laelaps | May 5, 2008
With all my running around this weekend I completely forgot that yesterday was the 183rd anniversary of T.H. Huxley's birth. Unfortunately, however, Huxley is generally regarded as "Darwin's Bulldog" and little else, his other accomplishments and role in the formation of professional science often overshadowed by a debate that never actually happened. While Huxley certainly did use his "beak and claws" to defend evolution, his view of how and when evolution occurred would seem unfamiliar to us today. His career has become something of a historical footnote, his support of evolution widely…
laelaps | May 5, 2008As I've learned first-hand during my time in human osteology this semester, identifying bone fragments can be a very tricky process. It is easy to identify the differences between a radius and a fibula or a scapula and a pelvis when you have the whole bones in front of you, but if you only have a handful of broken pieces the task becomes exponentially more difficult. In reviewing the dirty & dusty collection available to me in preparation for my final exam next week, I've been focusing on some of the errors I consistently made and thought "What better way to remind myself than to write…
laelaps | May 5, 2008On May 17 I'll be hosting the 20th edition of The Boneyard, but rather than just collecting a group of links from whatever might happen to pop up on the web I've decided to do something a little different. I want to run a contest for anyone who might be interested, and the theme of the competition is going to be "Meeting a prehistoric creature."
You could write some fiction about coming across a dinosaur in the woods or a Neanderthal on a subway, relate a real-life experience digging up fossils, talk about an early trip to the museum, or anything else that might come to mind on the theme of…
laelaps | May 5, 2008
Zeff, a 13-year-old Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) photographed taking a drink on a hot day last year at the Bronx Zoo.
laelaps | May 3, 2008The latest edition of the Boneyard is up over at Familiarity Breeds Content. The next edition will be back here in two weeks, but it isn't going to be your usual collection of links. The next edition will bring with it the potential to win a copy of Ralph O'Connor's The Earth on Show, Edwin Colbert's Men and Dinosaurs, and a few other books from my own library. I'll divulge all the details this coming Monday.
laelaps | May 3, 2008
A young bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana) photographed at the Delaware Water Gap last year.
laelaps | May 2, 2008Over at Darwinian Conservatism, Larry Arnhart recently wrote a post about how Michael Behe, the scientific "star" of the ID movement, seems to have fallen out of favor with the Disco Institute. Almost a year ago his book The Edge of Evolution was published, yet it seemed to have little impact within ID circles (or anywhere else). Behe's previous book (Darwin's Black Box) was a major hit, making it all the more shocking that Behe was absent from the recent creationist propaganda piece Expelled. If you've been paying attention, though, you'll know that Behe was interviewed for the film. Don't…
laelaps | May 2, 2008In 1944, G.G. Simpson published his important (but often overlooked) book Tempo and Mode in Evolution, one of the key works of the Modern Synthesis that attempted to explain the relevance of paleontology to evolutionary studies. In the Introduction, Simpson includes this passage about the lack of communication between geneticists and paleontologists;
The attempted synthesis of paleontology and genetics, an essential part of the present study, may be particularly surprising and possibly hazardous. Not long ago paleontologists felt that a geneticist was a person who shut himself in a room,…
laelaps | May 2, 2008What's a few more cat posts into the mix?
Huxley
Huxley
Huxley
[Just as a side note, my wife took these pictures (and yesterday's video) with a digital camera I bought her last year. I'm still working on getting the insurance money from when I was robbed, but hopefully I'll be able to get something new before I head off to Delaware in a few weeks for a camping trip along the shore.]
laelaps | May 2, 2008 If you're a pied babbler (Turdoides bicolor), you've got a bit to worry about while foraging. It's hard to keep watch for predators and eat your fill simultaneously, and trying to do both yourself would mean that you're either going to spend a lot of time looking for a predator that might not be there or that you might be oblivious to the predator that gets you. Fortunately for these birds there are individuals that act as sentinels, and as a new study in Current Biology reports, these sentinels appear to be boosting the feeding success of those they are watching over.
Like some other birds…
laelaps | May 1, 2008This is Huxley, who will be five weeks old this week. He'll soon be going up for adoption, but he'll still be here for a few more weeks. (Note: For some reason the video makes a high-pitched whine, so be sure to turn down/mute your volume before you play it);
laelaps | May 1, 2008I've been really down this week, biting my nails about finals and my academic future (or potential premature end of it). Walking on my way to give a presentation about Sterkfontein & Swartkrans caves ("killer man-apes," leopards, SK 53 and all that), I heard this Ben Folds song on my iShuffle and thought it most appropriate;
laelaps | May 1, 2008
A cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) photographed at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. last year.
laelaps | April 30, 2008This coming Friday will mark the beginning of the summer 2008 movie season, the first big-budget film to make an appearance being Iron Man. What does that mean for the unfunny and atrocious propaganda piece Expelled? If the theaters near me are any indication, it means that Stein's film flunked at the box office and is being expelled to make room for summer blockbusters. Of the three theaters that carried the film in my area, all of them are going to drop it this coming Friday, although I'm sure Expelled will soon re-appear on DVD.
The fact that Expelled is getting dropped from theaters doesn…
laelaps | April 30, 2008
The skull of Paranthropus boisei (AKA "Zinj," "Dear Boy," "Nutcracker Man," etc.). From Ungar et al. 2008.
Ever since the discovery of the hominds we call Paranthropus robustus in 1938 and Paranthropus boisei in 1959, the dietary habits of these "robust australopithecines" have been controversial. With skulls that seem to have more in common with gorillas than with Homo habilis, another hominid more closely related to us that lived during the same time, it has long been thought that Paranthropus was a dietary specialist. The saggital crest, large and thickly-enameled teeth, and huge jaws…
laelaps | April 29, 2008[Note: Just to put this post in context, today I was feeling extremely frustrated with the seemingly blind acceptance creationism receives because it makes some people feel comfortable. This is surely not my best work, and if anything it represents me trying to sort out the reasons why I keep coming back to the debate even though it can be aggravating at times.]
On a cold Sunday afternoon last February, I sat down to share a few slices of pizza with the man who had invited me to come speak about evolution to the Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Morris County, along with my wife and his…