Awesome!
Deer in lion's den is fatally injured as crowd watches (Washington Post)

Lily and I were actually at the Zoo yesterday, but we certainly didn't see this go down.

YouTube video of the incident

This reminds me: In other charismatic megafauna news, my Shenandoah trip on Saturday saw a black bear along Skyline Drive. (...as well as twenty or so deer).

Labels: dc, mammals

(Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6 of this series...)

Today's episode: The route down the mountain, and the long way back to camp.

After our "summit" of the arete between Hanging Canyon and Cascade Canyon, we begin carefully picking our way back downhill, switching between talus piles and snowfields, and back again:




We popped over the threshold, and started dropping down towards Jackson Hole. As the sun was dropping lower and lower in the sky to the west, we were pretty much in shadow from here on down... but the light still lingered on the highest peaks, like Teewinot Mountain, Mount Owen, and the Grand Teton itself:


By the time we got all the way back down to Jenny Lake, the sun was pretty much gone. However, it was illuminating a tall cloud north of us, sitting atop the Yellowstone area. We joked that this was the big one: Yellowstone had finally blown up and the orange color we were seeing wasn't "alpenglow" but incandescence from the long-awaited eruption of the Yellowstone volcanic center...


It wasn't, though. Just a little jest to take our minds off the fact that we had missed the last ferry across Jenny Lake, and so that meant adding an additional "2" (it sure felt more like 3) miles to our hike. As darkness closed in, we hoofed it along (only Pete had been prepared enough to bring a headlamp). For me, a highlight of this long slog came when Joel and I spotted an animal I'd heard of but never actually seen before: a pika! They are very, very cute animals that live in talus piles and make little squeaky noises. But they're quite elusive, at least in my experience. I've seen plenty of marmots and other alpine rodents, but this was my first Ewok pika.

We eventually got back to the vehicle and rolled back to camp, getting there about 10pm. We wolfed down some dinner, quenched our thirst, and sacked out. What a great day! In spite of being dog tired, I felt mentally rejuvenated and ready to take on the second half of the Rockies trip.

This post concludes the Hanging Canyon series. Thanks for coming along!

Labels: mammals, nova, travel, volcano, wyoming, yellowstone

All photos in this post by Rockies student Charlie Corrick.

Talking S-folds, vergence, and Pumpelly's Rule in the Bridger Range:


Hiking uphill and down-sequence in the Bridger Range:


Describing the Kootenai Formation:


Jared gets eaten by Big Mike:


Joel with a few columns of basalt:


Post-M.O.R.-tour, with the guide:


Victoria and a Triceratops horn:


Group at M.O.R., with Tyrannosaurus for scale:


Calcified bat, Lewis & Clark Caverns:


Inside the cave:


Beartooth Plateau:


Amanda enjoys the view:


Camp at Pebble Creek in Yellowstone:


Watching for wolves, Yellowstone:


Bison:


Obsidian at Obsidian Cliff:


Longhorned beetle that landed on our geologic map of Yellowstone:


More to come...

Labels: arthropods, dinosaurs, fossils, glacial landforms, mammals, montana, wyoming, yellowstone

As a high school student in Arlington County, Virginia, I used to take regular hikes down a path called Windy Run, and then walk along the south shore of the Potomac River, upstream. It was in the days before I knew anything about rocks, and I was mainly appreciating other aspects of nature, like the plant life, the birds, the bugs, the salamanders, and occasionally something really cool like a raccoon. But I was aware that the scene I observed and enjoyed was not the same scene that had always persisted.

I heard rumors from my uncle about patches of woods inside the DC Beltway that preserved virgin forest -- giant trees that gave a hint of the former majesty of this eastern hardwood forest. I read about an eastern herd of bison that would migrate north and south through the Piedmont and Coastal Plain, crossing the Potomac near Alexandria (before we killed them all). I noticed a gazillion deer, and had it explained to me that the lack of predators like cougars and wolves resulted in the herbivores' population explosion. We used to have elk here, but European colonists had extirpated them. The last of the bison were killed off by 1800, and the final elk met a bullet around 1850. This used to be a pretty wild place!

