Burgess Shale Arthropod Locomotion

Skimming the surface with Burgess Shale arthropod locomotion. 2011. N. J. Minter, et al. Proc. R. Soc. B. Published online before print November 9.

Tegopelte gigas producing a trackway © 2011 M. Collins.

Researchers have followed fossilized footprints to a multi-legged predator that ruled the seas of the Cambrian period about half a billion years ago.

The research team worked with samples gathered from the Burgess Shale, famed for its exquisitely detailed fossils from the Cambrian Explosion, a time when life underwent a dramatic change with the appearance of all the modern groups of organisms and some bizarre creatures.

Fossil trackways and other fossilized evidence of animal activities such as burrows, bite marks and feces are known as trace fossils. These provide evidence of where animals were living and what they were doing, but the full identity of the producers is rarely known.

In this case, size of the tracks and the number of legs needed to make them left only one suspect: Tegopelte gigas. This caterpillar-like animal sported a smooth, soft shell on its back and 33 pairs of legs beneath. One of the largest arthropods of its time, it could reach up to 30 cm in length.

By analyzing both the fossilized remains of Tegopelte and the trackways, the researchers were able to reconstruct how this animal would have moved. The creature was capable of skimming rapidly across the seafloor, with legs touching the sediment only briefly, supporting the view that Tegopelte was a large and active top carnivore. Such lifestyles would have been important in shaping early marine communities and evolution during the Cambrian explosion. link

Died This Day: Willis O'Brien

(March 2, 1886 - November 8, 1962)

From his biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:

O'Brien was a special effects wizard best known to the world as the man who created King Kong. O'Brien was a sculptor and cartoonist for the San Francisco "Daily News" before he first dabbled in the medium of film during the 'teens. His work caught the attention of the Edison company, for whom he produced several short subjects with a prehistoric them. Titles include The Dinosaur and the Missing Link, RFD 10,000 B.C and Prehistoric Poultry. His method of animating small rubber figures, carefully molded over metal skeletons with movable joints, by moving them a fraction of an inch for each frame of film exposed, became the standard process of live-action animation.

In 1918 he made his most ambitious film yet, The Ghost of Slumber Mountain paving the way for The Lost World (1925), a major Hollywood feature which told of a search for prehistoric creatures. O'Brien's dinosaurs were his most realistic yet, and still impress today, even in the wake of Jurassic Park Still, Obie (as he was known) kept experimenting.

When producer Merian C. Cooper saw his work, he hired O'Brien to animate King Kong (which, up to that point, was to have been shot with an actor in a gorilla suit). The extraordinary success of King Kong (1933) spawned an immediate sequel, The Son of Kong (also 1933), and made O'Brien a hero to several generations of fantasy filmmakers to come. O'Brien won his only Oscar for his effects in Mighty Joe Young (1949), another giant-monkey movie, on which his protégé (and successor) Ray Harryhausen worked.

O'Brien worked on other giant-monster movies (including 1957's The Black Scorpion his last) before dying in 1962. Today, O'Brien would be kingpin of his own studio, but even in the wake of King Kong he had trouble launching other film projects, and many promising ideas languished on studio drawing boards for decades to follow. One of the RKO staff with whom he'd worked in the 1930s, Linwood Dunn, gave O'Brien his final employment, doing stop-motion figures for It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963).

In 1950 O'Brien received (finally!) a special Oscar for his work on Mighty Joe Young which was the first such award ever given for special effects. This film also launched the career of the next great stop-motion animator, Ray Harryhausen.

Born This Day: Alfred Wegener

Visit The Paleomap Project

Alfred Lothar Wegener (Nov. 1, 1880 – Nov, 1930) was a German meteorologist and geophysicist who first gave a well-developed hypothesis of continental drift. He suggested (1912) that about 250 million yrs ago all the present-day continents came from a single primitive land mass, the supercontinent Pangaea, which eventually broke up and gradually drifted apart. (A similar idea was proposed earlier by F.B. Taylor in 1910.) Others saw the fit of coastlines of South America and Africa, but Wegener added more geologic and paleontologic evidence that these two continents were once joined. From Today In Science History

Born This Day: Gavin de Beer

de Beer (Nov. 1, 1899 – June 21, 1972) was an English zoologist and morphologist who contributed to experimental embryology, anatomy, and evolution. He refuted the germ-layer theory and developed the concept of paedomorphism - the retention of juvenile characteristics of ancestors in mature adults).

