Died This Day: Adam Sedgwick

From Today In Science History:

Sedgwick (March 22, 1785 - January 27, 1873) was an English geologist who first applied the name Cambrian to the geologic period of time, now dated at 570 to 505 million years ago. In 1818 he became Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge, holding a chair that had been endowed ninety years before by the natural historian John Woodward.

He lacked formal training in geology, but he quickly became an active researcher in geology and paleontology. Many years after Sedgwick's death, the geological museum at Cambridge was renamed the Sedgwick Museum of Geology in his honor. The museum is now part of the Department of Earth Sciences at Cambridge University

Born This Day: Roy Chapman Andrews

Photo from Parade of Life Through The Ages, by Charles Knight, Nat. Geo., Feb. 1942.

From the American Museum of Natural History web site:

Adventurer, administrator, and Museum promoter — Andrews (Jan. 26, 1884 – March 11, 1960) spent his entire career at the American Museum of Natural History, where he rose through the ranks from departmental assistant, to expedition organizer, to Museum director.

He became world famous as leader of the Central Asiatic Expeditions, a series of expeditions to Mongolia that collected, among other things, dinosaur eggs. Although on these expeditions, Andrews himself found few fossils, and during his career he was not known as an influential scientist, he instead filled the role of promoter, creating immense excitement and successfully advancing the research and exhibition goals of the museum.

Learn about the Roy Chapman Andrews Society HERE.

Born This Day: Theodosius Dobzhansky

Dobzhansky (Jan.25, 1900–Dec. 18, 1975) is noted for being one of the architects of the modern Synthetic Theory of evolution. During the first 20 years of the 20th century, Darwin's theory of natural selection had fallen out of favor among scientists. Many thought it insufficient to explain the origin of adaptations, while new discoveries of gene mutations seemed to them to be incompatible with Darwinian models of change.

But in 1937 Dobzhansky published his book, Genetics and the Origin of Species, that was the first systematic overview view encompassing organic diversity, variation in natural populations, selection, isolating mechanisms (a term he coined) and species as natural units.

Later, working with Sewall Wright, he went on to demonstrate how evolution can produce stability and equilibrium in populations rather than constant directional change. link. image.

Sheep Taphonomy

Photo and caption by Johannes Bojesen

The sheep had drowned while trying to cross a small canal in the meadow-swamp 'Tøndermasken' in southern Jylland in Denmark. Birds had eaten every part above the surface and everything under was left totally untouched. Photo location: Tøndermarsken, Tønder, Denmark.
From the 2012 National Geographic Photo Contest

Abstracts due for Vertebrate Paleontology session at North-Central GSA, 2013

You're invited to present at the GSA North-Central Section 47th Annual Meeting in Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2–3 May 2013. Evan Scott (ees20 at case dot edu.) and I (mryan at cmnh dot org) will be co-convening session T22, Topics in Vertebrate Paleontology. Talks on any aspect of post-Paleozoic vertebrate paleontology are appropriate.

We especially encourage presentations by students.

Abstract deadline is Feb. 5, 2013.

More information is available HERE

Stalking Attenborough

Also from BirdandMoon.com

Palaeo-Alphabet

From BirdandMoon.com

Died This Day: Carolus Linnaeus

Born May 23, 1707 – Jan. 10, 1778.

From the Linnean Society:

Linnaeus was born in 1707 in Sweden. He headed an expedition to Lapland in 1732, travelling 4,600 miles and crossing the Scandinavian Peninsula by foot to the Arctic Ocean. On the journey he discovered a hundred botanical species. He undertook his medical degree in 1735 in the Netherlands. In 1735, he published Systema Naturae, his classification of plants based on their sexual parts.

His method of binomial nomenclature using genus and species names was further expounded when he published Fundamenta Botanica (1736) and Classes Plantarum (1738). This system used the flower and the number and arrangements of its sexual organs of stamens and pistils to group plants into twenty-four classes which in turn are divided into orders, genera and species.