I observed trash nearly constantly, often mixed obscenely with natural debris, sheathed in mud, or woven into birds' nests. Every few minutes, a jet airplane on its approach to National Airport would thunder overhead. Those of us who lived in the flight path would learn to automatically put conversations on "pause" during the 30 seconds it took for the planes to pass. Visitors didn't know what to do about the noise; it was too pervasive to be ignored. But live here long enough, and you learned to ignore it. You adapted, like the birds adapted by putting aluminum foil and plastic bags into their nests.

And the river itself? It's gross. In the modern day, it's constantly muddy and silty, with a foul-smelling sewage/sediment biofilm all over the rocks and logs in the water. There's scummy flotsam and rumors that you'll get a rash if you swim in it. There's people fishing down by Teddy Roosevelt Island, and you have to wonder why... They're not going to eat the fish they catch out of this polluted stream, are they?

The theme of this month's Accretionary Wedge is "time warp." The Wedge is a geoblog 'carnival,' though it's been inactive for a while, this month sees its return to 'accreting.' For those of you who are new readers to NOVA Geoblog, it's probably a great opportunity to check out some of the dozens of other interesting geoblogs out there. So what does this have to do with my reflections on the local woods, and the Potomac River? This month's Wedge host is Lockwood from Outside the Interzone. He asked geobloggers, "Where and when would you most like to visit to witness and analyze an event in Earth's history?"

I'm going to use my time travel experience to go back in time right here, in Washington, DC. I want to go back to 1491*. I want to see what my home looked like before European settlers showed up and brought their particular brand of industrialization / civilization / land use changes / ecological perturbations to the Potomac River valley. It may surprise readers to learn that I'd opt for this -- a simple experience of pre-colonization North American nature -- over something tectonic and structural, but that's what calls to me on a deep, emotional level. I want to see a vibrant ecosystem with big trees. I want to see the water of the Potomac River look like water; I want to go swimming in it. I want to see what bird migration looked like before it dropped off so precipitously. I want to see a passenger pigeon, a carolina parakeet. I want to see for myself what a healthy amphibian population looks like. And bison fording the Potomac in Alexandria... perhaps emerging from the clear water with the autumn colors ablaze on the far side of the river? That would just be... awesome.

* Note that there's a good book by this same name, on this same theme, 1491. The book makes the case that there was already a lot of landscape/ecological modification playing out before Europeans arrived: that native Americans played a significant role in messing with natural systems and we shouldn't imagine an ecological paradise, just less of an ecological disaster.

Of course, going back to 1491 may have some negative aspects to it: there would be malaria endemic to DC at that time, and the native tribes might not take kindly to a time traveler popping in to ogle their forested homes. But I'll take those risks (they exist today in other places I've visited), since the pay-off would be such a profound deepening of perspective.

If I had the ability to go back in time, I'd use it to gain experience with pre-colonial North America. I'd check out the same river banks I would walk 500+ years later, and see what we've lost.

...And, once I've seen that former world, I can't guarantee that I'd come back.

Labels: amphibians, birdies, blogs, dc, environmental, geologic time, mammals, piedmont, rivers, virginia

Elizabeth Kolbert writes about topics I'm interested in reading. I dig her.

The latest is a piece she wrote in last week's New Yorker entitled "The Sixth Extinction?"

It's about the decline in biodiversity around the world, using frogs succumbing to a deadly fungus and white-nose syndrome in bats as case studies in extinction. It has a decent (though not perfect) geologic perspective -- worth reading. The online version is hidden behind a paywall, but maybe you can access it at your local library.

