South America's Many Remarkable Deer
Deer are strongly associated with Eurasia and North America and less so with the other regions of the world. In this brief article - part of which is an excerpt from my 2013 article on the conservation status of South American mammals (Naish 2013) - I'm going to say a few things about the deer [...]
Looking Back on 40 Years of Lucy
Paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson's first glimpse of Lucy came on November 24, 1974
40 Years After Lucy: The Fossil That Revolutionized the Search for Human Origins
Forty years ago today, a young American paleoanthropologist named Donald Johanson made the discovery of a lifetime in the arid badlands of Ethiopia's remote Afar region: a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton of a small-brained creature that walked upright like we do.
Life on the Volcano Is Increasingly Tough for These Hawaiian Birds
You have to hike a pretty long distance if you hope to see the critically endangered bird known as the palila (Loxioides bailleui), but if you’re lucky and work hard, you can walk their entire habitat in a single day.
Better Barley Let People Settle Tibetan Plateau
Importation of a frost-resistant barley from the Fertile Crescent to Tibet some 3,600 years ago is associated with the advent of settlements at 3,000 meters and more above sea level. Cynthia Graber reports
Cats Teach Robots to Land on Feet
Training rescue robots to land safely from falls like cats could give them nine lives in the field. Larry Greenemeier reports
Ants Abound in Manhattan's Slivers of Green
Ants—they're everywhere. Charging across your picnic blanket, sneaking into your sandwich and, naturally, marching one by one (hurrah!
Close, Peaceful Whale Encounters Captured on Video
I came across these incredible videos by John J. King II (AleutianDream on YouTube) and I just had to share them. These snorkelers are in such close and peaceful contact with wild humpbacks and sperm whales in waters near the Dominican Republic, and Dominica respectively.
Symmetrical Knees Predict Sprinting Speed
New research not only shows the predictive power of symmetry for athletic achievement but is a marker for overall genetic advantage
Fresh Mammoth Carcass from Siberia Holds Many Secrets
Scientists will examine the mammoth to learn whether it will yield enough undamaged DNA to make cloning the extinct creature a reality
Book Review: Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps
One of the most spectacular and visually fascinating Tet Zoo-related books of recent-ish months is Chet Van Duzer's Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps, published in 2013 by the British Library.
How Fake Fossils Pervert Paleontology [Excerpt]
A nebulous trade in forged and illegal fossils is an ever-growing headache for paleontologists