Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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Posts by this author
Just a reminder that the next edition of the geology-centered blog carnival The Accretionary Wedge is going to be up at Green Gabbro on Jan. 23rd (the day after I start the spring semester, oh joy...). The topics are your (least) favorite geological misconceptions and geology & pie (mmm...…
A capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) at the Cape May Zoo. Josephoartigasia dwarfs this animal, the largest of the living rodents.
One of the most interesting evolutionary patterns is an increase in the disparity of sizes in a group, small representatives persisting and changing even as some…
The creationist propaganda piece Expelled has been in the pipe for a while now, but it seems to be more and more apparent that the people behind it are scrambling to prevent the film from being a direct-to-video style flop. Originally slated for Darwin Day (February 12), the film has been pushed…
The endangered Grevy's zebra (Equus grevyi) is the largest species of zebra, and while it hasn't undergone the same level of taxonomic reshuffling that its relative the plains zebra Equus quagga) has, it still has been difficult to place at times. According to the IUCN page for Grevy's zebra, this…
You can see it over at One Good Move. Shubin's book, Your Inner Fish hit bookstores today.
Fossils are fragile, rare things; despite their abundance in some areas, we're pretty fortunate to have the remains of animals that lived and died in the distant past. One of the problems in modern paleontology (and in nearly any scientific discipline that requires fieldwork), though, is the…
A crocodile (I would assume Crocodylus niloticus) from William Cheselden's Osteographia.
Plumulites bengtsoni. From Vinther, J.; Van Roy, P.; Briggs, D. (2008) "Machaeridians are Palaeozoic armoured annelids." Nature, Vol 451, pp. 185-188 doi:10.1038/nature06474
Last week I briefly mentioned a new paper in Nature about an "armored worm" called Plumulites bengtsoni, and I've finally…
Some of you might already be aware of this, but whenever you click on one of the books I have in the "currently reading" section of this blog, my ridiculously-massive wishlist, or any other link to amazon.com and then buy something, I receive between 4% to 6% of the price of that sale. It doesn't…
Part of the reason why I love science blogging is that there are usually enough people with interest in a particular field that a lot more research gets covered over the whole blogosphere than any one author could accomplish alone. While I'm still mired in some papers I downloaded last week, Darren…
Bora and Reed both put in a Herculean effort in getting the 2nd edition of The Open Laboratory ready in time for the Science Blogging Conference this weekend, but the book is finished and now up for sale at lulu.com! The book will also be showing up in stores and on major online bookstores in the…
This is Leo, a snow leopard (Panthera uncia) at the Bronx zoo that was taken in by the zoo recently. Leo was orphaned at a very young age, too young to fend for himself in the wild, and with cooperation from officials in Pakistan was transferred to the Bronx zoo for care. The zoo has so much…
While my post about feral cats from last week might be a bit controversial to some, the LAPD is getting some help from from feral cats with a rat problem. According to the Los Angeles Times, there are a number of places in LA with rat and mice problems, and an animal rescue group has placed a…
The trailer for the film The Land That Time Forgot.
My first impression of what a dinosaur was conjured up images of creatures impossibly big and toothy, real-life monsters with names that sounded like they could very well have been out of mythology rather than science. I didn't know that they…
According to USA Today, a number of dinosaur tracks have been found in the Washington, D.C. area by amateur paleontologist Ray Stanford. Stanford has also found including a potentially new species that he will announce with Johns Hopkins paleontologist David Weishampel in the near future,…
A Red Panda (Ailurus fulgens) munching on some bamboo at the Bronx Zoo.
Zach has got the latest edition of the Boneyard up for your viewing pleasure (and many thanks to Zach for giving me my own little subsection). The next edition will be up the Saturday after next over at The Dragon's Tales, so get those links to me or Will as they crop up!
A mother lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) with her child, taken at the Bronx Zoo.
One of the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) cubs from the Bronx zoo hops over her sister. I haven't been back to the zoo since May of this past year so I have no idea if they are still there, but they are assuredly much bigger now than when I took this photograph.
A lot has been said as of late about reconstructions of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures on various blogs, and I'm not one to keep my mouth shut on the issue. I'll put up my own take on the issue tomorrow, but for now here's some Tyrannosaurus Alan spots that'll help set the stage;
A female gharial (Gavialis gangeticus).
Ever since Baryonyx walkeri was announced to the scientific community in 1986, spinosaurid dinosaurs have often been compared to crocodylians (at least as far as the construction of their skulls are concerned), the similarity going so far as to result in…
An African elephant (Loxodonta africana).
Part of what makes ecology such a fascinating subject is the complexity of interactions between species, especially when things don't happen in exactly the manner we might initially hypothesize. Such is the case with a paper just published in the journal…
Most of the photographs of Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) I post here are of an older female named Zeff at the Bronx zoo, but this tiger (also a resident at the Bronx zoo) is a younger male named Sasha. The two can be told apart from each other (as well as any other tiger) because each…
Feral cats are often portrayed as the scourge of of island ecosystems, killing off or pushing out endemic species at an alarming rate. To an extent such a reputation is deserved, but a new study out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that the elimination of a top-level…
This shot, taken at the Bronx zoo, is of one of the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) twins and her mother. The photograph was a bit difficult to get as I was shooting through a glass barrier and the shadows were very strong, but I still think it came out pretty well. Like "true" leopards (Panthera…
Wouldn't you know it? I'm in the middle of writing a nice summary on spinosaurid bite mechanics and all hell breaks loose in the journals. Besides the nonsense about Psittacosaurus, there's a new paper just out in Nature featuring a new cuddly little creature called Plumulites bengtsoni, that is if…
The skull of Psittacosaurus. From Osborn 1923.
Despite the large amount of evidence that birds are the direct descendants of a group of theropod dinosaurs some researchers continue to protest the association, one of the most vocal opponents of the idea being Theagarten Lingham-Soliar. Working…
While the mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei)studied by Diane Fossey might be the most familiar to the public, the vast majority of living gorillas are Western (or lowland) gorillas, Gorilla gorilla. While myths about these animals had circulated for some time, they were officially named in 1847…