The Old World Vultures: Top Ten Vultures (Part 1)

This coming Saturday is International Vulture Awareness Day, and in honor of the event, we are going to be taking a "Top Ten" look at the vultures!  Before we dive right in, I must make an important distinction.  Despite the fact that both the Cape Griffon vulture (native to Africa) and the turkey vulture (native to North America) are called vultures, they don't all belong to the same group!  Despite the often startling similarities possessed by these two different avian families, these similarities are not the result of a common ancestor, but the result of convergent evolution!  The Old World Vultures (native to Asia, Africa, and Europe) are in the same group of birds as the hawks and eagles do.  Meanwhile, the New World Vultures (native to the Americas) are just kinda out there, not too closely related to the Old World Vultures, but still birds of prey.  In order to keep this post from rapidly getting out of control (as has been known to happen to my blog posts), I have decided to break this Top Ten list into two parts.  The first part focuses on five awesome Old World Vultures, while the second post lists the last five vultures on the Top Ten list, all five of whom are New World Vultures!  Happy International Vulture Awareness Day, everybody!

10.  We'll start off with the lammergeier!  I remembered this one from a David Attenborough special that I saw several years ago!  This particular Old World Vulture was featured in a brief segment of "The Living Planet," and it was smashing good fun!  (That was a pun.  Unless you display a higher than average familiarity with your Old World Vultures, you probably won't get it.  But you will).  The lammergeier enjoys a nice meal of animal bones, especially the marrow on the insides, but oftentimes these bones are simply too tough for the bird to crack.  To successfully reach the innards, the lammergeier launches itself into the air, bone in hand, and flies upwards.  Once it has reached a satisfying height, the lammergeier will release the bone and, if all goes well, the bone will crack open upon impact with the hard rock below!  To see a video of this fantastic bird in action, make sure to click the link HERE!

2.  The smallest of the Old World Vultures, the palm-nut vulture is definitely quite distinctive, and, at least to my eye, looks a lot like an eagle!  (Not so much in the picture below, though, there it just looks like a bat!)  The palm-nut vulture, unlike most birds of prey, regularly consumes vegetable matter, with the primary component of its diet being the fruit of the oil-palm!  The palm-nut vulture does eat other foods as well, though, including crabs, fish, small mammals, reptiles, and birds.  Unlike most other vultures, rarely will a palm-nut vulture be spotted at a large carcass.

3.  The Egyptian vulture, much like the palm-nut vulture, also has a very varied diet.  This particular vulture also has ties to the lammergeier in the ways it gets to its food!  As is typical of vultures, the Egyptian will scavenge large carcasses, and this carrion is the primary component of its diet.  Just like the palm-nut, the Egyptian vulture will also consume rotting vegetables and fruits and, even grosser, it will eat poop!  (Although it may be gross, it is thought by many scientists today that part of the reason that so many people have allergies is because we don't eat poop!  Well....kind of.  Just read the post HERE.)  The Egyptian vulture also loves to eat eggs, but to get at the soft interior, the bird employs the use of tools, throwing rocks at the eggs to break them open!  To see a video of this, check out the YouTube link below!  But honestly, you might want to mute the video, the guy's voice is SOOOO annoying....

4.  Although this guy doesn't look quite as funky as some of the other vultures that we have already looked at, I really like the Cape griffon vulture (oftentimes simply called the Cape vulture, not to be confused with the griffon vulture) because I get to see them in the giraffe exhibit at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo most times we go down!  I was unable to figure out what the scientific name of the Cape griffon vulture, Gyps coprotheres, means.  I found that the genus name, Gyps, means "Condor" in Greek, and I am thinking that the species name, coprotheres, might have something to do with poop, given the fact that the Greek root "copros" means dung or excrement (i.e. coprolites are fossil poop).  However, I couldn't find anything on the Internet that would either confirm or deny my assumptions, so instead of hearing about some fascinating aspect of the Cape griffon vulture's feces, you instead can view some pictures and a video that myself and Grace Albers took at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo!

The video is indeed the link below, I didn't just accidentally upload two of the same picture!

