Hairy Museum of Natural History

One of the biggest stories in paleontology this past month was the announcement of a beautifully complete fossil of an Eocene primate scientifically christened Darwinius messilae, and given the popular moniker “Ida.” A massive publicity campaign, including a book release and a documentary hosted by Sir Richard Attenborough, was launched in tandem with the fossil’s description in the online journal PLoS ONE. A backlash erupted throughout the science-minded blogosphere/twitterverse, deriding the more breathless claims that this one specimen was the “missing link” that will “change everything.”

Some of the earliest and most insightful comments came from Brian Switek at Laelaps. Earlier today, Brian compiled a collection of his and others’ Darwinius-related posts into a blog carnival called Uncovering “Ida”—an excellent resource for anyone interested in the interaction between science, publicity, and media (new and old).

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Mammals, Paleo-Pop, Paleogene, Webbery.

Comments on record: (1)

Today is the first chance I’ve had to catch my breath (and unpack my car) since returning from the Western Interior Paleontological Society’s Founders Symposium in Golden, Colorado last weekend. The picture below shows me in the booth containing my work, as well as some paintings by Mary Sundstrom, a talented Albuquerque artist/printmaker I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with on various projects at the day job.

This is the first of these conferences I’ve had the pleasure to attend, and I am grateful to Judy Peterson for inviting me up to show some of my drawings & paintings in the Symposium’s paleo-art show. Judy put together a roster of about 25 artists who participated in the show, including a couple of folks I’d met previously and several faces who were new to me.

Above: Russell Hawley, from the Tate Museum at Casper College, showed off some of his amazingly detailed pen-and-ink drawings of ancient environments. Below: The prolific Greg Sweatt brought along his easel and put the finishing touches on one oil painting, then began two more during the one-day show.

Above: Neffra Matthews and some of her fantastic ichnological quilts. Below: In addition to his meticulous drawings, Todd Green displayed his beautifully pieced-together skeleton of a hatching emu.

Other artists (with online galleries) at the show included Tiffany Miller, Eric Parrish, and Gary Raham.

The theme of this year’s Symposium was Paleoclimates: Exploring Past Environments, and I was able to sit in on a handful of talks by various workers and students exploring the topic. Much attention was given to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a fairly rapid spike in global temperature 55 million years ago, when Wyoming was covered in tropical forests and alligators lived well north of the Arctic Circle. An analogy that came up in several talks could be summed up as follows:

Today’s climatologists : PETM :: Today’s economists : The Great Depression

Interestingly (perhaps frighteningly), multiple speakers noted that when models used in current climate change predictions were run with Paleocene-Eocene parameters, they ended up with polar temperatures nearly 10°C cooler than geologic/fossil evidence suggests…

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Paleo-Pop, Paleogene.

Comments on record: (6)

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  The giant Titanoboa (detail)
  Credit: Jason Bourque,
  University of FloridaFrom the UF press release.

• New Snake: Titanoboa cerrejonensis
• Name Means: Titanic Boa from Cerrejón
• Relations: Boid Snake
• Holotype: UF-IGM 1, a precloacal vertebra
• Location: Cerrejón, northeastern Colombia
• Age: Middle Paleocene, 58,000,000 to 60,000,000 years old
• Length: ~13 meters (42 feet)
• Weight: 1,135 kg (2,500 lbs)
• Info:
  A vertebra from a modern Anaconda boid Anaconda compared with the type vertebra of Titanoboa.
  Photo by Ray Carson, UF News Bureau. From the UF press release.
• The hefty vertebrae of newly-described Titanoboa dwarf their modern counterparts, and are by far the largest known from any fossil serpents, as well. Size estimates for this South American giant reach well over 40 feet in length and weighing in at just over a ton!
• Today, the largest snakes are found in the equatorial tropics, where high ambient temperatures allow them to maintain their “cold-blooded” bulk. If today’s anacondas and pythons need a mean annual temperature of 27° Celsius (80° F) to grow 20 feet long, then a giant like Titanoboa would have required mean annual temperatures of 32° Celsius (96° F) to support its serpentine bulk.
• Reference: Head, J. J., Bloch, J. I., Hastings, A. K., Bourque, J. R., Cadena, E. A., Herrera, F. A., Polly, P. D., and Jaramillo, C. A., 2009. Giant boid snake from the Palaeocene neotropics reveals hotter past equatorial temperatures. Nature 457: 715-717. doi:10.1038/nature07671. [Figures] [Supplementary Info]
• Further Reading:
  • University of Florida Press Release [multimedia]
  • Cryptomundo: Snake longer than school bus discovered!
  • The Dragon’s Tales: Now THAT’S a SNAKE!
  • microecos: Why is a protarded boa constrictor like a writing desk, I mean, thermometer?
  • Not Exactly Rocket Science: Titanoboa – thirteen metres, one tonne, largest snake ever.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Paleogene, Reptiles.

