Vultural Studies

Just a short note to commemorate International Vulture Awareness Day -

My mother shot this photo of two California Condors (Gymnogyps californianus) near Big Sur a few weeks ago:

Here is how she described her experience:

Sunday was a real remarkable day. 6 or 7 condors soaring over the cliffs, water and roosting on a luxury home south of Nepenthe.  We also at the same time had a pod of dolphin below us .  It was unreal.  They were so close I couldn’t believe my eyes and almost fell down a cliff I got too close to.  It was a good day.

Wish I had been there!  Go check out more Multi-Vultural Awareness at The Ethical Palaeontologist, Earth Wind and Water, and Swamp Things.

And my own thoughts on this most beautiful bird here.

Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath

Pepsis wasp in the Eastern Sierra – 4.0 on the Schmidt Pain Index.

Dudelets

Chicago huh?  Check out my new blog: F U Durophage.

A Tenrec in My Pants

I owe you a T-shirt.  I’m sorry.  It’s tough being both a perfectionist and  a procrastinator, terribly difficult to get things done.

Anyway tenrecs get all over the internet now and then, lately now–over at Zooillogix.  Far be it from me not to keep a good thing going, so why don’t we drop a little Afrothere roll call huh?

Tenrecs?

Check. [them's Little spikez, Big spikez, Fatty, and Uptown Streaky for those of you keeping track at home]

Elephant Shrew?

Sweet.

“Spitzmaus” (German for shrew) works out literally to “sharp mouse,” which is wholly badical.  But you already knew that.  Anyway to paraphrase Voltaire, hermano here is neither an elephant, nor a shrew.  Nor a sharp mouse.

Golden Mole?

Word is bond.  But not a really a mole. uh, okay. Hyraces?

Yikes.  Nice grill yo.  Moving right along…

Aardvark?

Hey, did you hear the one about the bipedal pangolin? Damnit, there’s no time!  Stay focused…

Okay, okay, uh who have we got left?

Sirenian?

Well, dudelet I hate to break this to you, but you’re fired.  I mean, extinct.  But whatever, you’ll do.

Alright, I know I’m forgetting someone here.  Think, think…

Oh yeah:

Nicked this one from Crappy Taxidermy which turns out to be the best thing going on the world wide web these days.  You really ought to check it out.

Well, I suppose that wraps things up here.  Pax.

DISCLAIMER: No animals weren’t not not harmed in the making of this blog post.

A Sexy Little Otter

“That’s an otter.”  The furry brown head slipped below the water just as I realized what I was looking at, leaving behind an ever-expanding set of concentric rings.  My wife, perhaps justifiably, figured I was full of shite.  After several frustrating minutes of fruitless searching I was beginning to feel like someone who had seen a sasquatch after a few beers, “no, no, I swear I saw it.”

Then, there it was.  Three of them actually; frolicking, cavorting, chomping down fish with gusto and generally displaying that uniquely lutrine joy de vivre.  They appeared to be herding fish into the chain-link erosion control barriers that line the bank of the heavily manicured, eutrophied waterway formerly known as Putah Creek.  Every so often they would look at us and cough disapprovingly.

The wood ducks were not amused.  The carp sucked air anxiously.  The jumping galls bounced about like gutter punks.  The jackrabbits raced to and fro like robotic hares off their tracks.  The joggers trotted by powered by Lady GaGa oblivious to it all.  All a few hundred meters away from my office on an unseasonably mild late July afternoon.

Man, does this read like an Oryctology post or what?

Tanystrophic Theatrics

…with apologies to the Theatrical Tanystropheus.  Lots of “work” to keep me “busy” and away from “blogging” this “summer.”  But I did return from Europe with a steamer trunk of full of chocolate, some knives, and a shit-ton of pictures–so I’ll try to post a steady trickle of the latter over the next few weeks.

Ah, Tanystropheus: proof that the Creator has either a sense of humor or a cannabis habit.  Tanstropheus seems to be the only protorosaur that gets any play and generally I’m loathe to reinforce such hegemony, but one must admit the dude is wholly protarded in the best possible sense of the word.

While perhaps a bit out of date–and arguably biomechanically impossible–these diorama reconstructions at least convey to the museum visitor to check it: some crazy-ass critters called this planet home in the past. You can pierce your labrum, or whatever, but basically your species is pretty weakly conventional. Srry.

Eating fossiliferous limestone is bad for your dental health.

Actually, I think it’s cement but same difference really.  In case you were wondering/haven’t been keeping up with my semi-urban wildlife/food processing updates on Twitter I am in fact still alive and back from my peri-alpine odyssey.  Saw some incredible fossils and took some amazing photos, you should really see them sometime.

Also, making some tremendous leaps and bounds with the whole dissertation thing: for instance it turns out the enigmatic placodont Henodus actually ate 2×4s (or 38×89s, or whatever).

Who would have guessed?