Snowy Palms: An Omen of Death

Recently, parts of Southern California experienced some surprisingly cold weather, as falling snow graced the tops of the palm trees around Christmas time.  A White Christmas is nothing terribly surprising for folks like myself, born and raised in Colorado, but for California natives it was definitely more of a surprise.  People had pulled over on the side of the highway for an opportunity to play in the snow, throwing snowballs and taking selfies all over the place.

Wind turbines in the foreground, and snow capped mountains in the background in the middle of the desert just outside of Palm Desert in California.

A family stopped along Interstate-15 in Temecula, California to play in the snow, a scene that could easily have been lifted out of Colorado, if not for the trees adorned with green leaves, and especially the palm tree in the background.

A snow selfie on the side of the Interstate-15 in Temecula, California.

Although the winter freeze was very exciting for many of the residents, for the native residents of Southern California's deserts, the freeze would be much less welcome.  Over millions of years, the animals that call these seemingly barren slopes home have evolved to cope with extreme environmental stress typical of those experienced in the desert.  Aridity and extreme heat of course play major roles in any desert ecosystem, and many of the adaptations of desert animals are in response to these climatic factors.

The bobcat (Lynx rufus), one of the residents of the Southern California deserts.  This particular individual was at The Living Desert in Palm Desert.

A captive desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni) at The Living Desert.  This subspecies is native to the southern United States and Mexico.

A western diamondback rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox), also native to the southern United States and northern Mexico.

A wild greater roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) that I chased through a Target parking lot.  

A wild California ground squirrel (Spermophilus beecheyi) that we saw foraging around at The Living Desert.

A hummingbird, possibly an Anna's hummingbird (Calypte anna).  Hummingbirds in Colorado will fly south for the winter, in order to avoid harsh weather like that seen in Southern California last week,

Of course, environmental conditions that fall well outside the norm are arguably equally important for animals native to a specific biome or region.  Even if a population of animals thrives in the harsh, arid landscape of Southern California, if all it takes is a single night of snow to wipe out the population, unusual weather (such as that seen in the area last week) can be extremely troublesome.  Extreme weather can also help control populations, and can be what keeps other animals from colonizing an area.  For example, if a population of desert rodent attempts to colonize the mountains around Palm Desert, but is unable to cope with the occasional snow storm, then that type of rodent would be much less likely to survive and thrive there.

Part of the mountains west of La Quinta and Rancho Mirage, prior to the snowstorm.

The same mountains, following the snowstorm.

Works Cited:

Hummingbirds found in California, USA. (n.d.). Retrieved January 4, 2015, from http://beautyofbirds.com/hummingbirdscalifornia.html

Rancho Mirage on Dwellable

Anoxic Conditions From Everest to Europa: Swamps, Fossils, Naked Mole Rats, and the Hunt for Extraterrestrial Life

Above elevations of 6500 meters (21,300 feet), most climbers tend to start using supplemental oxygen.  At altitudes higher than this, oxygen is spread so thin that humans can have a very tough time breathing.  Even people who come from sea level to my hometown of Boulder, Colorado at an elevation of 1,655 meters (5,430 feet) often get altitude sickness, and there's still a whole lot of altitude to go before you even get to Everest Base Camp.  Most birds don't fly as high as the summit of Mt. Everest, because most birds have no reason to fly that high.  However, for the bar-headed goose, the Himalayas form an unfortunate, but not impassable, barrier between their winter feeding grounds in India and their Tibetan nesting grounds.  These geese have been reported flying over some of the highest Himalayan peaks, and they're not the only ones that fly this high.  On November 29th, 1973, a Rüppell's griffon, a type of Old World vulture, collided with an airplane at an altitude of 11280 meters (37,000 feet).  By comparison, oxygen cylinders are recommended for sailplane pilots flying over 3660 meters (12,000 feet)!

