Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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Posts by this author
April 25, 2008
It's Friday night, which may mean that you're headed out for dinner, to hit the bars with from friends, or otherwise celebrate the beginning of the weekend. While you're out, though, some of your appliances are still going to be drawing power even when you think you've turned them off. The fact…
April 25, 2008
The Apatosaurus mount at the AMNH.
Every person who loves paleontology has their own story about how they became fascinated with strange creatures and ancient world. For me it was solidified by a visit to the American Museum of Natural History in New York when I was only knee-high to a…
April 25, 2008
Yesterday a short notice was printed in the journal Science describing where Tyrannosaurus fell in relation to birds on the basis of molecular evidence (i.e. proteins recovered from a Tyrannosaurus femur). Surprise, surprise, the study found that Tyrannosaurus is more closely related to birds than…
April 25, 2008
I was able to get a few more pages out yesterday, although (say it with me now) not as many as I would have liked. I'm continuing to hammer away at the human evolution chapter as I feel that it's the most important, although if I'm not careful it could turn into a book by itself. I may hit a wall…
April 25, 2008
A pair of red pandas (Ailurus fulgens) photographed last year at the National Zoo in Washington D.C.
April 24, 2008
In the first two installments of this series I had the chance to interview two of the most famous paleontologists in the field today, but there are many, many other skilled scientists that you may never have heard of. Dr. Jerry Harris, Director of Paleontology at Dixie State College, is an…
April 24, 2008
During the past week many bloggers on ScienceBlogs and elsewhere have been talking about Expelled and whether (based upon the opening weekend reaction) it seems like it's going to be a success or a failure. I'm not going to rehash what I've already said on that subject, but the discussion has once…
April 24, 2008
A female okapi (Okapia johnstoni) photographed last year at the Bronx Zoo.
April 23, 2008
I am proud to announce that tomorrow I will be posting an interview with paleontologist Jerry Harris as the third installment of my Paleontological Profiles series. It's a good one, so be sure not to miss it!
April 23, 2008
I have to admit I felt a bit foolish this evening. I went to see a lecture by Brian Richmond about hominid bipedalism, although the name didn't register with me. So I'm sitting there in front, watching him talk about Orrorin and how there haven't been any good studies about it, all the while…
April 23, 2008
This past January I was somewhat shocked to discover that one of my posts had been voted into the 2nd edition of The Open Laboratory, a collection of 50 of the best science posts published in 2007 by writers from all over the science blogosphere. Now you can purchase the book via amazon.com,…
April 23, 2008
A female lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
By the year 1799, the Great Chain of Being had effectively been sundered, although some still clutched the shattered links in the hope that some linear order to the Creation would be found. The concept was no longer…
April 23, 2008
Yesterday I managed to tack a few paragraphs on to the end of the human evolution chapter, bringing the page count so far up to 10, although some of this will ultimately be cut. I wanted to write more last night, but by the time I walked home from class and ate dinner it was 9:30 and I was feeling…
April 23, 2008
A female cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) photographed last year at the National Zoo in Washington D.C.
April 22, 2008
Although not as aquatically-adapted as their distant ancestors, Indian elephants are certainly capable swimmers.
A number of my fellow ScienceBloggers have covered the "Aquatic Elephant Hypothesis" lately (see here, here, and here), and even though I'm a little late to the party I thought that…
April 22, 2008
Happy Earth Day, everyone. I doubt my own ability to come up with something especially meaningful and poignant today, so instead I will refer you to two of my favorite quites from Carl Sagan and Aldo Leopold.
It is a century now since Darwin gave us the first glimpse of the origin of species. We…
April 22, 2008
Here are some pictures my wife took of the three kittens presently staying in the apartment with us, although all of them will soon be off to the adoption center to try and find good homes;
Elice (she likes to sleep in that box).
Emma
Mishu
All three together.
April 22, 2008
A white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum) photographed last year at the Philadelphia Zoo.
April 21, 2008
During the 17th and 18th centuries, when taxonomy was being sorted out and suffering from growing pains, the term "nondescript" was a useful placeholder for any creature that was known but not yet described. This fairly straightforward use of the term was used less and less often as more of the…
April 21, 2008
The newest edition of The Boneyard went up this past Saturday at Archaeozoology. It's a good one, so make sure you check out what's been going on in the paleo subsection of the blogosphere. The 19th edition will go up at Familiarity Breeds Content on May 3rd.
April 21, 2008
It's Monday morning, three days after the opening of the creationist propaganda piece Expelled, and everyone seems to be talking about whether the film can be considered to be a success or not. Wing Nut Daily says that it was a resounding success (despite coming in at #8), while many of my fellow…
April 21, 2008
A five-lined skink (Eumeces fasciatus) photographed last year at the Delaware Water Gap.
April 20, 2008
I was able to get another five pages done today, although (as always) I'm not entirely satisfied with them. There are so many juicy details and excellent narratives that it's difficult to get them all in, and it is sometimes difficult to discuss a topic that I know something about but also will…
April 19, 2008
No angry creationists gathered outside my door with torches & pitchforks last night, and I presume that the first-night impact of Expelled (at least in my area) was not as great as the producers of the film might have hoped. We won't know for sure, though, until the box office results are in on…
April 18, 2008
It's difficult to think about dinosaurs and not imagine what they might have been like in life. Museum restorations have tried to recreate scenes from the Mesozoic from the bones of dinosaurs for about a century, but new technologies are allowing museum patrons a new way to think about what…
April 18, 2008
Even though I was busy yesterday (3-hour lab and 2 lab reports due), I got into the writing groove and was able to produce about five pages of new material. I've been jumping around from chapter to chapter a bit, writing on whatever I feel most interested in on any given day, and yesterday was all…
April 18, 2008
The next edition of the paleo-carnival The Boneyard is going to be up at Archaezoology tomorrow, so send in your entries there or to me a.s.a.p.! I'm also in need of a host for the following edition on May 3rd, so please let me know if you're interested in hosting.
April 18, 2008
If creationists had their way, today would be the "Waterloo" of evolutionary science. Lab equipment would begin to collect dust, once proud scientists would have to find jobs flipping burgers, and creationism's Trojan horse (intelligent design) would successfully "reclaim America for Christ," all…