Critter Huntin' With Chris (Day 2, SC 2014)

On the morning of our second day in South Carolina, we visited the farmer's market, and then the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History at the College of Charleston.  The museum was incredible, especially for a small college museum, and they had so much cool stuff that I am in the process of writing a Top Ten post just about the museum.  We will also feature lots of the pictures that I took there in future posts, as a lot of the fossils that they had there are animals that have popped up on the blog, and will likely continue to do so.  Now, though, I'm sure you all are being eaten up from the inside with questions.  "What did you do for the rest of the day, Zack, after you returned from the museum?  I'm sure it was something fascinating, no doubt!"  No doubt.

When we got back, Chris and I decided to go out critter hunting.  The Beckley's live next to a golf course with several small ponds fairly close by, and we decided to look into two of the closest ponds to see if we could find any gators (Alligator mississippiensis) or cottonmouth moccasins (Agkistrodon piscivorous)!  In the first pond, we startled an anhinga (Anhinga anhinga), and it flew up into the trees.  The anhinga is a type of cormorant-like bird, and spends most of its days either swimming through freshwater in search of tasty fish, or sunning itself and preening on the bank.  They are not only very good at swimming underwater due to a reduced buoyancy created by heavy bones and wet feathers, but they are also very good at soaring and riding the thermals, similar in fashion to certain types of raptors.  Turns out, I would be seeing more of this interesting bird on our trip.

In Colorado, it is not altogether uncommon to spot a great blue heron (Ardea herodius) hunting along the banks of a pond or lake, or flying overhead with their impressively elongate neck drawn back in a tight s-curve, reminiscent of certain types of theropod dinosaurs (such as Compsognathus, pictured below).  However, in South Carolina, you can hardly go anywhere without seeing a heron, be it a great blue heron, an egret, or some other type of heron.  Right after spotting the anhinga, we noticed a great blue heron on the opposite bank.  In the picture below you can see the usually majestic bird caught in the not-so-majestic act of shaking itself dry.

A picture of a first generation cast of Compsognathus from the Solnhofen Quarry of Germany.  Although this animal almost certainly lived a very different lifestyle than the anhinga, it is interesting to compare the necks of these two animals.  You can also compare the anhinga's neck with the neck of another theropod dinosaur Coelophysis (who has a neck more similar to a heron's than that of Compsognathus) by clicking HERE to check out a short feature we did on this dinosaur awhile back.  This cast is a first generation cast in the collections of the Morrison Natural History Museum.

As we went around the pond, I got an opportunity to take a shot from much closer.  Check out how long that neck is!!  It always makes me think of other, extinct animals that are thought to be piscivorous, or fish eating.  The protorosaur reptile Tanystropheus, the long-necked plesiosaurs and nothosaurs, and many types of pterosaurs are all thought to be primarily piscivorous, based on studies of their dentition, anatomy, depositional environment, etc.  The long neck seen in many of these animals seems to be pretty similar to the long neck that I see in the great blue heron, which is a pretty good design for catching fish.  If you are trying to sneak up on something, the less of you the animal can see, the better!

The protorosaur Tanystropheus.  Photo Credit: Sam Lippincott

Inevitably, we got a little too close to the great blue heron, and it took off for the far side of the pond.  As it was flying away, almost out of sight, it got dive-bombed by a red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus)!  I thought that was kind of interesting.  It's relatively common place to see smaller birds attacking larger predatory birds like hawks or eagles, who potentially might bring them harm.  Apparently, great blues will also eat other birds, but I suspect that would be more of an opportunistic feeding opportunity, and not something the heron would purposely go out with the intention of catching.

As we continued our search, two more members of the heron family (family Ardeidae) graced us with their presence, the reddish egret (Egretta rufescens) and the great egret (Ardea alba).  I'd also like to point out that the egrets aren't really a natural grouping of birds, and is simply just one name, like heron, that is frequently attached to different members of the heron family, family Ardeidae.  For example, both the great blue heron and the great egret are in the same genus, the genus Ardea, while other herons and egrets are in different genera.  Kind of like how frogs and toads are all in the same family, the family Anura, but toads are generally characterized as having dry skin, while frogs are characterized as having wet skin.

The reddish egret.  It's a little tough to see, but the bird is flying roughly in the middle of the photograph, a little more on the left hand side.

The great egret.  It's a little tough to see, but the bird is flying a little below the middle of the photograph, and a tiny but further to the right of center.

