Juravenator starki

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Juravenator starki is a new small theropod dinosaur from the late Jurassic—the specimen is exceptionally well-preserved, and retains fossilized imprints of its skin. The surprising thing about it is that its anatomy puts it smack in the middle of a large clade of coelurosaurs, members of which are known to have feathers…and its skin is bare and scaly. What it suggests is that feather evolution was complicated (no surprise there, actually), and that some lineages secondarily lost their feathery covering, or that there were seasonal or age-related or regional variations in feather expression.

More pictures are below the fold—this really is a very pretty specimen.

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The shocking truth!

The Schoepenhauer awards are a delectable collection of interesting descriptions of parasites, such as the roundworm.

Today we’ll introduce you to the Intestinal Roundworm, a hideous parasite which infects one out of every four people in the world. That’s not a misprint: one out of four. More than one and a half BILLION people. Yup, every fourth person on this planet is nothing but a travelling worm farm.

Sweeeeet, right?

But hey, do you remember that moment in a certain cult movie when Sean Connery, dressed in little more than bandoliers and a speedo, is rummaging through a library and discovers the truth about his god, the incredible gun-spewing penis-hating flying head named Zardoz? He finds the book The WIZARD of OZ, and realizes he’s been tricked, and his whole life has been a lie, and he has to go kill all the Immortals and sleep with Charlotte Rampling.

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The Schoepenhauer article is accompanied by this figure.

Notice any remarkable similarities? Anything that makes you go “hmmm”?

Does this help?

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NOOOOOOOOOOO!

I’ve been tricked! Now I have to go home and get a pistol and some red underwear. Somebody…warn Charlotte Rampling, before it’s too late.

Snuppy is a real clone!

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Remember Snuppy, the cloned puppy? He’s been living under a cloud for a while now, since one of his creators was Woo-Suk Hwang, the Korean scientist who was found to have faked data and exploited his workers, and there was concern that perhaps the dog cloning experiment was also tainted.

Put those fears to rest. Two groups of researchers have independently analyzed Snuppy and its putative clone parent, and both agree that it is most likely a clone. The nuclear markers between the two were identical, while mitochondrial markers were different—exactly what you’d expect in this kind of clone, and not what you’d see from simple twins, for instance, or if someone had faked the samples.

Parker HG, Kruglyak L, Ostrander EA (2006) DNA analysis of a putative dog clone. Nature 440:E1-E2.

Seoul National University Investigation Committee, Lee JB, Park C (2006) Verification that Snuppy is a clone. Nature 440:E2-E3.

Long, silky blonde hair…

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…on a crustacean? Kiwa hirsuta is a new decapod crustacean discovered living near hydrothermal vents in the Pacific. It’s eyeless as well as hairy.

I’m sure there’s a dumb blonde joke in this somewhere, or since it was discovered by a French team, something about unshaven armpits. I wonder how low the comments are going to sink on this one; go ahead and vent and get it out of your system.

Spider Kama Sutra

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I’ve been savoring this lovely used book I picked up a little while ago, The Book of Spiders and Scorpions by Rod Preston-Mafham, and am appreciating more than the fact that it is full of beautiful photography of spiders and lots of general information on arachnid behavior and physiology; it’s also true that spiders are awfully sexy beasts. They are playful and romantic and kinky and enthusiastic and ferocious and savage and exotic, and really know how to have a good time. I thought I’d share a few of the pretty pictures and details of the arachnid sex life with the readers of Pharyngula—so if you’re mature enough to handle it, exuberant enough to enjoy reading about interesting animals doing fun things, and aren’t too squicked out at the idea of closeups of spider genitalia, read on.

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A squid too far

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People are so cruel. I was busy all evening with this talk (which went well, I think), and lots of people flood my mailbox with news of the giant squid at the NHM.

You know I can look out my window and see everything covered in over a foot of snow. You know I’m about as far from any sea as you can get. And you know you can get me pining for abyssal pelagia with this kind of thing—you all must love to torment me. Could you at least send tickets to London with this kind of news?

Oh, well. It is a thing of beauty at any rate, and I will just have to worship it from afar.