5.  Finally: number 5, the last Old World Vulture on our Top Ten list!  Meet the white-headed vulture, aptly named due to the fact that it has a white head and it is a vulture.  The white-headed vulture is an early riser, often the first vulture to arrive at a carcass.  Because of this, it would have been funnier for me to put the white-headed vulture at the very top of this list, but I'm too lazy to change it so you will have to get by with me just telling you about how funny it is.  Often considered to be an "aloof" vulture (meaning that it generally sticks to the outskirts of a group of feeding vultures), the white-headed vulture can be very aggressive, rushing into the midst of a large group of vultures to grab a scrap of food, and then rushing right back out!

This concludes the first half of our "Top Ten Vulture" posts.  Check back soon for the second half, the New World Vultures half of the posts!

What is a Pterosaur?

Most of you have probably heard about the so-called "pterodactyls," the flying creatures that lived during the time of the dinosaurs. Like most of us, you might not know exactly what a pterodactyl, more properly known as a pterosaur, is. Is it a bird? A bat? A dinosaur? Possibly even an insect? Or a distinct group of archosaurs that are thought to be fairly closely related to both dinosaurs and crocodilians, but scientists still aren't 100% positive how they fit into the reptilian family tree? Well, if you were thinking the last option, then lo and behold: you're right! Although the pterodactyls would have soared through the skies much like birds, bats, and even some insects of today, they would have been a distinct group altogether. They are also not quite dinosaurs: as the last option says, no one knows quite yet how exactly they fit in!

Pyg perches next to the skeleton of one of the most famous pterosaurs, Pteranodon, at the Morrison Natural History Museum in Colorado!  

Another misconception you might be suffering under is what these extinct flying reptiles are actually called. Although most people call them pterodactyls, that isn't quite the correct term for them. Scientifically, these creatures are known as the pterosaurs. The name pterodactyls actually originates from a small pterosaur that is commonly found in the fine-grained Solnhofen fossil beds in Germany. Known as Pterodactylus, several hundred of these little reptiles have been discovered!

Pyg checks out a cast of one of the more famous Pterodactylus specimens from Solnhofen!

The Solnhofen quarries are world renknowed for their excellent fossils. Not only have a large number of Pterodactylus specimens been uncovered there, but it was from these quarries that the very first Archaeopteryx was uncovered in 1861.  This primitive bird is one of the missing links between birds and dinosaurs, as it shares many features in common with both groups (such as feathers with birds and hand claws and teeth with dinosaurs). Other famous and important animals to come out of the Solnhofen Quarries include numerous crustaceans, insects, and even a small crocodile called Alligatorellus!

Pyg learns more about both the Pterodactylus specimen from above (left), but also about Archaeopteryx (right)!  This cast is of the best specimen of this primitive bird, and was discovered in 1877!  (The original specimen was, not the cast).

Part of the reason why the Solnhofen Quarry is so darn special is the extremely fine-detail preserved in the fossils. As I just mentioned in the previous paragraph, feathers have been discovered with Archaeopteryx specimens. Feathers, much like skin, hair, and other soft-tissues, rarely fossilize. As the science of paleontology slowly evolves, just like the animals it studies, paleontologists become better and better equipped to deal with, not to mention find, these soft-tissue elements of these extinct animals. More and more dinosaurs are being discovered with not only skin, but oftentimes feathers, such as Microraptor, an animal fairly closely related to Velociraptor of Jurassic Park fame; Dilong, an ancient ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex; and the bizarre therizinosaurs; amongst many others.

And it's not just feathers that fossilize, either. Wing membranes, composed of a flap of skin, are being discovered more and more frequently when it comes to pterosaurs. When it comes to Pterodactylus, scientists have such a large sample size that they are able to reconstruct much of the soft-tissue anatomy of this particular pterosaur! Scientists also have a very thorough growth series for this particular pterosaur, with individuals ranging from hatchlings, just a few days to a few weeks old, all the way to very old individuals with wingspans of around five feet, which, for a Pterodactylus, is very hefty indeed!

Although we've talked a lot about Pterodactylus, there are many other fascinating pterosaurs! I've taken a recent interest in pterosaurs, but before we dive on in to a wide variety of posts, I wanted to provide a brief introduction! Remember, this is a VERY brief introduction. For a more thorough introduction to pterosaurs, consult a book or something, or check back in the future as we learn more about pterosaurs! Don't hold me to it, but I feel like sometime in the near future, I will be talking about Dimorphodon and the anurognathids! Check back soon!

