Japanese moms turn lunchboxes into art

Something a little different today. No palaeontology, just some oddball phenomenon from around the world.

The typical Japanese family's kitchen is changing. Stay-at-home moms are investing in sketchbooks, drawing boards, tweezers, nail scissors and scalpels to create culinary wonders. The traditional Bento box (lunchbox) is getting a makeover. Most school children pack a bento box every day and they are frequently purchased by office workers in train stations, convenience stores and cafeterias. But take a closer at what the kids are bringing to school these days.

Fewer kids and increased household income means that housewives are finding more time on there hands to cater to their children’s needs and desires. Combining classic Japanese precision and aesthetics with a desire to create delicious, nutritious and exciting meals for their children has led many women to create amazing edible wonders.

Trendy artistic themes include seasonal motifs, cartoon characters, animals and food. The 'watermelon' above is made of seaweed, avacodo, salmon, and black seseame seeds for the pips. The details are prized by kids who take great pride in their mother’s efforts.

Housewives have featured their lunchbox exhibitions in cookbooks, online journals, and tv programs such as Yayoi Brown's creations. One woman has even started a blog, Rico & Coco, dedicated to her art.

Call me old fashioned, but I think it is mad to spend hours meticulously creating a work of art that will be gobbled down by a six year old in five minutes flat.

Food imitates art imitating food

In the News...

Big news in palaeontology this week, Graeme Lloyd posts on yet another gliding reptile in This Life is a Fiction, Matt Celeskey discusses Oryctodromeus, a burrowing dinosaur in his blog, The Hairy Museum of Natural History and Michael Ryan declares that T. rex Wins By A Nose in Palaeoblog.

What was the biggest dinosaur?

If you’re a palaeontologist you’ve heard this question a thousand times. And if you’re not a palaeontologist you might wonder why you never get the same answer twice. Well you see the annoying part of palaeontology is that the most spectacular animals are sometimes only known from a single bone or sometimes a fragment of a bone and so ‘reconstructing’ that animal can be incredibly difficult (and controversial).

The famous French naturalist, Georges Cuvier once said
"Today comparative anatomy has reached such a point of perfection that, after inspecting a single bone, one can often determine the class, and sometimes even the genus of the animal to which it belonged, above all if that bone belonged to the head or the limbs. ... This is because the number, direction, and shape of the bones that compose each part of an animal's body are always in a necessary relation to all the other parts, in such a way that - up to a point - one can infer the whole from any one of them and vice versa."

This principal is key to the reconstruction of many giant sauropods, which are often found as disarticulated, isolated specimens and historically, estimates of their size have varied dramatically. The other day, my nephew, Ben and I were debating whether sauropods were the largest animals that ever lived on Earth. Ben felt very strongly for the ‘for’ side while I was in the conservative camp of ‘against’ because I thought that while sauropods came close, they did not exceed the size of Blue Whales (about 30-33m long and 150-170 tonnes). Well according to Ken Carpenter's most recent estimate, pictured below by Matt Celeskey, Amphicoelias fragillimus may have been an amazing 58m (190ft) long! If you want to read more about how this estimate was made, visit Matt's wonderfully entertaining blog, the Hairy Museum of Natural History.


Left back: Amphicoelias fragillimus - estimated to be 58 m (190 ft) long
Left front: Seismosaurus hallorum - 33m (110ft) long
Middle: Human, Homo sapiens - 1.8m (6ft) tall and African Elephant, Loxodonta africana - 4m (13ft) tall
Medial right: Argentinosaurus huinculensis - estimated 30m (98ft) long
Furthest right: Puertasaurus reuili - estimated at least 35m (115ft) long

Survival of the fittest: GM malaria-resistant mosquitoes out compete diseased relatives

A team of researchers announced today that they have genetically modified a species of mosquito resistant to the malaria Plasmodium parasite. And that these GM mosquitoes out compete their relatives because the infected mosquitoes suffer from effects of the disease. Experiments showed that from a population of equal proportions, nine generations after the insects fed off of malaria-infected mice, 70% of the bugs were the malaria-resistant type. This picture shows a GM mosquito, whose eyes glow green because of a second modified gene for green fluorescent protein (GFP).

I have strong beliefs about the genetic modification of foodstuffs because 1) we are casually tinkering with genomes nature spent millions of years fine-tuning - what makes us think we know what we are doing? Some times science has unexpected consequences. And 2) The desirability of ‘superior’ crops and livestock produced through selective breeding and genetic modification have created monocultural populations which are hypersensitive to environmental change and disease.

However, in the case of agriculture, most ‘tinkering’ is uneeded effort; in the case of malaria, a solution could prevent one million deaths each year. Will this disease be controlled by introducing GM insects into wild populations? Not in the near future, but may be someday.

Mauro T. Marrelli, Chaoyang Li, Jason L. Rasgon, and Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena. March 19, 2007. Transgenic malaria-resistant mosquitoes have a fitness advantage when feeding on Plasmodium-infected blood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Would this bear be better off dead?