With nothing but birds and turtles in the first pond, Chris and I headed over to the second.  The second pond was much more secluded, surrounded by more trees and bushes.  We couldn't really see anything in their either, but we skirted around the edge of the pond through the trees.  Suddenly, Chris spotted some bones a few feet to the right of us.  He had spotted the skeleton of South Carolina's state animal, and only resident species of deer, the white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)!  This deer is actually the state animal of Illinois and Pennsylvania as well.

I'm definitely not an authority on such matters, but the teeth looked really sharp and not very worn down, so I was thinking maybe it was a younger animal.

The skeleton was pretty well articulated, with the front legs being the only major part of the body that was missing.

We moved on from the deer skeleton, and I promptly walked into a spider web.  Now, the thing about the spiders in South Carolina is that some of them grow nasty-big, and seem to have a propensity to spin their webs in between hip and head height for your average adult human.  I'm specifically talking about the banana spiders (Nephila sp.), or golden silk orb-weavers.  I'm not entirely sure how large the biggest banana spiders get, but I've seen ones that look like they have a leg span of three to four inches.  Disgusting.

Anyways, the one I walked into had spun a web at hip height.  Despite the fact that the web was between two ferns, I did not find the situation to be amusing in the slightest.  For a second, I thought I was going to be alright, and that maybe I had walked through a web without a spider in it.  But of course this was not the case, otherwise I would not be weaving you the tale of woe, much like this particular banana spider wove it's irritating web at hip height right in my path.  The spider started to stir, and crawl towards my crotch, which is one of the top two places that I don't want a spider to be, right after in my face holes.  I started moving my right hand, still holding my camera, away from my body to try and grab a stick to get it the heck off of me, when the spider started crawling up a line of web that it had somehow attached to my camera.  As I continually called out pitifully to Chris for help (he was probably laughing to hard at me to come and help even if he wanted to), the spider continually crawled toward my camera, which was in my hand, strung around my neck, and also several hundred dollars.  Too expensive to drop.  Right before the spider reached the camera, I was able to brush it off onto a nearby leaf.  Then, my desire to get a picture of the disgusting little arachnid overrode my other desire to get the heck out of there, so I was able to snap the picture that you can see above you.  Now you can understand the terror that I had to go through to get that picture.  Enjoy it.  Please.

Before we got out of the woods, I found a raccoon skull with both jaws nearby, as well as some other isolated bones.  I saved the skull, and hopefully I can remember to upload a picture later!  Raccoons are omnivorous, so they have fun teeth, an interesting combination of carnivorous and herbivorous dentition.

We also found a pair of what definitely looked like burrows.  We found lots of bones in the vicinity of the burrows, clearly from different animals, so I think it likely that they were created by a more carnivorous critter, likely a fox.  Gray foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) not only climb trees, but also don't seem to burrow under the ground, unlike the red fox (Vulpes vulpes), so if it is a little carnivorous mammal burrow, I think that the red fox is a good guess as to the den maker!

Chris also spotted a small crushed turtle shell which I also collected, and hopefully I will remember to upload a picture of that specimen, too!

On our way back to the house, I noticed an interesting flower that I later identified as the trumpet creeper (Campsis radicans) which, according to the USDA, can cause itching, redness, and swelling amongst mammals if the leaves and flowers are touched.  Well, later on, I picked up a flower, and did not find that to be the case.  Perhaps I didn't touch it enough, or maybe different people experience different reactions.  I thought they were interesting because I noticed that the long, tubular flowers might be a perfect example of a type of flower that has coevolved (learn about coevolution HERE) with hummingbirds and butterflies, pollinators with the means of reaching nectar from deeper within a flower, and it looks like that might indeed be the case!  Interestingly, for the first half of the trip, I don't remember hearing or seeing a single hummingbird...odd.  The trumpet creeper is a member of the Bignonia family, the family Bignoniaceae.

After we returned to the house, I thought the excitement was temporarily over.  That turned out not to be the case, as I promptly realized my right leg was under an attack from a small arachnid: a tick.  Ticks, spiders, scorpions, and solfugids (amongst others) are all members of the class Arachnida.  I believe that the tick I had on my was an adult female lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum).  The adult female is the only one with the little white dot on her back, which was something that my tick had.  Again, disgusting.  Fortunately, I was able to brush the little bloodsucker off my leg before he could bite.  Jean Ann, Mary Sullivan and I then tried to kill it with our shoes, my laptop, Honey's dog bowl, and Kleenex, but nothing worked.  I eventually just crumpled it up as best I could in several Kleenex, and then shoved it in the trash.  Ticks are tough to kill, they seem pretty well armored, and they are pretty flat, too, which makes them tough to even brush off.