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Drive to Dinosaur: Dinosaur Road Trip With Grace Part 1

Last Sunday, my girlfriend Grace Albers and I drove down for a few nights to Dinosaur National Monument in north western Colorado and north eastern Utah!  We saw a TON of awesome things, and I am going to share it all with you over the course of numerous posts!  First off, here are some pictures from our drive down there!

First off, we nabbed a few pics of my cat, Chimney, and dog, Daisy, before we left!

Pyg stops for a rest break at Lake Dillon near Frisco and Silverthorne!

Some pretty scenery on the road again!

A nice lunch of home made pasta salad, thank you mother!

Around Rifle I believe, Grace spotted a bald eagle!  We were moving pretty fast (but not over the speed limit, of course), so we didn't get any good pictures, but it's still enough to tell that it's a bald eagle!

A bit after the bald eagle, we saw some pronghorn, one of my most favorite animals of all time!  We will be talking about the evolution of the pronghorns speed sometime within the next few weeks!

After the pronghorn stopped to look at us in the picture above, the pair took off, and we got some great action shots!

We kept driving, and got some more awesome shots of the surrounding landscape!

It wasn't too long before we saw our second group of pronghorn, this one much larger!  Pyg tried to spot them, but you really need a zoomed in picture to see them.  Actual eyes and a brain don't hurt, either.

Here are some closer pictures of the pronghorn!  Below is a picture of a female.

Next, we have several shots of several pronghorn, with the male being the individual on the far right (or the only individual in the shot).  While female pronghorn have horns just like the males, they are much smaller, and are rarely pronged.

This looks like a female and a calf grazing!

Several shots of the sagebrush shrublands: Grace really enjoyed the landscape, as did I!

Finally, we were getting close to Dinosaur National Monument!  We first reached the Canyon Visitor Center, which is situated right next to the beginning of the Harper's Corner scenic drive, which we will most definitely talk about later on!  While we were at the visitor center, Pyg desperately wanted her picture taken next to this pre-rennaisance, old school Allosaurus model!

Utah, at last!  More state signs need to have dinosaurs on them, in my opinion.

Some more landscape shots!

We reached the small town of Jensen, and then turned north on the final leg of our journey!  Right after the right turn however, we spotted some funky looking deer, and went back a little ways to check it out!  On someones private property was a group of several fallow deer, a species of deer that, although it has its origins in Europe and Asia, has been introduced on every continent except for Antarctica!  There were several small and cute fawns in the mix, as well!  Notice that all of the deer, regardless of age, are spotted.  Unlike the mule and white-tailed deer fawns that live here in Colorado, the adults do not grow out of their white spots, and instead keep them their entire lives!  We actually saw several of these critters at the drive through animal park near my Gramma Roo's house in Texas, click HERE to check out that post, too!

At last, we reached the national park!

We stopped just inside the park to consult the map, and to check out the Green River!  While our side of the river was National Park, the boundary of the park traced the rivers course for aways, as you can see in the picture of the map below.  Right on the other side of the river was actually cultivated farmland, whose green pastures was a stark contrast to the arid sagebrush shrubland and desert right on the other side of the river.  I wonder just how much water they use to keep all those plants green?  We will actually talk more about water related issues in future posts of this series, including a fascinating fact that I learned about a dam!  But that comes later....

There were several Canada geese on one of the sandbars.  It was weird for me to see them out here in the middle of nowhere: usually when I see them, they are pooping all over the green grasses of the schools near my house!

The scenery in the park is pretty spectacular, and here are just a few shots of some of the rocky outcrops that we saw right away!

We finally got to our campground, the Green River Campground (consult the map above), which, as you might have already guessed, is a campground right along the banks of the Green River.  (If you didn't get that one, don't worry about it, it was supposed to be a tough one, most people don't get it the first time, either.)  Here is a shot of some more gorgeous outcrops between the trunks of two cottonwood trees at our campsite, followed by a picture of our tent!

Immediately upon arrival, we were plagued by several golden mantled ground squirrels who were positively itching for food scraps from us humans.

After we'd settled in, we decided to walk down to the river for a few minutes.  It was really gorgeous there, and we saw a ton of what I think are frog eggs in the water!

It was getting late in the day, but before the sun set, we wanted to go exploring.  Grace is super into Archaeology (Grace:Archaeology::Zack:Paleontology), so we decided to go check out: some petroglyphs.

Join us for our next installment, coming shortly: In Which We Check Out Some Petroglyphs!