Paleontologists Find 278-Million-Year-Old Amphibian, Reptile Fossils In Brazil

The Indian Placement Program

From  1956 to 1996, the Mormon Church operated a program where Native American kids were baptized and placed in Mormon foster homes during the school year. The idea was fostering would “lighten” them. The Mormon Church teaches that Native Americans were originally white, but God punished them, and made them darker.

It began being criticized in the 1970s for weakening the children’s connection to their Native American families and communities, and causing psychological damage. And today the Mormon Church is being sued in tribal court for allegations of abuse while in their foster homes.

American paleontologist O.C. Marsh with assistants.  c. 1872.

Reflections of Mt Hood  | © Photographer |  LFST

Meet a Mount: Peabody Museum Stegosaurus

Taxon: Stegosaurus ungulatus

Specimen Number: PMNH 1853 and PMNH 1858

Year Created: 1910

Stegosaurus was a strange looking animal, but with its long, tottering legs and minuscule head, the Peabody Museum of Natural History Stegosaurus ungulatus mount is stranger still. This mount, constructed by Hugh Gibb and W.S. Benton under the supervision of curator Richard Lull, owes its bizarre proportions to the fact that it is a chimeric combination of at least five differently-sized individuals. 

 O.C. Marsh named Stegosaurus ungulatus in 1877 based on fossils found at Como Bluff, Wyoming, and illustrated it with eight tail spikes. Although modern researchers have since rejected this reconstruction, the mount at Marsh’s home institution still sports the extra-spikey tail. In another way, however, this Stegosaurus mount was ahead of its time. Lull insisted that the tail was held aloft, rather than dragging on the ground, to better function as a defensive weapon.

Netflix’s new site is a giant “f*ck you” to Comcast and Time Warner

Netflix launched a site late Wednesday night called Fast.com, where — in one click — anyone browsing the internet can see how fast their internet speed is. Although it’s great for consumers, some internet providers might not be happy about the new website.

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Taking part in a predator study in the Mount Hood National Forest. Got some great pics including blurry picture of an endangered subspecies of Red Fox!

Ball is life.

Nola was born in the southern savanna woodlands of Sudan. In the mid-1970s she was captured to protect her from poachers, and in 1989 she moved to the San Diego Zoo. She shared her enclosure with buffalo, giraffes and gazelles, and enjoyed daily belly scratches. 

In 1990, a male rhinoceros named Angalifu joined Nola in San Diego, but she wasn’t interested in him. After hormone treatments, she mated with another male named Saut, but never became pregnant.

Saut died in 2004. Angalifu died last year. Nola was getting older, and suffering from a bacterial infection. Yesterday the zoo announced:

In the last 24 hours, Nola’s condition worsened and we made the difficult decision to euthanize her. We’re absolutely devastated by this loss, but resolved to fight even harder to #EndExtinction.

With the death of Nola this weekend, the northern white rhinoceros inches closer to true extinction. But it became extinct in the wild 2008, and the remaining rhinos have all been to old to breed for several of years. Still, there are plans to resurrect the subspecies using a preserved egg and sperm. The San Diego Zoo’s Institute has pledged $2 million to this difficult project. 

And there is reason to be hopeful. A cousin subspecies, the southern white rhino, has seen its population blossom from 20 to 20,000 in the last century thanks to the intervention of humans. 

Want to learn more? Check out this article by my friend (and housemate) Sarah Kaplan.

Image credits: Jeff Keaton, Make it Kenya, Ernst Schäfer, Colin P. Groves et al, TONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty Images