From examination of the fossil
Archaeopteryx, De Beer proposed mosaic evolution with piecemeal evolutionary changes to explain the combination of bird and reptile features.

Born This Day: John William Dawson

Dawson (Oct. 30, 1820 - Nov. 20, 1899>) was a Canadian geologist who made numerous contributions to paleobotany and extended the knowledge of Canadian geology. Dawson was born and raised in Pictou, Nova Scotia, where the many sandstone and coal formations provided fertile ground for his first scientific explorations, which culminated in the publication of Acadian Geology. He made many important discoveries of fossil life, great and small. These included fossil plants, trackways of lowly invertebrates, footprints, skeletons of reptiles and amphibians, millipedes and the earliest land snails. When the famous geologist Charles Lyell visited coal deposits in Pictou, Dawson acted as his guide.

In 1851, Dawson and Lyell teamed up again to examine the interiors of fossil tree trunks at Joggins, Nova Scotia. They discovered the remains of some of the earliest known reptiles, Hylonomus lyelli, along with other rare fossils, propelling this part of the world into the international spotlight.

Dawson became principal of McGill College in Montreal in 1854, which he made into a reputable institution. He remained there, teaching geology and palaeontology and acting as librarian, until his retirement. One of his lifelong dreams was realized in 1882 when Peter Redpath gave money to McGill for the construction and establishment of a museum, naming Dawson as director. Today the Peter Redpath Museum of Natural History houses many specimens from Dawson's personal collection.

Info from HERE and HERE. Images from HERE and HERE.

Trog!

"A sympathetic anthropologist (Joan Crawford!) uses drugs and surgery to try to communicate with a primitive troglodyte found living in a local cave."

Directed in 1970 by Hammer Films veteran, Freddie Francis, this was Crawford's last film. Notable for lifting the dinosaur scenes done by Willis H. O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen for the Irwin Allen-produced film The Animal World.

"After seeing this film, Joan Crawford supposedly joked that if it hadn't been for her end-of-life conversion to Christian Science, she might have committed suicide due to her embarrassment at having been in it." link

A Smaller Ka-Boom! Chicxulub Impact Did Not Cause Deccan Traps

Antipodal focusing of seismic waves due to large meteorite impacts on Earth. 2011. M. A. Meschede, et al. Geophysical Journal International 187: 529–537.

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Researchers have simulated the meteorite strike that caused the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, an impact 2 million times more powerful than a hydrogen bomb that many scientists believe triggered the mass extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The team's rendering of the planet showed that the impact's seismic waves would be scattered and unfocused, resulting in less severe ground displacement, tsunamis, and seismic and volcanic activity than previously theorized.

"We began by asking whether the meteorite that hit the Earth near Chicxulub could be connected to other late-Cretaceous mass-extinction theories. For example, there's a prominent theory that the meteorite triggered huge volcanic eruptions that changed the climate. These eruptions are thought to have originated in the Deccan Traps in India, approximately on the opposite side of the Earth from the Chicxulub crater at the time. Our measurements indicate that a Chicxulub-sized impact alone would be too small to cause such a large volcanic eruption as what occurred at the Deccan Traps.

"But our results go beyond Chicxulub. We can, in principle, now estimate how large a meteorite would have to have been to cause catastrophic events. For instance, we found that if you increase the radius of the Chicxulub meteorite by a factor of five while leaving its velocity and density the same, it would have been large enough to at least fracture rocks on the opposite side of the planet. Our model can be used to estimate the magnitude and effect of other major impacts in Earth's past. link

The Oldest Oxygen-Breathing Life On Land

Sea Devils © DC Comics

New research shows the first evidence that oxygen-breathing bacteria occupied and thrived on land 100 million years earlier than previously thought.

