Showing posts with label birds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birds. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Tale of Two Beaks: Darwin and the 21st Century

Fig.1. HMS Beagle in the Strait of Magellan (Credit: R.T. Pritchett, 1900

On 11 May 1820, the HMS Beagle was launched from the Woolwich Dockyard on the River Thames. Out of three voyages around the world to survey both land and sea, its second and easily most famous voyage cemented the ship’s role in history, thanks to the efforts of a young passenger named Charles Darwin. Now, nearly 200 years later, scientists have returned to the same birds that came to symbolize Darwin’s work in a study that captures evolution in action.

Friday, February 5, 2016

In the News: Mammoth for Dinner?

Fig.1. Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) in late Pleistocene landscape
(
Credit: Mauricio Antón, 2004)

From ices cores to mammoth meat, this week is full of curiosities frozen in time. A return to these specimens reveals an important software error, a lesson in evolution, an answer to a decades-old question, and more:

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

The Dawn of Birds

Fig.1. A green-naped lorikeet, a little owl, an Adélie penguin, and a northern cardinal show only a fraction of the remarkable diversity of birds (Credit: Benjamint, 2009Trebol-a, 2011Reinhard Jahn, 2007; & Stephen Wolfe, 2011)

Around 65 million years ago, one of the largest mass extinction events in Earth’s history occurred. An estimated 75 percent of all species went extinct, from non-avian dinosaurs to types of mollusks, plankton, insects, and plants. With extinction, however, came the chance for animals like birds to diversify and expand into empty ecological niches in a process called adaptive radiation. Although the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (K-Pg) may have enabled the rapid evolution of new species of birds, research published last Friday in the journal Science Advances suggests that birds have a much longer and more complicated history than previously thought.

Friday, September 4, 2015

In the News: Birds of a Feather

Fig.1. House Finch-eggs (Credit: Rich Mooney via Flickr, 2005)

Between Victorian egg collecting and modern day plastic production, humans have endangered bird populations around the world. Living collections and dried specimens found in museums help us to paint a picture of both their ancient relationship with people and future survival: