Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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Posts by this author
I don't have very much to say tonight; the drizzly, cold weather and a late-night math class have put me in a bit of a foul mood. I added a few more pages to the birds chapter today, although this also means I will have to do some heavy editing given that I am 22 pages in and haven't even gotten to…
Part of the head shield of a dead horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), photographed at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge, Delaware.
After brooding for an unnecessarily long time over a temporary title for the book project last week, I've decided to scrap The Pulse of Life as a contender. As my wife pointed out, it sounds like the title of a school filmstrip, and I wasn't very happy with all the vitalistic baggage that came…
During his 1876 tour of the United States, the famed anatomist and popularizer of science Thomas Henry Huxley stopped to see the American paleontologist O.C. Marsh at Yale. Marsh provided his esteemed guest with access to his ever-growing stores in the Peabody Museum, showing Huxley toothed…
Next Wednesday, October 1, I'll be at the Apple Store in SoHo, NYC, talking about science blogging with Jessica, Jake, Steinn, Grrl, and Katherine. You can find out more about the event at the Apple Pro Sessions website, and you can get directions to the SoHo store here.
Apparently the #1 threat to America (as far as Beck & Norris are concerned) is poorly-paid immigrant workers screwing up their orders at the drive-thru. I guess you don't have much time to cook if you're busy publishing vapid, conservative screeds;
This is an illustration of the skull of Ceratosaurus, as included in O.C. Marsh's famous volume The Dinosaurs of North America. The book has been notoriously difficult to find, often fetching high prices from booksellers, but now you can download a scan of it from the O.C. Marsh archives for free…
Even though discussions of it on the web has generally dwindled (it seems some people just can't bear to watch it anymore), Jurassic Fight Club is still generating a few comments and critiques. Over at his recently-minted blog, Sean Craven has posted a series of his thoughts on the show (parts 1, 2…
How do the conversations that occur on science blogs foster the development of science in academia? While conferences and papers are certainly an important part of the current scientific infrastructure, conversations about those more formal sources of information have always played a pivotal role…
Another photo of a a wave coming over a little barrier of sand, photographed at Ocean Grove, NJ.
We're fast approaching the date for the next Boneyard, which will be posted on October 7th. The only problem is that we don't have a host! If you're interested in hosting the next edition send me an e-mail (or say so in the comments of this thread), as the 24th edition deserves a good home.
Update…
Lately Chad has been pondering the lack of science majors in colleges, paying particular attention to societal factors. The image of scientists as socially inept dweebs who try to find the answers to questions no one asked is certainly a problem, but there are also substantial proximal problems…
Here's a short video about the famous Edmontosaurus specimen named "Dakota," focusing on how NASA technology was used to look inside the slabs containing the skeleton. There are a few things about Dakota that have been taken a little bit too far (i.e. just because Edmontosaurus had a deep tail does…
A wave comes over a little barrier of sand, photographed at Ocean Grove, NJ.
I'm about halfway through Keith Thomson's book The Legacy of the Mastodon: The Golden Age of Fossils in America, and so far I have learned quite a bit. Even though the book covers already well-trodden ground (the "American incognitum," Cuvier's mosasaur, Mary Anning, the discovery of Hadrosaurus),…
A sandpiper, photographed at the Prime Hook Natural Wildlife Refuge in Delaware.
For all the talk of the rise of Rutgers football being a "Cinderella story," the course of the present season is making many boosters eat their words. The first two games were disasters, particularly the second against the University of North Carolina (the score was 44 to 12, ouch). As the team…
H.F. Osborn and Barnum Brown's vision for "dueling" Tyrannosaurus.
Dawn glows along the shore of a lagoon near the sea three millions of years ago in Montana. The landscape is of low relief; sycamores and ginkgo trees mingle with figs, palms and bananas. There are few twittering birds in the…
After finishing Life's Splendid Drama last night, I immediately picked up Don Lessem's Dinosaurs Rediscovered which had arrived earlier in the day. It's like a little time capsule representing the state of paleontology when I was a kid, people like Paul Sereno, Michael Benton, and Peter Dodson…
The lack of a proper title for my book (latest update here) has continued to vex me, even as I have made quite a bit of progress in fleshing out the chapters. A title is not necessary to my work at this stage, of course, but I feel that having a title helps keeps the voice of the book coherent. I…
This past spring the science blogosphere was all a-twitter over the release of the creationist propaganda film Expelled. Was it a success? A flop? A big budget fluff piece that only attracted those already inclined to agree? Such debates aside, the release of Expelled and the opening of Ken Ham's…
It can really be a chore to track down old papers. While many journals have digitized their collections and placed them online, a subscription is often required to access old papers (even from the 19th century!)*. That's if the paper you're looking for was published in a journal that still exists,…
A large piece of driftwood, photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
As ever, I didn't get as much done as I wanted to today, but I still added a few more pages. I would have accomplished more, but in my research I came across a few resources that had previously eluded me. A few (like a collection of papers by Lawrence Lambe, including his description of…
"Leonardo," the mummy dinosaur, courtesy of the HMNS.
Although it got a brief treatment in the book Horns and Beaks, many people have been waiting for more information on the exceptionally-preserved Brachylophosaurus skeleton named "Leonardo." Due to be unveiled next week at the Houston Museum…