Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
laelaps
Posts by this author
A small-clawed otter (Aonyx cinerea) in a short tree, photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
Western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
The skull of Paranthropus boisei ("Zinj," "Dear Boy," "Nutcracker Man," etc.).
Louis Leakey had a problem.
During the summer of 1959 he and his wife Mary recovered the skull fragments of an early human scattered about the fossil deposits of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. The skull had been deposited…
Eden, from The World Before the Deluge.
At least I know that, if I fail at everything else in life, I could write a book claiming to reconcile science and Christianity. People love them. No matter how many times the same old talking points are trotted out there always seems to be room for one…
A spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
For months now I have been hammering away at individual chapters of my first book, Written in Stone, but this weekend I finally put all the individual parts together into one document. I still have a lot of editing to do, but it still feels good to move past the stage of large-scale construction…
A red river hog (Potamochoerus porcus), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
A western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) with an upset stomach, photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
Dwarf mongoose pups (Helogale parvula) playing, photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
I'm pleased to announced that paleontologist Scott Sampson, author of the new book Dinosaur Odyssey and host of the children's tv show Dinosaur Train, has just launched a blog. It is called The Whirlpool of Life. Go check it out!
Geladas (Theropithecus gelada) grazing, photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
Today is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, and there is a whole list of things I am not going to do;
I am not going to set aside time to read On the Origin of Species when I get home.
I am not going to write a long…
I get a lot of questions about my forthcoming book, Written in Stone, but the most popular by far is "What are you going to say about creationism?"
Presently there is a glut of books that confront creationism in one way or another. There are books that counter creationist claims with scientific…
A baby California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
A gelada baboon (Theropithecus gelada), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
A group of small-clawed otters (Aonyx cinerea) gnawing on some fishsicles, photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
A giraffe, photographed at the Bronx zoo.
For me, no visit to the zoo is complete without stopping by to see the giraffes. They are among the most common of zoo animals, certainly, but I still find them fascinating. If giraffes did not actually exist and someone drew an illustration of one as a…
A young nyala (Tragelaphus angasii) nursing from its mother, photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
At last long there was solid proof that humans had died in a real Noachian Deluge. That such an event had occurred was widely taken on faith by Christians, and the belief that world's geology had been formed by the Flood was assented to by many naturalists, but in 1725 the Swiss naturalist Jacob…
Via NatureBreak.org, a capuchin monkey bathes using a stolen orange;
I think she is correct. Capuchin monkeys regularly rub citrus fruits on their fur and this activity appears to keep them free of parasites and keep some of the biting insects away.
A group of geladas (Theropithecus gelada) in pursuit of a troop member (off camera) that had made the faux pas of grooming the wrong female . Photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
During the past six million years or so several species of humans have simultaneously inhabited Earth at any one time, but today only one species, ours, remains. How did this come to be? This is the question behind part 3 of the NOVA documentary series "Becoming Human" (see my reviews for parts 1…
A young Western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
The display of horse evolution at the AMNH as created by W.D. Matthew. Price reproduced this illustration without permission in his creationist textbook The New Geology.
The 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" put scientists on the defensive. It did not matter that the defendant in the famous case, John…
A ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.