The Community Vents

The ’sphere’s a-bubbling with a delicious, super-heated upwelling of righteous ire:

First, Ryan of Genomicron viciously skewers lazy science writing with Anatomy of a bad science story. Just ten easy steps to ensure that your piece follows the “norms of journalism*!”

(* inflates significance, distorts results and fosters public misconception)

Then, perpetual paleo-curmudgeon, and actual doctor, Dr. Vector wonders,

“Really, seriously, what the hell is wrong with museum exhibit designers these days?“

Then he goes on to explain exactly what is really, seriously wrong with natural history exhibit design these days. “Not enough ridable dinosaur models” isn’t on his list.

A warning to science journalists, exhibit designers and readers afraid of the ‘eff’ word: these waters is hot!

Photos: Top left - black smoker from NOAA.

Bottom - Saddled Triceratops at the Creation Museum! Photo Jonathan Gitlin, from his hilarious Flickr photoset - creative commons.

Alien vs. Moray Eel

I‘m listening right now to fellow Davisites Rita Mehta and Peter Wainwright on local radio, chatting about their recent Nature paper on the raptorial pharyngeal jaws of moray eels. Or if you’d rather… the ‘Alien jaws‘.

X-ray of moray eel from Mehta and Wainwright 2007

It’s an awesome bit of research, and makes those creepy Little Mermaid villains that much creepier. It’s also an excellent primer on how to get the media to recognize your research:

• Step 1. Make an awesome discovery.
• Step 2. Relate your discovery to a popular Sci-Fi movie.
• Step 3. Sit back and wait for the phones to ring.

I’ll bet Aaron Rundus wishes he had titled his recent PNAS paper “Ground squirrels use an infrared signal to outwit Predator, and also, maybe, rattlesnakes.”

 

um…Go Aggies ?

 

Much more on the alien eels over at the Loom and pretty much everywhere else.

Flipping Out

Let’s be honest. For me, every day is “Rockflipping Day.” But, despite being the last, blistering day of my vacation, I found a few moments on September 2nd to turn a few stones in honor of International Rock Flipping Day.

My discoveries were rather pedestrian, no salamanders, no snakes, no scorpions, not even a pseudoscorpion. But, I got a few nice shots nevertheless.

First, a bit about the rocks themselves. At left is rock #1, which observant readers will note has a bit of an anthropogenic look to it. The “anthro” in question is my mother, who has taken up stepping stone manufacture lately. This one consists of four scallop shells, one chunk of chert and sixteen amber glass beads (well, fifteen as one has apparently popped out) set in a round slab of concrete.

At right, rock #2, as extraordinarily observant readers may have noticed is a continuation of the seashell theme, though in this case one with a considerably
more established pedigree. It is a roughly grapefruit-sized fossil oyster, probably Ostrea titan one of the ubiquitous (and consequently very dull) fossils of my childhood.

We’ll do #2 first.

Okay, so this one’s a blatant cheat. Not only is this Pacific Treefrog (Pseudacris regilla) atop the fossil oyster, but I took this photo on Aug. 28th, several days before rock flipping day. But that is the rock I flipped on the 2nd, and there were frogs on and around it then too, so I couldn’t resist.

Many other IRF day participants turned up amphibians (check out the flickr pool). Most amphibians began their life as aquatic larva and, because most need to keep their skins moist in order to survive, the damp undersides of rocks are appealing refugia especially in the heat of a summer day.

Here are some other folks with aquatic roots. At center is a slug, perhaps the Gray Garden Slug (Deroceras reticulatum). He/she (I’m not hedging here slugs are hermaphrodites) belongs to that predominately marine group of delectable gooey animals the molluscs, same as the giant oyster he/she’s hiding under.

Slugs and oysters have followed roughly diametric paths. Oysters bulked up on armor and hunkered down in the ocean perhaps none more so than the massive Ostrea titan. Slugs on the other hand, in a previous incarnation as land snails, set out for shore, grew a lung (the opening to which, known as a pneumostome, is clearly visible in this shot), and reduced the size of their shell until it disappeared altogether. This left them vulnerable to predation and dessication, hence the hiding under the rock in the middle of the day bit.

The isopods off to the right (or if you’d rather, rollie-pollies, sowbugs, pillbugs, woodlice etc.) belong to a predominately marine group, the crustaceans. In fact, they still have gills! This makes them one of the most reliable denizens of moist microclimates, logs, underneath rocks, leaf-litter etc. Hence their place of honor on the IRF logo at top. I’ve written more about terrestrial isopods and the bizarre color-changing infection they get in A Passing Glance.