Here we have a beautiful (and extraordinarily neat) size comparison and altitude chart of a number of things covered in the post, including the altitude of Denver, the summit of Mt. Everest, the upper extent of the range of the snow leopard, and the height at which the Rüppells griffon got sucked into the jet engine.  I've also thrown in some other helpful and fun things for comparison as well.

Part of what helps birds survive at altitudes that could kill a human is a series of air sacs that allow air to flow in one direction through the body of the bird.  In humans, the air we breath in and out travels back and forth along the same tubes.  In birds, as well as some of their close dinosaurian cousins, these air sacs would have have allowed the air to flow more efficiently through their bodies.  While this is simply one of many adaptations that can help birds fly at incredibly high altitudes, other animals have evolved other adaptations to assist in high altitude living.  Scientists have determined that changes in the genes EGLN1 and EPAS1 are linked with animals living in oxygen impoverished environments, such as the snow leopard, humans native to Tibet, and naked mole rats.  Naked mole rats live in underground colonies of 20-300 individuals, and are one of two species of mammal that can be classified as "eusocial," meaning that their colonies display a caste system (similar to the social structure seen in ant and termite colonies).  These underground colonies are poorly ventilated, which means that as the mole rats inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, CO2 concentrations can increase to levels that would be unsafe for humans.  Fortunately, naked mole rats are well adapted to breathing very little oxygen, and their brains seem incapable of registering pain upon contact with acids, which is thought to help them in these CO2 rich confines.  They also demonstrate similar changes in the aforementioned genes as snow leopards and the Tibetan people, indicating another adaptation to these low oxygen (or hypoxic) conditions.

A group of naked mole rats all huddled together at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Look at all of that eusociality!

Although hypoxic conditions can bode ill for human climbers and gregarious colonial rodents, low oxygen conditions can be great for paleontologists.  When oxygen levels drop to nearly zero, anoxic conditions prevail, and bacterial decomposition of organic material is greatly reduced.  This can be a major factor when it comes to soft-tissue preservation, such as feathers and skin.  A FEW WEEKS AGO, we talked about several famous fossil sites called Lagerstätten (a German term meaning "mother lode"), that are set apart from other fossil deposits due to the quality and/or quantity of the fossils discovered there.  One of the most famous examples is the Cambrian-aged Burgess Shale in British Columbia, Canada.  Abrupt burial of the 500 million year old organisms, coupled with the anoxic conditions that prevailed at the bottom of this body of water, ensured that these soft-bodied organisms would be preserved in exquisite detail.

A drawing of Opabinia, one of the many creatures that inhabited the Cambrian aged Burgess Shale in British Columbia, Canada.  Photo Credit: Sam Lippincott

Why do swamps often have that rotten egg smell?  Believe it or not, the answer is closely related to what we've already been talking about!  Under hypoxic or anoxic conditions, bacteria that use oxygen (O2) sometimes have to make do with sulfur (S).  If you look at a periodic table, you can see that sulfur (element #16) is directly below oxygen (element #8).  In the periodic table, each group (or column) of elements has very similar chemical properties, which means each element will react in a similar fashion.*  For the bacteria that can't get enough oxygen, they will sometimes turn to its close cousin sulfur instead.  Below is the chemical formula for cellular respiration, which is what these bacteria do, as well as some of the cells in humans.  On the left, we have the inputs: glucose (C6H12O6), and oxygen (O2).  When we breath in air, we are bringing oxygen into our lungs, and we can get glucose from the foods we eat.  On the right of the arrow, we have the outputs: water (H20), carbon dioxide (CO2), and energy.  Remember how we talked about the CO2 concentrations in naked mole rat burrows?  CO2 is one of the products of respiration, and one that can be harmful in large doses.  Energy is another product of respiration, which is the fuel that cells need to do their job.  In places where there is less oxygen input (such as at the top of Mt. Everest or in a naked mole rat burrow), the cells don't get as much energy output, and they can't do their job as well.