In his publications, Linnaeus provided a concise, usable survey of all the world's plants and animals as then known, about 7,700 species of plants and 4,400 species of animals. These works helped to establish and standardize the consistent binomial nomenclature for species which he introduced on a world scale for plants in 1753, and for animals in 1758, and which is used today.

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His Systema Naturae 10th edition, volume 1(1758), has accordingly been accepted by international agreement as the official starting point for zoological nomenclature. Scientific names published before then have no validity unless adopted by Linnaeus or by later authors. This confers a high scientific importance on the specimens used by Linnaeus for their preparation, many of which are in his personal collections now treasured by the Linnean Society.

He was granted nobility in 1761, becoming Carl von Linné. He continued his work of classification and as a physician, and remained Rector of the University until 1772.

Born This Day: Nicolaus Steno

Steno (Jan. 10 – Nov. 26, 1686) was a Danish geologist and anatomist who first made unprecedented discoveries in anatomy, then established some of the most important principles of modern geology. He was Danish royal anatomist for 2 years.

Interested by the characteristics and origins of minerals, rocks, and fossils, he published in Prodromus (1669) the law of superposition (if a series of sedimentary rocks has not been overturned, upper layers are younger and lower layers are older) and the law of original horizontality (although strata may be found dipping steeply, they were initially deposited nearly horizontal.) link

Installing the Blue Whale in The AMNH

Installing the Blue Whale exhibit in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life at the American Museum of National History.
See more images here.
More info here.

Go See - Unpublished Devil Dinosaur!

HERE

Died This Day: Gregor Mendel

From Today In Science History:

Mendel (July 22, 1822 – Jan. 6, 1884) was an Austrian pioneer in the study of heredity. He spent his adult life with the Augustinian monastery in Brunn, where as a geneticist,
botanist and plant experimenter, he was the first to lay the mathematical foundation of the science of genetics, in what came to be called Mendelism.

Over the period 1856-63, Mendel grew and analyzed over 28,000 pea plants. He carefully studied for each their plant height, pod shape, pod color, flower position, seed color, seed shape and flower color. He made two very important generalizations from his pea experiments, known today as the Laws of Heredity. Mendel coined the present day terms in genetics: recessiveness and dominance.

Born This Day: George Ledyard Stebbins

From the U Calif., Berkeley:

Along with Dobzhansky (1900 - 1975), animal systematist Ernst Mayr, and paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson (1902 - 1984), Stebbins (Jan. 6, 1906 - Jan. 19 2000) is considered one of the "architects" of the modern evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s, an intellectual watershed and historic turning point that brought together research in cytology, genetics, systematics, paleontology into a common evolutionary framework. This synthesis, which had the effect of reconciling the often opposing views of laboratory-oriented geneticists and natural history oriented systematists, made Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection the centerpiece of the new discipline of evolutionary biology.

In this role, Stebbins is credited with bringing a modern framework to the study of plant evolution, and he is perhaps best known for his book Variation and Evolution in Plants, published by Columbia University Press (NY) in 1950. In the 1940s, Stebbins also played an important role in organizing the nascent Society for the Study of Evolution, of which he became the third president in 1948, and used his position to speak out for the botanical side of evolutionary studies, a field that had been dominated by zoologists. Photo .

Man Tried for the Moon (Henry Boltinoff, Showcase, 1962)

Art by Henry Boltinoff, Showcase #41< DC Comics, 1962 

Plus some Science Facts from Showcase #40:

Tarbosaurus Smuggler Pleads Guilty

Read about it at CNN Money

Died This Day: Eugene Dubois

Eugene Dubois (Jan. 28, 1858-Dec. 16, 1940) joined the Dutch Army as a medical officer, and used spare time from his medical duties to search for fossils, first in Sumatra and then in Java. He searched on the banks of the Solo River, with two assigned engineers and a crew of convict labourers to help him. In September 1890, his workers found a human, or human-like, fossil at Koedoeng Broeboes. This consisted of the right side of the chin of a lower jaw and three attached teeth. In August 1891 he found a primate molar tooth.