Myriapods, millipedes and centipedes, are today restricted to land although they had some marine relatives in Paleozoic. They are among the oldest groups of land animals and perhaps the first to work out how to extract oxygen from air directly.

Nevertheless, perhaps in an effort to avoid predators, they still tend to favor secluded environments especially under rocks and leaf litter. This millipede seemed none-to happy to see me and scuttled off before I could snap a decent picture. Others, like the house centipede, actually venture into buildings and cause great distress. Perhaps just to ge back at the rock-flippers.

Distant, uniramian cousins of the myriapods, insects are another decidedly terrestrial group. They’ve been even more bold and successful in their conquest of the land. Even many of the aquatic insects still breathe air, either rising to the surface, trapping bubbles, or growing a snorkel off their back side. This black weevil, probably Otiorhynchus something, might be hiding from predators or it could be recently pupated, laying eggs, or just after my mom’s gardenias.

So Rock #2: three phyla and five classes, six if you count the oyster itself, though at 20 million years dead I’m not sure that you could. Next…

Pretty much the same story over at #1. Lots of isopods…

 

and an earwig pretending to be an isopod.

Best of all, was this Grass Spider (Agelenopsis sp.) who scores us one more class of soil invertebrate, an arachind. And everyone knows arachnids are the best. Next year I’m going to the foothills or lava beds or Arizona or somewhere with some guaranteed scorpions!

The Coming Storm

Of blog posts? If you’re lucky.

But, we move in two days, so don’t count on it. The shot above is the Pozo schoolhouse, where my grandmother learned letters and figuring and such. In the background, the fronds of last Wednesday night’s electrical fury.

Just down the hill to the right, and back some seventy years, is the great-grandparents’ homestead

where we weathered the storm and listened to Nancy Sinatra and Lou Reed LPs. The Turkey Condors rattled their wings in the Ghost Pines and it sounded like thunder…

A complete account to come. Perhaps. While you’re waiting go take a draught off the latest lagerstatten, a.k.a Boneyard IV, a.k.a. Der Boneyardenhausensteinen over at When Pigs Fly Returns.

Melozoics

The ethical paleontologist has a list up of her top-five dinosaur songs and, given my recent penchant for posting rock videos…how can I resist a list of my own?

First, place crests down, is the haunting song of Parasaurolophus as reconstructed by Dr. Carl Diegert of Sandia National Lab and Dr. Thomas E. Williamson of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (seen above). I won’t even go into how they did it although these pics give clues, click ‘em for more info.

It sort of reminds me of Close Encounters…maybe Parasaurolophus is trying to communicate to us across the depths of time. What’s that girl? A well?

What? Oh, never mind I guess you want drums and guitars and stuff? The rest in all their wetubey goodness are below the…

 

Oh, eff.

Great. Cristopher Taylor, goes and insults gulper eels and this is what we get. Way to piss off the Cosmic Gulper, Christopher, thanks a lot.

Actually, Christopher’s post is great and while I knew about gulpers and their decidedly goofier-looking cousins the bobtailed snipe eels, I was unaware of the weirdest of the lot the aptly-named one-jawed eels. And reading the post inspired me to dust off a forgotten favorite of my personal bestiary.

I dreamed up the CG during freshman year Marine Science. When the lecture strayed into fictitious fancies like Ekman flow and Ferrel cells, I got to inventing myself. I sketched this guy many times trying to entertain the cute redhead that sat next to me. I had no idea that her hair color was a fiction too!

Okay, babe, let’s go take the dog for a walk.

Dude, these nuggs are like totally enriched

A few days ago, in the post about vampire bat breath, I pondered:

Oh those stable istopists what will they drop into the mass spec next??

Well, now we have our answer.

That’s right, reefer, herbage, kali, slang tang, chronic, da shiz, cheeba, kronic, the danky dank, ganja, I could go on but I won’t.

Every so often, a package of marijuana arrives in Jason B. West’s mail at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. While Dr. West may not be the only one on campus receiving deliveries of illegal drugs, he is probably the only one getting them compliments of the federal government.

Dr. West’s marijuana supply is decidedly not for consumption. It is meticulously cataloged and managed, repeatedly weighed to make sure none disappears, and returned to the sender (a laboratory at the University of Mississippi) or destroyed when he is done with it.

But, you just know they’re shotgunning the ICPMS.

Dr. West said his involvement in the project was not tied to any particular policy judgment. “I strongly believe that part of the picture in any policy development has to be the best possible science, and in cases where my work can contribute to that, I think that’s great,” he wrote in an e-mail message.

Yeah, whatever, narc.