After a few hours of downtime, we went down to the beach as the sun set.  Didn't see much, except part of a molted horseshoe crab shell, the Atlantic horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus).  Once they reach adulthood, horseshoe crabs shed their shells annually, usually in July or August.  Arthropods shed their shells, or exoskeletons, as they grow larger, kind of like how snakes will shed their skin as they grow larger.  Turns out, I would also be seeing a whole lot more of these later on, too!

After we got back from the beach, my father, sister and I all went gator hunting.  This was to be our first gator sighting of the trip, although we really couldn't see much.  The small reddish dot in the photograph below is actually the eyeshine of the gator, created by the reflective tapetum lucidum (read more about that interesting bit of eye anatomy by clicking HERE).  So we really couldn't see much unfortunately.

We also saw another American toad (Anaxyurus americanus), possibly the same one that I spotted the previous night!

So as of the second day, here's a faunal list of the animals that I've spotted and identified thus far.  I haven't identified really any of the plants, so I will just include plants that I've included on the blog.  Some of the animals on the list I didn't blog about, usually because I didn't get good pictures.

Amphibians:

American Toad (Anaxyurus americanus)
Green Tree Frog (Hyla cinerea)
Southern Leopard Frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus)

Birds:

Anhinga (Anhinga anhinga)
Carolina Wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus)
Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)
Great Egret (Ardea alba)
Mississippi Kite (Ictinia mississippiensis)
Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)
Osprey (Pandion haliaetus)
Red-Winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus)
Reddish Egret (Egretta rufescens)
Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura)

Invertebrates:

American Cockroach (Periplaneta americana)
Atlantic Horseshoe Crab (Limulus polyphemus)
Banana Spider (Nephila sp.)
Lone Star Tick (Amblyomma americanum)
Squareback Marsh Crab (Armases cinereum)

Mammals:

Eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)
Raccoon (Procyon lotor)
White Tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

Plants:

Trumpet Creeper (Campsis radicans)

Reptiles:

American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)

Mount Pleasant on Dwellable

Works Cited

Brachiosaurus, Riverdogs, and Frog Hunting (Day 1, SC 2014)

Here's a brain teaser: how can you tie the 4th of July to Brachiosaurus, South Carolina, and air travel altogether?  It's probably pretty difficult unless you were with me on the 4th of July when my family and I traveled from South Carolina by airplane, while having a layover in Chicago's O'Hare airport in Illinois, where they have a mounted Brachiosaurus skeleton!

My family unwittingly taking part of a scheme I concocted to have them act as scale bars for my Brachiosaurus picture.  They had no idea that I was manipulating them in such a fashion.

But the connection goes a little bit deeper than that, though.  It was actually on the fourth of July, way back when in the year 1900, when H. W. Menke, an assistant of the paleontologist Elmer Riggs, first discovered dinosaur bones at what would one day be called Quarry 13 in Grand Valley, Colorado.  From this quarry, the bones of a unique sauropod were uncovered.  It wasn't until several years later, in 1903, when Riggs gave a scientific name to this new leviathan, Brachiosaurus altithorax.

Today, a cast of this now-famous dinosaur is mounted in the Chicago O'Hare airport, and we got to see it on our layover!  Here are some pictures of this fantastic beastie!  It was originally at the Chicago Field Museum, but apparently was moved to the airport several years ago, to make room for the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton known, nicknamed "Sue."

Brachiosaurus, as you can see in the pictures, in an extraordinarily large animal!  A sauropod, or long necked dinosaur, its remains have been discovered in the Morrison Formation from the Late Jurassic Period, deposited approximately 150 MYA.  Brachiosaurus differs from other Morrison Formation sauropods such as Apatosaurus and Camarasaurus in that the fore limbs of the animal are much larger than the hind limbs.  In Apatosaurus, the opposite is true, with the fore limbs about twice as short as the hind limbs.  As a matter of fact, the name Brachiosaurus even means "arm lizard!"  

Myself standing next to the brach of Brachiosaurus!  Photo Credit: Julie Neher

A very closely related dinosaur, now known as Giraffatitan brancai, used to be referred to as another species of Brachiosaurus.  Giraffatitan (whose name literally means "giant giraffe"), an African sauropod, is known from the Tendaguru Beds in Tanzania, a formation which is approximately contemporaneous with the Morrison Formation from the western United States.  Other dinosaurs, such as Stegosaurus from the Morrison and Kentrosaurus from Tendaguru, seem pretty closely related.

The foot of Brachiosaurus. 

We were flying to O'Hare from Charleston in South Carolina.  Although we are back from our trip, I wanted to start with the end of our trip, the Brachiosaurus, as it had that fun little tie-in to the Fourth of July.  But starting from the beginning....

