Psittacotherium |
Synapsida
A random wander through the world of mammals
Sunday, 8 December 2024
Ancient Parrot-Beasts of Canada
Saturday, 30 November 2024
Antelopine Antelopes: Antelopes with Trunks
Saigas once lived across the steppes of central Asia, in lands stretching from Moldova to China. Hunting, for both meat and horns, caused a dramatic decline in their numbers throughout the 20th century, accelerating after the collapse of the Soviet Union and leaving them virtually extinct by the dawn of the 21st. A mass outbreak of infectious haemorrhagic septicaemia in 2015 threatened to finish the job, but since then there has been a truly remarkable recovery, with what's thought to be an eleven-fold increase in their numbers between 2015 and 2022. This is so great, in fact, that the species was removed from the international endangered species list in April 2023.
Sunday, 24 November 2024
Oligocene (Pt 12): Reign of the Hyena-Cats
Apterodon |
In most parts of the world today, all large, carnivorous, land-dwelling mammals are members of the order called, appropriately enough, the Carnivora. This is the group to which cats, dogs, and bears belong, along with many other animals from weasels to seals. If we go back far enough in time, we find that this group originated on the northern continents and was unable to reach the then-isolated southern ones until much later. During the Oligocene, therefore, there were no carnivorans in Africa.
Which isn't to say that there were no carnivorous mammals at all; absent some non-mammalian predator to out-compete them, it's just too useful a niche for nothing to evolve to make use of it. But those mammals were not close relatives of the lions and hyenas that live there today, belonging to different branches of the mammalian family tree.
Sunday, 17 November 2024
Oncillas in the Highlands
We do not have a name for this lost species, or know much about where it lived prior to its journey south. However, we can tell that it existed because all of the small cats of South America are missing a pair of chromosomes found in every other species across the world - including the jaguars and pumas with which they share their continent. As confirmed by more detailed genetic analysis, this means that they all shared a single common ancestor in which this oddity first arose.
Sunday, 10 November 2024
The Sounds of Mother and Calf
It's also important for many hoofed herd animals and, at least in the wild, few North American mammals are more sociable than the bison (Bison bison). While herds are no longer as vast as they were 200 years ago, recovery plans for the species are underway, and, in many cases, may rely on some degree of fencing or other containment at least for the time being. Understanding bison behaviour, including communication, could help with that, making it easier to assess how comfortable the animals are feeling - and, perhaps, the likelihood of a 750 kg (1,600 lb) bull deciding it's had quite enough of that fence and heading off somewhere it doesn't realise is less safe.
Sunday, 3 November 2024
Antilopine Antelopes: Dik-diks
Kirk's dik-dik |
Among the dwarf antelopes, we have the dik-diks.
While some researchers subdivide them further, four species of dik-dik are widely recognised, at least three of which are reasonably common within their respective homelands. This may partly be because they are too small to be worth hunting for meat - although, inevitably. this still happens from time to time.
Sunday, 27 October 2024
From Dragon to Cave Bear
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.