Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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Posts by this author
In the middle of the summer of 2008 the ScienceBlogs cat herders relayed some exciting news to my blogging colleagues and I. Randy Olson, creator of the documentary Flock of Dodos, had created a new movie called Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy and wanted to send us all screener copies for a…
I have often been teased for my habit of carrying a science book wherever I go. ("That's such a Brian thing," an acquaintance once remarked.) If I am going to be waiting for someone or have a few minutes to spare here or there I like to have something to read to fill up the time. It's either that…
A male pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), photographed at Antelope Island, Utah.
When I wrote about the public unveiling of Ardipithecus ramidus (or "Ardi" to the public) last week I contrasted the description of the hominin with the bombastic rollout given to the lemur-like fossil primate "Ida" (Darwinius masillae) this past May. In the latter case it was clear that a media…
A coyote (Canis latrans), photographed near Grizzly Lookout in Yellowstone National Park.
Last month everyone was all a-twitter about the big screen Charles Darwin biopic, Creation. The film, based upon the biography Annie's Box, was released in England with great fanfare, but whether it would come to the United States was another question altogether. A U.S. distributor was hard to come…
Roaring Mountain, a ridge dotted with steam vents and fumaroles, in Yellowstone National Park.
A ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) enjoying a lunch of salad greens. Photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
When I first walked into the Bronx Zoo's recently-constructed Madagascar exhibit I was greeted by an unpleasant, but not unfamiliar, odor. It smelled like the ancient gym mats of my old high school…
Heated water from the Norris Geyser Basin empties into a nearby river. Photographed in Yellowstone National Park.
A trio of dinosaurs at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City, Utah. An Allosaurus (left) attacks a Camptosaurus (right) while another Allosaurus looms in the background.
Two restorations of "Ardi", a 45% complete skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus published in this week's issue of Science. Restorations (including the full skeletal restoration below) by artist Jay Matternes.
The stories of "Ida" and "Ardi" could hardly be more different.
Ida was a lemur-like…
It's Ardipithecus day! No, not that one, but the other one, Ardipithecus ramidus, which paleoanthropologists have been studying for the past 15 years. Over 45% of the skeleton of this hominin was found in the early 1990's, but outside of a brief initial description no further details about…
Not long after I wrote about how creationists got paleontologists Simon Conway Morris and James Valentine to appear in the anti-evolution film Darwin's Dilemma I received a message from someone at the Faraday Institute. Conway Morris had done an interview with them about science and religion for a…
The Yellowstone River, photographed near Tower Falls in Yellowstone National Park.
Anemone Geyser, a small but frequently-erupting geyser in Yellowstone's Upper Geyser Basin.
I have been a little tied up with other writing duties today, so in lieu of a "normal" post here is another snapshot from my trip to the Bronx Zoo last weekend. It is of a young male gelada baboon (Theropithecus gelada) that came down to the moat to drink. He had just been involved in a major…
Three pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), an adult female and two juveniles, photographed in Grand Teton National Park.
As some of you may recall, last week I posted a list of new and forthcoming books written by science bloggers. I tried to include all the authors and titles I could think of, but there was one book that I intentionally left off the list; my own.
I am now proud to announce that my first book,…
For a handful of some of my favorite photos of big cats, check out this post on the website Paw Talk.
A bison (Bison bison) near the side of the road on Antelope Island, Utah.
A shot of the scenery taken on the way back from an early-morning hike to the Red Fleet Reservoir dinosaur track site in northern Utah.
There are some new residents at the Bronx Zoo: spotted hyenas! I had never seen a live spotted hyena before, and I was quite surprised to find them in what had previously been the cheetah enclosure near the giraffe house. For more on spotted hyenas, see Sci's excellent post on hyena mating or my…
During my studies of the history of paleontology I have often stumbled upon the work of the same scientists over and over again. The 19th century anatomists Richard Owen and Thomas Henry Huxley, especially, worked on a variety of fossil vertebrates and were critical to the establishment of…
Scotland did not have much to offer 19-year-old Andrew Geddes Bain. Both his parents had died when he was a child, and even though he was educated his job prospects were few. When his uncle, Lieutenant Colonel William Geddes, left for South Africa in 1816 young Andrew decided to go with him to the…
This year has seen an explosion of books written by science bloggers, and it looks like the trend is going to continue well into 2010.
Jason Rosenhouse recently published The Monty Hall Problem and is hard at work on a new title about what goes on at creationist conferences.
Chris Mooney and…
A group of small birds on the back of a bison (Bison bison). Photographed at Antelope Island, Utah.