Now, instead of having oxygen as one of the inputs of cellular respiration, let's try sticking oxygen's close cousin, sulfur, into the equation to see what will happen.  As you can see below, the glucose on the left of the equation remains unaffected, as does the carbon dioxide output on the right of the equation.  But instead of having water (H2O) as another one of the outputs, we now see a molecule with the formula H2S.  Instead of forming water (hydrogen oxide), we have now formed a closely related molecule, hydrogen sulfide.  In swamps, large amounts of organic material leads to lots of bacteria and bacterial decomposition, which in turn can lead to lots of the oxygen being used up in the water.  That's when these bacteria start using sulfur to make their energy, producing hydrogen sulfide, with that characteristic rotten egg smell.  Even with this sulfur replacement, sometimes the bacteria just can't keep up with the amount of vegetation that is deposited in the swamp, and the organic material builds up.  If the rate at which the vegetation accumulates exceeds the rate which the bacteria can decompose the vegetation, then you have coal formation potential sometime in the future.

Let's take this one step further.  In normal respiration, where oxygen is one of the inputs and water (H2O) is one of the outputs, carbon dioxide (CO2) is another one of the outputs.  If animals and bacteria keep using up oxygen and turning it into carbon dioxide, why haven't we run out of oxygen?  Will we run out one day?  Fortunately, for the time being, plants have got our back, by undergoing a process called photosynthesis.  Photosynthesis is almost the exact opposite of respiration: carbon dioxide and water are the inputs, and glucose and oxygen are the outputs.  However, unlike respiration, light is one of the inputs of photosynthesis.  In the 1700s, a man named Joseph Priestly did experiments in which he sealed a mouse in a jar, and waited to see what happened.  The mouse, as you could probably predict, suffocated and died.  It used up its oxygen to create energy (as well as carbon dioxide), and eventually ran out of oxygen.  (This is why it's important not to put animals into completely sealed jars with no airflow, as they will suffocate.)  However, if he put a plant into the same jar as the mouse, the mouse didn't suffocate.  We now know that is because, as the mouse used up the oxygen, creating carbon dioxide, the plant would use the carbon dioxide, ultimately creating more oxygen.

As you probably know, plants need light to survive, and as we mentioned before, that's because light is one of the inputs of photosynthesis.  No light, no photosynthesis.  No photosynthesis, your plant dies.  For many years, scientists assumed that all life on Earth was directly dependent on the Sun for its energy.  That is, until 1977, when scientists discovered entire communities of biological organisms living thousands of meters beneath the surface of the ocean, too far from any sunlight to undergo photosynthesis.  So what was going on?  How were these communities able to survive without access to the sunlight?

Hydrothermal vents are essentially underwater hot springs that form along tectonic boundaries thousands of meters beneath the surface of the ocean.  These underwater vents spew different compounds containing sulfur into the surrounding water, just like aboveground geysers do, too.  (If you have ever been to Yellowstone National Park, then you might even remember the rotten egg smell.)  Some bacteria that surround these vents are actually able to use these sulfur-containing compounds to create the energy needed to undergo a process similar to photosynthesis, called chemosynthesis (consult the equation below).  Chemosynthesis is very similar to photosynthesis, with a few key differences, the biggest difference being the sulfur reactions vs. sunlight as one of the inputs.  You can also see that, instead of having water (H2O) as an input like in photosynthesis, chemosynthesis instead uses hydrogen sulfide (H2S) as an input.  Then, instead of producing oxygen, the chemosynthetic organisms produce water and sulfur.  You can compare it to the oxygen-poor respiration equation that we talked about with the swamps, and see that it is similar to that equation as well, simply flipped around.

But that's not all.  Scientists have taken this idea a step (or rather, one giant leap) further.  The search for life on other planets thus far has yielded nothing, but that doesn't mean it's not there.  It is now realized that some of the factors that were once thought to limit the development of life, such as sunlight, might not be as crucial as we once thought, and the hydrothermal vent communities have been crucial in the maturation of these ideas.  Some scientists suspect that life could exist on Mars by using chemosynthesis, but a new candidate has been receiving an increasing amount of attention: one of Jupiter's moons, Europa.  Icier than the planet Hoth, Europa is now thought to have an ocean of liquid water up to 160 km (100 miles) deep surrounding the solid, rocky mantle, following the discovery of a magnetic field surrounding the moon, similar to the magnetic field that surrounds the Earth.