Thanks to Janine for forwarding a BBC news story about a polar bear cub, estranged from its mother, being raised in a German zoo. While zoo curators say the bear is well kept, activists have stated that raising a polar bear in a domestic environment is inhumane and call for the three month old cub to be killed.

Click here to Watch the video.

Story of a Grizzly - Polar Bear Hybrid

The current issue of Nature celebrates Linnaeus’ 300^th birthday with a series of editorials, essays and features on the continuing work of taxonomists. One of the more provocative articles discusses the definition of species, including the status of the beloved polar bear,Ursus maritimus.

Polar bears are more closely related to some brown bears (Ursus arctos) then some brown bears are to each other. While the interrelationships of these species (and subspecies) is a surprise, it has long been known that the animals are closely related and has been evidenced (rarely) by the hybridization of the polar bear and the grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis).

This hybrid, though extremely rare, has occurred in captivity and has long been storied in arctic legends. In 1864 biologist, Clinton Hart Merriam, described an animal killed at Rendezvous Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada as "buffy whitish with a golden brown muzzle". A century later, Clara Helgason remembers a bear shot by hunters on Kodiak Island during her childhood in 1943 as "a large, off-white bear with hair all over his paws".

The most recent sighting of the rare hybrid was made, unfortunately, after its death. On April 16, 2006, Jim Martell, a sport hunter from the United States, shot a grizzly–polar bear hybrid near on Banks Island, Northwest Territories, Canada. Martell had paid $50,000, for an official license and a guide to hunt polar bears in Canada’s arctic.


Martell shot what appeared, at a distance, to be a polar bear but officials noticed that beyond the thick, creamy white fur, typical of polar bears, the animal also had long claws; a humped shoulder, scoop-shaped snout and brown patches around its eyes. The hybrid was confirmed by a DNA test.

The government returned the carcass to Martell. Though the hybrid species has no conservational value (like white tigers), it is an amazing phenomenon and I am sad the hunter kept his prize. I think he should have been compensated and asked to donate the pelt to a museum where others could learn about the phenomenon.

Lastly, I will note that the US government is considering giving polar bears a ‘threatened’ status. The Canadian government has a different perspective as anecdotal evidence from aboriginals and official wildlife surveys indicate the polar bear population in Canada actually appears to be growing. This of course is a notion that doesn’t appeal fit well with proponents of climate change, but that is a debate for another posting.

Regardless of controversy surrounding these amazing animals I hate that the government advocates rich people throwing out $50,000 for the opportunity to shoot one of these creatures. It is one more example of how Canada continues to sell its natural resources and decimate its environment for a few greenbacks.

Marris, E. 2007. Linnaeus at 300: The species and the specious. Nature 446, 250-253.

Roach, J. May 16, 2006. Grizzly-polar bear hybrid found -- but what does it mean? National Geographic News.

Sometimes bad news….

This morning’s posting was a hopeful look at biodiversity so I am a little annoyed at having to post on an opposite story. In 2004 fleeting video footage caught a glimpse of ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) in an Arkansas swamp, for the first time since 1944. Birdwatchers and conservationists were elated by the news that the long-thought extinct bird is alive in North America, however recently, the woodpecker's existence has been questioned again.

Extensive searches have failed to find any more evidence of the animal’s existence and Dr. Martin Collinson of Aberdeen University has re-analysed the poor quality video. He has suggested that the mysterious bird may actually be a pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) in flight. He cites the wing markings and the rate at which the creature flapped its wings as being more comparable to a pileated woodpecker than an ivory-billed woodpecker.

The Aberdeen researcher also argues that the missing bird's large size and colourful plumage (it is a dramatically coloured black and white bird with a red head) would surely have been spotted by now in the many follow-up surveys.

The 2004 video ignited hope that other extinct birds might be clinging to survival in isolated places and some still believe there is the lost bird will reappear. I hope they are right.

Sometimes good news….

This year did not start out well from a conservation perspective. On a macrocosmo scale, we faced the reality that the Baiji dolphin is likely gone forever after a 40-day search of the Yangtze River failed to locate a single member of the species. In 2006 the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) declared four species of French Polynesian birds as extinct and this year the United States Government realizes the need to classify the polar bear as a threatened species. We have a very rich variety of fauna in the world today, much of which is threatened by human expansion. Sometimes all we hear is bad news.

But today, some good (microcosmo) news: 60 years after the last sighting, a beetle thought to be extinct in the UK has re-emerged in South Devon. The short-necked oil beetle (Meloe brevicollis) was last seen in Chailey Common, Sussex in 1948 and was rediscovered by amateur entomologist, Bob Beckford, during a wildlife survey on National Trust land between Bolt Head and Bolt Tail.