Two months later and one meter away was found an intact skullcap, the fossil which would be known as Java Man. In August 1892, a third primate fossil, an almost complete left thigh bone, was found between 10 and 15 meters away from the skullcap.

In 1894 Dubois published a description of his fossils, naming them Pithecanthropus erectus (now Home erectus), describing it as neither ape nor human, but something intermediate. In 1895 he returned to Europe to promote the fossil and his interpretation. A few scientists enthusiastically endorsed Dubois' work, but most disagreed with his interpretation. Many scientists pointed out similarities between the Java Man skullcap and Neandertal fossils.

Around 1900 Dubois ceased to discuss Java Man, and hid the fossils in his home while he moved on to other research topics. geology and paleontology. It was not until 1923 that Dubois, under pressure from scientists, once again allowed access to the Java Man fossils. That and the discovery of similar fossils caused it to once again become a topic of debate.

Skull cap (Trinil 2, holotype of Home erectus) from HERE.

Paleozoic Soft Tissue Preservation in Ostracods

A Silurian myodocope with preserved soft-parts: cautioning the interpretation of the shell-based ostracod record. Siviter, D.J., et al. Proc. R Soc. B 280 (1752), Feb., 2013.

Ventral view of the fossil Pauline avibella. Credit: D.J. Siveter, D. E. G. Briggs, D. J. Siveter, M. D. Sutton & S. C. Joomun.
Abstract: Ostracod crustaceans are the most abundant fossil arthropods. The Silurian Pauline avibella gen. et sp. nov., from the Herefordshire Lagerstätte, UK, is an extremely rare Palaeozoic example with soft-part preservation. Based on its soft-part morphology, especially the exceptionally preserved limbs and presence of lateral eyes, it is assigned to the myodocopid myodocopes. The ostracod is very large, with an epipod on the fifth limb pair, as well as gills implying the presence of a heart and an integrated respiratory–circulatory system as in living cylindroleberidid myodocopids. Features of its shell morphology, however, recall halocyprid myodocopes and palaeocopes, encouraging caution in classifying ostracods based on the carapace alone and querying the interpretation of their shell-based fossil record, especially for the Palaeozoic, where some 500 genera are presently assigned to the Palaeocopida.

"Mad Men" Palaeontologists!

Go read the full story HERE

Gigantism in Sauropods

High C/N ratio (not low-energy content) of vegetation may have driven gigantism in sauropod dinosaurs and perhaps omnivory and/or endothermy in their juveniles. Wilkinson, D.M., and G. D. Ruxton. Functional Ecology, published online Dec 11, 2012.

Turok, #31

Summary:

1. Sauropod dinosaurs were the largest terrestrial animals ever, and the combination of selective pressures that might have lead to such extraordinary sizes has long been discussed.

2. Here, we argue that a previous suggestion that large size may be a response to unusually high C/N ratios in available plant foods has been prematurely discarded. C/N ratios were likely to be high during much of the Mesozoic, and C/N ratio is entirely different from gross energy density as a measure of the value of a plant as food. In addition, we use recently published allometric equations for herbivore nitrogen and carbon use to make tentative calculations which suggest that if Mesozoic C/N ratios were greater than extant ones, this would have selected for one of two strategies: gigantism in ectothermic herbivores or endothermy (and selective foraging on high N material) in very small herbivores.

3. We speculate that smaller-bodied juvenile sauropods might have had a broader omnivorous diet and/or had higher mass-specific metabolic rates than adults. The former is potentially testable by changes in dentition; the latter matches evidence of high growth rates of juvenile sauropods. press release

Born This Day: Erasmus Darwin

Erasmus (Dec. 12, 1731 – April 18, 1802) was a prominent English physician, poet, philosopher, botanist, naturalist and the grandfather of naturalist Charles Darwin and the biologist Francis Galton. Erasmus Darwin was one of the leading intellectuals of 18th century England.

