February 2010

  • The Jersey Devil

    By erika on 2/26/10 4:50pm
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    The Jersey Devil is an excellent example of what happens when European attitudes about the wilderness and religion were grafted onto the New World during the Colonial era.  Just the name "Pine Barrens" sounds terrible, doesn't it?  And yet, the Pine Barrens is a vast and varied wilderness, a valuable ecology, and the kind of thing that would be called "old growth forest" anywhere else.

    The Jersey Devil is also one of the few cryptids I know of which has no equivalent in the legends of the local Native American tribes.  Unlike Sasquatch or the Swamp Ape, the Jersey Devil was never seen by the local tribes before the arrival of Europeans.  That's your first hint about what's going on!


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  • Croc-Eating Snakes!

    By sarajean on 2/26/10 12:11am
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    Crikey, a croc-eating snake!

    This is something that the late, beloved, possibly crazy Steve Irwin would have been very interested in, methinks: an ancient 45-foot long snake that ate—you guessed it—crocodiles!

    The Titanoboa, which means Titanic Boa, lived 60 to 58 million years ago, after the extinction of the dinosaurs. Given that the ancient ancestors of the crocodile, the Cerrejonisuchus improcerus, were only six to seven feet long, they were pretty much pre-packaged and snack-sized for the big snake. The ancient crocs, of course, would have been both predator and prey, notes Florida Museum paleontologist Jonathan Bloch.

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  • Killer Dolphins On The Hunt For Bigger Prey

    By erika on 2/24/10 5:40pm
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    Snorky Mad!Snorky Mad!When the corpses of porpoises began washing up on the beaches of Scotland, and the corpses of baby dolphins off the shores of Virginia in 1997, marine scientists were baffled.  But the evidence was conclusive, and some videotaped evidence sealed the verdict: it was the work of dolphins.

    Many people think of dolphins as peaceful, fish eating oceangoing geniuses with a permanent smile.  Now it appears that at the end, instead of waving goodbye and thanking us for all the fish, the dolphins may be preparing to attack.  And really, who could blame them?


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  • "New" Fossil Fish Found

    By erika on 2/19/10 3:11pm
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    PachycormidPachycormidThis article in Wired is yet another in a long line of examples recently of new species being "found" in the collections of museums.  I find this to be a fascinating phenomenon - it's as if museums were my dad's basement!  Anything could be in there!

    Paleobiologist Matt Friedman and five other colleagues found the fossils of two huge prehistoric filter feeding fishes from the pachycormid genus.  Pachycormids were huge fish that drifted slowly through the seas, sucking down whatever prehistoric plankton and other small animals were caught by its filter feeding plates.  They filled the same ecological niche as whales and whale sharks do today.


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  • The Indonesian Dragon and Operation Wallacea

    By erika on 2/17/10 6:30pm
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    This adorable little dragon was recently discovered during a herpetology study in Indonesia.  Although it is most likely related to the gliding dragons, a well described albeit somewhat rare species of lizard, it is making a big splash across the internet today.  (Perhaps because dragon jokes are just so easy for us internet folks! And because it is really really cute.)

    The beautiful russet wings of the diminutive Indonesian dragon are one of its most striking features.  The gliding lizards "fly" in the same way that flying squirrels do - with a flap of skin that connects their forearms to their rib cage.  In fact, the rib cage forms part of the "wings," as these movable ribs help to support the membrane during flight.


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  • Diplocaulus, Hammerhead Salamander: Extinct (No Really)

    By erika on 2/8/10 4:34pm
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    Diplocaulus ModelDiplocaulus ModelDiplocaulus is an extinct and unusual amphibian, with a distinctive boomerang shaped head.  It really IS extinct, although a Japanese sculptor's image caused a big stir a few years ago.  This image made the email rounds, and just like pretty much every picture that makes the email rounds, it was (sadly) fake.  

    A Japanese sculptor created an exacting replica of a small diplocaulus, then set it in a pan of water on his lawn and snapped a picture.  This proved to be sheer genius, even if he didn't intend it that way, because the naturalistic setting (as if he had just picked it up) and his wonderful work on the replica convinced thousands of people that it was real.


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