Dangerous combination for tech geeks: Lego + Computers

I hesitated to put this online because my own husband is a computer geek and lego fan, and I don’t want to imagine my living room being invaded with these crazy constructions. So ssshhhhhhhh, nobody tell him!

The Sumatran Striped Easter Bunny

Good news: one of the rarest species of rabbit in the world was seen again, but for only the third time in the last 35 years. Wildlife Conservation Society's Asia Program has released pictures of a Sumatran Striped Rabbit (Nesolagus netscheri), photographed by a camera trap in Bukit Barisan National Park.

The rabbit was last photographed in 2000, and before that the last sighting was by a scientist in 1972. It is threatened by habitat loss due to farming and is listed as critically endangered by the World Conservation Union. But the sightin has given new hope to conservationists

Happy Easter!

Meme: My Life’s Goals

Tagged again! This time by domestika.

I’m not very good at this 'life goal' stuff. Some people make long lists of life goals, hell there are even whole books on the topic. Really I am a simple girl with only one goal: Happiness.

What makes my happy changes from day to day, so every day is different but I am happy most days. Today I am happy because I am wearing the red sparkly shoes my husband bought me:)

If you would like to participate in this meme, consider yourself tagged and leave me a comment to tell me where I can find yours!

Darwin Fish Contest

Here is your chance to come up with your own parody of the fish emblem! Ring of Fire is holding a contest to come up with a new fish, they will manufacture and sell the winner's design. Click here to read more and check out my submission (below), which to be honest is a big large and probably won’t be practical for manufacturing:) The contest closes on 16 April.

High Stakes Custody Battle for Fossil Dinosaur Continues

Custody battles for fossils can bring big money these days so it comes as no surprise that it was announced today that a 2 ½ year custody battle for the ownership of Tinker, a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex will continue. A federal court of appeal ruled that a the lease formed between fossil hunters, who dug up the 65 million-year-old fossil and the County of Harding County, South Dakota was valid. This reverses a ruling made last year that deemed the lease void because it didn't follow a state law that requires leases exceeding 120 days and $500 USD to go before a public hearing.

Tinker is currently interned in Pennsylvania. An offer of $8.5 million USD has been made for the extraordinary fossil skeleton. In 1992, South Dakota saw another a custody battle for a dinosaur skeleton: Sue, a beautifully preserved, 13m (42ft) long T. rex specimen was at the center. Claims to Sue were made by a local rancher, a team of fossil hunters, a Sioux Indian tribe and the United States Government. It ended seven years later by awarding the dinosaur to the rancher on whose land the find was made. He then auctioned her off at Sotheby's, the winning bid went to Chicago's Field Museum with corporate sponsorship from McDonald’s and Walt Disney to the tune of $8.4 million. To date, it has been the most expensive fossil ever sold, I wonder if Tinker will break the record?

Creationist Museum Signs

Earlier today I wrote post about how Tyrannosaurus rex ate coconuts and how all dinosaurs used to be herbivores, at least according to a new Creationist museum in Kentucky, USA. In response, a reader sent me some hilarious signs that would be well suited to the museum:

Environmental message
“Another flood will make fossil fuels a renewable energy source”

Cafeteria menu
“Fish Sticks are organic and are not your relatives”

“Today’s special: Buy a spaghetti monster and get a free drink”

Museum Shop
“The Danny Dinosaur Adventure Ride is closed today. Please visit the Adam and Eve organic fruit and pet store”

T. rex ate coconuts

A new museum in Petersburg, Kentucky greets visitors with a 20ft tall tumbling waterfall and at its base, mannequins of frolicking children play amongst dinosaurs. The Creation Museum, which cost $25 million to build, is home to many unusual sites: a diorama of ancient people overshadowed by a towering T. rex, Adam and Eve swimming in a river with giant reptiles, and even a scale model of Noah's Ark. It seems Noah solved the problem of fitting dinosaurs into his vessel by only taking baby dinosaurs. Indeed, the ark has a detailed display of many animals happily boarding the boat: dinosaurs cavort with giraffes, penguins, hippos, and bears.

