, but it still provided for some good blog fodder. It seems that the initial response at Pharyngula ended up changing the summary I discuss [see comments section], and that's definitely a good thing. The show has also been pushed back to July, it seems. Rather than scrap the post due to relative irrelevancy, I'll leave it up as I think it still speaks to some continuing problems in science communication.]
About a month or so ago I was contacted by someone from the History Channel about where to find some good images of prehistoric life on…
laelaps | June 13, 2008
Photographed at the Prime Hook Natural Wildlife Refuge, Delaware on May 17, 2008.
laelaps | June 12, 2008Over at The World's Fair, David asks readers to share a moment in which they were "humiliated in the name of science." Fortunately I haven't had any "D'oh! I put the head on the wrong end!" moments as yet, but I'll briefly share a recent story of how I almost humiliated myself in a room full of professors and friends.
About a month and a half ago Brian Richmond came to present a lecture about the evolution of hominid bipedalism at Rutgers, specifically dealing with Orrorin. As he went through the introductory material, mentioning the evidence for bipedalism in the earliest known hominids, I…
laelaps | June 12, 2008In 1864 Jules Verne published the book A Journey to the Center of the Earth, and although the book is a classic the various TV & film versions (1959, 1967, 1976, 1977, 1989, 1993, 1996, 1999, 2001, 2003) are anything but. This summer will see the release of another interpretation of Verne's novel, this time starring Brendan Fraser;
After seeing the trailer for the new film in the theater, I had to turn to my wife and ask "But where's Gertrude the duck?"
Although the show involved time/dimensional portals, both iterations of "Land of the Lost" involved undiscovered mysteries…
laelaps | June 12, 2008
A cast of the skull of Yangchuanosaurus. Photographed May 18, 2008 at the Delaware Museum of Natural History.
laelaps | June 11, 2008Long story short; on the advice of the one dean who actually met with me face-to-face and listened to what I had to say I applied to transfer to the School of Arts and Sciences (where evolutionary anthropology is based) at Rutgers. Almost exactly 24 hours later I received a rejection notification saying that my case had been "carefully reviewed." (They didn't even wait for me to submit the rest of my transcripts before the June 15th deadline.) Unfortunately I'll still be bound to this soul-sucking monster of a university for another year, but at least I did everything within my power to try…
laelaps | June 11, 2008When I was 7 almost every smooth, oval stone was a dinosaur egg. I would spent hours in my grandparent's backyard hacking away at the dirt knowing that there just had to be a Triceratops or a Tyrannosaurus just beneath the surface. (I even got in trouble once for trying to clear out some of the tiny maple seedlings with a hatchet that I found in the shed.) I never found anything, but the hunt for fossils was a helluva lot of fun. My interest in paleontology waned a little as I got older, but I thankfully have rediscovered that interest and aspire to be the "dinosaur hunter" I felt like as I…
laelaps | June 11, 2008
When I wrote about the new sauropod Futalognkosaurus dukei last October, I noted that the authors of the paper describing the animal also included a brief summary of the other animals found nearby. Remains of crocodiles, fish, and pterosaurs provided some clues as to the paleoecology of the area about 90 million years ago, but one of the big surprises was a big honkin' claw from Megaraptor. At first the remains of Megaraptor were thought to represent a coelurosaur, but the complete hand has shown that it is probably either a spinosaurid or carcharodontosaurid. A recent study of the hand,…
laelaps | June 11, 2008I spent most of yesterday running between different offices and trying to obtain old academic records so my writing time was cut down dramatically, but I still managed to get some work done in the evening. Most of what I have been doing this week has focused on whales, especially since I've been tracing backwards through the literature to find more about how scientists thought they evolved before things started to change in the 1980's. I've still got plenty more to write about, but I think I have a fair amount of the skeleton of the chapter in place.
(New sections are in bold)
Introduction…
laelaps | June 11, 2008
Gastropods eating the shell and gills of a horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus). Photographed May 17, 2008 at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
laelaps | June 10, 2008Paleontologist Xu Xing is featured in a long USA Today article, covering his inspiration in becoming a paleontologist and his current work. Although it draws comparisons with Indiana Jones and Roy Chapman Andrews, the article is careful to separate the facts of Xu's work from popular fictionalizations and is definitely worth a look.
laelaps | June 10, 2008
A cast of Tuojiangosaurus on display at the Delaware Museum of Natural History. Photographed May 18, 2008.
laelaps | June 9, 2008Being that I've been working hard on my own book, my thoughts have often turned to the question of "What makes a good book?" As I pace around the track at the park every morning I'm not thinking of what I'm going to write about or what references to pull out. Instead I'm usually thinking about how long each chapter should be, what sort of spacing or font I should use, what images might be useful, and generally how to make the book pleasant to read rather than trying to cram in every last bit of information possible. Some of these questions are too trivial to worry about now, but I know from…
laelaps | June 9, 2008I'm not the only one interviewing paleontologists; David Hone has embarked on his own series, asking researchers about their thoughts on the current state of paleontology. There is more to come, but you can check out the first four installments here; 1 - 2 - 3 - 4.
laelaps | June 9, 2008
This past fall my friends Julia and Neil were kind enough to obtain a signed copy of the new book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters for me from the annual SVP meeting. Although I had not heard of the author, Dr. Donald Prothero, prior to reading the book I was certainly impressed with the wide selection of subjects he ably covered in the text. Little did I know that he is been a prolific author and researcher, some of his other recent published work being After the Dinosaurs and The Evolution of Artiodactyls. From microfossils to mammals, Prothero has studied a wide variety…
laelaps | June 9, 2008Last fall I was saddened to learn that the Yangtze River dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer) is probably extinct. Today it was announced that the Caribbean monk seal (Monachus tropicalis), last seen in the 1950's, is most likely extinct as well. The Endangered Species Protection Act came too late for these marine mammals (the last sighting was in 1952 and the seals were listed as endangered in 1967), and it is possible that they were entirely extinct before they even received protected status.
The two extant species of monk seal, the Hawaiian (Monachus schauinslandi) and Mediterranean (Monachus…
laelaps | June 9, 2008In a very interesting post about agamids and chameleons at Tetrapod Zoology, my fellow ScienceBlogger Darren states the following;
One of the greatest fallacies held about evolutionary theory is that fossils are essential in demonstrating the existence of change (don't believe me? Look at 'creation science' books like Duane Gish's Evolution: the Challenge of the Fossil Record and Evolution: the Fossils Say No!). Of course fossils do indeed show how characters were accrued and modified over time, and it's that 'time' aspect of the data that they shed crucial information on. But we most…
laelaps | June 9, 2008
A Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus). Photographed in the spring of 2008 at the Bronx Zoo.