The blood of dinosaurs

Courtesy of sciencegasm. Remember this when you see any cute Easter chicks*...

[*Yes, I know it’s not a baby chicken. Some kind of gull, maybe?]

Humpbacks ahoy! Whale watching off Sydney

We’ve been meaning to go whale watching since we moved to Sydney and today we finally got round to it. The weather was not the best - and the sea was a bit choppier than ideal - but it was a fantastic morning, well spent. Best of all, we got to see humpback whales!

It was only a small pod - a mother and calf, plus “escort” - but we got some reasonably close up views when one of them was having a play.

As well as a couple of breaches, this included a couple of good tail slaps.

Amazing animals. We saw some birds too - and, of course, some great views of the cliffs around Sydney harbour. All in all, a recommended half day trip.

The cocksure cockatoo

As well as my first wild wallaby, my Lorne trip earlier this year featured some good photo opportunities with sulphur-crested cockatoos. Although I included a couple of photos in the earlier post, I thought they deserved their own. They are very handsome birds and sometimes, when they pose, you think they just know it.

Of course, the “cock” in cockatoo does not really derive from cocksure. Instead, cockatoo is a derivative of the Indonesian name kaka(k)tua. [The cock in cocksure is a euphemism for God according to Google.]

As well as the posers, I also got some good shots of cockatoos eating. They can actually be pests and a flock of cockatoos can (apparently) strip a fruit tree in a few hours - not so fun if that tree is in your garden or farm!

My first wild wallaby

Over the weekend, I was at Lorne for the 20th APS Lorne Proteomics Symposium. It’s a lovely spot for a conference, and the schedule always includes some free time in the afternoon. On the friday, I took advantage of this and went for a walk on the nearby Tramway track.

I was attracted by the (somewhat optimistic) hope of seeing an Echidna, possibly my favourite animal of all, but instead got my first wild wallaby on the trail:

And some kangaroos:

Indeed, it was a good day for nature, with a seal having fun by the pier and some cockatoos strutting their stuff. (Galahs too, for all those Alf Stewart fans.)

No echidna, sadly. Maybe next time. (More pics here.)

Gull chicks for company at Dublin Marks & Spencer Rooftop Restaurant

Anyone who watched BBC Springwatch this year will know that gulls are increasingly nesting on the roofs of city buildings, which are safe from predators and provide lots of nice, flat nesting spots. Last week, we met a friend for brunch in the Marks & Spencer Rooftop Restaurant on Grafton Street in Dublin. The restaurant features an outside section overlooking Grafton Street and good for enjoying the rare bit of Dublin summer sun. At present, it also features a pair of cute little gull chicks, being reared on the flat roof section just beyond the barrier. The pictures below are a bit rubbish and out of focus but you get the idea.

Putting Archaeopteryx back on its perch?

Around this time last year, the sad news came out that South Korean textbook publishers were removing examples of evolution following pressure from Creationists. [Soo Bin Park (2012) South Korea surrenders to creationist demands. Nature 486:14.] One of the examples to be dropped was Archaeopteryx, on the grounds that it might not be an ancestral bird after all. I am not sure how they will respond to last week's news that recent research puts Archaeopteryx back in the bird lineage, as opposed to being "just another feathered dinosaur". (Just‽)

The study in question, A Jurassic avialan dinosaur from China resolves the early phylogenetic history of birds [Godefroit et al., Nature (2013) doi:10.1038/nature12168], describes a 170-million-year-old fossil (below). Twenty million years or so older than Archaeopteryx, Aurornis xui is touted as the earliest definite early bird. (Artist's reconstruction, above.) Furthermore, the traits it shared by the two seem to put Archaeopteryx fully back within the ancestral avian lineage.

The authors include one of my Southampton colleagues, Gareth Dyke, and you can hear him discuss the paper on the Nature Podcast at the Nature News article, New contender for first bird. You can also read a summary in the Science news of the week - Science 340:1024-1025, Earliest Birdie? [Pictures from the linked Nature and Science news items.]

Of course, whether or not Archaeopteryx is an ancestral bird or not, that does not alter the irrefutable fact that birds did evolve from dinosaurs. The real solution to the challenge by Creationists should not have been to take Archaeopteryx out of the textbook but to put more fossils into the textbook. Teach the actual "controversy", such as it is: from which dinosaurs did birds evolve?