Just from the airport to the rental car place, a pretty short drive, I saw a ton of fun and exciting birds, including cardinals, herons, osprey, and egrets!  South Carolina has a ton of birds, many of which you can see all over the place!  I didn't get any great pictures on the first day, but here we have one of a Mississippi kite (Ictinia mississippiensis)!  I wasn't entirely sure what it was, thinking it might be a harrier, but a quick email to my friend Anne Price, the Curator of Raptors at the Raptor Education Foundation confirmed that it was indeed a Mississippi kite!

This I am almost positive is a Carolina wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus), the state bird of South Carolina!  The only other bird that I think is a possibility is the Bewick's wren (Thryomanes bewickii), but the body coloration of this bird makes me think it more likely that it is the Carolina wren.  It is a little tough to see in the photograph below, but the bird is in the middle of the photo.

We love visiting South Carolina so much so that we can see our very good friends the Beckleys!  Once we got to their house and got settled, I went out back to look around for a few minutes, which is when I took that picture of the possible harrier.  They also have different squirrels here in SC: in Boulder, Colorado, we commonly see the fox squirrel (Sciurus niger), while in SC you see another member of the same genus, the eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis).  Apparently, the eastern gray squirrel is the most commonly seen mammal east of the Mississippi River!

Here's a picture of Honey, one of two of the Beckley's dogs!

To celebrate the Fourth of July, our families went to a minor league baseball game featuring the local Charleston RiverDogs (affiliated with the New York Yankees), playing the Rome Braves.  Although the RiverDogs lost, you, the reader, will end up winning, as you get to learn about riverdogs.  

Pete Perez, the pitcher for the Rome Braves.

An awesome RiverDog hat that I got at the game!  On it, you can see that the logo is simply a dog, and not an otter, a salamander, or a turd.  If you are confused, then you are clearly not familiar with the associations that the word "riverdog" has with different people.

At first, I assumed that a riverdog might be a nickname for the otter.  Although the connection seems tenuous (with other, slightly more raunchy suggestions out there), it looks like riverdog might be the nickname for the Hellbender salamander (Crypotobranchus alleganiensis), the largest aquatic salamander in the United States!  The hellbender can often grow to a foot in length, but apparently can sometimes grow to more than two feet!

I thought it was interesting that other salamanders are sometimes given dog-like nicknames, such as "mudpuppy."  Apparently, this nickname is due to the fact that the mudpuppy and waterdogs, all members of the genus Necturus, make a dog-like vocalization.  Like the axolotl, the mudpuppies and waterdogs retain their external gills as they mature.  

Later on in the day, after the sun set, I went out gator huntin' with a flashlight and my camera.  I didn't see any gators, but I saw lots of fun critters on the golf course at night!  First, here we have what I think is a squareback marsh crab (Armases cinereum).  This crab is semi-terrestrial, and I saw it maybe 20 or 30 yards from the nearest pond.

There were also a ton of frogs and toads, many of them concentrated around the sand traps on the golf course, and others in the little sprinkler areas.  I have attempted to identify these frogs to the best of my ability, but I'm not 100% certain about them!  The lighting was weird (it was at night, and I had a flashlight shining on a lot of them), and sometimes the colors of the frogs got washed out.  But I think the frog below is a green tree frog (Hyla cinerea).

I think both of the amphibians below were American toads (Anaxyrus americanus), with the second one actually pretty large, maybe three inches long when sitting like in the picture!

Another little critter that I got a good picture of was the southern leopard frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus).  

Apparently, cockroaches are found in Colorado, but I don't think I've ever seen any of them.  I did see an American cockroach (Periplaneta americana) on my little walkabout, however.  I thought that was kind of cool, because on the airplane today, I read a paper entitled "Cockroaches Probably Cleaned Up After Dinosaurs" (Vršanský et. al.).  The paper discussed how members of the family of proto-cockroaches, the Blatullidae, have been linked to the byproducts of certain types of dinosaurs, using interesting fossil amber from Lebanon.  So I got way more excited about this cockroach then really anyone else would, ever.  

Wild Dunes on Dwellable

Works Cited:

Moenkopi and Lykins: The Mid-Triassic in Western North America

In this post, we continue with out exploration of the Mid-Triassic, 240 MYA.  In this post, we look at the Moenkopi and Lykins Formations of North America, and see what they can tell us about this ancient time.  We also delve a bit into the evolution of fin-backs and sails as display structures, like you can see in the picture below.