The beetle gets its name from the highly toxic oil secretions it produces when threatened. Adult beetles lay about 1,000 eggs in burrowed soil, which hatch the next spring. The hatchlings crawl up vegetation and where they hitch a ride on the back of a mining bee. They are taken back to the hive, where they devour the bees’ eggs and the protein-rich pollen stores the bee intended as nourishment for its own larvae.

The National Trust says that natural habitat of the beetle and the bee has been decimated by intensive farming practices. The coastal strip of land where the oil beetle was discovered has been managed as ‘low intensity’ farmland, creating a habitat where the beetle could survive undisturbed.

This site will now be studied, monitored and managed to help ensure these creatures flourish.

"The discovery of a beetle that was thought to be extinct for nearly 60 years is an amazing story of survival, particularly for a species with such an interdependent lifecycle. It's great that this oil beetle, with its fascinating lifestyle, has survived against all the odds and is back in business on the south Devon coast."
-David Bullock, Head of Nature Conservation, National Trust

Image and original story from the BBC

Friday's Mystery Fossil Revealed

Congratulations to Mambo Bob for his response. Friday's Mystery Fossil was indeed a theropod and specifically a Tyrannosaurus but not Sue of the Chicago Field Museum. Rather, the picture is of a specimen at Palais de la découverte in Paris. Also, points Malacoda for his imaginative guess (an obvious asset in palaeontology:)

The image may be familiar to some as it was featured in my January posting, CSI: Garfield County.

Image copyright ©2005 David Monniaux.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This is one of my favourite videos of all time, particularly because of the cute mudskippers featured at the end. As is obvious by the title of my blog, I find the idea of fish with feet fascinating. So before you get to the video, a little indulgence:

Mudskippers are a group of marine fishes that are unique in that they have adapted a suite of characteristics to suit an amphibious lifestyle:

* Weight bearing limb structure
* Cutaneous air breathing (breathing through skin, mouth and throat)
* Ability to dig burrows for protection (from predators and for their nurseries)

All of these characteristics as well as their widespread sub tropical to tropical distribution means mudskippers have a lot in common with the first tetrapods. However unlike the first tetrapods, mudskippers are small: about 15cm long (the first tetrapods were large, some as big as 150cm) long and mudskippers eat crabs and insects (not fish).

Found: $20 million of marijuana

I can’t get over the stupidity of this situation: A truck of marijuana with an estimated street value of $20m (£10.3m) was left abandoned on a road in the city of Ontario, California.

The shipment was found when a patrolman stopped to help anyone that may have been in the marooned rental van. He then smelled the strong, distinctive odour and investigating further, he realized the vehicle was unlocked, the engine was warm, and the expensive cargo was all neatly plastic wrapped, ready for delivery.

Perhaps the engine overheated, and the owner was forced to abandon the vehicle or perhaps he just forgot where he parked, either way I figure someone’s going to lose their job over this one.

Original story spotted on the BBC.

Friday's Mystery Fossil:

HINT: Because this photo isn't at a high enough resolution, you cannot see the fine serrations on edges of the individual elements.

Come on, this one isn't too hard. Any guesses?

White Tigers: Species Mortality and Conservational Value

In response to inquiries after my previous blog entry, Macrocosmos and Microcosmos, I wanted to write about white tiger breeding and their conversational value.

First a quick history: white tigers are very rarely found in the wild. In about 100 years only 12 wild white tigers have been seen in India but they have long been a source of myth. They instill a sense of beauty and awe but folklore also calls them an omen of death, so while they are idolized by some, they are savagely hunted by others. This was the fate of one tiger, named Mohan, who was captured as a cub in 1951 by a Maharajah and his hunting party. Mohan was caged and was destined to father a significant portion of the world’s captive white tiger population.

Since the dramatic characteristics of white tigers are the result of a rare and recessive gene, all white tigers in zoos now are the descendents of Mohan or a other captive orange tigers whose recessive genes showed up through breeding programs. White tigers now represent a grossly disproportionate part of the captive tiger population compared to the natural world. The natural rarity of these animals and pressure from zoos and collectors to produce more white tigers means that current captive breeding pools go back to only a few closely interbred individuals.

"The white tiger controversy among zoos is a small part ethics and a large part economics. Owners of white tigers say they are popular exhibit animals and increase zoo attendance and revenues as well.”
- Dr. Ron Tilson, Conservation, Director of the Minnesota Zoo and Manager of the Tiger Species Survival Plan

Most genetic defects are recessive and so are masked by normal genes but with persistent inbreeding, genetic problems are amplified and accumulated resulting in disabilities and high mortality rates. Dr. Daniel C. Laughlin (Consultant for Big Cat Rescue) estimates that 80% of white tiger cubs die from birth defects associated with the inbreeding necessary to cause a white coat.

Of those surviving, most have such profound birth defects, such as strabismus (cross eyes), retinal degeneration, cleft palates, scoliosis of the spine, clubbed feet, as immune deficiency, and kidney abnormalities. This means that only a small percentage are suitable for display and are poor performers and so after the great expense and effort spent on breeding them, they cannot all be used for their intended purpose. In addition to the phyical problems associated with these animals there are also mental impairments such as depression and unpredictable behaviour.