The researchers show the most primitive form of aerobic respiring life on land came into existence 2.48 billion years ago.

The research team made their find by investigating a link between atmospheric oxygen levels and rising concentrations of chromium in the rock of ancient sea beds. The researchers suggest that the jump in chromium levels was triggered by the land-based oxidization of the mineral pyrite.

Pyrite oxidation is driven by bacteria and oxygen. Aerobic bacteria broke down the pyrite, which released acid at an unprecedented scale. The acid then dissolved rocks and soils into a cocktail of metals, including chromium, which was transferred to the ocean by the runoff of rain water.

"This gives us a new date for the Great Oxidation Event, the time when the atmosphere first had oxygen," said Konhauser. "The rising levels of atmospheric oxygen fostered the evolution of new bacteria species that survived by aerobic respiration on land. link

Born This Day: Julie Adams

Julie starred as Kay Lawrence in The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954). Adams has had a long career in films and TV, recently appearing on 'Lost'.

Born This Day: Giovanni Arduino

Arduino (Oct. 16, 1714 - March 21, 1795) was an Italian geologist, known as the father of Italian geology, who introduced the terms Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary in 1760 to classify four broad divisions of the Earth's rock surface, each earlier in deposition. Within each he recognized numerous minor strata, and had a clear paleontological interpretation of the age sequence of the fossil record.

The Primary order contained Paleozoic formations from the oldest, lowest basaltic rock from ancient volcanoes overlaid with metamorphic and sedimentary rocks which he saw in the Atesine Alps. He classified Mesozoic prealpine foothills as of the Secondary order, Tertiary in the subalpine hills and the Quaternary alluvial deposits in the plains. From Today In Science History

The Golden Age of Lasers

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The Calgary-based band, The Forbidden Dimension, has a newly minted CD full of hot 'n spooky rock 'n roll tunes. Dino aficionados will recognize the Waterhouse Hawkins-inspired cover drawn by double threat musician/artist, Jackson Phibes, in this promo photo he sent me.

You can pick up a copy at all the better independent record shops (or you will be able to very soon), or you can order a copy from Saved By Vinyl.

Watch a live version of hit single, "Tor Johnston Mask" here.

Premiered This Day: Unknown Island

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This 1948 film written by Robert T. Shannon and directed by Jack Bernhard features some of the worst ‘man dressed up as a T. rex’ effects ever. Not a bad little story though.

On This Day: Darwin Accepted Into Cambridge

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In 1827, Charles Darwin was accepted into Christ's College at Cambridge, but did not start until winter term because he needed to catch up on some of his studies. A grandson of Erasmus Darwin of Lichfield, and of Josiah Wedgwood, he had entered the University of Edinburgh in 1825 to study medicine, intending to follow his father Robert's career as a doctor. However, Darwin found himself unenthusiastic about his studies, including that of geology.

Disappointing his family that he gave up on a medical career, he left Edinburgh without graduating in April 1827. His scholastic achievements at Cambridge were unremarkable, but after graduation. Today Cambridge has Darwin College, founded in 1964, for advanced study that only admits postgraduate students. From Today In Science History

Born This Day: Jack Arnold

Jack Arnold (Oct. 14, 1916 - March 17, 1992) directed a number of classic SF films including The Creature From the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and It Came From Outer Space, as well as few not-so-classics (but still much loved) such as Monster on Campus. Throughout the ‘60’s and into the early 80’s he had a successful career as a TV producer and director.

Humans Descended From Ancestor With Sixth Sense*

Electrosensory ampullary organs are derived from lateral line placodes in bony fishes. 2011. M. S. Modrell, et al. Nature Communications 2: article #496.

The Shark © DC Comics^**

A new study finds that the vast majority of vertebrates are descended from a common ancestor that had a well-developed electroreceptive system.


People experience the world through five senses but sharks and certain other aquatic vertebrates have a sixth sense: They can detect weak electrical fields in the water and use this information to detect prey, communicate and orient themselves.

