Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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Posts by this author
June 11, 2010
A twisted tree situated along a trail at Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah.
June 10, 2010
"Dinah", a young female gorilla kept at the Bronx Zoo in 1914. From the Zoological Society Bulletin.
Frustrated by the failure of gorillas to thrive in captivity, in 1914 the Bronx Zoo's director William Hornaday lamented "There is not the slightest reason to hope that an adult gorilla, either…
June 8, 2010
Welcome Maryn McKenna and her blog Superbug to Sb! And, in case I forgot to mention it before, make sure to check out Deborah Blum's blog Speakeasy Science, too!
Wildlife experts use civetone-containing cologne to lure big cats
In a scene reminiscent of the ending of Kingdom of the Spiders,…
June 7, 2010
In the part of suburban New Jersey I grew up in, almost every other school took the cougar for its sports team mascot. There were the Carl H. Kumpf Middle School Cougars, the Cranford High School Cougars, and the Kean University Cougars, among others. Nevermind that cougars were extirpated from the…
June 7, 2010
A female pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), photographed at Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah.
June 6, 2010
Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), photographed at Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah.
June 4, 2010
The "common cuttle-fish." From Mysteries of the Ocean.
About three decades before On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection would forever change biological science, the aspiring young naturalists Pierre-Stanislas Meyranx and Laurencet submitted a paper on mollusks to France's…
June 4, 2010
A Utah prairie dog (Cynomys parvidens), photographed in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah.
June 3, 2010
The skull of a spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta), photographed at the AMNH's "Extreme Mammals" exhibit.
There was something strange about the assemblage of Homo erectus fossils found at Zhoukoudian - the famous 750,000 - 200,000 year old site in China popularly known as Dragon Bone Hill. Despite…
June 3, 2010
A golden-mantled ground squirrel (Spermophilus lateralis), photographed in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah.
June 3, 2010
As you can probably tell from the last two "photos of the day", I'm back from Utah. It was a wonderful trip, but I have been too swamped with other projects/commitments to get this blog back up to speed. Regular blog entries will resume soon.
After reading S.J. Gould's Dinosaur in a Haystack while…
June 2, 2010
Just a few of the many hoodoos which can be seen in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah.
June 1, 2010
Grosvenor Arch, photographed in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah.
May 31, 2010
A young lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
May 31, 2010
The skull of Paranthropus boisei ("Zinj," "Dear Boy," "Nutcracker Man," etc.).
Louis Leakey had a problem.
During the summer of 1959 he and his wife Mary recovered the skull fragments of an early human scattered about the fossil deposits of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. The skull had been deposited…
May 30, 2010
A laughing kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
May 29, 2010
An okapi ((Okapia johnstoni), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
May 28, 2010
An ebony langur (Trachypithecus auratus), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
May 28, 2010
Color-coded diagram of a small bone bed containing at least twelve individuals of the Permian synapsid Suminia. From Frobisch and Reisz (2009)
When I hear the phrase "early human relative" I cannot help but think of an ape-like creature. Something like Sahelanthropus fits the bill nicely - it…
May 27, 2010
A young California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
May 27, 2010
The skull of Nyctereutes lockwoodi as seen from the side and above. From Geraads et al, 2010.
In 2006 paleoanthropologists working in Ethiopia made a spectacular announcement - they had found the well-preserved remains of a juvenile Australopithecus afarensis, one of our prehistoric hominin…
May 26, 2010
A huon tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus matschiei), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
May 26, 2010
The skeleton of Palaeobatrachus from Lake Enspel, Germany. From Wuttke and Poschmann, 2010.
In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin said of the fossil record:
For my part, following out Lyell's metaphor, I look at the natural geological record, as a history of the world imperfectly kept,…
May 25, 2010
Zeff the Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
May 25, 2010
Close up of one of the Pipe Creek Sinkhole coprolites showing structures interpreted as hair (A) and a close-up of a mold in the coprolite thought to have been made by a hair (B). From Farlow et al, 2010.
Time and again I have stressed that every fossil bone tells a story, and, in a different…
May 24, 2010
A lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
May 23, 2010
A small-clawed otter (Aonyx cinerea), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.