I am obviously busy, but with enough time to quote rather than link. In that spirit let me excerpt a HILARIOUS rant, also from Locavore Hunter, on Bad State Fossils. What were these people (with the possible exception of the ones who picked the Utah Allosaurus) SMOKING? “I’m picturing the Kentucky state legislature being on …
Tag: Paleontology
Science Links
A BBC news article seems to point to the “Overkill Hypothesis” as the major cause of the extinction of the American megafauna. Studies of dung preserved in a Wisconsin lake suggest “… a slow decline in megafauna that began about 15,000 years ago and appeared to last for about 1,000 years. “This discovery rules out …
A Little Science
Almost old news now, but Ardipithecus is likely to be important– she is so old (4 million years plus) and a forest creature, so we have to rethink bipedality. It isn’t for running on the plains, looking over the grass etc. And we are not as close to chimps as we thought– the split goes …
Mammoth Art
An incredible artifact, a piece of bone with an image of a mammoth carved in it, has been found in Vero Beach. It may be as old as 14,000 years. “No similar carved figure has ever been authenticated in the United States, or anywhere in this hemisphere. (Snip) “Etched into the bone by a highly …
Who Were the Cannibals?
More and more it has been suggested that we interacted little if at all with our close cousins the Neanderthals. Though there is still some controversy it mostly seems that we did not interbreed, finding each other too strange. Some have wondered, more in literature than in science, if the appearance of our hairier relaatives …
The “Mammoth Killer”
Walter Hingley sent this good collection of links, pro and con, on the possible asteroid hit that may have contributed too the late- time extinctions. Maybe we didn’t eat them all.
Sunday Links
Nagrom has an essay on ranch life, cowboy music, and an encounter with one of the greats. Paleontology, real and not so: Darren discusses the new long- “tailed” birdlike fossil (and tells us that some of its more obscure details are interesting); and shows us how certain Native American art resembles a hypothetical giant earthbound …
First Dogs?
New candidates for the first dogs? HT Cat Urbigkit. Maybe, though there also may be at least one older claimant. I wonder if DNA supports the multiple origins idea?
Book Reviews
A Childhood by Harry Crews (also re-read: Florida Frenzy.) Harry Crews is probably in his seventies, a professor of writing in Florida, and grew up among the rural poor of north Florida and southern Georgia.A Childhood is his memoir of that. Somebody in the NYTBR said that it is “..about a part of America that …
Azhdarchids! (And other Paleo Matters…)
Our favorite zoological blogger, Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology, has had a blog post (about giant pterosaurs stalking prey on the ground) turn into a peer- reviewed scientific paper (With Mark Witton.) Here is the post telling the tale, with many links and pix. They even have a “support blog” about the monster pterosaurs here. …