This ancestor was probably a predatory marine fish with good eyesight, jaws and teeth and a lateral line system for detecting water movements, visible as a stripe along the flank of most fishes. It lived around 500 million years ago. The vast majority of the approximately 65,000 living vertebrate species are its descendants.

Using the Mexican axolotl as a model to represent the evolutionary lineage leading to land animals, and paddlefish as a model for the branch leading to ray-finned fishes, the researchers found that electrosensors develop in precisely the same pattern from the same embryonic tissue in the developing skin, confirming that this is an ancient sensory system. link

* Title from the actual press release.
^**(Well, Pluto was a planet back in 1963.)

Died This Day: Richard Denning

Denning (March 27, 1914 – Oct. 11, 1998) had a long career in Hollywood before moving into TV (notably Hawaii Five-O) in the 1960’s.

He had starring roles in a number of Sci-Fi flicks including Unknown Island (1948), Day the World Ended (1955), Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) and Black Scorpion (1957), but he takes a bow here for playing the greedy Dr. Mark Williams in 1954’s, Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Ichythosaur Vs. Kraken?

Triassic kraken: the Berlin ichthyosaur death assemblage interpreted as a giant cephalopod midden. 2011.M.A.S. McMenamin and S. McMenamin, 2011 GSA Annual Meeting in Minneapolis (9–12 October 2011).

In Triassic-aged rocks of Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada the remains of nine14m long ichthyosaurs, Shonisaurus popularis, can be found. These were the Triassic’s counterpart to today’s predatory giant squid-eating sperm whales. But the fossils at the Nevada site have a long history of perplexing researchers.

McMenamin noted different degrees of etching on the bones that suggests that the shonisaurs were not all killed and buried at the same time. It also looked like the bones had been purposefully rearranged (below). That it got him thinking about a particular modern predator that is known for just this sort of intelligent manipulation of bones.

In the fossil bed, some of the shonisaur vertebral disks are arranged in curious linear patterns with almost geometric regularity resembling a coleoid sucker. In other words, the vertebral disc “pavement” seen at the state park may represent the earliest known self portrait. link

But could an octopus really have taken out such huge swimming predatory reptiles? Watch this video :

Reconstructing The Evolutionary History of Mollusks

Phylogenomics reveals deep molluscan relationships. 2011. K.M. Kocot, et al. Nature 477: 452-456.

N-Man © Steve Bissette

Deep genomic analysis of Molluscsa shows there is more than 1 way to make a brain.

Using genomics and computational approaches, scientists have reconstructed the evolutionary history of the entire phylum Molluscsa, ranging from giant squid to microscopic marine worm-like creatures.

One of the surprising outcomes of the study suggests that the formation of a complex brain in mollusks has independently occurred at least four times during the course of evolution. link

Nothing says Danger like a Giant Clam!



Watch the horror HERE

Siamodon nimngami, Iguanodontian from Thialand

A new iguanodontian dinosaur from the Khok Kruat Fm (Early Cretaceous, Aptian) of northeastern Thailand. 2011. E. Buffetaut and V. Suteethorn. Annales de Paléontologie 97: 51–62.

Abstract: A new taxon of ornithopod dinosaur is described as Siamodon nimngami nov. gen, nov. sep., on the basis of a well-preserved maxilla from the Khok Kruat Formation (Aptian) of northeastern Thailand. An isolated tooth and a braincase are referred to this taxon, and the status of other ornithopod specimens from Thailand and Laos is discussed.

S. nimngami is considered as an advanced iguanodontian, apparently close to Probactrosaurus, from which it differs by various characters of the maxilla. Siamodon is an addition to the already long list of advanced iguanodontian taxa from the late Early Cretaceous of Asia. The diversity and abundance of these forms may suggest that advanced iguanodontians first appeared in Asia, before spreading to other parts of the world.

The Last Universal Common Ancestor of All Life

Evolution of vacuolar proton pyrophosphatase domains and volutin granules: clues into the early evolutionary origin of the acidocalcisome. 2011. M. J, Seufferheld, et al. Biology Direct: 6:50.