As a naturalist, he formulated one of the first formal theories on evolution in Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life (1794-1796). Although he did not come up with natural selection, he did discuss ideas that his grandson elaborated on sixty years later, such as how life evolved from a single common ancestor, forming "one living filament".

Although some of his ideas on how evolution might occur are quite close to those of Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin also talked about how competition and sexual selection could cause changes in species. link

Download Zoonomia HERE

In The Dawn of History

From Strange Adventures #3, 1950

Born This Day: Louis Dollo

Louis Antoine Marie Joseph Dollo (Dec. 7, 1857 – April 19, 1931) was a French vertebrate paleontologist who stated Dollo's Law of Irreversibility whereby in evolution an organism never returns exactly to its former state such that complex structures, once lost, are not regained in their original form. (While generally true, some exceptions are known.)

He began as an assistant (1882), became keeper of mammals (1891) at the Royal Museum of Natural History in Brussels where he stayed most of his life. He was a specialist in fossil fishes, reptiles, birds, and their palaeoecology. He supervised the excavation of the famous, multiple Iguanodons found in 1878 by miners deep underground, at Bernissart, Belgium. image From Today In Science History

Nyasasaurus parringtoni, The Oldest Dinosaur?

The oldest dinosaur? A Middle Triassic dinosauriform from Tanzania. 2012. Nesbitt, S., et al. Biol. Lett.. 2013 9 1 20120949

Abstract: The rise of dinosaurs was a major event in vertebrate history, but the timing of the origin and early diversification of the group remain poorly constrained. Here, we describe Nyasasaurus parringtoni gen. et sp. nov., which is identified as either the earliest known member of, or the sister–taxon to, Dinosauria. Nyasasaurus possesses a unique combination of dinosaur character states and an elevated growth rate similar to that of definitive early dinosaurs. It demonstrates that the initial dinosaur radiation occurred over a longer timescale than previously thought (possibly 15 Myr earlier), and that dinosaurs and their immediate relatives are better understood as part of a larger Middle Triassic archosauriform radiation. The African provenance of Nyasasaurus supports a southern Pangaean origin for Dinosauria. Press release

Dinosaur Trouble at The Earths' Core!

Read The Land That Time Forgot from Forbidden Worlds, 1956.

RIP, Jack Lerbekmo

Jack Lerbekmo,Professor Emeritus in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Alberta, passed away on Thursday, November 29.

To paraphrase David Eberth, our understanding of the Cretaceous - Paleocene chronostrat record in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin owes much to him. All of us who work in that area owe him a huge debt.

His U of Alberta web page is here.

Born This Day: Frank Reicher

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Frank Reicher (Dec. 2, 1875 – Jan. 19, 1965) was born in Munich,Germany and had a long career in Hollywood. He appeared in over 200 films, often playing small roles in minor films, and he directed over three dozen silent movies.

He is best know for playing Capt. Englehorn in King King (1933), and it’s quickie sequel Son of Kong from later that same year.

Died This Day: Godfrey Harold Hardy

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Hardy (Feb. 7, 1877 – Dec. 1, 1947) was an English mathematician known for his work in number theory and mathematical analysis. Although Hardy considered himself a pure mathematician, he nevertheless worked in applied mathematics when he formulated a law that describes how proportions of dominant and recessive genetic traits will propagate in a large population (1908). Hardy considered it unimportant but it has proved of major importance in blood group distribution. As it was also independently discovered by Weinberg, it is known as the Hardy-Weinberg principle.

The Hardy-Weinberg equation

Died This Day: J. B. S. Haldane

Haldane (Nov. 5, 1892 - Dec. 1, 1964) is best remembered along with E. B. Ford and R. A. Fisher one of the three major figures to develop the mathematical theory of population genetics. His greatest contribution was in a series of ten papers on "A Mathematical Theory of Natural and Artificial Selection" which was the major series of papers on the mathematical theory of natural selection. It treated many major cases for the first time, showing the direction and rates of changes of gene frequencies. It also pioneered in investigating the interaction of natural selection with mutation and with migration.

Haldane's book, The Causes of Evolution (1932), summarized these results, especially in its extensive appendix. This body of work was a component of what came to be known as the "modern evolutionary synthesis", re-establishing natural selection as the premier mechanism of evolution by explaining it in terms of the mathematical consequences of Mendelian genetics. From Wikipedia. More info here.

Born This Day: Robert Broom

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Robert Broom (Nov. 30, 1866 – April 6, 1951) was a South African doctor and paleontologist. From 1903 to 1910 he was professor of zoology and geology at Victoria College, Stellenbosch, South Africa, and subsequently he became keeper of vertebrate paleontology at the South African Museum, Cape Town.

Broom was first known for his study of mammal-like reptiles. After Raymond Dart's discovery of the Taung Child, an infant australopithecine, Broom's interest in paleoanthropology was heightened. In 1934 he jojned the staff of the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria as an Assistant in Palaeontology.

In the following years, he made a series of spectacular finds, including fragments from six hominids in Sterkfontein, which he named Plesianthropus transvaalensis. In 1937, Broom made his most famous discovery of Paranthropus robustus. These discoveries helped support Dart's claims for the Taung species.

The remainder of Broom's career was devoted to the exploration of these sites and the interpretation of the many early hominid remains discovered there. In 1946 he proposed the Australopithecinae subfamily. From Princeton.edu

Died This Day: Nicolaus Steno

Steno (a.k.a. Niels Steensen, or Stensen)(Jan. 10 – Nov. 26, 1686) was a Danish geologist and anatomist who first made unprecedented discoveries in anatomy, then established some of the most important principles of modern geology. He was Danish royal anatomist for 2 years.

Interested by the characteristics and origins of minerals, rocks, and fossils, he published in Prodromus (1669) the law of superposition (if a series of sedimentary rocks has not been overturned, upper layers are younger and lower layers are older) and the law of original horizontality (although strata may be found dipping steeply, they were initially deposited nearly horizontal.) link image

Born This Day: Edwin Conklin

Time cover

Conkin (Nov. 24, 1963 - Nov. 21, 1952) was an American biologist and embryologist. In 1905 he discovered that the contents of a tunicate's egg weren't uniform. Different parts of it were differently colored. When the mother egg began to divide, the new daughter cells that came from different colored areas became, as they split away, different types of tissue. The yellow stuff in the egg produced muscle cells, for instance, and the grayish stuff became the gut.

In addition to his work in embryology, he published a number of works on evolution. He estimated he made a thousand public lectures interpreting evolution to religious and lay groups. He was a leading critic of society's response to advanced technology. From Today in Science History

Published This Day: The Origin of The Species

My Greatest Adventure #68

From Today In Science History:

In 1859, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published in England to great acclaim. In this groundbreaking book by British naturalist Charles Darwin, he argued that species are the result of a gradual biological evolution in which nature encourages, through natural selection, the propagation of those species best suited to their environments. This book is unquestionably one of the most influential in the history of science.

Died This Day: Richard Carlson

Carlson (April 29, 1912 – Nov. 24, 1977) starred as Dr. David Reid in the classic Creature From The Black Lagoon (1957). You know that he was the “good” scientist ‘cuz he got the girl, even though he let a cover story for Nature skulk back into the Lagoon.

Born This Day: Skull Island Witch Doctor

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Steve Clemente (born Esteban Clemento Morro Nov. 22, 1885—May 7, 1950) was a Mexican actor known for his many villainous roles. He began acting in his teens, signing up for his first movie, The Secret Man, in 1917. His later, numerous roles were usually bit parts and he was an expert knife thrower.

