Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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Posts by this author
An Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis), photographed at the Philadelphia Zoo.
When I wrote my essay on violent interactions between prehistoric monsters in art, I thought I had touched on something intriguing. I penned a proposal for a more focused article on the topic and sent it out to magazines purported to feature articles at the intersection of science and culture. The…
Henry de la Beche's "Duria Antiquior," an image of the carnage along the shores of ancient Dorset.
As I've been reading Jane Davidson's A History of Paleontology Illustration I have been thinking about my favorite paleo artists. Late at night, when I am settling down to sleep, I sometimes just…
I have spent most of today finishing up Jane Davidson's A History of Paleontology Illustration (a review of which I intend on will writing up shortly), but I took a quick break to blow a few bucks at the Cranbury Bookworm. Here's what I came home with;
Evolution for John Doe - Henshaw Ward (1925)…
Western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
I had been meaning to post these pictures for a while, but I kept forgetting until now. Both are of Huxley, who was the first "foster cat" of the summer and found a good home;
My wife and I reading while dinner cooks on the fire. Taken at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware this past May.
So much work to do, so little time. The summer whizzed by at a rate faster than I expected, and now I'm just two days away from the start of the fall semester. (As my wife commented…
An Amur tiger, (Panthera tigris altaica), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
As far as my vote in the upcoming election goes, John McCain's selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin makes no difference to me. I'm voting for Barack Obama. What everyone is all a-twitter about on the science blogosphere, however, is the fact that during a debate in 2006 Palin said that if the…
Just in case you haven't had enough of the "classic" (vintage?) Eric Boardman & Gary Owens dinosaur documentaries, here's the sequel to "More Dinosaurs" called "Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs."
A horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
If there is any author associated with the book title On the Origin of Species it is most certainly Charles Darwin, yet Darwin was not the only person to pen a book beginning with those words. The full title of Darwin's first edition was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or…
Have you ever wondered where Bora does all his prolific blogging and masterminds PLoS initiatives? A North Carolina news crew caught up with him in his office.
I'm not really a fan of the Templeton Foundation. In the past they've contributed quite a bit of money to the intelligent design crowd and folks who want to foster a teleological view of evolution, and the work resulting from the funded projects appears to be generally unimpressive. When John…
An immature herring gull (Larus argentatus), photographed at Ocean Grove, New Jersey.
The famous fold-out plate that accompanied Pre-Adamite Man. Not the "dividing line" between ancient life and modern humans formed by the glaciers.
There is more to understanding the history of science than memorizing the dates when seminal books were published or knowing the names of the…
Today Sb is all shook up. The guys from DSN just announced that they'll be setting sail for the Discovery Channel blog network, but I am happy to announce that one of my most favorite bloggers (and commentors), Blake Stacey, is now in the Sb fold. Go check out his new digs and say "Hello!"
Although fluff pieces about football practice at Rutgers have flooded the newswires over the past few weeks, the university is still suffering from reports of shady financial practices that have favored football over academics. (See this post for the last update and summary.) In order to combat the…
The last time the 100 book meme came around I decided to step out of the vein and create a list of 100 books that I liked or have had a significant influence on me. Most of the them were non-fiction books about science, and I was glad to see the Jennifer has created a list of 75 popular science…
The guys over at Deep Sea News have been mercilessly teasing their readers for quite a while now, promising that they're got some absolutely astounding news to report sometime today. Amongst all the teasers they provided one hint; footage of a space shuttle lifting off.
What could the clue mean? I…
There's going to be a lot of talk about Darwin in the coming year. It's practically impossible to talk about evolution without tipping our hat to him in some way, but as Carl Zimmer recently pointed out during a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution (which he was kind enough to post) what we know…
A sandpiper, photographed at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge, Delaware.
When I was growing up, dinosaurs were almost always on television for one reason or another. From movies to commercials, from cartoons to documentaries, there was always some ancient creature on the screen. Among the panoply of prehistoric programming the documentaries featuring Eric Boardman and…
From Garfield Minus Garfield
I did it. The whale chapter has been put on the editorial chopping block three times, and I'm going to move on to other things for a while before coming back for the final cut. I'm particularly vexed by the last section of the chapter, which focuses on the evolution…
The Boneyard #23 will appear on September 2 at When Pigs Fly Returns. Get your paleo-posts from the last month to me or Zach if you want in on the next edition!
In a week I'll be headed back into the dusty, faded-pastel halls of higher learning for the fall semester, and given that I expect many of you will be doing the same I thought I would open up a thread about evolution education. As I have said multiple times, just because creationism isn't being…
This is a truly sad story. Last week a baby humpback whale, informally dubbed "Colette," was found alone in the waters off Sydney, Australia. The baby was in desperate need of fat-rich mother's milk, nuzzling boats in its attempts to find sustenance, but no surrogate mother came to the rescue.…
A laughing gull (Leucophaeus atricilla), photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
It's funny how editing is such a different process from the construction of a chapter. When I began writing the chapter on whales the more pages I could add, the better. When my wife asked me about my progress I would say "I wrote [x] more pages today." Now that I'm editing I usually reply "I pared…