The world’s most famous white tigers performed in Siegfried & Roy flamboyant Las Vegas show at The Mirage. The long-running closed its doors when one of the tigers attacked Roy Horn in 2003. The tigers are still housed at The Mirage who continue to use them as a tourist attraction.

“Siegfried & Roy have dedicated their lives to preserving these rare animals [white tigers], and their efforts have helped save them from total extinction.
- The Mirage, Las Vegas website

The Mirage gives the impression that white tigers are a race that needs to be conserved. The public is generally unaware of the strains on the captive tiger population and to use white tigers as a poster child of conservation is an abuse of the public’s faith. Conservation is occurring of a ‘non species’ white tigers survive in the wild but only in extremely small percentage, as long as we preserve a diverse range of the more ordinary orange tiger we will preserve the white tiger.

"The Tiger Species Survival Plan has condemned breeding white tigers … they serve no conservation purpose."
- Dr. Ron Tilson, Conservation, Director of the Minnesota Zoo and Manager of the Tiger Species Survival Plan

Colossal Squid Found!

Sorry, my blog has been a bit squid-heavy as of late but they are interesting creatures and this one definitely deserves a mention:

Vital Statistics:
Weight: 495kg (1,090lb)
Length: 10m (33ft)
Commonly: Colossal Squid
Scientifically: Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni
New Home: Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand's national museum

This amazing animal was caught last month by fishermen in Antarctica's Ross Sea. It is now on ice, awaiting examination and preparation for its permanent display in New Zealand's national museum. Once un-frozen, the creature will be embalmed and then preserved in a natural position.

The Colossal Squid was first recorded in 1925 after two tentacles were recovered from a sperm whale's stomach. Since then, only a handful of colossal squid have ever been sighted because they live very deep in the ocean. Two others were found in the Ross Sea, and one turned up near South Georgia in 2005.


Image from BBC website.

Borneo and Sumatra clouded leopards are seperate species

Graeme Lloyd and Darren Naish post on molecular differentiation of two Clouded Leopard species on their blogs, This Life is a Fiction and Tetrapod Zoology.

Return to the Robotic Salamander

Earlier this week I mentioned the Robotic Salamander featured in Science. Basically, researchers have determined that swimming and walking in a salamander is controlled by the same pathway, the difference in the actions being the level of neural stimulation. Engineers have built Salamandra robitica to emulate this action with surprisingly good results.

I think the simplicity of the mechanism is brilliant and when Jenny Clack came to the University of Bristol today I asked her opinion on whether the creators of the robot can really claim to shed light on "the evolutionary transition from swimming to walking". Disapointingly she did not have an opinion on the piece however I passed the article on to Emily Rayfield who is a biomechanics expert in our department, I will let you know if she has any insights.

Ijspeert, A. J., Crespi, A., Ryczko, D., Cabelguen, J-M. 2007. From swimming to walking with a salamander robot driven by a spinal cord model. Science, 315:1416-1420.

Would the Real Indiana Jones Please Stand Up?

After my birthday blog on Roy Chapman Andrews, Darren Naish commented that it is a myth that Andrews inspired Indiana Jones. I admit that this is a commonly told anecdote and that George Lucas never specifically cited a person as his inspiration for the character. He apparently told Steven Spielberg when they first discussed the movie trilogy in 1977 that he had been inspired by movie serials from the 1940s and the 1950s. Though these serials may have taken their inspiration from the real-life adventures of Andrews, he had retired by 1942. Other possible candidates for Indian Jones include:

*Professor Hiram Bingham III, an American academic, explorer and politician who rediscovered and excavated the lost Incan city of Machu Picchu in 1911.

*Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett a British archaeologist who disappeared in 1925 while searching for a lost city the Mato Grosso region of the Amazon jungle.

But perhaps the most interesting of ‘inspirations’ is religious archaeologist, Vendyl "Texas" Jones, who claims the fictional character was modeled after himself. He pointed out that by trimming his first name he could be ‘Endy Jones’ and claims his name made it into the movie by way of Randolph Fillmore, a science writer who attended one of his digs before writing the first draft of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

While Lucas and Spielberg remain generally tight lipped about their inspiration, Spielberg has adamantly denied that Vendyl Jones had any influence over the Indiana Jones character. Lucas says that Indiana is the name of his Alaskan Malamute and that originally he had planned on using the name Indiana Smith (after the fictional western movie character, Nevada Smith) but that Steven Spielberg changed it to Indiana Jones. Also, Randolph Fillmore was not involved in writing the first draft of movie And fortunately, Vendyl Jones has now stopped making his claim.

