Dear Kitty. Some blog

This video is about “Thylacoleo carnifex, the marsupial lion, Australia’s lost predator. ”

From ScienceDaily:

Discovery Of The Oldest European Marsupial In SW France

(Nov. 6, 2009) — Remains of one of the oldest known marsupials have been recovered in Charente-Maritime by a palaeontologist team from the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (CNRS) and the University of Rennes 1. This discovery raises a new hypothesis about the dispersal route of the earliest marsupial mammals.

In the history of the first modern mammals (i.e., marsupials and placentals), during the Cretaceous, Europe is almost a Terra incognita. No fossils are known between 125 and 84 million years (my), and very few up to the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (65 my). In the Cenomanian (99 my) of Charente-Maritime, the discovery of the scientist team from the Muséum1 (CNRS) and the University of Rennes 12 thus provides important information on the early history of these mammals in Europe. The discovery consists of a few teeth, collected after screenwashing of 5 tons of sediment. They belong to a new tiny mammal, named Arcantiodelphys marchandi, which is one of the oldest and most primitive marsupial known in the world. It is also the oldest known representative of the modern therians in Europe.

This discovery is the result of a research program of the University of Rennes 1 on the vertebrates from the Cretaceous of Charentes, in collaboration with the MNHN.

Arcantiodelphys marchandi improves our knowledge of the earliest stages of the marsupial history, so far known mostly from North American fossils. Its main significance is that the beginning of the marsupial history also involved Europe. Furthermore, it confirms faunal links between North America and Europe during the mid-Cretaceous. It is from these primitive marsupials from the “Euramerican” Cretaceous that the modern marsupials colonized the southern landmasses, South America and mainly Australia where they are nowadays well diversified. Opossums and kangaroos are extant representatives of this very old northern origin of the marsupials.

At the urban birds conference, there were also sessions about other animals.

Eric Korsten spoke about mammals in urban environments.

There are quite some mammals in Dutch cities and towns; including beech marten, and bank vole.

Foxes may be seen at industrial estates.

There are hedgehogs in urban areas; though their numbers are declining. Because of traffic killing them?

Beavers, recently re-introduced in the Netherlands, now also come close to buildings.

This is a video about greater mouse-eared bats in Belgium at night.

Most of Eric’s talk was about bats. Construction should take into account bats’ needs. Sometimes, taking birds’ needs and bats’ needs into account in building go hand in hand. In Tilburg city, there is a plan for both swifts and bats in construction.

From mongabay.com:

Palm oil threatens Borneo’s rarest cats

Jeremy Hance

November 04, 2009

Oil palm expansion is threatening Borneo’s rarest wild cats, reports a new study based on three years of fieldwork and more than 17,000 camera trap nights. Studying cats in five locations—each with different environments—in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, researchers found that four of five cat species are threatened by habitat loss due to palm oil plantations.

The groundbreaking study, undertaken by Jo Ross and Andrew Hearn with the UK’s Global Canopy Program’s Bornean Wild Cat and Clouded Leopard Project, has uncovered some of the first data on Borneo’s wild cats. The five cats species in Borneo include the Sunda clouded leopard, the bay cat, the marbled cat, the leopard cat, and the flat-headed cat.

“Sabah’s five species of wild cat are a special conservation treasure, and this study has made a tremendous contribution to knowledge about them,” Director of the WildCRU Professor David Macdonald said. Having worked with wild cats around the world, MacDonald is chairing a workshop in Sabah with various stakeholders to discuss conservation measures to protect the island’s cats.

Ross and Hearn discovered that Borneo’s cats were present in both primary forests and recently logged over forest, yet only one of the five cat species—the leopard cat—utilizes palm oil plantations. The researchers say that their findings should give special emphasis to keeping remaining forests—even those recently logged—free from further palm oil expansion.

The researchers also succeeded in estimating population densities for the Sunda clouded leopard using camera traps, as well as radio collaring and tracking an individual clouded leopard. The Sunda clouded leopard, which is endemic to Borneo and Sumatra, has only recently been declared a distinct species from the mainland clouded leopard.

Ross and Hearn have also taken the first photographs of the elusive bay cat in Sabah, and have recorded the world’s only video of the cat. Both the Sunda clouded leopard and the bay cat are classified as Endangered by the IUCN Red List.

From the BBC:

Rare whale gathering sighted

By Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News

A large group of a rarely sighted, mysterious species of whale has been seen off the coast of Antarctica.

Approximately 60 Arnoux’s beaked whales were seen and photographed frolicking on the surface in the Gerlache Strait.

Few sighting of this enigmatic species are made in the wild, and even less in waters near to shore.

The sighting, of the largest group ever recorded, is also the first time this species of whale has been seen socialising at the water surface.

Marine biologists have published details of the sighting in the journal Marine Mammal Science. …

Around 20 species belong to the family Ziphiidae, with several only having been discovered in the past couple of decades.

