The scientific classification of living organisms we use today has its origins in the 1758 edition of Systema Naturae, by Carl Linnaeus. Raccoons live only in the Americas, but even in 1758, Linnaeus was aware of the existence of raccoons, having heard about them from his friend Peter Kalm, who had observed them in what were then the colonies of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Based on Kalm's description, Linnaeus named this new species Ursus lotor - the "washing bear". It was one of four species of "bear" that he identified in that work, only one of which we'd still consider to be such today.
Synapsida
A random wander through the world of mammals
Saturday, 28 January 2023
The Raccoon Family
Sunday, 22 January 2023
Miocene (Pt 37): The Miocene Oceans
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Xiphiacetus |
At a more detailed anatomical scale, that would have been less true and many of the creatures would not have been as closely related to the modern forms as one might have supposed. Today, the largest number of cetacean species belong to the "true" or "oceanic" dolphin family, including not only all of the sea-going dolphins but some larger animals such as killer whales. But in the Miocene, true dolphins seem to have been comparatively rare and we know of very few fossils predating the subsequent, Pliocene, epoch.
Sunday, 15 January 2023
Grumpy Old Voles?
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Meadow vole (a related species) |
Drawing parallels between these changes and the way that humans develop isn't without risk; the complexity of our society, the existence of culture and so on significantly colour how we behave. But that's not to say that such parallels don't exist, and can't tell us anything, even if it's only how we evolved. We are, after all, still affected by our biology and evolutionary history in at least some respects. For instance, it's notable that exactly how animal pups are raised by their mother can affect how they behave as adults, even if the details are going to be less complex than they are with human child-rearing.
Sunday, 8 January 2023
Dunnarts in the Sandhills
For example, it is useful to conservation efforts to understand not only where a given species lives, and the habitat requirements it may have, but how it makes use of that environment. (Obviously, there's more to it than this, for example, how different species in the same area interact with one another but we'll stick with this one point for today). What particular features of the habitat are important to it? How much land does it need? How is its population distributed across the area?
Sunday, 18 December 2022
Prehistoric Mammal Discoveries 2022
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New reconstruction of the sabretooth cat Homotherium, showing that the teeth would not have been as visible as popularly supposed |
Large Herbivores
Probably the most distinctive thing about deer is that the males have antlers; branching bony head ornaments that are shed and regrown each year. This naturally raises the question of how this evolved, since no other animal has quite the same thing. Acteocemas was an Early Miocene deer, but despite living very early in the group's evolutionary history, it already had antlers that split into two near the tip - which the horns of animals such as cows and true antelopes never do. A Spanish fossil of the antlers described earlier this year showed that it was already shed and regrown, but microscopic analysis indicated that it appeared to have been present for over a year, suggesting longer a more irregular pattern of shedding that must have changed to the seasonal pattern we are familiar with more recently, perhaps in the Middle Miocene.
Sunday, 4 December 2022
Leaf-Eating Monkeys: Leading by a Nose
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Proboscis monkey (male) |
Indeed, it is strange enough that, during the 20th century, it was assumed to represent a very early side-branch in colobine evolution, existing outside all the other groups in the subfamily. That wasn't just because of its odd appearance, but also because it had two extra pairs of chromosomes to every other colobine monkey. But it turns out that that's a false signal and that, not only are proboscis monkeys a relatively recent branch within the subfamily, their closest relatives include the snub-nosed monkeys whose noses are noted for being extraordinarily short.
Saturday, 26 November 2022
Miocene (Pt 36): Dawn of the Seals
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Allodesmus |
Today, the seals are divided into two subfamilies (I have reviewed all living species of seal here): the phocine or "northern" seals, which live in the Northern Hemisphere, and the monachine or "southern" seals, which are primarily found in the Southern Hemisphere, but do include three living species in the north.