Science Notes
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We’re on the road again, heading for Washington, D.C. Among the roadkill I counted three or four hawks, half a coyote with a dead vulture beside it, and a yellow-crowned night heron.
We’re taking our return to Toronto in easy stages. This one allows me to visit the strange new dinosaur Nigersaurus in the National Geographic Museum and Richard to run along the old C & O Canal.
Yesterday, we got up in Savannah, Georgia, and went to bed in Wilmington, North Carolina. You’ll find a description and a larger map on my personal blog.
To my dismay, my friend here is treating melanoma with naturopathic and homeopathic “remedies.”
Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology gives us a run-down on some of the giant raptors that have developed in island ecosystems.
Sinraptor hepingensis is not a new dinosaur, but this is the first time I’ve seen one. It was discovered in 1987 and named in 1992. This carnivore was 10 metres long and a top predator in its region during the late Jurassic, 160 million years ago.
Ron Brown of The Framing Problem says,
In what is one of the top WordPress stories today, Karen at de-Conversion presents the story of an ex-Christian fundamentalist (Southern Baptist), Bryan, who after leaving his faith eventually finds meaning in wonder and promoting well-being in self and others. This is a beautiful story that speaks to the indescribable value of a number of easily secularizable Buddhist values: mindfulness, an intrinsic appreciation for ourselves and our world, and compassion for the self and others.
Hop over to his blog to read the story An Ex-fundamentalist’s tale.
Today we drove north from Coral Springs, Florida, to Savannah, Georgia. We took the scenic route part of the way: up some of the coastal islands from Daytona Beach.
On the way up the coast, we saw a couple of sandhill cranes. LotStreetWiz spotted and a roosting osprey by the side of the road.
We reached St. Augustine, Florida (founded 1635) about the time it got dark. There’s the remnants of an old and grim fort there.
We switched back to the main highway. It was dark enough between cities that I could see a lot of stars; in fact I thought I could see the Milky Way, but we didn’t stop for a look.
I’m back from the Dinosaurs of China exhibit in Miami, which was freakin’ awesome. Pictures were allowed and I took about 500, of which maybe 3 - 5 will be posted. But if you have a question about Chinese dinosaurs, drop me a comment or e-mail and I’ll see if I have something that illustrates it. I tried to take heads, hips, shoulder girdles, feet, etc. as well as whole animals. Small specimens were in glass cases and I don’t yet know how well autofocus (or my attempts to outsmart it) worked.
There was a herd of large Chinese dinosaurs that were unfamiliar to me, plus specimens of early birds such as Microraptor gui, and some other taxa (fish, insects) and plants.
One of the reconstructed dinosaurs, Dilong paradoxus, an early tyrannosaur, was feathered. This bony joint is surrounded by traces of its 3-cm long feathers. Because Dilong was feathered, we know that T. rex was probably feathered, at least in the juvenile stage.
See also Sleeping Dragon Posture.
I’ll be off to see the dinos as soon as my camera battery recharges. The Miami marathon is on today so I’ll be avoiding the running route if possible.
The Dinosaurs of China are at the Miami Science Museum: “14 enormous articulated dinosaur skeletons and 52 spectacular individual specimens, including 8 of the most rare feathered dinosaurs and birds from the fossil beds at Liaoning.” More on my visit later.
Ron Brown of The Frame Problem says:
On the evening of Friday January 25th the University of Toronto Secular Alliance, the Freethought Association of Canada, the Centre For Inquiry Ontario, and Skeptics Canada are teaming up with University College London professor, Royal Society member, and noted skeptic Dr. David Calquhoun to present Science in an Age of Endarkenment: Scientific Fraud, Quackery, Religion and University Politics at the University of Toronto. This is the UTSA’s feature presentation for the 2007/08 academic year and will be a must-see for skeptics and scientists in the Toronto area.
Toronto, Ont. (January 6, 2008)—The University of Toronto Secular Alliance, in coordination with the Centre for Inquiry-Ontario, will present Science in an Age of Endarkenment – Scientific Fraud, Quackery, Religion and University Politics with Dr. David Colquhoun, Fellow of the Royal Society, at 7:00 p.m. Friday, January 25 at the University of Toronto’s McLeod Auditorium, 1 King’s College Circle. A catered reception with the speaker will precede the event from 5:00 to 6:30 pm at the Centre for Inquiry Ontario at 216 Beverley St.
Roy Campbell, Director of Exhibits, gave a tour of the North Carolina Museum of Life Sciences to a group of science-bloggers. Above, he’s telling us about the arthropod festival before an impressive model of one of the larger arthropods, a preying mantis.
Hmmm, I don’t have a picture of the real catacombs, where scientists work for weeks and months with tiny drills and picks to liberate fossils from their stony beds; but I do have few pictures of the sub-basement, even lower, where research materials, specimens not on display, and yet-to-be-liberated fossils are stored.
…. First, there’s a science blogger looking an ostrich skeleton in the eye.
…. Here’s a science blogger inspecting the museum’s collection of hawk skins.
…. Some skeletons were too large for the cupboards.
…. Especially the bones of a right whale.
We just got back from a three-hour visit to Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge on the northeastern edge of the Florida Everglades. We were allowed to gaze from an observation deck at the real everglades. And we walked happily around earthen dikes of water impoundment areas where waterfowl were plentiful.
The impoundment areas are a test patch of the Everglades ecosystem. Sections are separated by dikes, and the researchers control the water levels to maintain healthy growth of the Everglades vegetation, produce plentiful wild food for native fauna, and discourage invasive species.
We saw broad-winged hawks, black vultures, great blue herons, great white herons, little blue herons, tri-coloured herons, cormorants or anhingas, possibly a green heron, possibly limpkins or wood storks, some dark heron-like birds, egrets, possibly ibises, coots, marsh hens, gallinules, lizards, turtles, and a few alligators basking in the sun. The alligators look at first glance like old tire treads. LotStreetWiz saw a dark snake about five feet long, which whipped away before I saw it.
We’ve arrived safely in Coral Springs, Florida, after a leisurely trip up the Florida Keys. (”Key” seems to be a corruption of a Spanish word for “island.”)
As long as we were in the Keys, we saw numbers of vulture-like objects.
We stopped at the Key Deer Refuge on Pine Key and saw four or five of the deer.
The Florida Keys are a series of islands off the tip of Florida in the southern U.S.
Today we stopped at the Key Deer Refuge on Pine Key and saw four or five Key deer. They are a half-scale variety of the white-tailed deer. This must be a young one; it looks no bigger than a dog.
The islands have protected the deer from predators and they have become smaller, which makes food and territory go farther. The Key deer are the smallest variety of Virginia white-tailed deer. They are found on about 20 of the small islands that make up the Keys, but in sizeable numbers only on two of them (Pine Key and No-Name Key). To combat inbreeding and help keep them viable, researchers have moved some deer from one island to another.
The gharial almost went extinct in the 1970s. Captive breeding and release raised their numbers to 3 000. (Numbers have been dropping again lately.) Now, dead gharials are washing up on shore: the cause is unknown. At least fifty, perhaps eighty, have died. It’s urgent that we find out why: pollution? a new disease? parasites?
The gharial is the most specialized of crocodilian animals. Its long snout is specialized for catching fish with sidewise slashes of its jaws.