Typically, beaked whales are deep divers, and they are the only whales to have tusks, which are teeth that erupt from the lower jaws of the males.

Together with its close relative, the Baird’s beaked whale (Berardius bairdii), the Arnoux’s beaked whale (Berardius arnuxii) is among the two largest of all beaked whale species. …

On 5 May this year, a team of Duke University researchers including Dr Friedlaender sighted approximately 60 Arnoux’s beaked whales near the entrance to the Schollaert Channel between Brabant and Cuverville Islands, which lie in the Gerlache Strait, Antarctica.

“What made the sighting atypical and noteworthy was the size of the group of animals and their surface activity,” says Dr Friedlaender.

This video from Australia says about itself:

Oil spill from leaking oil rig off West Australian coast in whale migration route since August

From the Green party in Australia:

Greens welcome end to oil leak

Media Release | Spokesperson Rachel Siewert

Tuesday 3rd November 2009, 8:53pm

The Australian Greens have welcomed the plugging this afternoon of a leak from the Montara wellhead in the Timor Sea, 10-and-a-half weeks since the spill began on Friday 21 August.

“This disaster has caused untold damage to the marine environment and has left a legacy that will need to be dealt with long into the future,” Greens Spokesperson on Marine Issues, Senator Rachel Siewert said.

“We expect the Federal Government to immediately announce the commencement of a full, independent, judicial inquiry into this incident, to be conducted at arm’s length from both the Government and the company.

“The Greens have been calling for such an inquiry since the start of this incident. It now needs to start immediately.”

For more information or media inquiries, please call Eloise Dortch on 0415 507 763

Leak from Deep-Water Rig Has Released an Estimated 9 Million Gallons of Fuel; Bad News for the “Drill, Baby Drill” Crowd? Here.

Throughout the oil spill crisis, the Rudd government has been preoccupied with protecting the image and profits of the multi-billion dollar offshore drilling industry: here.

USA: Louisiana Copes With Oil Spill, High Winds, Flooding: here.

Toxic shipwreck an ecological disaster for southern Madagascar: here.

From ScienceDaily:

New Clues To Extinct Falklands Wolf Mystery

(Nov. 2, 2009) — Ever since the Falklands wolf was described by Darwin himself, the origin of this now-extinct canid found only on the Falkland Islands far off the east coast of Argentina has remained a mystery. Now, researchers reporting in the November 3rd issue of Current Biology who have compared DNA from four of the world’s dozen or so known Falklands wolf museum specimens to that of living canids offer new insight into the evolutionary ancestry of these enigmatic carnivores.

“One of the big draws for an evolutionary biologist is that this species had a big influence on Darwin’s ideas about how species evolve,” said Graham Slater of the University of California, Los Angeles, noting that Darwin recognized differences between the East Falkland and West Falkland wolves as evidence that species are not fixed entities. But the wolves’ circumstances were also just downright puzzling.

“It’s really strange that the only native mammal on an island would be a large canid,” Slater explained. “There are no other native terrestrial mammals — not even a mouse. It’s even stranger when you consider that the Falklands are some 480 kilometers from the South American mainland. The question is, how did they get there?”

Possible explanations for the wolves’ presence on the islands, which have never been connected to the South American mainland, range from dispersal by ice or logs to domestication and subsequent transport by Native Americans. Ultimately, the Falklands wolf died out because it was perceived as a threat to settlers and their sheep, although fur traders took out a lot of the population as well.

Biologists have also puzzled over the Falklands wolf’s ancestry. It had been suggested that they were related to domestic dogs, North American coyotes, or South American foxes. Slater said the wolves were the size of a coyote, but much stockier, with fur the color of a red fox. They had short muzzles, just like gray wolves, and thick, wooly fur.

Slater’s team now reports that the Falklands wolf’s closest living relative is actually the maned wolf — an unusually long-legged, fox-like South American canid. The researchers also found that the four Falklands wolf samples that they examined shared a common ancestor at least 70,000 years ago, which suggests that they arrived on the islands before the end of the last ice age and before humans ever made it into the New World. That rules out the prevailing theory that Native Americans had anything to do with their presence on the islands.

“The biggest surprise was that the divergence of the Falklands wolf from its closest living relative, the maned wolf, occurred over 6 million years ago,” Slater said. “Canids don’t show up in the South American fossil record until 2.5 million years ago, which means these lineages must have evolved in North America. The problem is that there are no good fossils that can be assigned to the Falklands wolf lineage in North America.”

Given that maned and Falklands wolves split so long ago, there should be fossils of their close relatives in South America, Slater said. And in fact, the researchers may have a candidate: a species from Patagonia called Dusicyon avus, which went extinct 6,000 to 8,000 years ago. Slater says that’s a possibility that study coauthor Alan Cooper at the University of Adelaide in Australia is further investigating now.

