October 2010

Rapidly Evolving Rodents

Submitted by Doug L. Hoffman on Thu, 10/07/2010 - 15:36

That humans can alter the natural environment is well known. We have been hunting, fishing and clearing land for agriculture for tens of thousands of years. More recently humans have gained the ability to drain swamps, dam rivers, level mountains and pave over darn near anything. Environmentalists think this kind of activity is abhorrent, and go so far as to claim that H. sapiens are responsible for a new major wave of extinctions. In general, animal species can either move, go extinct or adapt to human caused environmental changes. Many biologists will tell you that species just can't evolve fast enough to deal with rate of human induced change. As it turns out, this isn't exactly true.

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Biodiversity: Manufacturing a Crisis

Submitted by Doug L. Hoffman on Sun, 10/03/2010 - 12:19

With the UN trying to promote diminishing biodiversity as the NEXT BIG CRISIS it is interesting to note the chaos among diversity researchers. It is hard to make definitive statements regarding loss of diversity when science can not even tell us how many different creatures there are on the planet. Nevertheless, the UN has launched the International Year of Biodiversity, warning that the ongoing loss of species around the world is affecting human well-being. Yet another UN generated “science based” crisis to keep the world's citizens in a frenzy—shades of the failed global warming crisis, which the UN is rather hoping we all will forget.

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Ave, Tyrannosaurus Rex

Submitted by Doug L. Hoffman on Fri, 10/01/2010 - 08:42

Tyrannosaurs, the group of carnivorous dinosaurs that includes Tyrannosaurus rex and its closest relatives, are the most iconic and most studied of the dinosaurs. Made famous by movies, television shows and books, T. rex is the image most people think of when they hear the word dinosaur. The popular image of a tyrannosaur is that of a gigantic meat eater, like the one shown in Spielberg's Jurassic Park, but this was not always the case. T. rex was initially described 105 years ago by H. F. Osborn of the American Museum of Natural History. New fossil finds, including six new species during the past year alone, have shown tyrannosaurs to be a more diverse group that was first thought. A phylogeny that includes recently described species shows that tyrannosaurs originated by the Middle Jurassic but remained mostly small and ecologically marginal until the Late Cretaceous.

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