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IMAGE: Photograph of a skeleton of the early non-mammalian synapsid (ancient mammal relative) Edaphosaurus on display at the Field Museum of Natural History. view more
Credit: Photograph by Ken Angielczyk
The backbone is the Swiss Army Knife of mammal locomotion. It can function in all sorts of ways that allows living mammals to have remarkable diversity in their movements. They can run, swim, climb and fly all due, in part, to the extensive reorganization of their vertebral column, which occurred over roughly 320 million years of evolution.
Open any anatomy textbook and you ll find the long-standing hypothesis that the evolution of the mammal backbone, which is uniquely capable of sagittal (up and down) movements, evolved from a backbone that functioned similar to that of living reptiles, which move laterally (side-to-side). This so called lateral-to-sagittal transition was based entirely on superficial similarities between non-mammalian synapsids, the exti
The study challenges the lateral-to-sagittal hypothesis by looking at the vertebrae of modern reptiles, mammals, and the extinct nonmammalian synapsids to determine how their vertebrae changed over time and its effect on how these creatures likely moved.
The Life and Work of Robert Alexander Gilbert: Empowering New Insights through Digitization and Transcription of Archival Materials
This post is part of a series from the Ernst Mayr Library exploring the digitization and transcription of ornithologist William Brewster’s archival materials and the insights and scholarship made possible thanks to this work.
Robert A. Gilbert, far right, at William Brewster’s cabin at Pine Point, Umbagog Lake, Maine. From the collection of the Museum of American Bird Art, Massachusetts Audubon Society and reproduced with their permission.
Robert Alexander Gilbert (1870-1942) was a Black photographer interested in ornithology and chemistry who worked for ornithologist William Brewster from the mid 1890s until Brewster’s death in 1919 and at various tasks around the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) at Harvard University beyond 1919. He was an Associate of the American Ornithologists’ Union.
Nature Conservation and William Brewster: Insights From a Lifetime of Scientific Observations
This post is part of a series from the Ernst Mayr Library exploring the digitization and transcription of ornithologist William Brewster’s archival materials and the insights and scholarship made possible thanks to this work.
A black and white photograph of William Brewster sitting on the front doorstep of his cabin in Concord, Ma. The small, one-story log cabin is set in a hillside and surrounded by small trees and shrubs. The back of the photograph has the note: “Concord, Mass. May 20, 1892.” (Ernst Mayr Library Special Collections, call no. bBr97.70.7.)
Tanya Lewis (
Live Science) writes about Piotr Naskrecki’s close encounter in Guyana rainforest with the South American Goliath birdeater (Theraphosa blondi), the world’s largest spider (according to Guinness World Records). Belonging to the tarantula family, its legs can reach up to one foot (30 centimeters) and it can weigh up to 6 ounces (170 grams). Wikipedia explains that it is the second largest by leg-span second to the giant huntsman spider but may be the largest in mass.
Piotr Naskrecki was taking a nighttime walk in a rainforest in Guyana, when he heard rustling as if something were creeping underfoot. When he turned on his flashlight, he expected to see a small mammal, such as a possum or a rat. “When I turned on the light, I couldn’t quite understand what I was seeing,” said Naskrecki, an entomologist and photographer at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.