Category: Uncategorized

This 26 February 2018 video from the USA says about itself:

The Permian-Triassic Boundary – The Rocks of Utah

The Great Dying! In this episode we head out to the Permian-Triassic boundary and try to discover what caused Earth’s Largest mass extinction event, 252 million years ago.

After 4-months of research, I’m excited to finally release this exciting video! A pre-print of the scientific paper is available here.

I’ve submitted this research to the journal “Global and Planetary Change” for peer review.

By Laurel Hamers, 2:12pm, December 20, 2018:

More plants survived the world’s greatest mass extinction than thought

Fossils in a Jordanian desert reveal plant lineages that didn’t perish in the Great Dying

Some ancient plants were survivors.

A collection of roughly 255-million-year-old fossils suggests that three major plant groups existed earlier than previously thought, and made it through a mass extinction that wiped out more than…

This week has seen me brave the biting winds and winter cold to get out in some wildlife friendly farmland locally to check on the winter visitors. As I set out, on a fresh wintry morning I wished I’d remembered my woolly hat. I very soon forgot the inconvenience and was lost in wonder as my first bird was a hunting barn owl quartering a field just in front of me.

The silent hunting Barn owl

Photo Credit: Simon Stobart Flickr via Compfightcc

Soon after my barn owl and in amongst the expected crows.rooks and jackdaws came the next surprise as a single skylark flying up from some winter stubble heralding a further dozen which flew up and then washed away with the wind. A little further on in the lea of an overgrown farm garden and feeding on a winter seed patch another flock this time of

This 21 December 2018 video from Borneo in Indonesia says about itself:

Update on Alba’s Reintroduction

[Albino blonde orangutan girl] Alba [freed recently after reconvalescence] is doing very well, and has adapted quickly to her new home with friend Kika! Our PRM team has followed Alba since her return, waking at 3 a.m. before she rises to track her progress. Don’t worry, we will keep an eye on Alba and her pal.

Read more here.

Great Egret and Snowy Egret

The Richmond Bay Trail has many waterbirds at this time of year.  We walked from the parking lot at Pt. Isabel to a little past the Meeker Slough cutoff. As it was a King Tide we hoped to see Ridgway’s Rail. We did get one quick look. Most abundant today were the Scaup, American Wigeons, Coots and White-crowned Sparrows. There continue to be Black-crowned Night-herons in the trees by the parking lot. We identified 40 species. Had we stayed longer we probably would have seen more shorebirds as the mudflats were still mostly underwater when we left.

Northern Shoveler

Click Read more to see today’s Bird List

This 16 October 2018 video from the USA says about itself:

Johana Goyes-Vallejos (UConn and KU): Do Female Frogs Call?

Dr. Johana Goyes-Vallejos discovers that in the smooth guardian frog of Borneo, female frogs call.

In frog species, typically male frogs call, while females stay silent. Dr. Johana Goyes-Vallejos shows that in the smooth guardian frog of Borneo (Limnonectes palavanensis) this is not the case and that female frogs call, too, producing spontaneous vocalizations to attract males. Dr. Goyes-Vallejos’ discovery that female frogs call suggests that L. palavanensis exhibits a reversal in calling behavior and possibly a sex-role-reversed mating system, which would be the first ever observed in a frog species.

Speaker Biography: Johana Goyes Vallejos received her bachelor’s degree in Biology from Universidad del Valle, in Cali, Colombia. For her Ph.D., she joined the lab of Dr. Kentwood Wells in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at…

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/05/beef-eating-must-fall-drastically-as-world-population-grows-report

Current food habits will lead to destruction of all forests and catastrophic climate change by 2050, report finds

Damian Carrington in Katowice

 @dpcarrington

snow upon snow
winter teaching
us her name

This July 2018 video says about itself:

252 million years ago 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species vanished, this was the Permian extinction.

From the University of Washington in the USA:

Biggest mass extinction caused by global warming leaving ocean animals gasping for breath

December 6, 2018

Summary: By combining ocean models, animal metabolism and fossil records, researchers show that the Permian mass extinction in the oceans was caused by global warming that left animals unable to breathe. As temperatures rose and the metabolism of marine animals sped up, the warmer waters could not hold enough oxygen for their survival.

The largest extinction in Earth’s history marked the end of the Permian period, some 252 million years ago. Long before dinosaurs, our planet was populated with plants and animals that were mostly obliterated after a series of massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia.

Fossils…

This video from the USA says about itself:

Eastern Meadowlarks singing two different flute like songs and foraging for food on the vast St John’s Marshland in Florida. These birds are just gorgeous and their song a winter delight – note the blooming mass of swamp sunflowers – filmed on December 4th, 2018 with: Canon SX60 HS.

This 27 February 2018 video says about itself:

Galápagos Tortoise Movement Ecology Programme

The film captures the hidden mystery of the lives of giant tortoises, among the longest lived vertebrates on earth. It illustrates the diverse ecological roles played by Galápagos tortoises and how the environment has shaped complex yet predictable patterns on movement, morphology and ecological relationships among tortoises across the Galápagos Archipelago.

It demonstrates how a team of conservation biologists developed and implemented a research programme that revealed the hitherto unknown secret lives of Galápagos tortoises – one of the earth’s most iconic wildlife species. It documents the movement ecology of tortoises, their feeding ecology, their role as ecosystem engineers, and their pivotal role in ecosystems.

Touching on their conservation history from the time humans discovered the islands, and how humans will determine the fate of tortoises and their habitats. It demonstrates how scientific research can inform…