Museum guides tell visitors that before Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise all of the dinosaurs were peaceful plant-eaters. In Genesis 1:30 God gives ‘green herb’ to every creature to eat and so there were no predators. When a curious museum visitor asks, why exactly T. rex had six-inch long serrated teeth, the guides go on to explain that T. rex used his big teeth to open coconuts. Apparently it was only after Adam and Eve sinned and were cast out of paradise that the dinosaurs started to eat flesh.

My opinion: I think the people who built this museum are smoking a bit too much ‘green herb’.

Dinosaur Blog

Found this great cartoon online. Sorry I don’t know who the author/illustrator is so I can’t give them the proper credit.

Evolution Videos

Laelaps has a compilation of hilarious evolution videos worth checking out on his blog. Highlights include The Flanders visiting the Hall of Man at the Springfield museum, The Family Guy’s version of the big bang / evolution and a great montage of Bush or Chimp set to an anti-evolution song sang by a lovely school choir. Click here and Enjoy!

Antarctic Amphibian: a fossil from 245 million year in the past

The beautiful thing about the Antarctic is that it is one of Earth’s last unexplored frontiers. New information about climate, geology, and paleontology is discovered regularly and today, the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology announced the discovery of a fossilised amphibian which lived more than 245 million years ago in the Triassic of Antarctica. Its presence suggests that the climate at the time was mild enough to allow cold-blooded creatures to live near Pangea’s southern margin, at least seasonally.

This news is of particular relevance to my work so I was very excited when I heard about it. For those of you that want to get technical, the amphibian, Parotosuchus was a large predatory temnospondyl that inhabiting lakes and rivers. For the layman: basically it was a 2m (6.5ft) long animal that superficially resembles a modern day crocodile, but was actually an amphibian.

Parotosuchus is differs from modern-day amphibians because of its form, large size and the fact that it was covered in a scaly skin. It was amphibious and so liked to live in the water and on land (but never far from the water) and swam in an eel-like fashion (see my posting from last month on the Robotic Salamander).

Previously, Parotosuchus remains have been discovered in Germany, Kazakhstan, Russia and South Africa, which up until now was its most southerly range. But in the Triassic, Africa and Antarctica were joined together in a supercontinent called Pangea so the find is not altogether a surprise. Parotosuchus was discovered in the Fremouw Formation of the Transantarctic Mountains, just six degrees short of the South Pole.

P.S. I stole the pic from the Tree of Life at http://tolweb.org/Temnospondyli.

In the News: Ancient Humans, Great Pyramids and an Antarctic Amphibian

Mystery of the great pyramids solved
Original Publication: Dassault Systems
Popular News site: CBC

Ancient human fossil from China collides with ‘Out of Africa' theory
Original Publication: PNAS
Popular News site: BBC

Antarctic amphibian
Original Publication: JVP
A synopsis of the original article will be published on this blog later today.

Meme: Why do you blog?

I’ve been memed by Greg Laden, who asked, “Why do you blog?”

Well, this blog is a recent endeavor (I started about a month ago) and my original intention was for it to be a place where I could ramble on about natural history, biodiversity and neat things I learned at school. But in the mean time I have become acquainted with the blogosphere, picked up a few regular readers and enjoyed interacting with fellow bloggers. I really like writing posts and I hope you will continue to enjoy reading them!

If you’re a blogger reading this, pass on the meme and leave me a comment to tell me where I can find yours:)

My postponed safari

As many of you know, the week before last I was set for my Indian safari with my sister, Reena and my friend, Cheryl. To make a REALLY long story short, my trip had to be cancelled at the last minute due to the embassy losing my papers. Quite frankly the whole experience was pretty frustrating and very stressful. So I decided to take a few days off anyway, visit my family here in England and potter around the house. It was pretty good and I hope to reschedule my trip in the future. So sorry for not getting safari pictures for you! I promise to add some of Reena and Cheryl’s pictures when they return.

Tomorrow I am back to regular posting, starting with the latest palaeontology and archeology news.

Thank you!

First, a big thank you everyone who gave Janine a warm reception in my absence including:

Luca Fenu of The Owl's Hide who contributed his own picture of Mount Etna to Janine’s Most Beautiful Volcano contest.

