In ancient Egypt, various animals played a role in people’s lives, including in religion.
Just after leaving for the museum, I see a non mummified, still very much alive animal: a holly blue butterfly.
The museum has not only the animal mummy special exhibition, but also animals depicted in paint, sculpture, amulets, etc. in its permanent collection. I decide to look at these today and to come back for the mummy exhibition on some later day.
The first room in the permanent Egyptian exhibition is about prehistoric and early dynastic times.
One of the objects there is a Neolithic pot, with ostriches painted on it. That is special, according to the museum, as ostriches disappeared from Egypt about 5,000 years ago.
Also from Old Kingdom times, a coiled snake, as a board for the mehen game.
After the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom, the Asian Hyksos invaders ruled Egypt. From their epoch, fish-shaped and goose-shaped vases.
The Hyksos brought horses to Egypt for the first time. These were depicted in the tomb for General Horemheb. The Egyptian sculptors still were not really used to depicting these new animals then.
From the times of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, animal pictures from the tomb of Paatenemheb.
Fossil of most primitive 4-legged creature found in Latvia; lived eons before dinosaurs
By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON June 25, 2008
Scientists unearthed a skull of the most primitive four-legged creature in Earth’s history, which should help them better understand the evolution of fish to advanced animals that walk on land.
The 365 million-year-old fossil skull, shoulders and part of the pelvis of the water-dweller, Ventastega curonica, were found in Latvia, researchers report in a study published in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature. Even though Ventastega is likely an evolutionary dead-end, the finding sheds new details on the evolutionary transition from fish to tetrapods. Tetrapods are animals with four limbs and include such descendants as amphibians, birds and mammals.
While an earlier discovery found a slightly older animal that was more fish than tetrapod, Ventastega is more tetrapod than fish. The fierce-looking creature probably swam through shallow brackish waters, measured about three or four feet long and ate other fish. It likely had stubby limbs with an unknown number of digits, scientists said.
The new catfish, named Gogo atratus by Heok Hee Ng, John Sparks and Paul Loiselle, is known from the lower reaches of the Mananara du Nord River drainage in the northeastern highlands of Madagascar.
The new genus, named Tampichthys, was described as part of a study on the molecular phylogeny of the North American cyprinid genus Dionda by Susana Schönhuth, Ignacio Doadrio, Omar Dominguez-Dominguez, David Hillis and Richard Mayden.
The authors used one mitochondrial (cytb) and three nuclear gene sequences (S7, Rhodopsin, Rag1) totaling 4487 nucleotides to examine the phylogenetic relationships of 15 species of Dionda and 34 species of closely-related North American cyprinids.
The authors found that members of the genus Dionda were not monophyletic, with six species (D. rasconis, D. ipni, D. erimyzonops, D. mandibu[l]aris, D. dichromus and D. catostomops) being more closely related to another genus (Codoma) than to all other species of Dionda.
These six species, which occur in east-central Mexico (principally inhabiting the upper waters of the Pánuco–Tamesí drainage), were thus described as belonging to a new genus, Tampichthys. The name of the genus means “fish from the Tampico Embayment drainage of Mexico” in Greek.
The government of Kenya, through the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), has approved a proposal to turn 20,000 hectares of the pristine Tana Delta into irrigated sugarcane plantations. Conservationists and villagers living in the Delta, which provides refuge for 350 species of bird, lions, elephants, rare sharks and reptiles [see also here] including the Tana writhing skink, believe the decision is illegal and are determined to block the development. The groups are considering what action they might take.
Ever since Thursday. there is an orange spoonbill on Texel. The animal was seen at the Schorren, a nature reserve on the outside of the Wadden sea dike, managed by Natuurmonumenten.
This is not any misplaced joke by football fans; this is a freak of nature. Spoonbills eat shrimps, which contain an orange pinkish substance. Usually, this pigment is neutralized in spoonbills; obviously, not with this bird, however. This makes the pigment become apparent in the feathers. Other shrimp eating birds, like ibis, flamingos, and also American [roseate] spoonbills, as a rule have a pink or orange colour.