In the Moenkopi Formation of North America, we can gain a more complete understanding of the terrestrial fauna of this time period.  We already discussed the rauisuchian Ticinosuchus and the protorosaur Macrocnemus from Monte San Giorgio, as well as the large temnospondyl amphibian Eocyclotosaurus from Grès à Voltzia, but there were lots of other very exciting animals alive back then as well.  Arizonasaurus, a poposaurid archosaur, was likely one of the top predators, and had a back adorned by a Spinosaurus-like sail, similar to the sail seen in the more primitive German archosaur Ctenosauriscus.

We talked about the poposaurs in a recent post which you can read by clicking HERE.  The poposaurs, as well as the rauisuchians, were both members of a large group that many scientists refer to as "pseudosuchians."  These animals were crocodilian in nature, and fairly closely related to them.  But some pseudosuchians, including some rauisuchians and poposaurs, actually evolved a body design similar to some types of dinosaurs, where they could walk on either two or four feet.

Let's jump back to the sails on the back of Arizonasaurus, Ctenosauriscus, and Spinosaurus.  The first two are fairly closely related to each other, but Spinosaurus is not closely related at all, separated by around 150 MY of geologic time.  The question is, why would these animals have convergently evolved these sails on their backs?  The orthodox answer is that the sails help the animal thermoregulate, that by turning the sail towards or away from the sun, it would help the animal warm up or cool off.  Similar ideas have been proposed for other animals that feature similar anatomical structures, such as Stegosaurus with its double row of plates down its back, or the primitive synapsids Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus.

A model of a juvenile Stegosaurus from the Morrison Natural History Museum.  Other stegosaurs that are very closely related, such as Kentrosaurus and Wuerhosaurus, have very different shaped plates, and a different amount of plates, as well.

This idea has some major flaws, however, as argued by paleontologist Dr. Robert Bakker in his excellent and influential book "The Dinosaur Heresies."  In the book, Bakker points out that very close relatives of these sail-animals don't have these strange fins on their back.  If the thermoregulation theory is accepted, then that would suggest that these very closely related animals had very different thermoregulatory needs.  For example, Bakker points out that the primitive synapsids Dimetrodon and Sphenacodon are very closely related to each other, and most of their anatomy is very similar, other than the fact that Dimetrodon has that enormous sail on its back, and Sphenacodon has only a very slight elongation of its vertebrae.  If we accept the thermoregulatory hypothesis at face value, it would imply that, despite being very similar in anatomy and lifestyle, for whatever reason Dimetrodon and Sphenacodon had drastically different thermoregulatory needs.  Below, we have a chart showing a sail-back on the left with a closely related animal on the right, this one lacking a sail.

So what do we propose instead?  Most likely a means of attracting a mate.  In animals today, it is display structures and behavior pertaining to courtship that changes the most.  An excellent example of this is the birds of paradise from New Guinea, which we discussed in greater depth in a post with a similar focus, in regards to the plates of Stegosaurus, which you can read HERE.

Sharks, such as the very strange-looking Hybodus, have also been discovered in the Moenkopi Formation.

Where I live in Colorado, the Lykins Formation is approximately contemporaneous with the Moenkopi Formation.  The Lykins Formation isn't the most exciting of Colorado's geologic formations (at least not for people interested in fossils or excitement), but stromatolites can be found in some areas of the formation.  Stromatolites are layers of wavy and convoluted cyanobacteria that sometimes form in areas of shallow water.  Cyanobacteria by themselves aren't very big, as they are simply single-celled photosynthetic bacteria.  However, together, the gelatinous secretions they produce is enough to trap the sediment that settles out of the water, forming visible laminations that sometimes fossilize.

Stromatolites were much more common prior to the Cambrian Explosion approximately 500 MYA, as back then there wasn't really anything that could eat it.  Believe it or not, layers of cyanobacteria are notoriously bad at running away from herbivores, even something as slow as a snail or a slug.  Today, stromatolites are relatively rare, especially considering their past abundance, but you can still find them in isolated areas like Shark Bay, Australia, and Lake Salda in Turkey.  Most stromatolites form in areas that discourage herbivore grazing.  Shark Bay and Lake Salda are both hypersaline areas, places where most herbivores simply don't want to go (especially slugs and snails).  More recently, stromatolite-like growths were found living in an abandoned asbestos mine in Yukon, Canada.  This indicates to us that the parts of the Lykins Formation in which the stromatolites are found were likely not conducive to supporting herbivores, perhaps also due to hypersaline conditions.

Join us soon for our next post, in which we look at ancestors of both dinosaurs and mammals that were alive during this time!  We will also do a little investigating into different types of dentition, so stay tuned!