Comments on record: (15)

• 
  
  Credit: John Klausmeyer,
  University of Michigan
  Museums of Natural History.
  From the U. of Mich. press release.

• New Mammal: Maiacetus inuus
• Name Means: Fecund Mother whale
• Relations: Protocetid whale
• Holotype: GSP-UM 3475a, partial skeleton of an adult female, containing the partially ossified skeleton of a near-term fetus (GSP-UM 3475b)
• Location: Balochistan Province, Pakistan
• Age: Middle Eocene, ~47,500,000 years old
• Length: ~2.5 meters (about 8 feet)
• Info: Artist’s conception of male Maiacetus inuus as it would have appeared in life.
  Credit: John Klausmeyer, University of Michigan Museums of Natural History.
• A team of paleontologists led by Philip Gingerich have described a new species of early whale. Buried along the shrinking shores of the Tethys Sea (and collected well above sea level in present-day Pakistan), the holotype of Maiacetus is the partial skeleton of a pregnant mother, preserved with the remains of its near-term fetus still in its womb. A more complete skeleton found one kilometer away is thought to be male, due to differences in size and pelvic proportion, and shows that this early whale retained the ancestral ability to stroll the shores on four fully-functional limbs (including an artiodactyl-style “double-pulley” ankle). The position of the fetus in the female indicates that Maiacetus gave birth head-first and most certainly on land, unlike modern whales that give birth tail-first into the water, which reduces the risk of drowning and helps orient the newborns parallel to their mothers. There are several excellent articles around the blogosphere for those who want to learn more, and the description is freely accessible through PLoS ONE at the link below.
  Fossils of female Maiacetus inuus with near-term fetus in utero, as found in the field. The female’s skull is shaded white (teeth brown), and other parts of her skeleton are shaded red. The single fetus, in birth position inside the mother whale, is shaded blue (teeth orange). The specimen was collected in three plaster jackets (blue dashed lines), and additional bones were picked up separately. The red dashed line indicates the edge exposed by erosion.
  Copyright: University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology.
• Reference: Gingerich, P. D., Haq, M-u., von Koenigswald, W., Sanders, W. J., Smith, B. H., and Zalmout, I. S., 2009. New Protocetid Whale from the Middle Eocene of Pakistan: Birth on Land, Precocial Development, and Sexual Dimorphism. PLoS One 4(2): e4366. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004366.
• Further Reading:
  • University of Michigan Press Release
  • Greg Laden’s Blog: Amazing Fossil Finding: Proto Whales Gave Birth on Land, not at sea
  • Laelaps: Maiacetus, the good mother whale
  • The Loom: The Backward Whale
  • Not Exactly Rocket Science: Fossil foetus shows that early whales gave birth on land
  • The Questionable Authority: A Fossil Fetus and what it can tell us about the life history of early whales.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Mammals, Paleogene.

Comments on record: (3)

Apparently this is the first video footage of a live Hispaniolan Solenodon (Solenodon paradoxus), a secretive Caribbean mammal known primarily for being:

• Endangered
• Venomous
• Along with the Cuban Solenodon (S. cubanus), the last remnant of a distinct lineage of mammals going back 76 million years

More information about this footage (and higher quality video) can be found at this press release from the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, or the related BBC story.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Cretaceous, Mammals, Neogene.

Comments on record: (1)