If you are lucky, you can see this bird ‘live’ on the website www.beleefdelente.nl between the white spoonbills. This was made possible by a webcam put by Natuurmonumenten a few weeks ago at De Schorren.
Maybe now that the Dutch soccer team are out of the championship after they lost the match to Russia, that spoonbill will revert to the normal white colour.
Rivulus giarettai is a member of the subgenus Melanorivulus, and is distinguished from all other members of that subgenus in having the males with red pigmentation of the flank arranged in irregular lines to form a vermiculate pattern.
Scientists from Brazil have described a new Trichomycterus catfish with an unusual shape from southern Brazil.
The new species, named Trichomycterus crassicaudatus by catfish experts Wolmar Wosiacki and Mário de Pinna in the latest issue of the journal Copeia, represents a new body shape for the family Trichomycteridae.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – A major initiative to create alternative nesting sites for the largest colony of Caspian terns in the world – and to help protect juvenile salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River – is finding early success.
A recent survey of a new nesting site at Crump Lake in southern Oregon, which was just constructed in February by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, found more than 135 nesting pairs of Caspian terns, as well as more than a thousand pairs of gulls and two nesting pairs of double-crested cormorants.
Redistributing the terns is critical because research by Oregon State University scientists found that terns and cormorants annually consume more than 10 million juvenile salmon and steelhead migrating through the Columbia River estuary en route to the Pacific Ocean. OSU researchers helped lure the Caspian terns to Crump Lake, which is northeast of Lakeview, with decoys and recorded sounds of nesting terns that they had recorded in the Columbia estuary.
“It is amazing that more than 520 Caspian terns have found the new island, which was only constructed five months ago – and that some have decided to nest there,” said Dan Roby, an OSU professor of fisheries and wildlife and principal investigator in the study. “There is a history of nesting at Crump Lake and clearly the birds have some kind of ‘populational’ memory of the place. That is a real key to the success.”
The joint effort between the Corps, OSU, Real Time Research, Inc., and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Oregon Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit is being funded by a $2.1 million grant to OSU from the Corps and Bonneville Power Administration.
The Corps’ avian predation program aims to reduce the number of young salmon consumed by terns in the estuary and “substantially improve the survival of fish listed as threatened or endangered” under the Endangered Species Act, said Geoff Dorsey, a wildlife biologist with the Corps’ Portland District.
The initiative seeks to redistribute a portion of what researchers say is the largest Caspian tern colony in the world. Last year, OSU researchers counted 9,900 pairs of nesting terns on East Sand Island near the mouth of the Columbia River – which accounts for an estimated 70 percent of all Caspian terns nesting in the Pacific Coast region from Alaska to Baja California.
Pacific humpback salmon recorded in River Tweed in Scotland: here.
This species has very recently been scientifically described and given the name A. barlowi, it was previously known as either sp ‘Maulbruter’ or ‘Brustband’..it is the only species of apisto that practices mouthbrooding of its fry. This video shows the female mouthbrooding her fry.
Apistogramma barlowi is easily distinguished from other members of the genus by the adult males having a disproportionately large head and enormously enlarged mouth with massive lips.
Rhamdella cainguae is distinguished from other members of the genus in having a distinct and large ovoid area in the supraorbital laterosensory canal between the frontal and sphenotic delimited by the apparently slender dorsal walls of these bones and with no foramen for a laterosensory branch.
Brazilian scientists have described two new species of darter tetra from eastern Brazil. The two new species are named Characidium nupelia and C. xavante by Weferson da Graça, Carla Pavanelli, and Paulo Buckup in the most recent issue of the journal Copeia.
Well … I said ‘finally’ … without then knowing that this was still to come:
Chinese and Japanese scientists have described a new species of bagrid catfish from the middle Yangtze River drainage in southern China in the latest issue of the journal Ichthyological Research.
Authors Jian-Li Cheng, Hajime Ishihara and E Zhang have named the new species Pseudobagrus brachyrhabdion, after the short maxillary barbels of this species (Greek brachys – short, and rhabdion - rod).
Right now, there is an open air exhibition of work by Zimbabwean sculptor 