Works Cited:

Grès à Voltzia: Mid-Triassic French Lagerstätten

In our last post*, we got our first glimpse of some of the flora and fauna that inhabited the earth 240 MYA, in the Mid Triassic Period.  In that post, we mostly looked at the aquatic environments, fossils found at a fascinating place in Italy called Monte san Giorgio.  In good time, we will learn more about the terrestrial ecosystems and what lived on land.  But first, let us look between the aquatic and the terrestrial.  Let's look at the seashores of this ancient Earth.

To gain a better understanding of what lived on the margins of the oceans, we can look at Grès à Voltzia in France.  The importance of this site lies not just in the preservation of a large number of different organisms, but in the exceptional quality of said preservation.  Grès à Voltzia is considered a Lagerstätte, a German word referring to fossil sites that feature remarkable detail in the preservation of fossils, with famous examples including the Solnhofen Limestone in Germany and the Green River Formation in Wyoming.  The depositional environment that would one day become Grès à Voltzia featured deltas very close to the shore, and were home to many animals.  This prime habitat resulted in the burial of both terrestrial and marine animals, painting an even more complete picture of this ecosystem.

Here we have a picture lifted from my Instagram that shows three very different animals from the aforementioned Lagerstätten. What ties these three animals is their common ability to fly.  On the right, we have pictures of two fossil casts from the Solnhofen Limestone in Germany, deposited about 150 MYA.  Archaeopteryx, the primitive bird/dinosaur link, is on top, and Pterodactylus, a type of pterosaur, is on the bottom.  The picture on the right is of a bat from the Eocene of Wyoming, found in the Green River Formation, deposited approximately 50 MYA.  Despite its age, Icaronycteris was fairly similar to modern bats.  All three of these animals convergently evolved flight, and were not derived from a common ancestor.

Along the shores of these 240 MY old rivers, horsetails and and ferns grew in abundance, as well as several different types of gymnosperms.  Large amphibians such as Eocyclotosaurus made their home in these waterways, as they were tied to moist environments just like modern amphibians are today.

Horseshoe crabs like Limulitella, very similar to modern horseshoe crabs, are commonly found, as are many types of crustaceans, such as Antrimpos, a type of shrimp.

Insect larvae includes dipteran (true flies), odonatopteran (dragonflies and damselflies) and ephemeropteran (mayflies).  Annelids (segmented worms like the modern earthworm) have also been discovered here, as well as fish and a jellyfish.

The horsetails, such as Equisetites, grew along the edges of the water, while the gymnosperms grew further inland, probably reaching at least several meters in height.

A large number of insects, including the dipterans and ephemeropterans that we already mentioned, lived here.  Proto-cockroaches (blattopterans), beetles (coleopterans), and hemipteroids were all present, as well as myriapods (centipedes and millipedes), and spiders.  A strange mixture of modern and exotic looking animals to be certain!

Next time, we will be continuing our investigation regarding the flora and fauna of the Mid Triassic by learning about two North American geologic formations that might reveal a bit more about the terrestrial ecosystems.  Join us!

*As those of you who are familiar with myself and this blog, you are likely familiar with the fact that once I start talking, it takes a good deal to make me shut up.  The same is true for writing this blog.  When I originally came up with the idea to do a post about the flora and fauna that inhabited the Earth 240 MYA, flora and fauna that many people, myself included, are relatively unfamiliar with, it was supposed to be a relatively short post, maybe four or five paragraphs in length.  Instead, I ended up just writing and writing and writing.  I realized, as I often do, that A) so few people would be reading these posts to begin with, and B) those people who do wind up reading these posts would likely not have stuck around for an immense post that talks about everything from the ichthyosaurs of Italy, the stromatolites of Colorado, the insects of France, the communal latrines of Tasmanian devils, the lack of communal latrines of Maiasaura, the communal latrines of dicynodonts (yes, poop is cool), the heterodont condition of primitive whales, and everything in between, that it made more sense to split the post up.  This is the second installment of five (so far, at least) regarding the flora and fauna of the Mid Triassic Period, approximately 240 MYA.  It now occurs to me that I probably lost most of you in this long-winded exposition.  I don't want to just delete all this though, as future generations will find this fascinating glimpse into my thought processes an untapped reservoir of knowledge that is absolutely vital to an understanding of the ultimate being I shall become.  I think I will just make this whole thing an endnote.