Labels: amphibians, evolution, geologic time, mammals

Today's NASA Earth Observatory image of the day is of a place that is near and dear to my heart, the Etosha Pan of Namibia:



In late 1996, my father and I took a trip to Namibia to study termite mound gas exchange as part of an Earthwatch expedition, and afterwards we rented a car and went off on a little safari. Up in Etosha National Park, the wildlife was pretty amazing. Here's a leopard that crossed the road in front of us, immediately followed by a second leopard:



An oryx (or gemsbok):


...And an elephant, drinking from one of the watering holes that fringe the main salt flats:


Namibia has been getting a lot of water lately, as evidenced in compare/contrast images like these, also from NASA's Earth Observatory:

June 2007:


Last week:


And that brings us back to the first image:


In this picture, you can see a new package of river water coming south into the Etosha Pan from the Oshigambo River of Angola. This is "fresh" water, but it has a dissolved load of sediments in it. As the water hits the hot, baking expanse of the Etosha Pan, it evaporates, but the dissolved ions within don't have that option. So they become more and more concentrated, and settle out in a chemical precipitate. This is where all the salt comes from: even freshwater is a little bit salty, and when you evaporate it repeatedly in an enclosed drainage basin, evaporite minerals accumulate there.

Labels: africa, critters, floods, mammals, namibia, national parks, salt, travel

This will bring a smile to your face, no matter who you are:

Hat tip to the CCAN blog.

Labels: art, humor, mammals

This was forwarded to me today; I'm posting it as a "public service announcement" for local cavers:


Prepared by the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) Natural Heritage Program in consultation with members of the caving community and staff from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (DGIF). This statement is supported by the Virginia Cave Board, the Virginia Speleological Survey, the Cave Conservancy of the Virginias, the Board of the Virginia Region of the National Speleological Society, and the Butler Cave Conservation Society.

White Nose Syndrome (WNS) is a condition that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds-of-thousands of bats in the northeastern United States since 2006. It is associated with a Geomyces sp. fungus that grows at cold temperatures and colonizes the skin of animals in cold environments. This is consistent with properties predicted for a causative agent of WNS-associated cutaneous infection. More on WNS can found here.

This winter cases of White Nose Syndrome (WNS) have been confirmed in Pendleton County, West Virginia. In February, surveys of significant bat and recreational caves in adjacent Highland and Bath counties in Virginia discovered what appears to be WNS in Breathing Cave in Bath County, located near the Highland County border. On March 3 in response to caver reports of dead bats, a survey of Clover Hollow Cave in Giles County identified a second apparent WNS outbreak. Specimens from both sites have been sent to USGS National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin for analysis.

This winter, 18 Virginia caves in Giles, Bland, Page, Wise, Lee, Bath, and Highland counties have been surveyed for WNS. So far, signs of WNS have only been observed in Bath and Giles counties. However, since Highland County lies directly between Bath County and Pendleton County, West Virginia, along the same belt of karst, it is likely that WNS is present there as well. There is mounting evidence that humans may play a significant role in transmitting biological agent(s) responsible for WNS in bats. The strongest such evidence is that WNS is showing up first in the Virginias in recreational caves with high visitation. It is known that some of those cavers visiting the affected West Virginia Caves had previously visited WNS affected caves in New York. While it is unlikely that humans are the sole or even the primary vector, transmission of the disease by humans may increase both the rate of expansion and geographic extent of WNS.

The Virginia Cave Board and Natural Heritage Karst Program are asking for a moratorium (a voluntary ban) on all underground caving activity in Virginia until April 15, 2009. A new statement will be issued on or before that time. Please note that at that time, we may ask to further extend the moratorium. During the moratorium, three tasks will be accomplished.

1. Scientists from DGIF and DCR will work to identify significant bat caves to which access will be limited in an attempt to slow the spread of WNS by humans. A significant bat cave is defined as a cave used by rare or endangered bat species, significant numbers of common bat species, and/or a high diversity of bat species. Input from cavers is sought and encouraged. A list of these caves will be posted on the VAR List of Closed and Limited Access Caves. Please note that many of the significant bat caves are already gated, closed, and/or have limited (seasonal) access.