Prairie Road Trips, Vampire Squids and Mr. Spock

I grew up in the prairies and one of my favourite ways to relieve the boredom of long summer road trips was to examine the different bugs splattered on the windshield. I would try to figure out which bug each splatter was and I was fascinated by the ways some left green smears or bright, thick, yellow splats. It made me wonder why animals have different colours of blood and how many different colours there are.

Humans blood is made of an amber coloured liquid called plasma and numerous red blood cells (about 25,000,000,000,000), which lend their colour to our blood. Each red blood cell uses haemoglobin (or hemoglobin) to transport oxygen, which gives our oxygenated/deoxygenated blood a bright/dark red colour respectively. With the exception of a few fish, all vertebrates use haemoglobin to carry oxygen.

I was surprised to learn how many other compounds are used by animals to carry oxygen. You may recall last week that I wrote about the vampire squid, which lives in the oxygen minimum zone (OMZ) of the deep ocean. In this hostile environment the vampire squid and many other animals use haemocyanin (hemocyanin) instead of haemoglobin to transport oxygen as it is much more efficient. Since haemocyanin is copper based, it gives the blood a bluish appearance.

Polychaetes, wormy sea creature, use chlorocruorin to move oxygen which makes their blood green when dilute, and vivid red at higher concentrations. Some bottom-dwelling worms and brachiopods use haemerythrin (or hemerythrin) an iron-based compound which is bright pink or violet when oxygenated. And vanadium chromagen, a pigment found in sea squirts, ascidians, and tunicates turns their blood green , blue or orange.

Back to the prairies: insects are quite different because they do not use pigmented oxygen carrying compounds which means bug blood is colorless, or sometimes yellow or green because of pigments in their food.

So maybe Mr. Spock could have green blood. Many movie monsters and aliens are inspired by the weird and wonderful side of Nature. You know the old proverb: Fact is stranger then fiction.

Albertaceratops nesmoi

News of a new horned dinosaur, Albertaceratops nesmoi made headlines earlier this month but I am a little behind! Though the dinosaur was discovered in 2001 and described in Ryan’s 2003 dissertation (as Medusaceratops) it has now been formally published. The generic name means ‘Alberta horned face’ and the specific name honours Cecil Nesmo, a rancher from Southern Alberta who aided the palaeontologists recovering the fossil.

The animal, known from a single complete skull and postcranial fragments, is from the middle Campanian (Upper Cretaceous) Oldman Formation of Alberta, Canada, and Judith River Formation of Montana, USA.

Distinctive features include: long brow horns a bony ridge over its nose two large outwardly-projecting hooks on its frill. Ryan’s phylogenetic found it to be the most basal centrosaurine known.

Ryan, M.J. (2007). A new basal centrosaurine ceratopsid from the Oldman Formation, southeastern Alberta. Journal of Paleontology 81(2):376-396.

Emma Darwin's Diaries Go Online

The diaries of Emma Darwin, the wife of naturalist Charles Darwin have been published online. The 60 pocket-sized books document six decades of her life with Charles Darwin, giving academics and enthusiasts a new perspective on the scientist.

The diaries begin in 1824 when Emma (then Wedgwood) was 16. She married her cousin, Charles 15 years later and kept a diary until she died. Her perspectives focus on visitors, dinners, and her family life. Emma Darwin’s diaries are available online at http://darwin-online.org.uk/EmmaDiaries.html, published on the same website as the complete works of her husband, which went online last year at http://darwin-online.org.uk.

Sneak Peak at DinoBase

As its name suggests, DinoBase is the ultimate dinosaur database and we are letting you have a sneak peak at it! Check out at http://dinobase.gly.bris.ac.uk.

*News – The newsest species, big finds and current controversies

*Forum – Chat and discuss all aspects of Dinosauria. To be come a member, visit http://dinobase.gly.bris.ac.uk/forum/login.php.

*DinoBase Kids – Q & A, activities, info on toys and movies

And of course….

*The Database – find info on dinosaur species, including discovery info, vital statistics and classification.

Enjoy!

10 (Actually 7) Weird Things About Me

I don't usually do Memes*, but this one is being circulated around right now and the answers have been always entertaining, sometimes revealing and occasionally downright hilarious. My list is 7 because I guess one weird thing about me is that I don’t have a very long attention span and I’m afraid that if you read 10 you’d never come back to this blog!

1) I love Kraft Dinner.

2) I hate organization, routine and structure. But I hate wire hangers more and my closets (one for casuals and one for formal) is the only organized part of my life. All of the hangers are the same, the clothes are all oriented in the same direction and are ordered by colour and then in the case of tops, by sleeve length. I am so obsessive about hangers that my husband is afraid I will turn into Joan Crawford (as portrayed by Faye Dunaway) in Mommie Dearest.

3) There are certain foods I only like on their own but can’t stand in anything: coconuts, pineapples, bananas, almonds, oranges, cherries.

4) I swear the best Chinese food in the world is in India. I know it sounds weird but ask anyone who’s ever had it!

5) I still keep up with the American soap opera General Hospital even though I now live on a different continent.