Works Cited:

240 MYA: Messing Around in the Mid-Triassic

People tend to think of the dinosaurs filling the dominant terrestrial ecological niches during the entirety of the Mesozoic Era, from the Early Triassic all the way to the Late Cretaceous.  This is an oversimplification, however, as the dinosaurs didn't really evolve until the Mid or Late Triassic, and still up against competition from other groups of animals until the Early Jurassic.  Today, we are going to travel back in time 240 MY, back to the Middle Triassic Period.  This slice of time is approximately 10 MY after the mysterious Permian Extinction, and is about 10-15 MY before the first undisputed dinosaurs start showing up.  We are in a time when many of the animals that lived on the land and swam in the seas looked similar to life that is more familiar to us, but much of it was distinctly different.

All of the Earth's continents were united in the supercontinent Pangaea, surrounded by the super-ocean Panthalassa.  The Tethys Sea was nestled into what would one day become the somewhat smaller supercontinents Laurasia (North America, Europe, and Asia) and Gondwana (pretty much all the rest).  Warmer conditions prevailed, and the poles were ice free all year round.  Although the coasts seemed to be more hospitable to life, the center of Pangaea was not quite as welcoming, receiving little rain and remaining fairly arid.

There are several important sites around the world that preserve fossils from this time period.  Let's start in the ocean and work our way onto the land, starting with Monte San Giorgio.  This site along the border between Switzerland and Italy gives us insight into the ecosystem that flourished beneath the waves of the Tethys Sea.

Sauropterygian reptiles such as the ten-foot long Ceresiosaurus cruised around, likely hunting smaller sauropterygians such as Neusticosaurus.  These reptiles resembled the more famous Nothosaurus and the later plesiosaurs, with their four limbs greatly resembling paddles, all of approximately equal length.

The dolphin-like ichthyosaurs such as Mixosaurus and Besanosaurus would have zoomed around, feeding on faster prey such as squid and fish.  Mixosaurus was pretty much your stereotypical ichthyosaur, but Besanosaurus was a bit odd-looking, with all four fins/limbs being fairly close to equal in length, unlike the shortened hind flippers that is more commonly seen in ichthyosaurs.  Besanosaurus also seems to not have had a dorsal fin.

The giraffe-like protorosaur Tanystropheus also probably hunted fish and squid, using its extraordinarily long neck to ambush unwary prey items, sneaking up on them while the rest of the animal was still four or five feet away!

A drawing of the protorosaur Tanystropheus by the talented young artist Sam Lippincott!  Photo Credit: Sam Lippincott

The turtle-like placodonts like Paraplacodus and Cyamodus possessed large, flat teeth perfect for crushing the shells of molluscs and crustaceans.  The teeth of these placodonts are similar to the molars that you can see in the mouth of the walrus, a marine mammal that has a diet fairly close to the placodonts of 240 MYA.

Thalattosaurs like Askeptosaurus also probably fed on molluscs and crustaceans, and likely fish as well.  Askeptosaurus had a long snout, and superficially resembled animals like Ceresiosaurus and Nothosaurus.  In the picture below, the snout is tucked towards the animals left armpit, almost like it's trying to figure out whether Triassic animals can get B.O.

Several terrestrial reptiles have been discovered at Monte San Giorgio as well, such as the rauisuchian Ticinosuchus and another protorosaur like Tanystropehus (albeit one with a much shorter neck), Macrocnemus.  We'll talk more about the terrestrial ecosystems of the Mid-Triassic later, with more talk of animals like Rauisuchians!  Check back for our next post, featuring the French site Grès à Voltzia!

Lugano on Dwellable

Works Cited:

Animal Poop: More Fun, Tasty, and Aromatic Than You Thought!

If you're a fan of Bob's Burgers, you might remember the Season 4 episode entitled "Ambergris" (check out the full episode HERE), in which the Belcher children discover a strange, aromatic hunk of...something...on the beach.  This something turns out to be an interesting byproduct produced by the sperm whale: and even a small hunk of it can be worth thousands of dollars to the right buyer.  But what exactly is the stuff?

Much like the title of the episode, this hunk of surprisingly expensive junk is called "ambergris," and scientists believe its production is related to the sperm whale's diet.  Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) love to eat giant squid who, despite their relatively squishy nature, possess a very tough beak, a feature seen in other cephalopods such as octopi and nautilus.  In my opinion, the cephalopods can be some of the most fascinating animals ever.  Period.  We can delve deeper into why these creatures are so fascinating some other time, but for now, I leave you with this video of the ultimate in animal spy-gadgetry that would make even James Bond sea-sick with envy.  (To see the full Ted-Talk that this video clip is taken from, click HERE.)

Another thing that I think is really cool about animals such as the octopus and the squid is that they have an extraordinarily tough beak.  Partially composed of keratin (the same thing your fingernails, hair, porcupine quills, whale baleen plates, claws of reptiles and mammals, horns,* etc.), this beak very closely resembles beaks seen in some types of birds, and is often referred to as a "horny, parrot-like beak."**  To truly understand the close resemblance, check out the pictures below!