2. Additional caves will be visited by biologists to better assess the current extent of WNS in Virginia. We will work to temporarily restrict access to caves in which WNS is present.

3. DGIF and DCR scientists will work with other biologists studying WNS to establish and refine protocols to reduce the possibility of transmission of WNS by cavers. The two major protocols under consideration are listed below. Comment on these protocols is welcome, especially during the moratorium period. Cavers choosing not to observe the moratorium are strongly urged to follow these draft protocols. Once the moratorium is lifted, all cavers will be asked to follow protocols to reduce the risk of transmission of WNS.

Draft protocols to reduce transmission of WNS in Virginia by humans

1. Geographic isolation of caving activity and/or gear: Cavers are requested to limit their caving activity to one caving area as defined by a county or group of counties. The designation of caving areas appears at the end of this document. We are asking this because sterilization procedures are likely not 100% effective, especially since neither the specific causal agent nor mode of transmission has yet been definitively identified. Cavers choosing to cave in more than one of the defined caving areas are asked to dedicate a specific set of clothing and caving gear for each respective caving area. If you must go caving in multiple areas, complete disinfection of vehicles is recommended between trips to different areas. Special care should be taken to segregate any cave clothing and equipment dedicated for use in a given area from all other sets of clothing and equipment dedicated for use in other caving areas.

2. Strict adherence to decontamination procedures when moving between caves (even within the same geographically designated area). After exiting one cave and prior to entering another cave, even within a designated caving area, decontamination practices as outlined by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must be strictly adhered to. ALL equipment must be cleaned! These procedures are posted online here. To reduce the risk of harboring or carrying the disease on their persons, cavers should thoroughly clean and scrub themselves with soap and hot water following each trip to each cave. All clothes worn while traveling to and from the caving area should be laundered as soon as possible following caving trips.

List of Virginia Caving Areas
Alleghany Highlands: Alleghany, Bath and Highland counties
Shenandoah Valley: Frederick, Clarke, Warren, Shenandoah, Rockingham, Augusta, and Page counties
Middle James and Roanoke River basins: Botetourt, Rockbridge, Roanoke, Craig (except RT 42 south of Newcastle) counties
New River North: Giles, Montgomery, and Craig counties (only RT 42 south of Newcastle)
New River South: Bland, Pulaski, and Wythe counties
*Holston: Smyth and Washington counties
*Clinch: Scott, Russell, and Tazewell counties
*Powell: Lee and Wise counties
_________________________________________________________________________________
* - These areas are in the upper Tennessee River basin, and include the northeastern boundary of the range of the Gray Bat (Myotis grisescens). This species is not yet affected by WNS. If you are caving in these areas, please only cave in these areas. If you are not caving in these areas, please do not start.

Labels: caves, disease, mammals, virginia, west virginia

Brilliant! Especially in light of the new fossil evidence about the origins of whales released earlier this year.

From last week's issue of the New Yorker, which I've got time to read today because it's a snow day here in DC!

Labels: art, evolution, fish, fossils, humor, mammals

We now return you to our originally-scheduled photo-travelogue...

On the second day of our Andean mountain tour in Ecuador, Lily and I set out from Tambopaxi Lodge, our comfortable accomodation in Cotopaxi National Park:



We were going for a day-hike, checking out the scenery with our guide Diego while we acclimatized for some more serious mountain climbing in the days to come. The official goal of our hike was to check out two naturally-flowing cold springs, where the agua was pura, and safe to drink. Here's the first one, issuing from the base of a lava flow, with me awkwardly twisting around to raise a bottle of the good stuff:



Spring #2, of greater volume:


Some shots of the scenery:







The extinct volcano Sincholagua:


Me with Sincholagua (and lower cloud cover) in the distance:

A look back at Pasochoa, which we had climbed the day before:


And Cotopaxi itself, the charismatic, active volcano which draws most people to the park:


Critters:

A big insect, maybe a grylloblattid?


Feral horses:


We also saw some cool "primitive" plants (plants with ancient lineages):

Liverworts:


Sphenopsids:


Club mosses:


There was also some geology going on...

Here's a handful of loose lapilli (mixed in with some organics):


Stream deposits on the flanks of Cotopaxi Volcano, showing different water energy regimes. The coarsest layer in the middle represents the fastest moving water (capable of carrying larger particles of sediment):


And here's some flow-banding in andesite:


It started raining on our way back to the lodge, but that was okay, because hot showers and warm tea awaited there. Acclimatization, check! Next up, the peak known as Ruminahui...

Labels: arthropods, critters, ecuador, geology, mammals, plants, south america, travel, volcano

I'm very pleased to announce that my colleague Ralph Eckerlin, professor of biology at NOVA-Annandale, has been selected as a recipient of the 2009 Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. The award is the highest honor for faculty bestowed by the Commonwealth.

From the letter the President of Northern Virginia Community College, Bob Templin, just sent out to all the faculty and staff:

Dr. Eckerlin has served with distinction at NOVA since 1971. He has always given primary attention to effective teaching while also maintaining a strong record of research in his specialization of parasitology and making numerous other contributions to his profession. A previous recipient of college awards as the Student Government Association Most Outstanding Faculty and the Alumni Federation Outstanding Faculty Member, Dr. Eckerlin is praised by students and colleagues as an exceptionally dedicated and inspiring teacher. He takes particular pride in serving as advisor to students seeking admission to professional fields in biology and medicine, and in chairing or serving on committees to bring new faculty to the college who will continue the strong institutional tradition of excellence in the instructional program for biology and other sciences. He has sponsored student trips and conducted research in such locations as Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Mexico, Belize, and Costa Rica. Closer to home, he organizes regular trips to expose students to the wonderfully diverse biota of Virginia, whether in Highland County or the Dismal Swamp.

Beyond NOVA, Dr. Eckerlin has been very active in a number of professional societies, to include serving as president of the Tropical Medical Association of Washington, the Helminthological Society of Washington, and the Virginia Association for Biological Education. He also served as editor of the journal Comparative Parasitology as well as being a member of its editorial board since 1984. His numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals have dealt with a diversity of subjects, including mammals, reptiles, beetles, fleas, lice, nematodes, and protozoans.

Dr. Eckerlin is the seventh NOVA faculty member to receive this prestigious award. This is also the fourth year in a row that a NOVA faculty member has been a recipient. [...and the second year in a row just within the Math, Science, and Engineering division at Annandale -- last year, it was Walerian Majewski in physics!] He and eleven other faculty from Virginia colleges and universities will be recognized at special events in the General Assembly and elsewhere in Richmond on February 19.

Please join me in congratulating our colleague Ralph Eckerlin as one of NOVA's and Virginia's very best!

Bob

Congratulations, Ralph!

Labels: arthropods, mammals, nova

The day before Inauguration, I decided to celebrate George Bush's last day in charge of my country by taking a walk in the woods. Okay... that wasn't really my motivation. I was just procrastinating writing up my Structural Geology labs for the coming semester. Anyhow, for one reason or another, I took a stroll in the woods.

I brought my rootin' tootin' new camera with me, and took a few photos. I've got four things to show you: (1) some differential weathering, (2) some kink banding, (3) some cool effects in frozen soil, and (4) a critter.

(1) To start, check out this close-up photo of a stone bridge where the Klingle Valley merges with the Rock Creek Valley:


Several of the (local) stones used in the bridge are weathering at a faster rate than the mortar (cement) that holds them together. As a result of this differential erosion, the less-stable rocks are recessed into the face of the bridge:



Here's another one, where you can see that not all minerals are equally stable at Earth surface conditions. The large central quartz augen stands out in high relief as the micaceous & feldspathic schist around it weathers away.



