Online Cortex Thoughts on Science and Technology

The internet just keeps getting bigger.  This last week, I stumbled across a new group called NatureServe that makes publicly available data about species distributions across the Western Hemisphere.  NatureServe itself has information on over 65,000 species of plant and animal.  You can download all sorts of information, such as Conservation Status, Distribution, Ecology and Life History, etc.  Below is a distribution map of one of my favorite birds: the House Sparrow.  Note that they don’t like the Amazon Jungle nor the Andes!

Their cousin site InfoNatura has information about all the species across Latin and South America.  Together these two sites provide massive amounts of data to the public on all the plants and animals in the Western Hemisphere.

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Posted under Birds, Research, Wildlife

Our birdwatching trip to the Boreal Forests of northern Wisconsin was very exciting.  We did not see any Boreal Chickadees, nor did we see any Black-Backed Woodpeckers, which we also looked for.  However, we did see several Gray Jays, which in my opinion are beautiful. 

They have no crest, but are covered in soft fluffy feathers that range in color over all shades of gray.  It is a bird that knows how to work with what its got.  Other highlights of the trip included three Porcupines, a Snowshoe Hare, Bobcat tracks, and two tagged Trumpeter Swans, which have recently been reintroduced into Wisconsin.

I had never appreciated how suddenly the Boreal Forests start as one heads north once you are north of Antigo WI.  There are also a great number of bogs in northern Wisconsin as well.

A bog is a circular-shaped depression often surrounded by Black Spruce trees (thanks to my dad Rocky for the phone pic above).  Mats of sphagnum moss grow at the water’s edge and slowly grow inward forming a tangled mat that one can walk on.  We didn’t go out walking on the bog this time, but I have done it before, and it is fun how the mat moves up and down as you walk and as waves travel across the water under the mat.  As you step near a small tree growing through the mat, the tree bends toward you as your weight deforms the mat.

On the evening of Saturday April 8th, we were thrilled to see the Northern Lights.  There were sheets of light green veils hanging from the sky flickering in the silent sky.  They were so beautiful.

After our boreal adventure, we drove back to my home town of Fond du Lac WI.  On Tuesday night (April 11, 2006) my brother Joshua took us out into the country east of Fond du Lac to look for frogs and salamanders.  It was unseasonably warm and humid…you could say froggy.  We found several Blue-Spotted Salamanders by driving very slowly down the highway and watching for them crossing the road.  [Insert your favorite 'Cross the Road' joke here].  We also stopped for a while to listen to the chorus of frogs.  What amazed me was that once I stopped to listen—really listen—I could hear all the different kinds of frogs.  I heard the peeping of the Spring Peepers, the clucking sounds of the Wood Frogs, and the comb-tooth-playing sounds of the Chorus Frogs.  (Click on the links for frog calls)  I didn’t hear the Gray Tree Frog that my father and brother picked out.  In addition, we heard a Woodcock, a Common Snipe, a Barred Owl, and a Coyote.  The moon was almost full and the sparse clouds were racing away on the sky above us while we were surrounded, not by silence, but by the active excited clamour of the nocturnal wildlife.

Kevin Knuth
Bronx NY

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Posted under Birds, Travel, Wildlife

Its early morning in the Bronx and the car alarms are singing below in a chorus accompanied by sirens from the nearby hospital and percussion from the construction work.  Its 8:30 am, which is early for me.

I am getting ready to leave for Wisconsin.  Its my dad‘s birthday this month, and we are going birdwatching in northern Wisconsin in the hopes of finding the ever-elusive Boreal Chickadee.  The range of the Boreal Chickadee is restricted to the boreal (northern) coniferous forests.  I have just realized that both northern Wisconsin and the Adirondacks in New York constitute the southern-most parts of its range.  So if I don’t see them on this trip, I can look for them when i get home!

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Posted under Birds

Just last week in the March 25th issue of Science, an article by Mary H. Schweitzer, Jennifer L. Wittmeyer, John R. Horner, and Jan K. Toporski announced the unimaginable.  They had found soft tissue remnants inside the fossilized femur of a Tyrannosaurus Rex!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0324_050324_trexsofttissue.html

The Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton had been found in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana a good distance from the road.  The bones had to be airlifted out by helicopter.  The femur bone was too big and the paleontologists were forced to break it in half.  When they did, they realized that the interior did not look like fossilized bone. 

Once safely in the laboratory, they demineralized the specimen and were stunned to find flexible vascular tissue that remained elastic.  This vascular tissue exhibited branching patterns, and the researchers worked to show that it was not fungus or plant material.  Comparison with the vasculature of demineralized ostrich bone is breathtaking with the Tyrannosaurus vessels showing nearly identical morphology to that of the ostrich.