Wolves in Germany: here.

From ScienceDaily:

Newly Discovered Ankylosaur Dinosaur Is ‘Biological Version Of An Army Tank’

ScienceDaily (Nov. 1, 2009) — A husband and wife team of American paleontologists has discovered a new species of dinosaur that lived 112 million years ago during the early Cretaceous of central Montana.

The new dinosaur, a species of ankylosaur, is documented in the October issue of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. Ankylosaurs are the biological version of an army tank. They are protected by a plate-like armour with two sets of sharp spikes on each side of the head, and a skull so thick that even ‘raptors’ such as Deinonychus could leave barely more than a scratch.

Bill and Kris Parsons, Research associates of the Buffalo Museum of Science, found much of the skull of the newly described Tatankacephalus cooneyorum resting on the surface of a hillside in 1997. Because the skull was 90% complete, it was possible to justify this fossil as a new species.

“This is the first member of Ankylosauridae to be found within the Early Cretaceous Cloverly Geologic Formation,” said Bill Parsons, who characterized the fossil as a transitional evolutionary form between the earlier Jurassic ankylosaurs and the better known Late Cretaceous ankylosaurs.

The skull is heavily protected by two sets of lateral horns, two thick domes at the back, and smaller thickenings around the nasal region. “Heavy ornamentation and horn-like plates would have covered most of the dorsal surface of this dinosaur” said Bill Parsons.

“For years, Bill and Kris have been collecting fossils from a critical time in Earth’s history, and their hard work has paid off,” said Lawrence Witmer, professor of paleontology at Ohio University who was not involved with this study. “This is a really important find and gives us a clearer view of the evolution of armored dinosaurs. But this is just the first; I’m sure, of what will be a series of important discoveries from this team.”

Parsons also illustrated the dermal armour of this new species based on the theory by Museum of the Rockies paleontologist John R. Horner that there was an outer keratinous sheathing on it as found in modern turtle shells and bird beaks. In his new reconstruction, Parsons suggests that Tatankacephalus exhibited complex and colorful patterns rather than the dull appearance suggested in earlier ankylosaur portraits. “According to Horner’s theory, many other dinosaurs also had this kind of sheathing and also may have been diversely colored,” said Parsons.

As to its name, the broad, short horns on the back of its skull resemble the horns found on a modern buffalo skull and Tatankacephalus loosely translates as ‘Buffalo head.’ Parsons also noted, “of course any further allusions to the city of Buffalo are completely intentional as well.”

Tatanka means American bison in the Lakota language.

See also here.

Terrible Teens Of T. Rex: Young Tyrannosaurs Did Serious Battle Against Each Other: here.

This is a National Geographic video about blue whales.

From AFP news agency:

Japanese PM says he hates whale meat

October 31, 2009 - 8:09PM

AFP

Japan’s Yukio Hatoyama has revealed he dislikes whale meat, a newspaper has reported in an unusual confession for the prime minister of a country that defies Western criticism of whaling.

“I hate whale meat,” Hatoyama said during a meeting with his visiting Dutch counterpart Jan Peter Balkenende on Monday, the Sankei Shimbun reported on Saturday.

Most Japanese (and most people in other countries where there still is whaling, like Iceland and Norway) don’t eat whale meat. Continuing whaling just serves the special interests of small minorities, at the detriment of the global ecosystem. Time to stop it forever.

In the lead-up to US President Barack Obama’s first visit to Japan, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has signalled that his government is wanting to readjust the country’s longstanding alliance with the US: here.

From the BBC:

What do you get if you cross a polar bear with a grizzly brown bear?

Scientists can now answer the question, following the first study of a polar bear/grizzly bear hybrid.

Only one hybrid bear has ever been seen in the wild, so the study evaluated two hybrid bears kept in captivity, which are among 17 such bears known to exist.

While each hybrid has inherited characteristics from either parent, some traits, such as partially hollow hair, appear to be a blend of the two.

“Hybrids between polar and brown bears in the wild are very rare. Only one confirmed case is known,” says Dr Ute Magiera, the conservation coordinator of Osnabruck Zoo in Germany.

That hybrid bear was shot in April 2006 by an American big game hunter on Banks Island, Northwest Territories, Canada.

[American black] bears don’t really love honey: here.

This is a Hungarian video of a male red deer.

From FlevoPost in the Netherlands:

LELYSTAD - In Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve, two female red deer which have been freed there in 1992, are still alive. Then, the animals, born in Scotland, were about 18 months old. Staatsbosbeheer says so. These pioneer red deer can be recognized by their earmarks. …

“These elderly ladies are in good health, and by now do not get fawns anymore.”

In 1983, 32 Heck cattle were released in the area. In 1985, 20 konik horses came; and during 1992 and 1993 57 red deer followed suit.