He was a known scene stealer and was famous for his villainous snarl. He later starred in such movies as The Most Dangerous Game (1932), playing Tartar, the second henchman of Count Zarrof and played the Witch King in King Kong (1933). From Wiki

Born This Day: Robert Armstrong

Armstrong (Nov. 20, 1890 – April 20, 1973) took Fay Wray to Skull Island in 1933. He returned later the same year to find The Son of Kong, only to lose him as the island sank, as these things are prone to doing.

Farish Jenkins, RIP

The Boston Globe has a nice article about the late paleontologist, Farish Jenkins, who passed away earlier this year.

Fantasia Premieres (1940)

Walt Disney’s epic film, Fantasia, opened this day on Broadway in New York City in 1940. The film featured Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra performing a number of pieces of classical music to the film’s animated visuals. Igor Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” provided the score for the evolution of the Earth including a wonderful sequence on the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous. Many school teachers actually showed this sequence in science class up through the 1970's as it was one of the most accurate animated depictions to that date.

Born This Day: Helen Mack

Nov 13, 1913 – August 13, 1986

Helen starred as Helene Peterson in “Son of Kong”, the quickie follow up to “King Kong”. Once again Carl Denham leads a beautiful girl into danger on Skull Island.

Born This Day: Julie Ege

Nov. 12, 1943 – April 29, 2008

The late Julie Ege had the lead role as Nala in the 1971 Hammer film, “Creatures The World Forgot”.

Xenoceratops - A New Centrosaur From Alberta

Art © Mark Schultz, 2012

Abstract: Xenoceratops foremostensis gen. et. sp. nov., a new centrosaurine ceratopsid from the Foremost Formation (Campanian) of Alberta, is described based on frill material from at least three adult-sized individuals collected from a low-density bone bed. The material can be assigned to Centrosaurinae based on features of the preserved squamosal. Although the parietals are incomplete, the shape of the diagnostic parietal can be inferred from several overlapping serial elements. The parietal of the new taxon shares with all other centrosaurines, except Centrosaurus apertus, spike-like ornamentation at the posterolateral (P3) locus under traditional coding methods. At approximately 78 Ma, it is the oldest known Canadian ceratopsid, approximately 0.5 Ma older than Albertaceratops from the lower Oldman Formation of Canada and approximately 1.0 Ma younger than Diabloceratops from the Wahweap Formation of Utah. A phylogenetic analysis resolves the new taxon as the basalmost centrosaurine and places Centrosaurus brinkmani as the sister taxon to Styracosaurus albertensis. The type species of Centrosaurus brinkmani is moved to a new genus.

Watch David Evans explain it all on Canada Am.

Died This Day: Gideon Mantell

Mantell (Feb. 3, 1790 – Nov. 10, 1852), a physician of Lewes in Sussex in southern England, had for years been collecting fossils in the sandstone of Tilgate forest, and he had discovered bones belonging to three extinct species: a giant crocodile, a plesiosaur, and Buckland's Megalosaurus. But in 1822 he found several teeth that "possessed characters so remarkable" that they had to have come from a fourth and distinct species of Saurian. After consulting numerous experts, Mantell finally recognized that the teeth bore an uncanny resemblance to the teeth of the living iguana, except that they were twenty times larger.
In this paper, the second published description of a dinosaur, he concluded that he had found the teeth of a giant lizard, which he named Iguanodon, or "Iguana-tooth."

Mantell illustrated his announcement with a single lithographed plate. Mantell included at the bottom of the plate a drawing of a recent iguana jaw, which is shown four times natural size, and for further comparison, he added views of the inner and outer surface of a single iguana tooth, "greatly magnified."

The traditional story that Mantell's wife found the first teeth in 1822, while the doctor was visiting a patient, appears, alas, to be unfounded.

Info and plate from HERE.