plesiosaur family known as an elasmosaur. According to the museum’s press release, Curvin Metzler, a fossil collector based out of Anchorage, made the find. The elasmosaur featured extremely long necks and long, paddle-like limbs that would have enabled them to swim freely underwater, according to the museum’s marine fossil expert and earth science curator Patrick Druckenmiller, who was quoted in the museum announcement as comparing the ancient dinosaur and the mythical Loch Ness monster that is rumored to live in the Scottish lake. Elasmosaurs roamed the waters of Alaska around 70 million years ago, but are not actually classified as dinosaurs because they never set foot on land. Theresa Bakker, a spokeswoman for the museum, said that there were highly specific criteria that needed to be satisfied before a creature could be considered a dinosaur, despite the fact that elasmosaurs lived during the Late Cretaceous when terrestrial giant reptiles were at the top of the food chain. The new find represents a historic moment in Alaskan paleontology, as it is the first time fossilized remains of an elsamosaur have been discovered within the state. Metzler discovered several of the creature’s fossilized vertebrae protruding from a bluff as the stone around it eroded, and he joined forces with Druckenmiller and an additional pair of experts to excavate the site in June this year. It was at that point that the fossil hunter was able to identify the skeleton as originating from an elasmosaur; a large percentage of the remains have since been recovered. Although the fossils were 30 feet up a 60-foot cliff, Druckenmiller wasn’t deterred from pursuing the find. A passionate plesiosaur fossil hunter, he has previously led several paleontology excavation teams across North America; one of his most recent finds was a nearly-complete elasmosaur unearthed in Montana in 2010. For now, the majority of the skeleton is being put on display at the Museum of the North, located in Fairbanks. Druckenmiller says there’s still a few remnants to recover from the site; according to his estimates, the elasmosaur would have been a minimum of 25 feet long in life. This new find isn’t the only example of a fossilized marine reptile being discovered within the state. Alaska has also been the home of two distinct finds, the first being a long, lizard-like reptile with a flattened tail known as a thalattosaur, which was uncovered on the shores of the Thongass National Forest southeast of Juneau; the other, an ichthyosaur, which resembles a modern dolphin, was discovered in the Brooks Range, located in the northernmost reaches of the state. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: D. Gordon E. Robertson]]>
Categories
Robespierre Deposed
Beringia for the Bering Strait that separates Alaska and Russia, was indeed the route taken by early Native American forebears. In a press release accompanying the publication of the report, University of California, Berkeley associate professor Yun Song commented that while there is a level of uncertainty in when this migration occurred and when the northern and southern Native American populations diverged, researchers will be able to become more precise in their estimates as additional ancient genomes become sequenced. Song, one of the co-authors of the new study, added that there were three different statistical models used in conjunction with one of the most modern and comprehensive sets of data ever to be used in the quest to identify the genetic forebears of Native Americans. The data sets consisted of genomes mapped from the remains of 23 different North and South American individuals that have been dated to between 200 and 6,000 years ago. These ancient genome sequences were then compared to genetic data collected from modern humans belonging to Native American tribes as well as those inhabiting Siberia. According to the team’s findings, the populations that would eventually become the northern and southern Native American civilizations broke apart from one another sometime between 11,500 and 14,500 years ago. While the majority of those that migrated to the south are the forebears of native Central and South American populations, part of North America was populated by these individuals as well. According to UC Berkeley professor Rasmus Nielsen, the first unique Native American culture, known as the Clovis, first appeared around 13,000 years in the past, which corresponds with the time that modern Native American bloodlines began to diversify. This date can be pinpointed with such confidence thanks to the discovery of the remains of a 12,600 year old boy who was revealed to have been associated with the Clovis after careful analysis. ]]>
Categories
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Meeting a frosty reception on its initial release, the book has since become one of the most iconic children’s stories ever. When first published in 1865, the book received largely negative reviews. The surrealist nature of the work was interpreted as utter nonsense by most readers, who found it absurd and incoherent. Over time, and aided by the illustrations provided by John Tenniel, these accusations have evolved into an appreciation of the vividly realised world described by the author. Some of the more bizarre elements of the story – Alice consuming a mushroom which alters her physical state or a talking caterpillar smoking a hookah pipe – have since been interpreted as thinly veiled references to hallucinogenic drugs. As soon as Alice follows the white rabbit, the story becomes increasingly removed from reality. This idea that the book is loaded with thinly veiled drug references was particularly cemented in the 1960s, when bands, musicians and artists associated with the psychedelic movement frequently described imagery and text from Carroll’s books alongside allusions to narcotics. This is most explicit in Jefferson Airplane’s famous song “White Rabbit”, which is saturated with references to characters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Writing in a time when opium was legal in Britain, there is of course a chance that Carroll was influenced by drug use. However, there is a danger that the story’s adoption into psychedila in the 1960s has distorted perceptions of the original work and its author, reflecting how a more recent cultural interpretation of the book has been projected onto its creator. Lewis Carroll, born in 1832, was a lecturer in Mathematics at Christ Church College, Oxford. Several recurring ailments, including a stammer, partial deafness, and physical deformities affected Carroll’s confidence in dealing and socialising with others. Socially awkward, Carroll was immensely creative in private, not only as a writer but also a photographer. The witty, complex wordplay in his writing, far from being a sign of hallucinations, is often considered to be an example of him applying the rules of logic and mathematics he needed in his day job to manipulate language. Carroll’s inhibitions around adults completely disappeared when in the company of children. He was fascinated by the innocence of youth, and had an ability to tell imaginative, offbeat stories; his diaries are full of references to the friendships he formed with children, especially girls. One in particular, Alice Liddel, the daughter of one of Carroll’s colleagues, became the inspiration for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This obsession with childhood, a desire to capture a fantastic story which could ignite the imagination of a young child, is a much more likely explanation for the fantastical elements of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland than the author being under the influence of opium. As a BBC article published in 2012 observed, there is no evidence that Carroll himself was a recreational opium user. The book may seem completely disjointed from reality, surreal to the point of being hallucinogenic – especially when compared to other works from the era – but this is because it was aimed at a young audience, inspired by a socially awkward adult’s fascination with the innocent imagination of youth. In recent years Carroll’s relationships with the young girls who he became friends with have been called into question, perhaps fueled by modern cynicism in the wake of recent controversies related to peadophilia, but also backed up by the unearthing of several troubling photographs of nude children in Carroll’s archives. Although there is no clear evidence that Carroll engaged in any inappropriate actions (it is not clear, for instance, if Carroll was the photographer or even owner of the troubling pictures), questions over his conduct have led to further reappraisals of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a fantastical piece of literature which revels in the joy of youthful innocence. Shifting interpretations of the book however, reveal that its true meanings are still far from understood.
Related Books
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
And Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
by Lewis Carroll
www.sciencemag.org Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: Mauricio Anton]]>
