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Laelaps
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- July 6, 2010
- 01:23 PM
- 4 views
Funky Worms Cause Ants to Mimic Fruit
A normal giant gliding ant (left) and an infested ant (right). The red color of the gaster is not caused by a pigment, but thinning of the exoskeleton combined with the color of the nematode eggs. From Yanoviak et al, 2008.
In one of my favorite episodes of the animated TV show Futurama, the chief protagonist - delivery boy Philip J. Fry - becomes infested with worms after eating a dodgy egg-salad sandwich purchased from the restroom of an interstellar truck stop. Lucky for Fry, the parasite........ Read more »
Yanoviak, S., Kaspari, M., Dudley, R., & Poinar, G. (2008) Parasite‐Induced Fruit Mimicry in a Tropical Canopy Ant. The American Naturalist, 171(4), 536-544. DOI: 10.1086/528968
HUGHES, D., KRONAUER, D., & BOOMSMA, J. (2008) Extended Phenotype: Nematodes Turn Ants into Bird-Dispersed Fruits. Current Biology, 18(7). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2008.02.001
- July 1, 2010
- 11:46 AM
- 2 views
What's eating you? - Bugs, bacteria, and zombies
The trailer for Shaun of the Dead.
Not all zombies are created equal. The most popular zombie archetype is a shambling, brain-eating member of the recently deceased, but, in recent films from 28 Days Later to Zombieland, the definition of what a zombie is or isn't has become more complicated. Does a zombie have to be a cannibal corpse, or can a zombie be someone infected with a virus which turns them into a blood-crazed, fast-running monster?
For my own part, I have always preferred the cla........ Read more »
Campobasso, C. (2001) Factors affecting decomposition and Diptera colonization. Forensic Science International, 120(1-2), 18-27. DOI: 10.1016/S0379-0738(01)00411-X
Carter, D., Yellowlees, D., & Tibbett, M. (2006) Cadaver decomposition in terrestrial ecosystems. Naturwissenschaften, 94(1), 12-24. DOI: 10.1007/s00114-006-0159-1
DeVault, T., Brisbin, Jr., I., & Rhodes, Jr., O. (2004) Factors influencing the acquisition of rodent carrion by vertebrate scavengers and decomposers. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 82(3), 502-509. DOI: 10.1139/Z04-022
- June 30, 2010
- 11:46 AM
- 3 views
Deceitful Male Topi Raise False Alarms to Keep Females Nearby
Out on the grassy plains of Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve, a group of six female topi antelope (Damaliscus lunatus) walk across the savanna. It is the time of the annual rut - a one and a half month period in which most males control small patches of land and try to attract adult females which, for one day, are in estrus. The small group walks by one of the lone males, but just as they reach the edge of his territory he snorts an alarm. It means that somewhere, out ahead of them, a preda........ Read more »
Bro‐Jørgensen, J., & Pangle, W. (2010) Male Topi Antelopes Alarm Snort Deceptively to Retain Females for Mating. The American Naturalist, 176(1). DOI: 10.1086/653078
- June 28, 2010
- 07:46 PM
- 2 views
The Extinction of the Hundsheim Rhino - Being a Generalist Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be
The skeleton of the Hundsheim rhinoceros, Stephanorhinus hundsheimensis. From Kahlke and Kaiser, 2010.
In any given environment, it might be expected that a generalized or unspecialized species might be less prone to extinction than one which depends upon a narrow temperature range, a peculiar kind of food, or other aspect of natural history which is key to its survival. An herbivorous mammal which can subsist on a variety of grasses, leaves, and other plant foods, for example, may be more l........ Read more »
Kahlke, R., & Kaiser, T. (2010) Generalism as a subsistence strategy: advantages and limitations of the highly flexible feeding traits of Pleistocene Stephanorhinus hundsheimensis (Rhinocerotidae, Mammalia)☆. Quaternary Science Reviews. DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.12.012
- June 24, 2010
- 02:43 PM
- 2 views
Sea Otters, Hunters, and Steller's Sea Cows - Replaying a Recent Extinction
The nearly complete skeleton of a Steller's sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) - it is missing bones from the wrist and hand. From Woodward, 1885.
It did not take long for the last remaining population of Steller's sea cow to be driven into extinction. Discovered by the German naturalist Georg Steller around the Bering Sea's Commander Islands in 1741, this enormous and peculiar sirenian became an easy target for Russian hunters. By 1768, it was gone. (The marine mammal would not be scientifically ........ Read more »
Turvey, S., & Risley, C. (2006) Modelling the extinction of Steller's sea cow. Biology Letters, 2(1), 94-97. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2005.0415
- June 23, 2010
- 05:37 PM
- 4 views
Ancient "Big Man" Confirms That Humans Stood Tall Early
The skeletons of Lucy (left) and Kadanuumuu (right). Both belong to the early human species Australopithecus afarensis. (Images not to scale.)
I never fully appreciated how small Lucy was until I saw her bones for myself. Photographs and restorations of her and her kin within the species Australopithecus afarensis had never really given me a proper sense of scale, and when I looked over her incomplete skeleton - formally known as specimen A.L. 288-1 - I was struck by her diminutive proportio........ Read more »
Haile-Selassie, Y., Latimer, B., Alene, M., Deino, A., Gibert, L., Melillo, S., Saylor, B., Scott, G., & Lovejoy, C. (2010) An early Australopithecus afarensis postcranium from Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1004527107
- June 22, 2010
- 11:41 AM
- 4 views
Homo sapiens can bite hard, after all
Three-dimensional models of hominoid skulls used in the study - (a) Hylobates lar; (b) Pongo pygmaeus; (c) Pan troglodytes; (d) Gorilla gorilla; (e) Australopithecus africanus; (f ) Paranthropus boisei; (g) Homo sapiens. They have been scaled to the same surface area, and the colors denote areas of stress (blue = minimal stress, pink = high stress). From Wroe et al, 2010.
It is all too easy to think of human evolution in linear terms. From our 21st century vantage point we can look back thro........ Read more »
Wroe, S., Ferrara, T., McHenry, C., Curnoe, D., & Chamoli, U. (2010) The craniomandibular mechanics of being human. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.0509
- June 21, 2010
- 08:25 PM
- 2 views
Tiny Trilobites Drifted in Cambrian Currents
A restoration of the tiny trilobite Ctenopyge ceciliae. From Schoenemann et al, 2010.
The first time I can remember seeing a trilobite, it wasn't in a museum case or a book about prehistoric animals. It was on card 39 of the gratuitously gory Dinosaurs Attack! card series, a horrific vignette depicting four of the invertebrates crawling over the bloodied face of their hapless victim. (No indication was given as to how the "flesh-eating worms", as the card identified them, had subdued the man........ Read more »
SCHOENEMANN, B., CLARKSON, E., AHLBERG, P., & ÁLVAREZ, M. (2010) A tiny eye indicating a planktonic trilobite. Palaeontology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4983.2010.00966.x
- June 16, 2010
- 05:39 PM
- 2 views
Small Fossil Mammals Reveal Wounds Left by the Last Great Extinction
A golden-mantled ground squirrel (Spermophilus lateralis), photographed in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. Though abundant at the Samwell Cave Popcorn Dome, California site during the Late Pleistocene, its numbers in the area decline at the beginning of the present Holocene epoch.
"One of the penalties of an ecological education", the naturalist Aldo Leopold once wrote, "is that one lives alone in a world of wounds." Few knew this better than he did. Despite becoming a celebrated advocate ........ Read more »
Blois, J., McGuire, J., & Hadly, E. (2010) Small mammal diversity loss in response to late-Pleistocene climatic change. Nature, 465(7299), 771-774. DOI: 10.1038/nature09077
- June 15, 2010
- 08:37 PM
- 3 views
Repost: Mosasaurs - The Marine Monsters of New Jersey
The skull of Mosasaurus hoffmani. From Lingham-Soliar 1995.
On my first trip to the Inversand marl pit in Sewell, New Jersey, I didn't find the wonderfully preserved Dryptosaurus skeleton I had been dreaming of. I picked up a number of Cretaceous bivalve shells and Paleocene sponges, but other than a few scraps of "Chunkosaurus" my excavations didn't yield very much. Before my paleontology class left the site, though, we took a walk by the spoil piles - great green mounds of sediment that ha........ Read more »
KIERNAN, C. (2002) STRATIGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION AND HABITAT SEGREGATION OF MOSASAURS IN THE UPPER CRETACEOUS OF WESTERN AND CENTRAL ALABAMA, WITH AN HISTORICAL REVIEW OF ALABAMA MOSASAUR DISCOVERIES. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 22(1), 91-103. DOI: 10.1671/0272-4634(2002)022[0091:SDAHSO]2.0.CO;2
Lingham-Soliar, T. (1995) Anatomy and Functional Morphology of the Largest Marine Reptile Known, Mosasaurus hoffmanni (Mosasauridae, Reptilia) from the Upper Cretaceous, Upper Maastrichtian of the Netherlands. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 347(1320), 155-172. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.1995.0019
Mulder, E. (1999) Transatlantic latest Cretaceous mosasaurs (Reptilia, Lacertilia) from the Maastrichtian type area and New Jersey. Geologie en Mijnbouw, 78(3/4), 281-300. DOI: 10.1023/A:1003838929257
- June 14, 2010
- 07:42 PM
- 4 views
Restoring Missing Lynx - The Rejuvenation of an Ecosystem
A drop in the bucket - a massive pile of bison skulls about to be ground into fertilizer, photographed circa 1870. From Wikipedia.
From almost the very start, wolves were not welcome in Yellowstone. When the national park was established by the United States government in 1872 the bison population had crashed - a victim of westward expansion, the fur trade, and the desire to deprive native people of an animal important to their existence - leaving the area's wolves little recourse but to beg........ Read more »
Elmhagen, B., Ludwig, G., Rushton, S., Helle, P., & Lindén, H. (2010) Top predators, mesopredators and their prey: interference ecosystems along bioclimatic productivity gradients. Journal of Animal Ecology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2010.01678.x
Johnson, C. (2010) Red in tooth and claw: how top predators shape terrestrial ecosystems. Journal of Animal Ecology, 79(4), 723-725. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2010.01706.x
- June 10, 2010
- 08:37 PM
- 4 views
Pruning the Primate Family Tree
"Dinah", a young female gorilla kept at the Bronx Zoo in 1914. From the Zoological Society Bulletin.
Frustrated by the failure of gorillas to thrive in captivity, in 1914 the Bronx Zoo's director William Hornaday lamented "There is not the slightest reason to hope that an adult gorilla, either male or female, ever will be seen living in a zoological park or garden." Whereas wild adult gorillas were "savage" and "implacable" beasts which could not be captured (a photo of a sculpture included ........ Read more »
Merceron, G., Kaiser, T., Kostopoulos, D., & Schulz, E. (2010) Ruminant diets and the Miocene extinction of European great apes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.0523
DUNHAM, A., ERHART, E., & WRIGHT, P. (2010) Global climate cycles and cyclones: consequences for rainfall patterns and lemur reproduction in southeastern Madagascar. Global Change Biology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2010.02205.x
- June 3, 2010
- 05:27 PM
- 1 view
Repost: The Skull-Crushing Hyenas of Dragon Bone Hill
The skull of a spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta), photographed at the AMNH's "Extreme Mammals" exhibit.
There was something strange about the assemblage of Homo erectus fossils found at Zhoukoudian - the famous 750,000 - 200,000 year old site in China popularly known as Dragon Bone Hill. Despite the abundance of skulls and teeth, there were hardly any remains of the hominins from below the neck. Where were the bodies?
The majority of Homo erectus fossils from Zhoukoudian were discovered and s........ Read more »
Noel T. Boaz, Russell Ciochon, Xu Qinqi, and Liu Jinyi. (2000) Large Mammalian Carnivores as a Taphonomic Factor in the Bone Accumulation at Zhoukoudian. Acta Anthropologica Sinica, 224-234. info:/
Boaz, N. (2004) Mapping and taphonomic analysis of the Homo erectus loci at Locality 1 Zhoukoudian, China. Journal of Human Evolution, 46(5), 519-549. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2004.01.007
- May 28, 2010
- 11:24 AM
- 9 views
Repost: Suminia: Life in the Trees 260 Million Years Ago
Color-coded diagram of a small bone bed containing at least twelve individuals of the Permian synapsid Suminia. From Frobisch and Reisz (2009)
When I hear the phrase "early human relative" I cannot help but think of an ape-like creature. Something like Sahelanthropus fits the bill nicely - it may not be a hominin but it is still a close relative from around the time that the first hominins evolved. That is why I was a bit puzzled to see MSNBC.com parroting a story written by the Discovery C........ Read more »
Jörg Fröbisch and Robert R. Reisz. (2009) The Late Permian herbivore Suminia and the early evolution of arboreality in terrestrial vertebrate ecosystems. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.0911
- May 27, 2010
- 11:23 AM
- 9 views
Fossil dog lived alongside "Lucy's baby"
The skull of Nyctereutes lockwoodi as seen from the side and above. From Geraads et al, 2010.