What keeps the liquid ocean of Europa from freezing solid?  Jupiter is pretty far from the Sun, and even Mars, which is much closer to both the Sun and the Earth than Jupiter is, has had its water frozen for millennia.  It's thought that the gravity exerted by the enormous mass of Jupiter continually pushes and pulls, or tidal stresses, on its moons, which keep the planets from becoming tectonically inactive, like Mars.  Io, another of Jupiter's moons slightly larger than our Moon, is the most geologically active body in our Solar System.  The tidal stresses from Jupiter exerted on Io apparently make Io's ground itself buckle up and down, similar to the tides we experience here on Earth, except that instead of water moving up and down 18 meters (60 feet), its solid ground moving up and down up to 100 meters (330 feet!)  It's these same tidal stresses that make Io so geologically and volcanically active that help keep Europa from freezing solid.  It has been hypothesized that the tidal flexing might also create hydrothermal vents on the bottom of Europa's oceans, and it shouldn't take too much thinking to realize what that might mean: the potential for extraterrestrial life!

*For example, we humans, as well as all known lifeforms, are carbon-based.  In science fiction, such as Star Trek and Transformers, you will often hear about "silicon-based lifeforms."  Why silicon, as opposed to any other element?  If you look at the periodic table, silicon is in the same group as carbon, and situated right beneath it, and therefore has very similar chemical properties as carbon.



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'Donts and 'Apsids: Ancestral Dinos and Mammals of the Mid-Triassic

When it comes to dinosaurs and mammals, neither had quite yet evolved yet.  Most people consider animals like Herrerasaurus and Eoraptor to be among the oldest known dinosaurs, but others now consider Nyasasaurus to be the oldest, originating from 240 MY old rocks from Tanzania.  Many dinosaurs looked very similar to other, closely related archosaurs, and only extensive research and more specimens will be able to shed light on these ancient critters.

Mammalian ancestors took the form of the now-extinct dicynodonts and the cynodonts, the latter of which include modern mammals, as well.  In modern mammals, you can see how the skull only has a single hole behind the eye (the space where the coronoid process sneaks in between the main part of the skull and the extruding zygomatic arch), making it a synapsid, or "one-holer."  In previous posts, we've talked about primitive, mammal-like animals such as Dimetrodon and Cotylorhynchus.  Both of these critters are synapsids.  Diapsids, or "two-holers" (remember from our recent Latin/Greek Roots post that the root "di" means "two" [click HERE to read that post]), is another large group, and includes everything from crocodiles to dinosaurs, lizards to snakes, and tuataras to birds.  It also includes the archosaurs, a subgrouping of diapsids that are characterized by an additional hole in the skull, bringing the total number of skull holes up to three.  So some diapsids are also archosaurs, such as birds, dinosaurs, and crocodiles.  There's also the anapsids, which are animals with no holes in the skull, such as amphibians and turtles.  Taxonomically, this can get a bit confusing (especially since sometimes an animals classification doesn't correspond to the number of holes that it has at that point in its evolutionary history), and maybe later we can go into greater detail about these different 'apsids, but below we have a nice picture that should help clear things up a little.

Holes in the skull.  On the top left, we have the prehistoric sea turtle Protostega, an anapsid, with no extra holes behind the eye socket.  Below Protostega, we have Prestosuchus, a type of archosaur.  Not only does Prestosuchus have the two holes in the skull behind the eye socket that characterize older diapsids, but it also has a third hole, in front of the eye socket, but behind the nose openings.  On the bottom right, we have Edaphosaurus, a primitive synapsid.  The largest hole in the skull, furthest on the right, is what will one day become the hole that the coronoid process sneaks through, between the zygomatic arch and the rest of the skull.  In the picture above Edaphosaurus, you can see what I'm talking about, with the extinct mammalian synapsid Hyaenodon.  Here, you can see the little nub of the coronoid process between the zygomatic arch and the skull.

As we talked about in that Latin/Greek post that I mentioned above, the name of the primitive, fin-backed synapsid Dimetrodon means "two measures of teeth," referring to the two different types of teeth this animal possesses.  This is a feature known as "heterodonty," a term that means "different teeth."  Most mammals are heterodonts, and most other animals like reptiles are not, but it doesn't always work that way.  Modern cetaceans such as the sperm whale, as well as orcas and dolphins, are homodonts, meaning that they only have one type of tooth in their mouth.  If you look at ancient ancestors of whales, such as Basilosaurus or Zygorhiza, you can see that they have different types of teeth in their mouth.  This condition can be traced all the way back to 50 MY old Pakicetus.

A trio of cetacean skulls.  On the top left, we have Pakicetus, a terrestrial ancestor of the cetaceans, that lived in Pakistan approximately 50 MYA.  Below Pakicetus, we have Zygorhiza, a more derived and fully aquatic cetacean.  In both Pakicetus and Zygorhiza, you can see how the front teeth and back teeth are different, with the front teeth more for gripping prey, and the back teeth perfect for slicing.  On the right, you can see the skull of the modern killer whale, or orca, which has only one type of tooth in their mouth, the conical, gripping teeth.

Then, of course, there are the heterodont reptiles and dinosaurs such as the Cretaceous crocodilian Malawisuchus, and the dinosaurs Heterodontosaurus (literally meaning "different-toothed lizard") and the oviraptorosaur Incisivosaurus.  We also talked about the primitive pterosaur Dimorphodon (two morphs of teeth) in the Latin/Greek post as well.  If you look at the skulls of any of these animals, you can clearly see the different types of teeth in their mouth.  Cynodonts were not merely an aberrant heterodont form amongst a vast sea of closely related homodonts, but instead were precursors to the default heterodont condition seen in mammals.

The skull of Heterodontosaurus, on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.  You can see the two different types of teeth in the skull, especially in the lower jaw.

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Eyes on Ears and Mouth on Toes

Despite the clever if misleading title, we will not be talking about mouths on toes today (although many creatures such as butterflies can taste with their feet).  I just said that to make it sound like the line from the classic song "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" by Bob Dylan.  Instead, we are going to be talking about eyes on ears: eyespots, at least!

A picture of one of the Amur tigers at the Denver Zoo.  See those white bars surrounded by dark fur on the ears of the cat?  Those are the topic of today's discussion.

On the cover of the August/September issue of the National Wildlife magazine, there was a picture of a drinking bobcat, its ears folded back in the posture that some refer to as "airplane ears."  On both of its ears were two white bars that made the ears look a lot like eyes.  I never really paid attention to this pattern on the coat, but once my friend Aidan Cook pointed it out, it got the proverbial gears going.  I remembered that servals also had the eyespot-like patterns as well, but did other cats?  Turns out a lot of them do, with just a few shared throughout the post.  Notice how defined the eyespot is in both the bobcat (top) and the serval, below.

To learn more, I consulted my "Wild Cats of the World" book by Mel and Fiona Sunquist.  The authors state that many cats have this pattern on their ears, "almost as many species" have the ear eyespots that are "poorly defined or absent."  One of the many examples that they include is the lion.  As you can see in the pictures below, lions do have this pattern to a certain degree, but nowhere near as derived as in the serval or the bobcat.  Below we have pictures of a young adult male lion, two of females, and one of a cub, and you can see that none of them have a very well defined eyespot.

Mountain lions also generally don't have it as well defined.  It seems like some mountain lions really don't have that much black on their ears at all, and some have a higher degree of black and white.  Presumably, whatever the function the eyespot serves in other species, it is not as important for the mountain lion, and natural selection therefore does not favor it highly one way or another.

