Chicken feet and horse feathers
Specialized teeth and many of them in the same mouth - it is often great fun to look at Heterodontosaurus and see how the dinosaurs independently invented something that is one of the defining features of mammals. Guess what else ? Heterodontosaurids had feathers ! While feathered dromaeosaurs from China are .. err.. old hat, this latest fossil has raised a confusing little storm. All the feathered dinosaurs found thus far (and this includes those Oxford Street red-tailed hawks) are saurischians - the "lizard-hipped" kind of dinosaurs - which carry the popular image of being fast and deadly and carnivorous. This is the first time that one of the slower, herbivorous, bird-hipped dinosaurs has been found with feathers, or long filamenty things that might have been feathers anyway. The dino known as Tianyulong confuciusi - pretty darned confuciusing, methinks.
Another microraptor has been found, but this time it's North American. Yet another example of 'looking closely' winning over 'digging deeper', the specimen was rediscovered after sitting in a museum for 25 years. Hesperonychus ('evening claw') was a raptor the size of a small bird, possibly climbed trees and glided down off them. This fossil could shed more light on the famous "Did they take off by running fast on the ground ?" vs. "Did they leap off trees ?" debate - also known as the Airplane vs. Hang-glider question. What ever it did though, it sure wasn't chicken.
Blunderful life
This one is my favorite story of the week, mostly because I recently finished reading Wonderful Life, and because I can use bizarrely functional machines (read 'animals') to justify some of the bizarre things I've been guilty of building. Like some of the other Burgess Shale creatures, this one too was initially thought to be many different animals - the mouthparts, 'legs' and shell were each classified as other less strange creatures. Until recent work by Desmond Collins and colleagues recognized it as a new giant predatory shrimp: Hurdia, a larger relative of the one called Anomalocaris, but with a wackier covering shell (this is a Burgess Shale creature after all !). Here's the Science article. And a picture so you can write in and disagree about whether it looks like a Klingon spaceship.
Gannet get any worse ? Whale, it can
Remember the video of gannets dive-bombing a baitball, from a couple of weeks ago ? It turns out that the Great Sardine Run produces even more fantastic behavior. If you thought seabirds swimming around underwater alongside sharks to catch fish was strange, check this video out ! Fish packed into a ball, being troubled from the surface by gulls, from underneath by penguins, and along comes a humpback ... this is easily the most beautiful video I've seen in a long, long time - and that's no red herring. Just be warned that you might grin so hard you fall off your chair.
Honey, I bashed up the hive
Another connection to a past Llamasaurus tale. The Goualougo chimps are monkeying around some more. This time though, they're not taking it out on termites, but saving their engineering talent and patience to get a sugar fix. And willing to bash away at a hive hundreds of times with a heavy club. Which seems a terrible thing to do to such unselfish animals as bees. Oh, the things some folks will do to satisfy a sweet tooth ...
