The Naturalists’ Miscellany : Or Coloured Figures Of Natural Objects; Drawn And Described Immediately

Big sister drops to her knees to show affection to newborn Photo by James Irwin

The Lemon Grove Mummies: Ancient Corpses from Mexican Cave Found in California Garage

On an ordinary day in 1980, a Californian mom decided to spend the afternoon cleaning out her garage – a long neglected chore. She found a lot of trash and plenty of knick-knacks; some forgotten memories arose but nothing unusual. That is until she came to a carton buried in the back. Inside, she found the corpse of a young girl and an infant. Horrified that something so ghastly was lurking in her garage, the mom called the police at once. The Lemon Grove PD arrived ready to investigate a murder. Instead, they stumbled upon a mystery. The two bodies found in that California garage may have been victims but their deaths had taken place centuries earlier.

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Bawean warty pig may be world’s rarest pig, with only 230 around 

by Fred Pearce

By day, they rest in the surviving scraps of rainforest on their remote tropical-island home. By night, they grub around for tubers and roots in the forest gardens of local communities, dodging guard dogs and the occasional angry farmer with a gun.

Now, the diminutive warty pigs of Bawean, a small island in Indonesia’s Java Sea, have a new claim to fame: they may be the rarest pigs in the world.

The warty pigs of Southeast Asia come in many shapes and sizes – and, it seems, many species too. Often dismissed as little more than pests, they are receiving a taxonomic makeover, with a dozen distinct species now acknowledged, and others likely to emerge.

The latest is the Bawean warty pig (Sus blouchi), a dwarf relative of the Javan warty pig (Sus verrucosus), but now claimed to be a species in its own right…

(read more: New Scientist)

photograph via: Bawean Endemik Konservasi Initiatif

A few photos from my visit to the Museum of Osteology in Oklahoma City.

(Fact Source)

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Taphonomy

Geologic Evidence May Support Chinese Flood Legend

A deluge that washed down the Yellow River nearly 4,000 years ago could be linked to the founding of China’s semi-mythical first dynasty.

Nearly 4,000 years ago, a landslide sent boulders and sediment tumbling into a valley of the Yellow River. The carnage created a massive earthen dam some 660 feet (200 meters) tall, cutting off the river for months.

When that dam finally burst and the river broke free, a massive flood raged across the countryside—and potentially altered the course of Chinese history.

That’s the story told by sediments and archaeological remains described Thursday in a provocative new study published in Science. If correct, the geologic evidence provides a kernel of truth to one of the country’s most important legends: a great flood that paved the way for the Xia, China’s semi-mythical first dynasty.

“Its importance is just like the story of Noah’s flood in the Western world,” says study leader Qinglong Wu of China’s Peking University.

According to the legend, ancient China held a vast watery landscape that took decades to make livable, largely through the efforts of a hero named Yu. For his work, he was rewarded with political power, ultimately founding the Xia dynasty.

There’s considerable debate, however, over whether the Xia actually existed. The main evidence comes from stories written down centuries after their rule, and no archaeologically recovered writings have been concretely tied to the Xia.

If the newly discovered flood is the great flood of legend, it offers tantalizing evidence for the tale. For starters, the flood dates to 1920 B.C., a period that coincides with a critical time in Chinese history: the beginning of the Bronze Age and the start of the Erlitou culture, which some archaeologists associate with the Xia.

“If the great flood really happened, then perhaps it is also likely that the Xia dynasty really existed too. The two are directly tied to each other,” says study co-author David Cohen of National Taiwan University.

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SPERM WHALE EVOLVED TO RAMMING

Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick was inspired by historical instances in which large sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus L.) sank 19th century whaling ships by ramming them with their foreheads. The immense forehead of sperm whales is possibly the largest, and one of the strangest, anatomical structures in the animal kingdom. It contains two large oil-filled compartments, known as the “spermaceti organ” and “junk,” that constitute up to one-quarter of body mass and extend one-third of the total length of the whale 

Now an international team of researchers used structural engineering principles to test how the head of the sperm whale might be able to resist strong ramming impacts. Using computer simulations and working from published data on sperm-whale tissue and skeletal structure, scientists modeled impacts of varying types, and from a range of directions,what they found is the whale’s junk proved to play a vital role, with tissue partitions distributing much of the stress from ramming impacts and thereby preventing the skull from fracturing.

Although male sperm whales may not fight frequently, we know that aggressive ramming behaviour is a common characteristic in the group of mammals from which whales are derived – the even-toed ungulates, the artiodactyls. 

Illustration: Schematic representation of sperm whale head structure, courtesy of Ali Nabavizadeh. 

Reference: Panagiotopoulou et al. 2016. Architecture of the sperm whale forehead facilitates ramming combat Peerj

How do you think they'll dispose of Tillikums body? :/

They’ll probably do a necropsy after he dies to determine the exact cause of death. After that, I’m not sure what they’ll do. Normally they don’t tell anyone what happens to the animal’s body after they die. Perhaps since Tilikum is so well-known they’ll give him a proper burial/memorial? I’ve heard somewhere before (but for the life of me cannot remember where, so don’t take this as a fact) that Kalina is buried somewhere on the property of SeaWorld Orlando.

I know I’ve read that in Kamogawa Sea World they bury the dead orcas in a cherry blossom garden, which I think is very nice and respectful.