6) A friend recently pointed out that I have a habit of buying frames and hanging them up but never put pictures in. I realize now that I have empty frames in my living room, hall, guest bedroom and even my office.

7) All of my plants are named George

*A little trivia: Meme is a term that was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to refer to a piece of cultural information that is easily propagated between individuals.

If dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct: the evolution of dinosauroids

Horizon: My Pet Dinosaur was broadcast on BBC Two on 13 March at 21:00GMT. The idea behind the program is what would have happened if the dinosaurs hadn’t gone extinct? This sounds like a fantastic idea for a program and I am all for popularizing science, I believe public interest in scientific research is important. But some of these popularizations go to far; there are bound to be small anatomical mistakes in TV shows, even some hypotheses based on limited evidence, but what I hate is unreined wild speculation.

Several palaeontologists including Kristi Curry-Rogers and Phil Currie lent their names to this show and make reasonable statements about a world of dinosaurs today including:
“Adaptable dinosaurs had it all covered. Dinosaurs could have comfortably colonised many environments, from polar conditions to regions of rivers and forests, jungle and deserts”.
"We wouldn't have the modern animals that we're used to. Giraffes and elephants and so on; they just wouldn't have evolved because dinosaurs would still be here.”

But the show then goes on to state that dinosaurs like the bipedal Troodon with its good vision, long grasping hands and problem-solving abilities made it a candidate for a human-like evolutionary path.

Dr Simon Conway Morris says: "The human is extraordinarily well designed," he says. The whole arrangement is actually designed for a particular mode of life, which, as you can see looking around us, is incredibly successful…If it's such a good solution for us, is it so difficult to imagine it could be a good solution for a dinosaur, therefore a 'dinosauroid'?"

The show even includes full-sized, bold constructions of ‘dinosauroids’. Ok so maybe I am being to harsh and this is just a little fun, but I like my popular science to at least have some element of science.

Robotic Salamander

I am curious what palaeontologists who specialize in early tetrapods make of this Science paper. Jenny Clack will be visiting Bristol on Thursday so I hope to get her opinion then.

Abstract: The transition from aquatic to terrestrial locomotion was a key development in vertebrate evolution. We present a spinal cord model and its implementation in an amphibious salamander robot that demonstrates how a primitive neural circuit for swimming can be extended by phylogenetically more recent limb oscillatory centers to explain the ability of salamanders to switch between swimming and walking. The model suggests neural mechanisms for modulation of velocity, direction, and type of gait that are relevant for all tetrapods. It predicts that limb oscillatory centers have lower intrinsic frequencies than body oscillatory centers, and we present biological data supporting this.

Ijspeert, A. J., Crespi, A., Ryczko, D., Cabelguen, J-M. 2007. From swimming to walking with a salamander robot driven by a spinal cord model. Science, 315:1416-1420.

Happy Birthday!

Today is my birthday. I mean my actual birthday, because I started celebrating last week. I’ve seen all of my friends, most of my family (except my mom who is back home) and gotten loads of presents. It's been a pretty great celebration.

My birthday is shared with entertainer Liza Minnelli and American baseball player Darryl Strawberry and is a day after the death of one of the greatest explorers that ever lived: Roy Chapman Andrews died on March 11, 1960.

Roy Chapman Andrews was the real life Indian Jones, it was his adventures that inspired the fictional character. He was a naturalist, traveler, explorer and author.

Though he had a college degree he was so desperate to work at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) he took up a job scrubbing floors. A combination of taxidermy skills, an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, enthusiasm and ambition allowed him to finally convince the museum’s director, Henry Fairfield Osborn, to let him lead the museum’s most ambitious expedition: an exploration of the Gobi Desert. Andrews had to raise his own financial support and in 1922 made his first expedition to the Gobi to find the ‘missing link’ for Man. Bandits, venomous snakes, sandstorms were only some of the perilous and dangerous obstacles he faced. Instead of discovering human fossils, as he expected, he discovered mammals, reptiles and the first dinosaur eggs.

In 1934, after a series of expeditions to East Asia, he became the director of the AMNH and retired eight years later to the quiet town of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where he wrote about his adventures. If you haven’t read any of his books I would recommend doing so. I read his autobiography Under a Lucky Star last year which chronicles many of his life’s adventures. Tough book to find, but definitely worth the read!

Denizens of Deep Seas and Deep Time Part 3: The Vampire Squid

Its deep velvety black colour, huge red eyes and a webbing of skin connecting eight arms earned this animal the name Vampyroteuthis infernalis, which literally translated means ‘Vampire squid from hell’. It is a small, deep-sea animal, neither an octopus or a squid but a relative and phylogenetic relic or living fossil first described in 1903 by Carl Chun.

The vampire squid is an extremophile, living at depths from 600-900 meters (2,000-3,000 feet). Sunlight does not penetrate the darkness here, pressure is high and oxygen saturation is 3%. But the vampire squid is so beautifully adapted to its environment it manages to do more then just eke out a living, it thrives.