In 2006 paleoanthropologists working in Ethiopia made a spectacular announcement - they had found the well-preserved remains of a juvenile Australopithecus afarensis, one of our prehistoric hominin relatives. Quickly dubbed "Lucy's baby" this 3.4 million year old specimen graced the cover of Nature and numerous news reports, yet its description represents only a fraction of the paleontological wor........ Read more »
DENIS GERAADS, ZERESENAY ALEMSEGED, RENE BOBE, and DENNE REED. (2010) NYCTEREUTES LOCKWOODI, N. SP., A NEW CANID (CARNIVORA: MAMMALIA) FROM THE MIDDLE PLIOCENE OF DIKIKA, LOWER AWASH, ETHIOPIA. Journal of Verterbrate Paleontology, 30(3), 981-987. info:/10.1080/02724631003758326
- May 26, 2010
- 11:20 AM
- 10 views
Fish was fossil frog's last meal
The skeleton of Palaeobatrachus from Lake Enspel, Germany. From Wuttke and Poschmann, 2010.
In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin said of the fossil record:
For my part, following out Lyell's metaphor, I look at the natural geological record, as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; an........ Read more »
Wuttke, M., & Poschmann, M. (2010) First finding of fish in the diet of a water-dwelling extinct frog Palaeobatrachus from the Upper Oligocene Fossil-Lagerstätte Enspel (Westerwald Mountains, Western Germany). Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments, 90(1), 59-64. DOI: 10.1007/s12549-009-0019-z
- May 25, 2010
- 11:18 AM
- 9 views
Fossil feces from an Indiana sinkhole preserve traces of a meat-eater's meal
Close up of one of the Pipe Creek Sinkhole coprolites showing structures interpreted as hair (A) and a close-up of a mold in the coprolite thought to have been made by a hair (B). From Farlow et al, 2010.
Time and again I have stressed that every fossil bone tells a story, and, in a different way, so do coprolites. They are small snapshots of a moment in the life of an organism, often preserving bits of their meals, and while they may not get top billing in museum halls, they are among the........ Read more »
James O. Farlow; Karen Chin; Anne Argast;Sean Poppy. (2010) Coprolites from the Pipe Creek Sinkhole (Late Neogene, Grant County, Indiana, U.S.A.). Journal of Verterbrate Paleontology, 30(3), 959-969. info:/10.1080/02724631003762906
- May 21, 2010
- 05:15 PM
- 11 views
Hunters and the Hunted
A Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer), photographed at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.
Outside of the trash-grubbing black bears I occasionally come across when driving to hikes in northern New Jersey, I never encounter large predators near my home. The imposing carnivores which once roamed the "garden state" were extirpated long ago. This is a very unusual thing. For the majority of the past six million years or so hominins have lived alongside, and have regularly been hunted by, ........ Read more »
Blasco, R., Rosell, J., Arsuaga, J., Bermúdez de Castro, J., & Carbonell, E. (2010) The hunted hunter: the capture of a lion (Panthera leo fossilis) at the Gran Dolina site, Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain. Journal of Archaeological Science. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2010.03.010
Dunham, K., Ghiurghi, A., Cumbi, R., & Urbano, F. (2010) Human–wildlife conflict in Mozambique: a national perspective, with emphasis on wildlife attacks on humans. Oryx, 44(02), 185. DOI: 10.1017/S003060530999086X
Caldicott DG, Croser D, Manolis C, Webb G, & Britton A. (2005) Crocodile attack in Australia: an analysis of its incidence and review of the pathology and management of crocodilian attacks in general. Wilderness , 16(3), 143-59. PMID: 16209470
- May 20, 2010
- 09:39 AM
- 7 views
Tiny treasures - 100 million year old mammal hairs trapped in amber
Mammal hairs preserved in amber specimen ARC2-A1-3. a - First fragment; b - Line drawing of first fragment; c - Second fragment; d - Line drawing of second fragment; e - Close-up of second fragment to show the cuticular surface.
About 100 million years ago, in a coastal forest located in what is today southwestern France, a small mammal skittered up the trunk of a conifer tree. As it did so it lost a few of its hairs, and this minor event would have been entirely unremarkable if two of tho........ Read more »
Vullo, R., Girard, V., Azar, D., & Néraudeau, D. (2010) Mammalian hairs in Early Cretaceous amber. Naturwissenschaften. DOI: 10.1007/s00114-010-0677-8
- May 18, 2010
- 08:14 AM
- 5 views
The majestic Megatherium
A restoration of Megatherium from H.N. Hutchinson's Extinct Monsters.
For over a century and a half dinosaurs have been the unofficial symbols and ambassadors of paleontology, but this was not always so. It was fossil mammals, not dinosaurs, which enthralled the public during the turn of the 19th century, and arguably the most famous was the enormous ground sloth Megatherium. It was more than just a natural curiosity. The bones of the "great beast" represented a world which flourished and ........ Read more »
Christine Argot. (2008) Changing Views in Paleontology: The Story of a Giant (Megatherium, Xenarthra). Mammalian Evolutionary Morphology A Tribute to Frederick S. Szalay . DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-6997-0_3
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