Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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Posts by this author
March 7, 2010
A California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
March 6, 2010
A male red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus), photographed in Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
March 5, 2010
A jaguar (Panthera onca). From Flickr user Prosper 973.
One year ago this week Macho B was euthanized. He had been captured in mid-February of 2009, the only known jaguar living inside the United States, but after he was caught and fitted with a radio collar his health quickly deteriorated. When he…
March 4, 2010
Yellowstone National Park is an amazing place. I stayed there for three days longer than I had originally planned and I still was not ready to leave it. Even if I had spent another week there I still would not have seen all the natural wonders of the park, but fortunately the BBC recently sent film…
March 3, 2010
The exceptionally preserved skeleton of Darwinius, known popularly as "Ida." From PLoS One.
Almost ten months ago an international team of researchers introduced the world to an exquisitely-preserved primate from the 47 million year old oil shales of Messel, Germany. Dubbed Darwinius masillae, and…
March 2, 2010
A young Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
March 2, 2010
Here's another sneak-peek at Life (this time with David Attenborough's narration) featuring one of my most favorite canids, the Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis). Enjoy!
March 1, 2010
A dwarf mongoose (Helogale parvula), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
March 1, 2010
An adult chimpanzee in Bossou, Guinea uses hammer and anvil stones to crack nuts as younger individuals look on. From Haslam et al., 2009.
Before 1859 the idea that humans lived alongside the mammoths, ground sloths, and saber-toothed cats of the not-too-distant past was almost heretical. Not only…
February 28, 2010
An American avocet (Recurvirostra americana), photographed at Antelope Island, Utah.
February 27, 2010
Male (right) and female (left, with infant) friends in a population of Chacma baboons. (From Palombit, 2009).
Among other things, friends are people you count on to come to your aid when you need help. If you were at a bar and a stranger started acting aggressively towards you, for example, you…
February 26, 2010
Canada geese (Branta canadensis), photographed in Mt. Kisco, New York.
February 26, 2010
Today is my 27th birthday. To celebrate Tracey and I were planning on visiting Philadelphia's Mutter Museum and the Academy of Natural Sciences, but given the deep accumulation of snow we thought better of going into the city. I can still celebrate by sharing something with you, though. Presented…
February 25, 2010
A coyote (Canis latrans), photographed in Yellowstone National Park.
February 25, 2010
When it comes to nature documentaries the BBC's natural history unit is the best of the best. Over and over again they have produced top-notch programming, and their new multi-part series Life is perhaps the best I have ever seen. The series contains some familiar moments, such as a sengi running…
February 24, 2010
A Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer), photographed at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.
February 24, 2010
A Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer), photographed at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.
No one knew what happened to William Olson. At about three in the afternoon on April 13, 1966 he had been swimming with his friends from the Peace Corps in the part of the Baro river that ran through…
February 23, 2010
A reconstruction of a dead Edmontosaurus on display at the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point, Utah.
February 23, 2010
Way back in 2007, when I was still a neophyte science blogger, Rutgers University philosophy professor Jerry Fodor published an op-ed in the London Review of Books called "Why Pigs Don't Have Wings." It was a critique of a straw man version of evolutionary theory characterized by a brand of…
February 22, 2010
A Madagascar giant day gecko (Phelsuma madagascariensis grandis), photographed at the National Zoo.
February 22, 2010
A restoration of the giant, durophagous shark Ptychodus, courtesy paleo-artist Matt Celeskey.
The study of prehistoric sharks is no easy task. Specialists in other branches of vertebrate paleontology at least have the reasonable hope of discovering complete skeletons of their subjects; except in…
February 21, 2010
A Coquerel's sifaka (Propithecus coquereli), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
February 20, 2010
A gull stands at the edge of the surf while sanderlings scuttle about in the background. Photographed at Spring Lake, New Jersey.
February 19, 2010
I love monster movies. When they're good, they're great, and when they're bad, they're still fun to riff on. I do not know enough about it to judge it yet, but the forthcoming film Splice looks interesting, at the very least. According to science blogger Tamara Krinsky:
The classic monster film…
February 18, 2010
An engraving of Koch's "Hydrarchos", from the American Phrenological Journal. (Pardon the smudges)In July of 1845 the amateur fossil hunter Albert Koch brought his sea monster to New York City. A cousin of the serpentine creatures that so many had claimed to see off the coast of New England, the…
February 17, 2010
A stuffed coyote (Canis latrans), photographed at the Utah Museum of Natural History.
February 17, 2010
Detail of a Charles R. Knight mural depicting a family a mastodons.Fossils often turn up in unexpected places. As people have dug swimming pools, tilled farms, blasted through mountains, and quarried the land for minerals traces of ancient life sometimes come to the surface, from isolated shark…