Archy goes looking for mastodons, finds fanged hippos with massive organs instead.
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When you are hungry for news about mammoths, you go and visit Archy, of course. But this time, he moves sideways to take a look at mastodons, hippos and Ken Hamm. And the tail, or whatever that is....
tags: mastodon fossils, Greece
AMNH 9951, skeleton of the American mastodont, Mammut americanum, Newburgh, NY.
Image: AMNH (American Museum of Natural History, NYC, NY) [larger]
In an astonishing discovery, a three million year old "fossilized zoo" was discovered by Greek geologists yesterday in…
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…
A restoration of Eritreum compared to the larger Gomphotherium. From Shoshani et al. (2009).
Before I loved dinosaurs, I loved elephants. I would run around the backyard with my little pith helmet on, firing my "elephant mover" to herd the imaginary pachyderms. (At the time I did not…
Oh I can see that becoming a straight to the SciFI Network Movie.
CARNIHIPPO!!!
Actually, Job 40 is one of the bible prophesies concerning George Bush:
21 He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens.
Well, in the Nature episode "Hippo Beach" they show a hippo munching on an ungulate with the narration to the effect that "Eating Meat is rare for a hippo, but not unheard of."
Well, in the Nature episode "Hippo Beach" they show a hippo munching on an ungulate with the narration to the effect that "Eating Meat is rare for a hippo, but not unheard of."
This is an amusing and relevant paper (and close to being relevant):
Werdelin, L., Ã. Nilsonne and M. Fortelius (1999). Testicondy and ecological opportunism predict the rapid evolution of elephants. Evolutionary Theory 12:39-45.
Their argument is that because the elephant's balls don't drop, they have a higher mutation rate in the sperm (they actually measured this). They then suggested that this could explain why elephants, mammoths etc. were so successful: a higher mutation rate.
Bob
My mind is so squeaky clean today that I had to click the link to find out which organ was so massive.
As if. If SciFi ever made a movie about this, they'd call it "Carnipotamus".
No. Not SciFi. No way should they get their hands on this one.
I'd never have thought anyone could ruin a guaranteed can't-miss premise like astronauts being mauled on a remote planet by mutant grizzly bears, and yet they managed to.
Perhaps Archy explains why said hippos are "lusty", but for now I'd just like to point out that when you call your post "Lusty killer hippos", you really set up your reader to misread the word "organs"...
Brian, that's not a misread there. It's supposed to imply the penis.
Archy's comment is a good example of how you can get something interesting (albeit not science) from the Bible, and usually a lot more interesting than the narrow literalism favored by creationists....SH
I'd never have thought anyone could ruin a guaranteed can't-miss premise like astronauts being mauled on a remote planet by mutant grizzly bears
I sheepishly admit to watching that, and it was so fascinatingly bad (like a parody of a bad movie), that i couldn't turn away.
I still shudder to think of it.
You really can get some old-style campy sci-fi entertainment on that channel on saturday nights.
did anybody see "Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep" last saturday, for example?
wonderful romp, complete with giant squids and evil men taking advantage of helpless busty ladies (if only in the "theft" category).