Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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Posts by this author
Brian at Clastic Detritus want to know what you listen to while writing (and ReBecca chimes in, too). My answer, unexciting as it may be, is "The various clicking and whirring of my computer." I occasionally listen to music while writing, but since I don't have much instrumental or classical music…
The skull of Mosasaurus hoffmani. Lingham-Soliar 1995.
On my first trip to the Inversand marl pit in Sewell, New Jersey, I didn't find the wonderfully preserved Dryptosaurus skeleton I had been dreaming of. I come across a number of bivalve shells and geologically younger sponges, but other than…
I'm really not that worried about Expelled. Sure, it has resulted in a fair amount of posts here on the blogosphere (and I've done my fair share), but from what I can tell most people have never even heard of the film. Set to come out on April 18th, the film hasn't even shown up on the radar of…
The skull and mandible of Guarinisuchus.
After the end-Cretaceous extinction, an "empty" world was left to fill up. The non-avian dinosaurs were gone, as were the mosasaurs, ammonites, pterosaurs, and other creatures. Indeed, in marine environments the large Mesozoic predators were eliminated in…
Crappy anime, claymation, and hand puppets? Watch if you dare...
From the series "Kyoryu Tankentai Born Free."
Earlier this month I mentioned an article by Suzan Mazur about a "meeting of the minds" that's going to take place this summer to discuss the state of evolutionary theory. I'll be interested to see what comes out of the symposium, but the 16 invited scientists aren't going to be constructing a new…
According to a Daily Mail article released yesterday, a 19 lb. jawbone from an extinct elephant relative was found in an unmarked package in a bus compartment. There isn't much else to the story, except that the mandible was misidentified by the "expert" called to look at photos of the fossil (and…
Over the course of my relatively short blogging career, I've had the pleasure of being in contact with a number of working paleontologists, people who are actively contributing to our understanding of ancient life. Although I'm always a little intimidated talking to professionals in paleontology, I…
Puzzles, a 27 year old female giraffe that was a favorite at the Philadelphia zoo (see above), was euthanized last week. Puzzles was most easily identified by the mysterious growth on her neck, something that zoo officials said did not contribute to her declining health although no one ever seemed…
Among the phrases that are most likely to make my hackles rise, "missing link" has to be among the most irritating. There is no good reason to continue to use it, the idea that evolution is a "chain" of progress being closely associated with the terminology, but this seems to be of little concern…
The mount of Brontotherium on display at the AMNH. Notice the healed rib.
During the field season of 1892, J.L. Wortman found the front half of an absolutely monstrous mammal. Entombed in the South Dakota sediment was the exquisitely preserved front half of a Titanotherium (now called…
The view off the back of "Sedge Island" in Barnegat Bay. If you hurried, you could run from one side of the tiny island to the other in less than a minute, but it's where I spent a few days several years ago for an ecology field camp course. Interestingly, nearby power plants warmed the water in…
Anyone else remember this one?
To young-earth creationists, that's practically a documentary.
Presently there are few words as divisive among science bloggers as "framing," and at this point it appears that the concept of framing itself has been "mis-framed." The concept has always been a bit nebulous to me, but I'm definitely concerned by the recent formulation of framing being proposed by…
As some of you know, I take in an extra cat that needs a foster home from time to time, rotating them out as they are adopted or go to the pet store so people can see them. Here's a quick run-down of how the cats my wife and I have fostered (each in turn) have been doing;
Beatrice: Bea was the…
The study of the evolution of avian dinosaurs is one of the most active and exciting areas of paleontology (if not science in general) today, and I've been fortunate enough to see a revolution in this field during my own lifetime. When I was first learning about dinosaurs as a child, a few…
There are times when I'm not entirely sure what to write. Like many other bloggers, I was certainly frustrated by Matt Nisbet's latest piece about who is allowed to "speak for science," but whatever useful discussion there might have been essentially was dead at the start. I wrote something up…
"An Iguanodon proper," as it appears "on the dexter side" of the Maidstone coat of arms, added in 1949.
Although the teeth of Iguanodon were discovered in 1822, more definitive skeletal remains of the dinosaur did not appear until 1834, which were discovered in Maidstone, Kent in England. These…
Spring break is over, which means that in addition to heading back to class, I'm going to try to confront the RU administration one more time in a sort of "last stand" to try and work things out. I doubt that I'll be successful, but I know that if I don't at least try I'm just going to be…
I have little sympathy for human-like "dinosauroids," but apparently they're more popular than even I originally thought. Darren, master of "things that make you go 'Huh?!', has a summary of some "anthroposaurus"-related literature, including details of the nuclear Cretaceous apocalypse.
The…
The origin of bipedalism, one of the classic traits popularly cited to separate humans from other primates, has long been a controversial area of research. A number of hypotheses have been floated over the years, but now that more fossil material from the time around the chimpanzee/human split has…
An African civet (Civetticus civetta) that had been rescued and found a home at the Popcorn Park Zoo. I don't know the history of this particular animal, but civets are often "farmed" for civetone, an ingredient used in expensive perfumes that is found in a substance secreted from a gland near…
Where there's one, there's the other. The pair behind the infamous "framing" concept are back, and this time they're telling scientists to shut up, perhaps taking up the axiom of "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone were nice?" More specifically, in a recent blog post Matt Nisbet admonished PZ and…
I usually tread lightly on theological issues here (outside of conflicts between monotheistic dogma & evolution), but the other day I heard an interview on NPR with John Dominic Crossan about the historicity of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Crossan does not believe in a bodily…
Will has got it up over at The Dragon's Tales. Greg Laden will host it next on April 6th.
In nearly any film that involves dinosaurs, the main problem facing the people making the movie is determining how to get humans and dinosaurs together in the first place. Some films have opted for genetic experiments, others hidden refugia, and still others nuclear tests (although these films…