Under a scanning electron microscope, I cannot tell the features in the dinosaur vasculature apart from those in the ostrich.  Smaller structures are visble, such as osteocytes (mechanosensing cells that help modify the bone matrix) and what appear to be nuclei of endothelial cells, which line blood vessels.

I know what you are thinking…DNA.
I am sure that they are thinking it too, but even if you could find DNA, there would probably be a good number of mutations in the molecule, or you might just find pieces.  Whether someday someone will be able to reconstruct a Tyrannosaurus’ DNA is anyone’s guess.

But there is another surprise.  They now believe that this bone is medullary bone, which is created in female birds when their estrogen levels rise during ovulation.  This was a female Tyrannosaurus Rex and she was getting ready to lay eggs!

Three other things amaze me about this find: 

First, I find it very hard to believe that organic structures can last for 70 million years.  Surely they are not exactly as they were, and it will be very interesting to find what types of degradation have occurred over that time period.  But 70 million years is a mighty long time.

Second, it opens up entire new areas of study.  Soon researchers will be cracking open fossils and looking inside.  The more recent mammalian fossils have a better chance of yielding DNA and will allow us to better map out evolutionary changes.  This will open avenues of research once only imagined.  The more ancient Jurrasic and Triassic dinosaurs (going back some 200+ million years) have less chance of there being soft tissue and organic remains.  But who knows?  If this quantity of T. Rex tissue lasted this long, its half-life must be quite a bit longer.

Third, I marvel at how much has changed in science since I was young.  When I was six years old, I wanted to be a paleontologist.  Back then, dinosaurs were cold blooded reptiles that lumbered about slowly.  Since then, we have learned that they were warm blooded.  Also, we have learned that birds evolved from dinosaurs.  In fact, many dinosaurs had feathers and the precursors to feathers, which are now well documented.  The Tyrannosaurus Rex itself is a species that is thought to have had feathers.  Now there is a sight unimagined by the dinosaur artists of my youth!

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Posted under Birds, Dinosaurs, Evolution, Paleontology

I will share a little something that I have enjoyed over the years.  This morning I drove back from The Bronx to Albany NY.  The first part of my drive is a frantic race north on the Bronx River Parkway.  I am very familiar with this stretch of highway since I used to drive it daily when I lived in New York City and worked in Orangeburg NY.

As I approach White Plains, one of my favorite things to do is to pay close attention in hopes of catching a glimpse of a particular goose that frequents a depression in the grass near the parkway.  I have come to call this goose “my goose”.  Exactly why I came to believe that it somehow belonged to me may have something to do with the fact that at one point this goose had become an important part of my morning commute.

I was thrilled when, once again, this morning I spotted my goose.  This goose looks like a farm goose x graylag goose hybrid and has a snow white neck and head and a light gray body.  I have been amazed to see it nearly every other time I drive this northward route since the summer of 1999 when I first noticed it.  It has been about six months now since the last time I have seen it, and I was hoping that it would be there.

I find it fascinating that this goose has hung out around this patch of grass for over 6 years now.  Alongside one of the busiest parkways in New York City no less.  I wonder what its days are like.  Whether it is awakened by the rush of early morning traffic, and if it appreciates the calmer weekends like I do.  What is it like to sleep in the grass with the dew, or the snow in winter?  How can it choose to drink the nasty runoff from the parkway?  The air isn’t very fresh either with all the traffic, so I’d imagine that I would fly away to a more pastoral habitat.  What surprises me though is that because I can identify it as an individual, and that I have known of it for so long, I find myself thinking about it as a fellow being and imagining its life with details that I rarely entertain when watching other birds or animals.

I enjoy watching birds.  Sometimes I will watch a Mallard and wonder what it is like to sit in the cold water with your bare feet dangling below.  And how it might feel to push yourself through the water like a boat by kicking your feet.  Or on cold days I might wonder how shocking landing must be as you plunge into the water.  Or how your feet might hurt landing on ice.  I think about these things with other birds and animals, but with this goose it is different…a little more intimate if you will.  I wonder what it thinks about as it munches grass alongside the parkway.  Has it had a good life?  Does it get along well with the Canada Geese?  It seems to.  But then I realize that the Canada Geese that are hanging out with it just might be the same Canada Geese that I have been seeing all these years, or perhaps their sons and daughters.  I would never know the difference.

For several years this goose was an integral part of my morning commute, but its friends and mate (it did have one once) are still indistinguishable to me.  It is my goose, but the ones that are important to it are just geese to me like a thousand other geese.  I am reminded of the story of the Fox and The Little Prince where the Fox says “It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”  It is the time that I have wasted thinking about this goose that has made it so important to me.  But then I realize that to my goose my car is just one of tens of thousands of cars racing by with a rush of air.  But if the goose watches closely it will see me with my nose flattened against the windowpane.

Kevin Knuth
Delmar, New York 

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Posted under Birds, General