It's a little tough to tell in the picture below, but the sand cat is another one of those cats that has a poorly defined eyespot.

Cheetahs also don't have terribly well defined eyespots.

Yet another cat that does not have very well defined eyespots, the ever fantastic Pallas cat!

I thought I had read somewhere that the eyespots served to help communicate between individuals when they were hunting.  This doesn't make that much sense, though, because most cats are solitary individuals, with the main exception being lions, and we already noted that their eyespots are not quite as specialized.  The Sunquists state in their book that the exact function of the eyespots is unknown, although some scientists believe that they serve as a "follow me" signal to their young, which "may be especially important in low-light conditions."  I assumed that this might mean that the young cats wouldn't have the eyespots, but this is clearly not true, as you can see the photograph of Sochi, the new male Amur leopard cub at the Denver Zoo.  There, you can see that Sochi (named after the Russian city that is holding this years Olympics) also has the ear spots.  So while this doesn't necessarily support the idea of a "follow me" signal to the young, it doesn't really not support it either: it's just something interesting that I wanted to point out.

We already talked about how tigers have a pretty well developed eyespot, but here are two more pictures of tigers to drive the point home.

I can't remember for certain if the picture below was a bobcat or a lynx, but I am pretty certain it is a bobcat, looking at the size of the feet.  (Lynx spend a lot more time in the snow, and therefore have larger feet, a snowshoe-like adaptation to keep them from sinking in.)  This cat, one of many at the Wild Animal Sanctuary, seems to have much smaller feet in proportion to the rest of the body.  Regardless, you can see the well defined eyespots.

The snow leopard, one of my favorite cats, has well defined eyespots as well, which you can kind of see in both of these pictures.

Photo Credit: Masaki Kleinkopf 

The fishing cat is another cat that has these well defined eyespots.

And finally, the Canadian lynx, much like its bobcat relative, also has pretty well defined eyespots!

Works Cited:

Chiidax the Northern Fur Seal and the Evolution of the Otariids

Late last year, the New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts received Chiidax, an orphaned northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus).  However, it was last July that Alaska SeaLife Center first took in Chiidax, after he was left outside the Alaska Department of Fish and Game offices.  A note which was included on the outside of the box that the pup came in said that the pup's mother had died while she was giving birth.  Notice how in the first two pictures of Chiidax below, the pup is covered in an all black coat, a mark of his young age.

After the pups are weaned at around four months old, they molt into their next coat, the cream and brown color of the young juvenile northern fur seal.  Look for those in these next four pictures, taken sometime last fall.  The post on ZooBorns (read that HERE) doesn't say exactly when the pictures were taken, but given that the post was published late last November, these last photos were presumably taken around then.  

When the first post on Chiidax was written on November 23rd of 2013, he weighed 18 pounds, but when he's full grown, he will definitely be a bit bigger: the males, or bulls, of the species can weigh nearly 600 pounds, which is several times more than the females weigh!  The males have to be so large because they create harems of thirty to forty females, and defend them from other males.  The seals are native to the Pacific Coast of the United States, as well as the coast of the Bering Sea in Canada, Alaska, and Russia.  

The last report on Chiidax was in late December, on the 29th.  Below are several pictures that were shared then.  You can see how smooth he looks, and how perfectly adapted for a life beneath the waves this creature is!  

The northern fur seal is the sole extant member of the genus Callorhinus, but there is also a fossil species of Callorhinus.  C. gilmorei is known from the Pliocene Epoch of southern California and Mexico, as you can see in this paper HERE.  Other sources cite another paper, linked HERE, as stating that this genus is also known from Japan, but I was unwilling to pay the fee to read the paper, so that fact remains unconfirmed.  If you have a subscription to this online journal, let me know what you find!

