laelaps | February 22, 2008I'm sorry I still haven't put up my post about dinosaurs & mythology as yet; I've had a bit of a stressful/depressing day and I just wasn't up to the task of finishing it. I'll definitely finish it tomorrow, however, just in time for the next installment of The Boneyard over at Amanda's place.
In the meantime, I thought I would put up something frivolous since it's a Friday night. Here's 10 videos for 10 random songs currently in circulation on my iPod shuffle (feel free to carry this on as a meme if it suits you);
Reel Big Fish - "Take On Me"
Aerosmith - "Eat the Rich"
SUM 41…
laelaps | February 22, 2008
John Martin's 1838 depiction of an Iguanodon attacked by a Megalosaurus.[source]
The other day I received a review copy of Ralph O'Connor's fantastic book The Earth on Show, and it has quickly become one of my most favorite tomes. (I know I'm a bit behind on reviews; I hope to get some done this weekend.) Reading it has definitely sparked plenty of thoughts about dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures as monsters, a post on which I'm working on presently (I'm away from my library at the moment, though, so I won't be able to dig into my bookshelves until later today). Descriptions of…
laelaps | February 22, 2008
Unfortunately I don't have any photographs of charismatic carnivores in the snow, but here's another shot of Zeff the Amur Tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) on a cold February morning. I could probably get some today or tomorrow, but being that the snow is still coming down it's probably safer not to try and make it over the George Washington Bridge today.
laelaps | February 21, 2008
I cringed when one of the video captions used the phrase "missing link," but other than that the clip is a good summary of what it took to reconstruct Tiktaalik. I wish I had some degree of artistic talent; I've always admired the reconstructions, restorations, and mounts on display at the AMNH and elsewhere. Arranging bones in a "true-to-life" position might not be considered art to some aficionados, but then again the Tyrannosaurus on display in New York is still inspiring awe in scores of children that stand in the shadow of the skeleton's massive frame.
Update: Paleo-artist and friend…
laelaps | February 21, 2008
Nebraska Man as restored in the Illustrated London News.
As I made my way around the lab table during my last human osteology practical, examining the yellowed and cracked teeth in the hopes that I'd be able to tell an upper molar from a lower one, I came across a particularly strange tooth. I had been told by the professor that 3rd molars ("wisdom teeth") can be strange and don't always conform to the rules that makes identifying other molars comparatively easy, but this specimen was simply bizarre. The arrangement of cusps and folds on the crown of the tooth didn't correspond to any of…
laelaps | February 21, 2008
Two members of the three-cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) coalition at the Philadelphia Zoo.
laelaps | February 20, 2008Expert On Anteaters Wasted Entire Life Studying Anteaters
[Via the Onion]
laelaps | February 20, 2008Several nights ago I was attending a lecture, reading Lyman's Vertebrate Taphonomy, when I noticed someone standing beside me. A thin male student in a long grey coat walked into the room halfway through the lecture, peering around the classroom for someone or something. On a normal day I wouldn't have thought twice about it, but this transpired the day after the Northern Illinois University tragedy. My heartbeat quickened, I started to worry about what to do if this was an insane student, and I was somewhat relieved when he found a seat and took out a notebook.
Perhaps my anxiety in that…
laelaps | February 20, 2008
PZ and Josh may have beat me to the punch, but I agree that this belongs on a t-shirt.
laelaps | February 20, 2008I would assume that most people who go out to the movie theater now and then have at least one experience similar to my own. You're sitting there, already halfway through your bag of popcorn, and the lights dim for the trailers. Some of the upcoming movies look good, others are just eye-candy (but you know you're going to see it no matter how vapid the premise), and some make you wonder who the hell put up millions of dollars to film such absolute dreck. The last reaction most closely approximates my thoughts when I found out that Oxford is going to get $4,000,000 from the Templeton…
laelaps | February 20, 2008Amanda is already far more prepared than I am for the next Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting that will be held in Cleveland, Ohio this coming October. I'm hoping to be there, but somehow I get the feeling that my own experience is going to be a relatively last-minute mad dash to get everything together (if I'm able to scrounge enough money to get me there and back to begin with). I'm pretty optimistic that I'll make it, although I'm sure I'll feel like an extremely little fish in a pond filled with Dunkleosteus.
laelaps | February 20, 2008Last November news broke of at least one Florida school district opposing new education standards that would bring the term "evolution" to the state's students for the very first time. Since that time opponents to the view have attempted to rally but never quite got their act together, and now it has been decided that the phrase "scientific theory of evolution" will be used in Florida public school science standards. This is a compromise (I'm sure we'll still be hearing "It's only a theory!" often), but in a general sense it's a win for better science education.