Michael J. Ryan of Palaeoblog who devoted a whole post (and humorous cartoon) to Fish Feet. Ryan’s tendonitis seems to be improving so lets hope he can continue with his regular posts!

John Hopkin, a new visitor who had an innovative approach to finding out what Janine’s secret volcano was:)

And finally, a big thank you to Janine herself who agreed to keep up my blog while I was away. She has done a stellar job! If you enjoyed her posts and would like to hear from her again, feel free to leave a comment.

Bye for now!

So I've come to the end of my time covering for Sarda. Its been good, and I think we had some fun which is the most important thing. Bye for now... Janine

April Preview

Upcoming posts:

*Jaws! *Floating gold *T. rex: coconut eater *My postponed safari

Result: Beauty contest

Well the votes have been counted and verified (by an independent adjudicator) and it seems there was an outright winner of the "most beautiful volcano" contest...

and the winner is... Kilauea, Hawaii


Just a little bit of extra info about Kilauea for those who are interested:
Kilauea is the youngest and southeastern volcano of Hawaii's Big Island. Kilauea is the home of Pele the Hawaiian volcano goddess. It is said that when she is angry the volcano erupts. Well this volcano has been erupting continously since 1983, so it seems Pele is rather cross about something. For more information check out the USGS website for some more great images and history of the volcano.

Thanks to all who voted!

Glastonbury festival record sellout!

Yet again the Glastonbury festival has sold all its tickets in record time (137000 tickets in 90 minutes)! Pretty impressive. If you're unfamiliar with this festival its the biggest greenfield music and performing arts festival in the world. It's held on a piece of farm land in SW England, and for the rest of the year it is filled with cows! Most people who haven't been to this particular festival would probably be under the impression that it's predominantly a celebration of music. Having been to the festival myself I would agree with this to some extent, there's a huge variety of musical genres on offer on seven stages.

However, this festival has so much more to offer: craft stalls, juggling school, theatrical displays, comedy, charity events, kids world and a huge variety of food and stalls from around the world. For a three day festival you could quite easily not go to see any bands play, and then you would probably just about have time to look at all the other things on offer. This of course would a missed opportunity. I've been to Glastonbury Festival twice and have seen such class acts as Paul McCartney, David Bowie and James Brown. For those of us who are unfortunate enough not to be going along (or are getting old and the idea of camping in the mud with absolutely revolting toilets is not appealing anymore...) its usually broadcast on the BBC in the third week on June. Bring it on...

Beauty contest

So my last two blogs have been a bit technical, but perhaps some of you have learnt something from outside your normal areas of interest. So I thought for a little break, and to let your brains recover we could have a beauty contest. My collegues have referred to this as gratuitous volcano-porn, but what the hell its friday afternoon! So which of these four beauties gets your vote as the most beautiful volcano?

First up: Mount Fuji, Japan. One of the most famous volcanoes in the world, and looking at this picture it's clear to see why.


Secondly: Mount Stromboli, Italy. Stromboli is famous for its "fire-fountains" and shown in tihs picture is a perfect example.


Thirdly: Kilauea, Hawaii. This low viscosity basaltic magma pouring from the volcano produces these spectacular lava flows...


...and last but not least: Parinacota, Chile. Its difficult to pick the "most beautiful" volcano from the Andes as there are so many equally fine candidates. However, for me Parinacota has just a little something extra.


So, the contestants are lined up and waiting for you to decide which of them is most worthy of the title "most beautiful volcano". Cast your votes!

New discovery in Greenland changes our view of early plate tectonics

An exciting discovery was reported in Science this week as evidence of plate tectonics occurring 3.8 billion years ago turned up in Greenland. Plate tectonics is the large-scale movement of the Earth's crust. New ocean floor is made by the spreading apart of these plates at ocean ridges. It was previosly thought that during Earth's early years it was too hot for this process to have occurred in the same way as it does today, and some other methods of heat loss have been suggested instead. However, the recent discovery of ophiolite sequences (ocean crust that is exposed on land) in Greenland has confirmed that the same ocean spreading senario thought to happen today also occured 2 billion years earlier than previously thought.



For further info check out: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/315/5819/1650b