My Greatest Adventure, DC Comics

New evidence suggests that the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) was a sophisticated organism after all, with a complex structure recognizable as a cell.

The study builds on several years of research into a once-overlooked feature of microbial cells, a region with a high concentration of polyphosphate, a type of energy currency in cells.

This site actually represents the first known universal organelle (acidocalcisome), once thought to be absent from bacteria and their distantly related microbial cousins.

By comparing the sequences of the V-H+PPase genes from hundreds of organisms representing the three domains of life, the team constructed a "family tree" that showed that the V-H+PPase enzyme and the acidocalcisome it serves are very ancient, dating back to the LUCA, before the three main branches of the tree of life appeared.

"There are many possible scenarios that could explain this, but the best, the most parsimonious, the most likely would be that you had already the enzyme even before diversification started on Earth," said study co-author Gustavo Caetano-Anollés.

"The protein was there to begin with and was then inherited into all emerging lineages." link

Died This Day: George Gaylord Simpson

Simpson (June 16, 1902 - October 6, 1984) is known for his contributions to evolutionary theory and to the understanding of intercontinental migrations of animal species in past geological times. Simpson specialized in early fossil mammals, leading expeditions on four continents and discovering in 1953 the 50-million-year old fossil skulls of dawn horses in Colorado.

Simpson helped develop the modern biological theory of evolution, drawing on paleontology, genetics, ecology, and natural selection to show that evolution occurs as a result of natural selection operating in response to shifting environmental conditions. He spent most of his career as a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History. image. From Today In Science History.

Mr. Future!

Mr. Future, Master of Time!

Born This Day: Charles Lapworth

From Today In Science History:

Lapworth (Sept. 30, 1842 - March 13, 1920) was an English geologist who proposed what came to be called the Ordovician period (505 to 438 million years old) of geologic strata. Lapworth is famous for his work with marine fossils called graptolites.

By fastidiously collecting the tiny, colonial sea creatures, he figured out the original order of layered rocks that had been faulted and folded in England's Southern Uplands. This method of correlating rocks with graptolites became a model for similar research throughout the world.

In 1879, Lapworth proposed a new classification of Lower Paleozoic rocks with the Ordovician, between the redefined Cambrian and Silurian periods. The name comes from an ancient Welsh tribe, the Ordovices.

Anatotitan, No More!

Cranial Growth and Variation in Edmontosaurs (Dinosauria: Hadrosauridae): Implications for Latest Cretaceous Megaherbivore Diversity in North America. 2011. N.E. Campione & D. C. Evans. PLoS ONE 6(9): e25186.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Abstract: The well-sampled Late Cretaceous fossil record of North America remains the only high-resolution dataset for evaluating patterns of dinosaur diversity leading up to the terminal Cretaceous extinction event. Hadrosaurine hadrosaurids (Dinosauria: Ornithopoda) closely related to Edmontosaurus are among the most common megaherbivores in latest Campanian and Maastrichtian deposits of western North America. However, interpretations of edmontosaur species richness and biostratigraphy have been in constant flux for almost three decades, although the clade is generally thought to have undergone a radiation in the late Maastrichtian.

We address the issue of edmontosaur diversity for the first time using rigorous morphometric analyses of virtually all known complete edmontosaur skulls. Results suggest only two valid species, Edmontosaurus regalis from the late Campanian, and E. annectens from the late Maastrichtian, with previously named taxa,including the controversial Anatotitan copei, erected on hypothesized transitional morphologies associated with ontogenetic size increase and allometric growth.

A revision of North American hadrosaurid taxa suggests a decrease in both hadrosaurid diversity and disparity from the early to late Maastrichtian, a pattern likely also present in ceratopsid dinosaurs. A decline in the disparity of dominant megaherbivores in the latest Maastrichtian interval supports the hypothesis that dinosaur diversity decreased immediately preceding the end Cretaceous extinction event.

'Nuff Said!

