Indeed, while naturalists continued describing such bones as belonging to fantastical animals into the 18th century, physician and rationalist Gregor Horst had beaten them to the punch, pointing out as early as 1656 that bones recovered from Unicorn Cave (yes, that is its actual name) looked remarkably like those of "bears, lions, and humans". Today, we can look at Paterson Hain's original illustrations and confirm that he had produced the first known published drawings of the bones of a cave bear.
Synapsida
A random wander through the world of mammals
Sunday 27 October 2024
From Dragon to Cave Bear
Sunday 20 October 2024
Moulting Marmots
Moulting is a feature of mammalian physiology that will be familiar to pet owners worldwide. While it's not present in all mammals, it is very widespread despite the fact that, when you think about it, it's obviously costly to the animal in question. Why shed and replace a large amount of hair in a short time when you could replace it bit by bit as humans do?
The fact that so many mammals, of widely different kinds, moult to at least some extent shows that it must be an evolutionary ancient phenomenon. In fact, it turns out that animals have probably been moulting since before they even had hair. We can tell this because it's not unique to mammals. For instance, birds moult their feathers, and the process is similar to hair moulting in mammals. More significantly, perhaps, moulting has the same underlying mechanisms as reptiles periodically shedding their skin and can be tied back to sloughing in fish and amphibians as well.
Sunday 13 October 2024
You Scratch My Back...
Many mammal species live solitary lives, at least outside of the mating season. For those, there would be little opportunity for social grooming and no wider benefit to be gained from it if there was. Self-grooming or "autogrooming" - such as licking one's own fur - may well be sufficient for them. But, of course, primates are not the only social mammals, and many of those other animals have fur in which parasites could hide, so it's reasonable to ask if allogrooming really is unique to primates.
Sunday 6 October 2024
Antilopine Antelopes: Dwarf Antelopes of Eastern and Central Africa
Oribi |
Technically, these dwarf antelopes were collectively referred to as "neotragines" and assumed to be a natural grouping within the antelopes more widely. Genetic analysis over the last couple of decades has muddied these waters considerably, not least because the genus for which the branch was named, Neotragus, turns out not to be closely related to the gazelles, and is something else entirely. Even if we look solely at those dwarf antelopes that we can still say belong to the antilopine subfamily, it turns out that they don't have a single common ancestor. Specifically, one of them is more closely related to gazelles than it is to any of the other members of its purported evolutionary branch.
Saturday 28 September 2024
Oligocene (Pt 11): Early Monkeys and Two-Ton Herbivores
Arsinoitherium |
Monkeys first appeared in Africa in the latter half of the preceding epoch, but their early record is patchy. This is likely because many of the earliest monkeys lived in areas that simply weren't conducive to forming fossils - although the fact that many parts of Africa have not had the same detailed paleontological surveys that other continents have may also be a factor. Much of the history of the primates during the epoch is a blank... but not entirely.
Sunday 22 September 2024
700th Synapsida
Evolution remained the single most common category for the past 100 posts, which is hardly surprising given how many are about extinct species, and how important it can be to understanding how the living ones got to be the way they are. However, diet and habitat, which are often linked, have overtaken animal behaviour to nab the second and third spots... although the latter has remained common. Since I pick most topics on the day, without any grand plan to even things out, that's probably just the vagaries of what I happen to have come across.
Sunday 15 September 2024
Hair, Fur, Bristles, and Spines
Hair is one of the key defining features of mammals. Apart from cetaceans, such as dolphins, no mammals are entirely hairless, although, for example, hippos and some babirusa species come very close. The original purpose of hair was almost certainly to maintain body heat, something that matters to warm-blooded animals in a way that it doesn't to, say, reptiles. Since then, however, hair has adapted to fulfil many other functions as well.Trinomys
To begin with, there is colouration, a function that hair needs to take over once it obscures the skin. The most obvious way that hair colour can help an animal is camouflage. While this is instinctively true, there have been statistical studies that demonstrate certain hair colours are, indeed, more common in animals living in certain environments. For instance, multi-species analyses of lagomorphs and cloven-footed mammals have shown that animals with grey fur are more likely to live in rocky environments. The same studies, as well as similar ones on carnivores, show that pale fur is associated with open environments, especially deserts, while dark fur is most common in those animals living in jungles, dense forests, or heavily vegetated swamps. And, surely to the surprise of almost nobody, white fur is associated with the Arctic, or with the winter coats of those living where it snows.