Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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Posts by this author
March 5, 2009
"Caught in an asphalt lake." From the November 1919 issue of The World's Work.
As much as I love visiting the American Museum of Natural History in its current incarnation I sometimes wish I could have seen the institution in earlier eras. It has undergone its own evolution and while plenty of…
March 5, 2009
I'm a little bit late on this one but I wanted to say "Welcome!" to the latest member of the Sb collective All of My Faults Are Stress Related. It's good to have another geo-blog around the place.
The first edition of ART Evolved has been posted. The inaugural edition features a slew of…
March 5, 2009
A pair of ring-tailed mongoose (Galidia elegans), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
March 4, 2009
Later this month (March 20-22) I will be headed down to Washington DC to check out the national museum of natural history, the national zoo, etc. (It's about time, especially since I blog for Smithsonian...) I would love to set aside some time to meet some DC-area bloggers and readers while I'm…
March 4, 2009
The Burlington County skull. From Hrdlicka's Skeletal Remains Suggesting or Attributed to Early Man in North America.
By 1859 it had become established that humans had a more ancient history than had previously been known, but just how old was Homo sapiens? This was a pivotal question, for the…
March 4, 2009
A snow leopard (Panthera uncia), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
March 3, 2009
I had initially intended to write this post to coincide with my birthday last week but my research unexpectedly set me on the trail of Saartje Baartman. Below is the essay I had originally set out to write;
What to do about Charles Lyell? In September of 1859 he had announced to the scientists…
March 3, 2009
Western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
March 2, 2009
[Last night New Brunswick was buried under several inches of snow, shutting down the university and giving me the day off. I have been using my free time to get some reading done and work on a few projects but I did not want to neglect this blog. Here are the first several pages of the chapter on…
March 2, 2009
Red panda (Ailurus fulgens), photographed at the Turtleback Zoo.
March 1, 2009
I don't quite know what to make of Richard Fortey's latest book Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret life of the Natural History Museum. When I opened my copy to the first chapter I was expecting something like Douglas Preston's written tour of the American Museum of Natural History, Dinosaurs in the…
March 1, 2009
A white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), photographed in rural New Jersey.
February 28, 2009
A California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
February 27, 2009
The "Hottentot Venus", drawn from a wax cast made in Paris. From The Human Race.
On December 31, 1816 Saartje Baartman died in Paris. She had been ill for three days, perhaps stricken with smallpox, before she and her unborn child expired. Better known as the "Hottentot Venus", Baartman was a…
February 27, 2009
Many thanks to everyone who wished me a happy 26th birthday yesterday. I was surprised by the number of people who did, in fact, and I was glad to receive the kind greetings of so many friends.
Special thanks are due Amanda, as well, who sent me a shiny new copy of Richard Fortey's Dry Storeroom No…
February 27, 2009
A Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
February 26, 2009
A red wolf (Canis lupus rufus), photographed at the North Carolina Zoo.
February 25, 2009
So there I was, vainly searching Amazon.com to see if a subscription to this blog is available on Kindle (it appears not), when I was hit between the eyes by something unexpected.
A few of you may recall that a few months ago I wrote a lukewarm review of Jerry Coyne's new book Why Evolution Is True…
February 25, 2009
The skull of Gomphotherium, from Barbour's paper.
Regular readers of this blog are well aware that the "March of Progress", a depiction of the single-file evolution of humans from an ape ancestor, is a biological bugbear that refuses to go away. Even though the Great Chain of Being ceased to be…
February 25, 2009
A North American river otter (Lontra canadensis), photographed at the Turtleback Zoo.
February 24, 2009
Am I a scientist? It seems like a simple question requiring little more than a "yes" or "no", yet I am at a loss as to how to answer it. Even though I have been called a scientist by people I respect I cannot bring myself to use the term to describe myself.
It is not that I am holding onto some…
February 24, 2009
A great horned owl (Bubo virginianus), photographed at the Turtleback Zoo.
February 23, 2009
Moropus, a chalicothere. From The Annual Report of the American Museum of Natural History.
Suppose for a moment that you are walking across a dry, wind-swept landscape known to be rich in fossils. During your perambulations you notice a large fossilized claw sitting on the surface; what sort of…
February 23, 2009
A bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), photographed at the Turtleback Zoo.
February 22, 2009
It would be fair to say that, until a week ago, I knew virtually nothing about J.B.S. Haldane. I knew he was a British biologist who helped form the subdiscipline of population genetics, but that was about it. Then, unexpectedly, Oxford University Press sent me a copy of What I Require From Life:…
February 22, 2009
An Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis), photographed at the Turtleback Zoo.
February 21, 2009
A red panda (Ailurus fulgens), photographed at the Turtleback Zoo.
February 20, 2009
The "Newberg" (or Warren) mastodon. From Elements of Geology. Note the claw-like restoration of the feet.
How did the mastodon, Mammut americanum, feed itself? It is a fairly simple question best answered by looking to living elephants, but things were not always so straightforward. Early…
February 20, 2009
A goat (Capra aegagrus), photographed at the Turtleback Zoo.
February 19, 2009
The "Navel of the earth." From Paradise Found.
In 1885 the theologian William F. Warren, then president of Boston University, could no longer keep silent. Society was turning away from "old time religion" in favor of an ever-expanding naturalism that made(in Warren's view) the world a colder,…