Cowboys Vs Dinosaurs!

Jack Kirby + pterosaurs + cowboys = Good Fun over at Atomic Surgery

Premiered This Day (1914): Gertie The Dinosaur

Winsor McCay (Sept. 26, 1987 – July 26, 1934) was one of the great American artists of the last century. He is best known for his newspaper comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland that ran from 1905 to 1914, and the animated cartoon creation Gertie the Dinosaur (1914).

For this cartoon McCay hand drew each frame of film. He took it on a tour of the vaudeville circuit and delighted audiences by being able to ‘interact’ with Gertie. Gertie is considered by many as the first true animated character to be featured in a film.

Glass Lantern Field Slides Now Posted at the NMNH

This lantern slide is from a collection showing field excavations in Arizona, at the Grand Canyon and other unnamed locations in the Painted Desert.

A collection of newly digitized glass lantern slides, showing early 20th century paleontological digs and the preparation of fossils for display, is now available to the public from the Smithsonian Institution Archives and the National Museum of Natural History. Link from Wired.

Thanks to Matt Vavrek!

Laccognathus embryi

Ted Daeschler/ANSP (image), K. Monoyios (illo)

The 375-million-year-old Laccognathus embryi was d found at the same site as Tiktaalik, on Ellesmere Island in the remote Nunavut Territory of Arctic Canada. Laccognathus is a lobe-finned fish whose closest living relative is the lungfish. The creature probably grew to about 5 or 6 feet long and had a wide head with small eyes and robust jaws lined with large piercing teeth.

"Clearly these Late Devonian ecosystems were vicious places, and Laccognathus filled the niche of a large, bottom-dwelling, sit-and-wait predator with a powerful bite."

The researchers named the new species in honor of Dr. Ashton Embry, a Canadian geologist whose work in the Arctic islands paved the way for the authors' paleontological explorations.

The kind of fish known as Laccognathus (translates as pitted jaw) was previously only known from Eastern Europe. The discovery of Laccognathus embryi, the new species, extends the geographic range of Laccognathus to North America and confirms direct connection of the North American and European landmasses during the Devonian Period.

Published in JVP.

Born This Day: Stephen Jay Gould

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Sept. 10, 1941 - May 20. 2002

Here’s a nice piece on Gould by Henry Lowood from the Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts.

Premiered This Day: Mighty Mightor!

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"While on a hunting trip, Tor and his faithful companion Tog rescue an ancient hermit from a Tyrannosarus rex. Grateful, the old man gives Tor a club which possesses great powers. Tor raises the club and he becomes Mightor, and Tog is transferred into a fire-breathing dragon. Together they become champions of good and the nemesis of evil!" From the opening narration. link.

Mighty Mightor debuted this day in 1967 as part of the Moby Dick and Mighty Mightor Hanna-Barbera cartoon show.

Australopithecus sediba

Australopithecus sediba at 1.977 Ma and Implications for the Origins of the Genus Homo. R. Pickering, et al. Science 333: 1421-1423.

Five papers based on Australopithecus sediba have been published in Science on Sept. 9, 2011. They include an analysis of the most complete hand ever described in an early hominin, the most complete undistorted pelvis ever discovered, the highest resolution and most accurate scan of an early human ancestors brain ever made, new pieces of the foot and ankle skeleton, and one of the most accurate dates ever achieved for an early hominin site in Africa.

Au. sediba (MH-1) skull reconstruction (opaque) with endocast (green, opaque) partially visible as a result of virtual craniotomy. Dr K. Carlson, U. Witwatersrand.

Abstract: Newly exposed cave sediments at the Malapa site include a flowstone layer capping the sedimentary unit containing the Australopithecus sediba fossils. Uranium-lead dating of the flowstone, combined with paleomagnetic and stratigraphic analysis of the flowstone and underlying sediments, provides a tightly constrained date of 1.977 ± 0.002 million years ago (Ma) for these fossils. This refined dating suggests that Au. sediba from Malapa predates the earliest uncontested evidence for Homo in Africa.

