Around Moab UT you can run down sand dunes and you can hike on rocks that were sand dunes in the past. You can take a face-plant on one, as my son did, and not get hurt but you better be very careful not to fall on the other. I recently spent a... Continue Reading →
I’m sitting in the Boston Airport on my way to a conference at Gordon College but I have enough time for a natural history note while I wait for a colleague to arrive. On my flight from Ohio I read the last chapter of the Peter Harrison’s “The Fall of Man and the Foundations of... Continue Reading →
Today Creation.com (Creation Ministries International) published a story about the amazing preservation of clearly identifiable gall mites. My Facebook feed proclaimed the following: "Gall mites magnificently preserved in amber ostensibly 230 million years old are just the same as mites found alive today" with a link to the story HERE. The gist of the article... Continue Reading →
This is a bit embarrassing but I think instructive so I am going to share how I discovered that I have been utterly fooled by a parody web site for many years. Last week I wrote about the importance of understanding that even fringe groups have fringes (see: Human Fossil Footprints: Exploring the Fringes of... Continue Reading →
How long would it take for falling dust to accumulate into a mound 2 1/2 miles tall? Answers in Genesis has commented (Wind, not water, may have built the Martian Mount Sharp) over the weekend on the same research article that I referenced in my post last week (NH Notes: Did Wind and Dust Create a... Continue Reading →
Large depressions, layers of rocks, precipitated minerals in rock cracks, erratic rocks strewn about, mountains inside of craters: these are just a few examples of the diversity of landscapes on Mars that the Curiosity rover has discovered and been investigating the past six months. The mountain at the center of the crater that Curiosity... Continue Reading →
A few nights ago I finally decided it was time to find out what had been making periodic strange noises in my attic at night for the last couple of months. I had looked up there once before and couldn't find any signs of anything unusual so I thought it was just in the gutters... Continue Reading →
I have been thinking about Elephants the last couple of days and may write more about elephant following in the vein of my recent posts on horses. For now I just want to introduce you to one really weird extinct elephant. I call it an elephant because of its obvious similarities but just like with... Continue Reading →
What happened to huge dinosaur eggs that were either abandoned or broke prematurely? You might think that this is a question that is impossible to answer, but dinosaur eggs have been discovered with intriguing evidence of scavenging of various forms. I recently came across a report from 2011 that I thought was especially interesting... Continue Reading →
Fossilized bones of dinosaurs, whales and mammoths get all of the attention but trace fossils provide important evidence for interpreting when and how organisms lived on Earth in the past. Trace fossils are not the fossilized remains of organisms themselves but rather are evidence of the past presence of organisms. The most recognizable trace fossils... Continue Reading →
I'm posting a short follow-up to a story about huddling penguins that I wrote about a few weeks ago (Heat-sharing Huddling Penguins - A Benefit to Selfish Behavior?). I was pointed to a really fascinating set of videos that show emperor penguins in the process of forming huddles. You can see these videos embedded in... Continue Reading →
In a paper entitled, "Modeling Huddling Penguins" in PLosOne (an Open Access journal) a few months ago mathematicians take on a difficult question in biology: Do individuals organisms make decisions to share a resource for the greater good (altruism) or do they generally act only as selfish individuals. It is very difficult to test the cause... Continue Reading →
A Chinese spacecraft has been only the fourth to fly past an asteroid and capture close-up images. Here are a series of images of the 4 km long asteroid Toutatis which is considered a NEA (Near Earth Asteroid) though it won't make another pass near the earth for another 50 years. This is... Continue Reading →
I'm taking a bit of a tangent from my usual subject material to have a bit of fun with some material that I recently found as part of this thing called the blogosphere. Ok, maybe not all fun since I'm not sure if this post will make you laugh or cry or maybe both. My... Continue Reading →
I would like to take a small diversion from my usual material on this blog to do a little backyard natural history. Our new home has almost a half acre of grass which abuts to our neighbors yard which is several acres of hardwood forest. In researching our home I found out that our... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 