In order to cope with life in the suffocating oceanic, vampire squids have developed several radical adaptations. They have a very low rate of metabolism and instead of using haemoglobin to transport oxygen in their blood they use the more efficient compound haemocyanin, which colours their blood blue.

The vampire squid is covered in light-producing photophores over which the animal has great control. It is capable of producing disorienting flashes of light and can finely tune the size of the photophores as well as the intensity and frequency of flashes. If threatened, instead of ink, the vampire squid ejects a sticky cloud of bioluminescent mucus from the tips of its arms. This luminous barrage, which can last several minutes dazes predators and allows the animal to escape.

The Vampire squid is the soul extant member of the cephalopod order Vampyromorphida, which shares similarities with both squid and octopuses. Its relationships can be explored further on the Tree of Life website. Like many other deep sea animals it has no IUCN status as not enough is known about it to determine if it is a threatened species.

Denizens of Deep Seas and Deep Time Part 2: The Coelacanth

Coelacanths are lobe-finned fish, which vary in size but can reach up to 6.4 feet in length and weigh up to 176 pounds. Scientists have inferred that they can live 80 to 100 years. Their closest living relatives are lungfish and as fossils they can be readily identified by their distinctive ‘tail flag’. They were long thought to be extinct because their fossil record seems to disappear quite abruptly along with the dinosaurs and many other creatures at end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago.

In the winter of 1938, trawler captain, Hendrik Goosen returned to London after an excursion to South Africa’s Chalumna River. He contacted friend and curator, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, beacause she delighted in looking through his exotic catch for anything interesting. She noticed a distinctive fish, which she described as "the most beautiful fish I had ever seen, five feet long, and a pale mauve blue with iridescent silver markings."

She could not identify the fish from any of her conventional texts so she tried to contact her friend and colleague, James Leonard Brierley Smith. Since he was on Christmas holidays, she sent the fish off to a taxidermist so it could be preserved until his return. When Smith saw the specimen, he immediately recognized the distinctive tail flag of the coelacanth, which until that point, he had only seen as a fossil. This specimen,which he named Latimeria chalumnae to honor Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, can still be seen in the East London Museum.

A worldwide search for more coelacanths advertised a reward of £100 but it took 14 years for another discovery to be made in the Comorian islands. The locals all knew of the coelacanth, as it occasionally appeared in fishermen’s catches but they always threw it away as it is inedible.

The coelacanth proved to be elusive animal because its natural habit is deep ocean. Some species have been found over 2000 feet below. Coelacanths are now known in the Comoros, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania. And now that the conservational value of the coelacanth is known by the Comorians, when they are accidentally caught, they are returned to deep water.

You can read Smith’s account of the coelacanth story in Old Fourlegs, which though published in 1956, is still in print. The coelacanth ahs also found its way into popular imagination through the years; I am a big fan of Ogden Nash and so thouroughly enjoyed this poem:

Consider now the Coelacanth
Our only living fossil,
Persistent as the amaranth,
And status quo apostle.
It jeers at fish unfossilized
As intellectual snobs elite;
Old Coelacanth, so unrevised
It doesn't know it's obsolete.
- Ogden Nash

Denizens of Deep Seas and Deep Time Part1: The Frilled Shark & Goblin Shark

‘Living Fossil’ is often a term applied to an animal that has a fossil record very far back in time but no close living relatives. This is a loose definition and taxonomists will argue about its specifics but we aren’t going to hash it out. Most people have at some point or another have heard of living fossils and you could probably come up with a list of common suspects: gingko, horsetail, horseshoe crabs, sphenodonts and the platypus, an egg-laying mammal. A popular theory has also pegged the Loch Ness Monster as worthy of living fossil status since it is ‘a plesiosaur trapped in time’. But you needn’t look to legend and mythology to discover sea monsters that are living fossils because we are still finding them today. This is the first in a three part series about Frilled & Goblin Sharks, Coelacanths, and Vampire Squids.

Sharks evolved about 400 million years ago and so they have had a lot of time to adapt and change to their environment. Their great diversity is familiar to us all: from the fearsome gape of the Great White to the bizarre, almost laughable appearance of the Hammerhead. Sharks as a whole group have been called living fossils, though the term is probably best applied to specific species which have changed very little through time and have few relatives.

Recently, two amazing discoveries of living fossil sharks were made off of the coast of Japan. On January 21, 2007, staff at Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka, southwest of Tokyo, were alerted by fishermen to a 'strange eel-like fish with razor sharp teeth'. The 1.6 meter long female frilled shark appeared to be in poor health so was captured by park staff who placed it in a salt water tank. Unfortunately, the fish died a few hours after capture.

The frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus) was discovered in Japanese waters in the 19th century and superficially, looks less like a shark and more like an eel. Its distinctive 'shark' features include its eponymous protruding gill slits which form a frill around its neck The frilled shark usually live at depths of 600 to 1,300 meters, feeding on small deep water fishes and squid. Park staff believe the animal came to the surface because it was unwell and disoriented.

More recently, another strange creature, a 1.3 metres long goblin shark was caught swimming in Tokyo Bay. It was transferred to an aquarium but also died a short time later. The goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni) has a long pointed, rostrum and dwells at similar depths to the frill shark feeding on small fishes and crustaceans. The most striking feature of this odd animal is the snout which is thought to be an electrosensory device used to detect prey for capture.

Both the frilled and goblin sharks are so rare that only a few have ever been documented and studied since thier discovery in the 1800s. Their homes are so deep in the oceans that we cannot easily study their habitat, life history and reproductive habits. Ironically though we cannot reach them, it is likely that the polluting effects of our lifestyles reach their environment. But since we cannot determine if their populations are threatened by our actions they are not currently given protected status.

March Preview

Upcoming posts:

*Deep Sea Living Fossils *More White Tigers & *The Ultimate Dinosaur Database

Macrocosmos and Microcosmos: white tigers and the humble amoeba

This week pictures were released by Taman Safari Indonesia Animal Hospital & Zoo of two Sumatran tiger cubs and a pair of orangutan babies who have been sharing a home over the last month. All four were orphaned, rescued and are now being housed together at the animal hospital. The snapshots show gentle affection, playful behaviour and even a helpful orangutan feeding a tiger cub.

I am unsure what made the zoo decide to keep these animals together. Perhaps they are experimenting with bonding between species, or may be it was a more logistic matter of space. Regardless, the result is that the four have bonded and there are ethical dilemmas to consider in the near future. What if one of the animals gets aggressive and hurts the other? How will they react to separation if they continue to be as attached to each other as they are now? Holding animals in captivity means severely disrupting their relationship with their natural habitat and social structure. What are our responsibilities as conservationists?

I have long been of two minds about zoos. Like most people, I do not enjoy seeing animals in small cages and cringe when I see large animals display ‘stir crazy’ repetitive behaviour. But the greater good voice in my head says that without zoos we could not create awareness of biodiversity and fund many conservation programs. Of course safari parks are a way to ease the conscience over traditional zoos but despite their growing popularity, they have yet to resolve one of the most striking problems about conservation: a greater value is placed on the conservation of large, ‘sexy’ animals then small, ubiquitous species such as small mammals, amphibians, reptiles, insects, algae or microorganisms.

One example of this slanted perspective on biodiversity is white tigers. These spectacular animals are not a true breed but in fact the result of a rare, recessive genetic anomaly occurring in the more ordinary orange tiger (typically the Bengal Tiger subspecies) . Their fur is white or creamy, they have pink noses, usually blue eyes and black, smoky grey or chocolate-brown stripes or may lack stripes all together.

Until 1951, white tigers were a part of Indian folklore, then a rich Maharajah hunted and captured a white tiger cub and kept it in his palace. This tiger, Mohan, (the Enchanter) is thought to be the only white tiger ever caught in the wild. All white tigers in zoos now are the descendents of Mohan or other captive orange tigers whose recessive genes showed up through breeding programs. The novelty and excitement that such an animal generates means that now while less then 1% of the natural tiger population display the unusual phenotype, a significant number of captive tiger populations are white.

Since wild white tigers are so rare, the current captive breeding pools goes back to only a few individuals and there is so much pressure from zoos and collectors to produce more white tigers, that a host of inbred – related problems have begun to surface including strabismus (cross eyes), retinal degeneration, postural problems, clubbed feet, weakened immune systems and kidney abnormalities.

Zoos cater to the public’s demand of BIG! SEXY! FURRY! and FEROCIOUS! And so they over represent animals such as tigers, elephants, hippos and other macrocosmos. To get across the reality of biodiversity we have to make microcosmos interesting for people. Let’s be honest, does a kid runs up to a tank of water full of floating/swimming algae, amoebas and diatoms and get excited? No. Do children enjoy looking at sketches of insects and peering at them through a commplex dissecting microscope? No. So how do we bring microcosmos interesting? One of the best displays I have seen is at the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta. Their Burgess Shale gallery shows colourful large scale models of ‘swimming’ creatures in their marine environment. Visitors walk through the space which is dramatically lit and gives the real sense of being on a sea bed.

Media also plays a vital part. One of my favourite movies is Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou's 1996 documentary Microcosmos. 15 years of research, 2 years of equipment design, and 3 years of shooting went into making this amazing venture into the hidden world of a French meadow. Especially memorable are a gross scene of slugs kissing and a humorous excerpt of a toiling dung beetle.

Large screens, high resolution graphics and even CGI help bring attention to small organisms but I don’t know if amoebas will ever have much of a ‘cool factor’. Anyway, next time I am at the zoo, I am going to spend a little extra time appreciating the small things.