Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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Posts by this author
A young Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
Part of the Appalachian Trail in New Jersey, headed towards Raccoon Ridge.
Here are a few snapshots of the foster kittens that have been running around the place lately:
Psghetti. She was adopted the day I took this photo.
Meatball. She is Psghetti's sister, and still needs a good home.
Leela. She loves to "help" when I'm working at the computer.
Teddy. He and…
The theme from the animated (1986) Transformers film.
I had promised myself that I would not blog about Transformers 2. I knew it was going to be awful, but against my better judgment I went anyway. (Given that MST3K was one of my favorite shows, I figured I could at least have some fun riffing…
An American toad (Bufo americanus), photographed along the Appalachian Trail in New Jersey.
I have been thoroughly enjoying my copy of The Paleobiological Revolution (edited by David Sepkoski and Michael Ruse), so much so that it has inspired me to get to work on some new academic papers. I will post a review of the book sometime this weekend, but here is a quote that is going to be very…
A western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
Richard Owen's restoration of Glyptodon. From Brinkman (2009).
Perhaps one of the primary reasons that there is so much to say about Charles Darwin is that he left us so much material to scrutinize. Outside of his famous printed works there are numerous notebooks and a staggering amount of…
A young orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus), photographed at the National Zoo.
Since the early 20th century, at least, young earth creationists have attempted to blame Charles Darwin for genocide, world wars, and whatever political movements seemed most threatening at one time or another (i.e. communism). What Darwin is faulted with changes with the times, but most recently…
Mother gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) Mandara holding her child Kibibi. Photographed at the National Zoo.
If you can handle some more hype about human evolution, here's a snippet from the (more or less) recent BBC documentary "The Ape That Took Over the World." It is about the controversial placement of Kenyanthropus in hominid evolution;
I do not have time to do a full write-up here (especially…
Fossil teeth can be tricky things. In 1922 paleontologist H.F. Osborn believed that he had found the first evidence of an extinct fossil ape from North America on the basis of a worn molar from Nebraska, but it later turned out to be the tooth of a prehistoric peccary. Four years later, by contrast…
Rokan the Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae), photographed at the National Zoo.
A calf and its mother (Bos primigenius taurus), photographed in suburban New Jersey.
They Might Be Giants is soon going to release a new educational album called Here Comes Science, and one of the songs on it is about paleontology! It's hard to make out most of the lyrics from the video below, but it's called "I am a Paleontologist."
Two Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica), photographed at the Philadelphia Zoo.
A red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus), photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
A young western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
The "common cuttle-fish." From Mysteries of the Ocean.
About three decades before On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection would forever change biological science, the aspiring young naturalists Pierre-Stanislas Meyranx and Laurencet submitted a paper on mollusks to France's…
California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) and their trainers, photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
In case you missed the last announcement, author Tom Levenson has been running a multi-part series on the genesis of his latest book, Newton and the Counterfeiter (Available now. Pick up a copy!). One of the most recent entries is about, to borrow from Tom's title, "writing the damn thing", to…
A red wolf (Canis lupus rufus), photographed at the North Carolina Zoo.
The skull of a spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta), photographed at the AMNH's "Extreme Mammals" exhibit.
[Author's note: This post gets a little bit graphic, so those who are made squeamish by taphonomy might want to skip this one.]
There was something funny about the assemblage of Homo erectus…
Paleo-blogger Zach has revitalized the long-dormant Boneyard carnival over at When Pigs Fly Returns. He has collected a nice assortment of links, but if you want to submit some more, Zach's the guy to talk to. I am sorry that I no longer have the time to run the Boneyard myself, but I am glad that…
The skull of the Taung child (Australopithecus africanus); the fragmentary remains of Orrorin; the scattered bones of Homo erectus from Dragon Bone Hill; a skullcap of a young Paranthropus from Swartkrans, South Africa. What do all these hominin fossils have in common? They all bear the tell-tale…
This past January I had the pleasure to re-visit Duke University's lemur center in North Carolina. I really recommend that you stop by if you have the chance (I'm hoping to head back to North Carolina sometime this summer myself), but if NC is beyond your reach the center has posted a number of…