Yet another: recessed about an inch into the bridge:



That's not all I saw. I also re-discovered the location of some kink bands along the Rock Creek Park bike path:



These kink bands are similar to the ones that Spring 2008 Honors student Victoria measured and analyzed in Broad Branch (also in Rock Creek Park), but these ones are in a different location, further south in the park.



What's worth noting about these kink bands is that they overprint the regional foliation of these schistose rocks. In order to do that, the force that generated the foliation must have been coming from one direction (call it east-west), causing the mineral grains to line up at right-angles to that stress. That allignment is what we call foliation. Later, a new generation of deformation came in from a different direction (call it north-south, approximately parallel to the foliation), kinking the pre-existing foliation. For more on kink bands in DC, see my "DC rocks" page.



(4) One of the disadvantages to hiking in Rock Creek Park in the winter is that it's pretty monochromatic. One of the advantages is that with all the leaves off the trees, it's a lot easier to see new stuff. It's great woodpecker-watching weather, for instance. I saw five woodpeckers of two species that day. Also, it makes it a lot easier to see where the trails are. I saw a new trail that I had never walked before, and so I decided to check it out. I'm glad I did. One thing that I saw that is pretty cool is this effect in frozen soil:



When water freezes, it expands in volume by about 9%, and that shows up here as the upper layer of wet soil froze, it expanded in all directions, pulling away uniformly from two large cobbles of quartzite. It almost makes it look like the quartzite cobbles shrunk in their "sockets," but really it's the "sockets" that got larger.

(4) Lastly, I was doubly glad to have taken the new trail because it was a "road less travelled" kind of deal. I was the only one there. As I trod along, suddenly I heard a scampering noise. It was a critter! It ran up a little gully and then paused as still as a stump, looking at me:



Can't see it? Try this zoomed-in shot:



It's a red fox! Vulpes vulpes, one of two wild canids we have in Rock Creek Park. Pretty good sighting -- only the fourth time I've seen one here (and I spend a lot of time in this park). And every one of those times was in the winter. Again, it's having those clean leaf-less views that allows hikers to see stuff like this.

Labels: critters, dc, ice, mammals, national parks, structure, weathering

Recently, Andrew Alden compiled a list of state minerals and state rocks. A quirky piece in today's Washington Post explores what Maryland is urging its citizens to do with their state fish: eat them. The story also, somewhat randomly, includes a limerick composed by Virginia's former governor and current senator, Mark Warner:

We have a state dog and a fish and a bird.
And of the fossil I'm sure you have heard.
So why not a bat?
What's wrong with that?
The state beverage is no more absurd.

For some reason, I hear this limerick in my head in Carl Kasell's voice...

Labels: birdies, critters, fish, fossils, mammals, maryland, politics, virginia

Hilarious! Nothing to do with geology, but when a cute dog dresses up for Halloween as the three-headed Cerberus, I must pass it on:

Click on the photo to go to the Washington Post's "Day in Photos" page, from whence it came.

Labels: humor, mammals

CNN reports on cougar sightings in the town of Blackstone, Virginia, a bit southwest of Richmond. The official line goes that since mountain lions (Felis concolor) were wiped out along the eastern seaboard in the early 1900s, they haven't been found anywhere except for a relict population in the Florida Everglades (where they are called "panthers"). But this one little town in the Virginia Piedmont has had more than the average number of sightings. I think it would be great if mountain lions reestablished themselves in the hills of the Old Dominion. Our deer population is out of control, and while it's unsettling to not be at the top of the food chain, ecosystem coherence takes a higher priority in my mind. Along similar lines, in 2004 it was reported that coyotes had moved back into Rock Creek Park, the large national park that runs through the heart of northwest Washington, DC. Park officials have suggested they wouldn't be surprised if black bears moved back in too.