According to the first paper, the eared seals, or the members of the family Otariidae, can be traced back at least to the Mid to Late Miocene Epoch, approximately 11-12 MYA in California, in the form of Pithanotaria starri.  Another taxon, Thalassoleon mexicanus, is known from Mexico during the Late Miocene, approximately 5-8 MYA.  The authors of the paper suggest that between 5 MYA and today, between our time and the time of Thalassoleon, was when fur seal diversification took off, resulting in the eight extant species of Arctocephalus and the extant Callorhinus ursinus, which includes little Chiidax!  The genus Arctocephalus, along with the genus Callorhinus, comprise the extant members of the eared fur seals.  The writers of the paper also suspect that it is during this 5 million year period that the sea lions developed as well.

Things have probably changed a lot in this area of paleontology since this paper was published in 1986, but unfortunately I can't seem to access most of these papers.  Callorhinus gilmorei still seems to be a valid taxon, however, as do Thalassoleon and Pithanotaria.  Hopefully, new fossils will yield more interesting results regarding these creatures very soon!  

Unless otherwise noted, the photo credit for all of these pictures in the post go to ZooBorns, either this post HERE or HERE.  

Boston on Dwellable

Works Cited:

Introduction to Latin and Greek Roots and the Number One!

When it comes to giving an organism a scientific name, many languages can be used to construct the two part name (consisting of the genus name and the species name), but it must be in the Latin grammatical form.  For example: a long time ago, last July, I wrote a post about some fun scientific names: click HERE to check it out!  One of the animals that we talked about is an interesting theropod dinosaur from Madagascar.  Named Masiakasaurus knopfleri, this dinosaurs name roughly translates to "vicious lizard of Knopfler."  In this case, the "Knopfler" part of the name is the surname of famous musician Mark Knopfler, and the "Masiakasaurus" part of the name is the origin of the "vicious lizard" half.  So the words in the binomial name don't have to be Latin: however, they are Latinized.  Oftentimes, Greek roots are used.

Oftentimes, you can tell a bit about an animal just from its scientific name.  I like doing this, and thought it might make for a few good posts.  We'll start easy today: let's look at the number one, in both its cardinal (i.e. one, two, three, etc.) form, as well as its multiple form (i.e. once, twice, thrice, etc.).  Many of these roots will be familiar to you, both the Latin roots and the Greek roots.  For example, the root "du" in Latin means the English equivalent of two.  Meanwhile, the Greek root is "di."  For multiples (i.e. the English equivalent of the word "twice"), you would use the Latin root "bi" or the Greek root "dis."  There are often multiple roots that mean the same thing in any given language.  For example, when using the Greek root "di" to mean two, you could instead use "dy" or "duo."  Sometimes, especially for the multiple versions of the roots, there are just not really any animals whose scientific names use them: at least, not that I could easily find.  If you want to search those animals out, by all means be my guest!

Keep in mind, however, that just because a scientific name has the letters of the root in it, doesn't necessarily that the person who originally came up with that name meant that root to be inside.  For example, the dugong, Dugong dugon, appears to have the Latin root "du" in it.  However, the true etymology stems from the Malay name for the animal, "duyung," meaning "lady of the sea."  Another example is the massive extinct penguin Pachydyptes simpsoni.  A quick look at the species name, "simpsoni," might indicate that the Latin root "sim," meaning "once" in English, is in the name: however, this penguin was actually named for the famous paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson!

Much as Pachydyptes simpsoni would have dove into the oceans off the coast of Australia, let us in turn dive into the number one!  We will start with the cardinal roots for the two languages.  First, in Latin, the root word would be "uni."  You might be thinking of "unicycle" (one wheel), or "unicorn" (one horn).  Here is an example of a biological organism with the root "uni" in its binomial name: meet Monotropa uniflora, the ghost plant!  The name genus name, Monotropa, originates from the Greek roots "mono" and "trop," meaning "once" and "turning" respectively.  Meanwhile, the species name, uniflora, means "one" and "flowered" from the roots "uni" and "flora."  We'll talk about this flower again in a few minutes.

