When it did, tropical winds pushed the warm water up against the American coast, from southern Alaska to southern Mexico, where it basically sat until El Niño kicked off in 2015... and that kept things unusually warm for another year. Inland, this disrupted weather systems leading, among other things, to frequent thunderstorms that sparked what was (at the time) the worst wildfire season in California's history.
Synapsida
A random wander through the world of mammals
Sunday, 18 May 2025
Sea Lions v. The Blob
Sunday, 11 May 2025
Oligocene (pt 15): Land of the Fire-Beasts
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Pyrotherium |
Sunday, 4 May 2025
Delphinids: Small Dolphins of Shallow Southern Seas
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Commerson's dolphin |
In 1766, naturalist Philibert Commerson accompanied explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville on what would become the first successful French circumnavigation of the globe. While passing through the Straits of Magellan the following year, he spotted an unusual-looking dolphin close to the ship and sent a description of it back to France. (As a side note, later on in the voyage, it was discovered, much to the crew's shock, that Commerson's assistant was secretly a woman; she is now remembered as the first woman to circumnavigate the globe).
Sunday, 27 April 2025
Cheating Little Vixens
Sunday, 20 April 2025
Delphinids: White-sided Dolphins
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Atlantic white-sided dolphin |
The genus was named by John Edward Gray in 1846 for a specimen of a previously unknown species sent to him for analysis at the British Museum, after having been caught somewhere off the coast of Norfolk. It translates as "bottle-nose", for the shape of the beak... which is, perhaps, unfortunate, given that the animal we refer to in English as the "bottlenose dolphin" is something else entirely. Over the centuries since, five new species have been added to the genus, giving us the six we recognise today.
Sunday, 13 April 2025
The Diets of Parallel Pigs
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Peccaries from South America |
Sunday, 6 April 2025
Of Pregnancy and Progesterone
Whether or not other mammals menstruate may depend on your exact definition of the term. Chimpanzees certainly do (and, indeed, rarely experience menopause), and it's present to a variable extent in other apes and Old World monkeys. In New World monkeys it's microscopic and it's completely absent in lemurs. At least some bats menstruate, as do sengis (elephant shrews) and, so far as we know, just one species of rodent.