Labels: critters, dc, florida, mammals, virginia

Labels: fossils, mammals, meetings, oceans, psw, smithsonian

Over the past couple of weeks, I've watched a number of videos that readers of this blog may be interested in. Yesterday, I blogged about A Private Universe and Minds of Our Own. Let me mention a few others today.

The Life of Mammals is a BBC production by the great David Attenborough, who also made Life of Birds, Life in the Freezer, Trials of Life, etc. etc. etc. (Attenborough has been making nature documentaries for the BBC since the late Miocene.) If you're into geology as part of a larger natural system, or if you happen to be a mammal yourself, this is a series well worth watching. Attenborough has a signature style involving showing up in different corners of the Earth, and carrying on a continuous narration the whole time. One moment he's in Tasmania, the next in Brazil, but his thought process is uninterrupted. The discussion is of the highest quality, without being too technical. He's got a real gift for this business. Five stars.

I also watched Walking with Prehistoric Beasts, from the Discovery Channel. It's about past creatures; Cenozoic mammals and birds. Because the animals it describes are extinct, it can't have footage of the narrator (Kenneth Branagh) strolling amongst the entelodonts or Andrewsarchus. Instead, they've used puppets and lots of computer generated animation to depict their subject. They're pretty clever about this, using "film" techniques that give it the flavor or an actual nature documentary: They mimic night-vision footage, for instance, as well as "handheld" camera shakiness, herds fleeing an overhead "helicopter" perspective, and the subjects nosing up to the "camera lens." While the animals they describe are quite interesting, I found the production to be a bit on the bombastic side, with pounding music intended to raise the viewers' adrenaline levels during a hunt scene, and so on. All told, the content wasn't as good as Life of Mammals, but I appreciated the way they handled the production, so I'd give it 3.5 stars.

Labels: critters, fossils, mammals, movies, teaching, tv

A new study in Current Biology looks at mitochondrial DNA evidence from 160 woolly mammoth fossils on both sides of the Bering Land Bridge, and finds that the beasts trooped east from Asia into North America, and then marched back again 40,000 years ago, at which point the Asian mammoths slid into decline and extinction. The interpretation by the study's authors is that the North American prodigal mammoths returned to the mother country and possibly wiped out their Asian cousins.

The original article on the Current Biology* site. *Link wasn't working quite right this morning...
Scientific American's treatment of the story.
An article in the New York Times reviewing the study.

Labels: alaska, critters, fossils, mammals, pleistocene, russia

Okay, so we've all heard what a stinker the new movie 10,000 B.C. is, right? I actually went to see it, on Geotimes' nickel, along with a couple of other scientists so we could assess the scientific validity of the film for the magazine. Afterwards, I went to enter my own "review" into Netflix (2 stars out of 5) and I noticed there was another "10,000 B.C." film in the Netflix library: "L.A. 10,000 B.C.," a program from the Discovery Channel that examined the natural history of the Los Angeles area during that same time. I decided to check it out, and last night I watched it.

My brief review: It's not really a traditional natural history program. Instead it takes fossil evidence and uses it as a starting point for a "reality T.V." style stunt program. They take three L.A. stunt actors and "train" them to be Ice Age hunter-gatherers. Then they build pneumatic robots to mimic the teratorn and Columbian mammoth, and the stuntmen and women have to battle them. No joke. This resulted in some cool visuals, though: the mammoth crushing a ten-pound can of tomatoes and having all that red spray everywhere (mimicking the head of a Clovis hunter). And the footage of the stuntman being tossed thirty feet through the air by the "angry" robot mammoth was kind of cool too.

But you can't really call that a nature program. There were some cool facts presented, but the majority of the film was devoted to sensationalism of the encounters between humans and these Pleistocene species. The film was also very repetitive, taking half an hour's worth of material and stringing it out into 1.5 hours. It appeared to have been designed so anyone channel-surfing could get an orientation as to what the program was all about regardless of when they tuned in. That's kind of lame if you're watching the whole thing from start to finish, methinks.

Labels: birdies, cenozoic, mammals, movies, tv