May 2011
13 posts
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April 2011
34 posts
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Calvatia gigantea, Lycoperdon perlatum.
Calvatia gigantea.
I’ll be delivering a lecture on this species tomorrow evening, so I figured I’d link to a little information about it, (the actual lecture text will probably be posted here, once enough time has passed that my professor won’t google it, find my tumblr and accuse me of plagiarizing myself).
Calvatia gigantea, commonly known as the Giant puffball, is...
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Fossil Sirenians, Related to Today's Manatees,... →
April 24, 2011
What tales they tell of their former lives, these old bones of sirenians, relatives of today’s dugongs and manatees. And now, geologists have found, they tell of the waters in which they swam.
While researching the evolutionary ecology of ancient sirenians — commonly known as sea cows — scientist Mark Clementz and colleagues unexpectedly stumbled across data that...
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Mad as a Marine Biologist: What a Fad →
mad-as-a-marine-biologist:
[Here’s a piece I wrote in 2008]
What is a FAD apart from a temporary fashion that connects enthused people temporarily? (remember the exciting days of Tamagotchi or presently skinny jeans, more over skinny jeans on men! Temporary had better be the operative word of that sentence!)
Well, in…
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Bone-Munching Worms from the Deep Sea Thrive on... →
April 18th, 2011 -
A new study led by a scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego is painting a more complete picture of an extraordinary sea worm that makes its living in the depths of the ocean on the bones of dead animals.
Discovered fewer than 10 years ago off Monterey, Calif., but since identified in other oceans, the flower-like marine “boneworms,”...
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The Eyes Have It: Dinosaurs Hunted by Night →
From Science Daily:
The movie Jurassic Park got one thing right: Those velociraptors hunted by night while the big plant-eaters browsed around the clock, according to a new study of the eyes of fossil animals. The study will be published online April 14 in the journal Science.
This conclusion overturns the conventional wisdom that dinosaurs were active by day while early mammals scurried around...
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Crystal 'Eyes' Let Simple Mollusks Called Chitons... →
From Science Daily:
April 14th, 2011 - Using eyes made of a calcium carbonate crystal, a simple mollusk may have evolved enough vision to spot potential predators, scientists say.
…The three-inch-long mollusks, called chitons, have hundreds of eye-like structures with lenses made of aragonite, a type of rock. It’s the first time scientists have found an animal that makes eye lenses...
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Loch Fossils Show Life Harnessed Sun and Sex Early... →
From Science Daily:
April 14, 2011 - Remote lochs along the west coast of Scotland are turning up new evidence about the origins of life on land.
A team of scientists from the University of Sheffield, the University of Oxford and Boston College, who are exploring rocks around Loch Torridon, have discovered the remarkably preserved remains of organisms that once lived on the bottom of ancient...