Next, we have the Greek root for "one," which is the root word "hen."  For this root, we will look at another fascinating creature we have about!  Remember the turtle-like placodonts that we talked about in a post a few months back?  (No?  Well you better familiarize yourself with it HERE because otherwise your friends will ostracize you.)  Of these placodonts, one of them received the binomial name "turtle-faced single tooth.)  Called Henodus chelyops, the genus name, Henodus, can be broken down into the Greek roots of "hen" and "odus."  As we already talked about, "hen" means "one," and the root "odus" is the Greek root for "tooth."  (We will probably have an entire blog post just about that one root!)

Wait a second, though let's back up to the ghost plant real fast, Monotropa uniflora.  In this binomial name, the root "uni" was only used once in the binomial name, and yet the English words "once" and "one" were both contained within!  Well, this is because the root "mono" is the multiple Greek root for one!  (Remember, multiple would be like once, twice, thrice, etc.)  Here are some other examples of the root word "mono" used in a biological context:

• One of the three main groups of mammals, the monotremes, get their name from the roots "mono" and "trema," which roughly translates to "single hole."  This refers to the cloaca, a single orifice in many animals that is the only opening for the reproductive, intestinal, and urinary tracts!
• The dubious taxa of ceratopsian dinosaur called Monoclonius, whose name means "single sprout," and refers to the single horn coming out of the snout of the animal!  The remains of Monoclonius are very fragmentary, however, and some paleontologists believe that Monoclonius is simply a bunch of juvenile ceratopsian dinosaurs clumped together, such as Centrosaurus.  

• The scientific name of the narwhal is Monodon monoceros, which is double ones!  The name means one-tooth (mono-don) one-horn (mono-ceros).  The root word "ceros" might sound familiar: remember the ceratopsians?  "Ceratopsian" translates to "horned faces" (cerat=horned, tops=face).  
• This is Monolophosaurus, a Chinese theropod from the Middle Jurassic   It's name, meaning "single-crested lizard," originates from the fact that the animals head plays host to a single large crest running much of the length of the skull!

• Now this little dinosaur is QUITE the interesting fellow: little Mononykus, one of the few dinosaurs whose arms are even stranger than those of Tyrannosaurus rex!  Literally meaning "one claw," Mononykus had a single claw on its arm, and was quite interesting looking!  This three foot long dinosaur was originally named Mononychus, but the name was changed after it was discovered that name was already taken by a beetle, the iris weevil!

We ain't done yet, though!  Remember before when I mentioned that multiple roots can have the same meaning?  Well, there are two multiple Greek roots that mean one, with "mono" being one and "haplo" being the other!  Here are a pair of examples:

• The sauropod called Mongolosaurus haplodon, whose genus name refers to Mongolia and whose species name, "haplodon," translates to "single tooth."  Mongolosaurus, like Monoclonius, is a dubious taxa.

• Here's another sauropod: Haplocanthosaurus, discovered in the Morrison Formation, along with the stegosaur Hesperosaurus, the theropod Allosaurus, and another sauropod called Eobrontosaurus!  However, "Haplocanthosaurus" roughly translates to "simple spined lizard."  This is another example of a root word that has two different meanings: "haplo" can either mean "single," or "simple," making binomial nomenclature anything but.

This is a lot to process for a single post, so I think we will save the twos for next time!

Black Bears on the Primos Truth Cam!

A few weeks ago, a bear savagely tore through the fence of my friends neighbors.  The Lippincott's have an alley behind their house, and the bears apparently like to use it as a thoroughfare, so I decided to try and catch one on my Primos Truth Cam!

Here, we have Sam Lippincott posing next to the bear break-in entry point.  For reference, he's about 8.5 feet tall, which gives you a sense of how tall the bear must have been.

Another photo of the damage.  The bear was trying (and succeeded) to get to the trash cans, and had proceeded in strewing the trash all over the place!

I didn't get much, but I did get a series of five pictures of a young black bear!  Check them out, pretty exciting stuff!