Some have hinted that the…
laelaps | February 20, 2008
I had nearly forgotten about this photograph of a sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), but it's one of my favorites. Don't let their name or insect-based diet fool you, though; they can move quite quickly and are can be very dangerous to encounter. This is not because they are especially aggressive, but rather because they usually cannot see or hear humans until they are nearly on top of the bear, at which point the bear may attack in defense. Such facts don't mean much if you stumble into a sloth bear on a dark night, though, and according to at least one study there were as many as 735 sloth…
laelaps | February 19, 2008I had something of an interesting experience this afternoon. I stopped into a local Stop & Shop to pick up a new razor and a few other necessities, and because I only a had a few items I decided to use the self check-out. On my way over someone dropped two boxes of cereal on the ground as I was passing by so I bent down, picked them up, and put them in the cart. The person didn't even look at me. It was somewhat bizarre; the person was talking with a friend no more than a foot away, yet it would seem that they didn't hear the box smack the floor, notice me pick it up, or realize that they…
laelaps | February 19, 2008The next edition of The Boneyard is coming up on the 23rd of the month (Saturday [short notice, I know!]) over at Self-Designed Student. After that it'll be back on the regular two-week schedule, the 15th edition showing up right here. The slate after that is wide-open though, so if you'd like to host let me know in the comments or via e-mail.
laelaps | February 19, 2008This morning I was browsing YouTube in an attempt to find some nutty creationist argument no one had seen yet, but instead I came across a few cable TV "debates" between creationists and defenders of evolution. They were painful to watch; the creationists proffered the same nonsense and the various skeptics/scientists often talked right past them and did not do a very good job at refuting the "freedom of inquiry" spin creationists love to use. This clip is a case in point;
Ouch. I don't have warm feelings for Anderson Cooper, either, as asking vague, "objective" questions that create such…
laelaps | February 19, 2008
While petsitting for a friend this past summer, I noticed that every afternoon a female white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) would bring several fawns into the yard to forage every afternoon. Most days I had to photograph them from the house, the sound of a door opening sending them off into the woods, but on one particular day I was able to sneak outside and able to conceal myself in the bushes. This fawn came particularly close (although, as you can see from the blur on the right, I was still in the middle of my chosen cover), but the shutter quickly gave me away.
laelaps | February 18, 2008As T. Ryan Gregory recently pointed out in his paper "Evolution as Fact, Theory, and Path," it is a shame that the English language is so impoverished as to cause the concept of evolution to be so controversial. Within the evolutionary lexicon, "theory," "saltation," " macroevolution," "direction," "purpose," and "design" are among the words that unfortunately seem to conflate rather than enlighten as far as the general public is concerned, and now Ken Miller (of Finding Darwin's God fame) wants to take back "design" for evolution. I don't have a good feeling about this one...
As John Wilkins…
laelaps | February 18, 2008
Over the last several hundred years, humans in North America have unwittingly selected the species that are going to be coexisting with humanity in the future. Rare native flora and fauna have disappeared, but some organisms have flourished in the modified landscape. White-tailed deer, coyotes, black bear, cowbirds, and other familiar (if somewhat "plain") animals are just a few of the native species that have adapted and even benefited from the presence of people while other species have been driven into extinction.
Some researchers like Paul S. Martin, however, argue that we are living in…
laelaps | February 18, 2008A few days ago I wrote about my experience with an ice storm that hit the city I live in and my experience walking home in it. Things warmed up a little after that, but I was not expecting to wake up and find out that the temperature was 60 degrees Fahrenheit at 6:00 this morning! I wish I had to day off to make the most of the unusually warm weather, but contra to what Phil said a few weeks ago there may yet be an early spring.