Now, if you've ever tried to digest a bit of antelope horn or Komodo dragon claw, you might have noticed that it doesn't go down very easy, and comes out the other end with even less easy involved.***  For whales, most of the squid is pretty easily digestible, as they don't have to worry about scales or claws, feathers or hair.  That is, other than that tough, keratinous beak.  So what does the sperm whale do with this sharp section of squid structure?  The answer to that is kind of cool, albeit still poorly understood.

Here's what scientists think happens.  In order to keep the squid beak from harming the sperm whale from the inside, the whale somehow surrounds the tough bits of indigestible material (including the squid beak), to keep any sharp edges from being exposed.  That part seems to be fairly widely agreed upon, although it seems that the exact methods are still not terribly well understood.  Sources differ on how the ambergris leaves the whale's body, however.  One Scientific American article states that the whale passes the ambergris with its feces because "it smells more like the back end than the front" when it is first cast out of the body.  However, other sources explain that whale feces are liquidy, and hard matter could be difficult for the whale to process.  Instead, these sources state that ambergris builds up in the whale over the course of its lifetime, and are released when the animal dies.

So why is ambergris so poorly understood?  Well, researching whales, and sperm whales in particular, can be extraordinarily difficult.  You need the proper equipment, you need the money, and you need to be able to find the whales.  Sperm whales can also be more tough to study than other whales because of their natural behavior.  They will dive thousands of feet deep in search of their prey, and spend most of their time beneath the ocean's surface.  When they do protrude above the surface, it can still be difficult to find them, as they often don't protrude very far, and their spout of water released upon surfacing is much smaller than in many other whales.

Because of these and other factors, sperm whales remain poorly understood.  Ambergris is only known to form in the sperm whale and the related pygmy sperm whale (Kogia breviceps), both of which are very hard to study.  Furthermore, studies have found that ambergris is only found in 1-5% of these whales, making the substance even rarer still!****  Because it is so rare, no one has ever seen ambergris expelled from a sperm whale, and the association is only known because of dead sperm whale bodies with ambergris discovered inside.

In spite of this rarity, or perhaps because of it, ambergris is something of a hot commodity, and apparently has been for thousands of years.  The Scientific American article quoted above cites the use of ambergris in many different ancient cultures, including the ancient Egyptians, Middle Easterners, and the Chinese.  It seems to have been regarded as a "cure-all" in some cultures, including Britain during the Middle Ages.  More recently, it was commonly used in perfumes, to fix odors and make the smells hang around for a longer period of time.  Although synthesized replacements have taken the place of ambergris in many scenarios, there apparently still is quite a market for the stuff, and even a relatively small hunk of it can fetch a price of several thousand dollars from the right buyer!

As an interesting side-note, fossilized ambergris has been discovered in 1.75 million years old Pleistocene deposits in Italy.  Some of these fossils, which apparently number more than 25, are even about two feet high and four feet wide!  The abstract of the article (link HERE) describe these fossils as "the only known example of Pleistocene sperm whale coprolites," indicating that the authors of the article consider ambergris to be a poopy product of the sperm whale.  Within the fossilized ambergris, parts of squid beak and "altered organic matter" have been found.

So yes, ladies, long story short, it is possible (although unlikely) that you have sprayed yourself with squid beak byproduct that was somehow expelled from a sperm whale at some point in your life.  If you feel slightly foolish, just remember: you can be sure that you never drank any coffee that was created from the partially digested excretions that came from the hindquarters of the Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus), or freshened up with the assistance of the male musk of the the aptly named musk deer (Moschus moschiferus), a scent which the females of the species find most alluring.

Oh wait, you might have done both of those.  Coffee made from animal poop....I have no doubt that Gene Belcher would love to have a cup.  Just remember on your next date, it's not coffee breath or a lack of perfume you have to worry about: its civet-butt breath and a lack of musk deer scent and whale byproduct.  You just better hope that there aren't any female musk deer around....

*Note that antlers are different from horns, and are not made out of keratin.  For a more in-depth discussion regarding the differences between antlers and horns, click HERE and HERE.
**Not that kind of horny.
***Based on speculation on the part of the author, and NOT personal experience.  Please do not try this at home without the supervision of a parent or guardian who has been trained in such matters.
****This statistic comes from the following source: http://www.environment.gov.au/node/18363.  It doesn't actually say how this statistic was determined, but I assume from analysis of whale carcasses.  I don't think many people have tried to look at the digestive systems of whales that are still alive.
*****Yes that kind of horny.

Works Cited: