"Dodo Birds". Black and amber chalk on cream paper. By Roelandt Savery, ca. 1626. Public Domain; click for source Any animated film starring pirates, Charles Darwin, and a dodo is going to be worthy of mention here, but Aardman Animations -- of Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run fame -- has outdone itself with "The Pirates!: Band of Misfits"...
The sacred Asian water lotus, Nelumbo nucifera -- the pedestal of choice for a variety of Egyptian and Indian deities. It's easy to see why. Public Domain.
The Midway Geyser Basin at Yellowstone National Park, teeming with colorful archaea and bacteria. Creative Commons Wing-Chi Poon. Click image for license and source.
Two plants in one. Both are mosses, but they look wildly different. Creative Commons ndrwfgg. Click image for license and link. One of the most astonishing secrets in biology is this: every plant you see makes two different plants from the same genome...
Sea cucumbers aren't all boring, trundling bags. Some of them swim -- and glow. Though I opted to focus on creatures found at greater depths in my last post, one of the creatures observed by the Deepsea Challenger expedition in the New Britain Trench at a relatively shallow 1000 meters was just such a swimming sea cucumber...
From the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary. Credit: Wikimedia When an avalanche tears down a mountain, a revealing, if inadvertant, botanical experiment is sometimes begun...
Anglerfish and comedy always seemed like a natural pairing. But it took internet humorist Ze Frank to bring the two together in one delicious dish. The natural history documentary parody series "True Facts About ..." by Frank has become a minor youtube sensation...
Confused by what this might be? So were scientists for several hundred years. Apparently, the occupant of this contorted alder root also likes hanging out on your floor.
Last month, I was lucky enough to be asked by fellow Sci Am blogger Carin Bondar to compose and record a short spot about my first February nematode post (Nematode Roundworms Own This Place) for our new Sci Am feature Best of the Blogs...
It's often said that we know less about the bottom of our own ocean than we do about the surface of Mars. The governments of the world, and our government in particular, seem presently much less than enthusiastic about exploring the oceans of our own planet than in exploring other planets (ocean research seems to have taken a particular hit in the last decade of Congressional budget cuts, although admittedly, all agencies have seen cutbacks)...
Preserved colossal squid? Or alien from "Independence Day"? You decide. The colossal squid at the Museum of New Zealand in Wellington. Creative Commons Y23.
Consider this image: Is it a work from a modern-day Book of Kells ? A Chinese seal? The cover of The Neverending Story ? No.Would you have guessed it is from a U.S.
The next time you find yourself becoming mosquito chow, remember this video: This is Strelkovimermis spiculatis -- a parasitic nematode, or roundworm -- casually escaping from an unlucky, soon-to-be-expired mosquito larva...
Mosses, which probably already have an inferiority complex, must feel especially inferior in Sequoia National Park. When you stand in the shadows of giants, how will you ever get noticed?If you are lucky, someone like Lena Coleman will come to your rescue.You may have recently read David Quammen's wonderful profile of The President, the second-largest tree on Earth and a resident of Sequoia National Park...
This curious creature, captured here under the microscope, is not a protist. It's an animal. An animal, in fact, that can be smaller than some unicellular microbes.
The beech orange, likely Cyttaria darwinii. These were sprouting near Ushuala in southern Argentina. Image courtesy Bruce Muller; used with permission.
Thermococcus gammatolerans -- a flagellate archaeon that thrives in hot, oxygen-starved waters. Note the tuft of flagella. This microbe lives in water hotter than about 160F.
An aplacophoran cuddled up with a bubblegum coral, according to Alistair Dove at Deep Sea News. NOAA Okeanos Explorer; public domain. Click image for source.
Toxic "parasporal" crystals of Bacillus thuringiensis. Jim Buckman/ P.R. Johnston. Public domain. In this photograph are elegant, microscopic agents of death.
The Ediacaran fossils Dickinsonia (big guys) and Parvancorina (little shield-shaped guy at lower left). Photo by Gregory Retallack. Does these look like lichens to you?