The cranium of the juvenile skeleton of Au.sediba. Pic courtesy of Lee Berger & U. Witwatersrand.

Born This Day: William Lonsdale

Painting by Dan Erickson of the Phaeton Group

William Lonsdale (Sept. 9, 1794 – Nov. 11, 1891 ) was an English geologist and paleontologist whose study of coral fossils found in Devon, suggested (1837) certain of them were intermediate between those typical of the older Silurian System (408 to 438 Ma) and those of the later Carboniferous System (286 to 360 Ma. Geologists Roderick Murchison and Adam Sedgwick agreed and named this new geologic system after its locale - the Devonian Period (1839).

Lonsdale's early career was as an army officer (1812-15) and later he became curator and librarian of the Geological Society of London (1829-42). He recognised that fossils showed how species changed over time, and more primitive organisms are found in lower strata.
From Today In Science History

Born This Day: Joseph Leidy

From The Academy of Natural Sciences:

Leidy (Sept. 9, 1823 - April 30, 1891) is known as the "Father of American Vertebrate Paleontology". He described the first relatively complete dinosaur skeleton, Hadrosaurus, and introduced many American and European scientists to the fossil riches of the American West. Leidy's consummate skill in comparative anatomy would allow him to identify and characterize even the most fragmentary fossil material.

Leidy was also the "Founder of American Parasitology," a Professor of Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania, a pioneering protozoologists, an influential teacher of Natural History, an accomplished microscopist and scientific illustrator, and an expert on a variety of subjects encompasing the earth and natural sciences. He published scientific papers on more than a thousand extinct and living protozoa, fungi and invertebrates and vertebrates as well as an assortment of publications on human biology and medicine. He was also one of the earliest supporters of Charles Darwin.

Revenge of The Big Birds In The War That Time Forgot!

Read it now over at Atomic Surgery!

Born This Day: Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden

From Today In Science History

Hayden (Sept. 7, 1829 - Dec. 22, 1887) was an American geologist and explorer of the U.S. West. After finishing a medical school training (1853), his early career began in paleontology for James Hall, collecting fossils in the Badlands and the Upper Missouri Valley. It is believed he made the first North American discovery of dinosaur remains (1854) during this expedition.

His work in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains helped lay the foundation of the U.S. Geological Survey. Hayden is credited with having the Yellowstone geyser area declared the first national park (1872).

Image and more info on Hayden HERE.

Born This Day: Comte Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon

Buffon (Sept. 7, 1707 – April 16, 1788) was a French naturalist, who formulated a crude theory of evolution and was the first to suggest that the earth might be older than suggested by the Bible.

In 1739 he was appointed keeper of the Jardin du Roi, a post he occupied until his death. There he worked on a comprehensive work on natural history, for which he is remembered, Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière. He began this work in 1749, and it dominated the rest of his life. It would eventually run to 44 volumes, including quadrupeds, birds, reptiles and minerals.

He proposed (1778) that the Earth was hot at its creation and, from the rate of cooling, calculated its age to be 75,000 years, with life emerging some 40,000 years ago.

From Today In Science History. Stamp from HERE.

More info on Buffon from UC-Berkeley.

Born This Day: Raquel Welch

The cinema's definitive cave woman!

Premiered This Day (1969): The Valley of Gwangi

Died This Day: Luis Alvarez

Alvarez (June 13, 1911 - Sept. 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1968 for work that included the discovery of many resonance particles --subatomic particles having extremely short lifetimes and occurring only in high-energy nuclear collisions.

In about 1980 Alvarez (left) helped his son, the geologist Walter Alvarez (right), publicize Walter's discovery of a worldwide layer of clay that has a high iridium content and which occupies rock strata at the geochronological boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras; i.e., about 66.4 million years ago.

They postulated that the iridium had been deposited following the impact on Earth of an asteroid or comet and that the catastrophic climatic effects of this massive impact caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Though initially controversial, this widely publicized theory gradually gained support as the most plausible explanation of the abrupt demise of the dinosaurs.

Read more HERE. Image from HERE.