Another day at the Museum (AMNH)

On Wednesday, I went on another trip to one of my all-time favorite spots, the American Museum of Natural History. Unlike most of my visits, where I loiter aimlessly and spend far too much time on the fourth floor with the fossils, I was on a mission. The museum’s been advertising a new exhibit on its website, called “Picturing Science: Museum Scientists and Imaging Technologies.” Sounds promising, doesn’t it? About time a museum highlighted the aesthetic value of the images produced by research. (I’m still waiting for an exhibit showing how research images and art have coevolved. I mean, you’ve seen the Vitruvian Man, right? How about Vesalius’s illustrations?  Or, if you want to see something really cool, take a look at this talk by the late Denis Dutton about how our perception of beauty may have evolved!)

Anyway, I went to this exhibit after having looked at the exhibit gallery on the museum’s website—and maybe my expectations were too high. I saw almost all images that were on display on the website, before I’d even stepped foot in the gallery. The exhibit took up about half of an already small hallway. That being said, each piece tied the visual with its scientist and research origins very well. Even if SEM of insect genitalia isn’t your schtick, there were geological, archaeological, and other works to look at. If you’re in the museum, check it out. If not, the website will show you everything anyway.

Thankfully, my visit to the museum was not in vain! Not only did I spend some time with my fourth floor favorites (early fish and amphibians, for the curious), I also got to see another special exhibit: The World’s Largest Dinosaurs. This one is worth seeing! Not just fossils, this exhibit includes life-size reconstructions of sauropods, as well as discussions of scaling, physiology, and life history! I walked in past a fossilized leg that was about twice my height. I saw a huge model showing how the hypothesized respiratory system of sauropods could have worked (much like the one-way air flow in modern birds). And, if the museum’s estimates are correct, a sauropod with a femur the same length as my own would have weighed about 895 pounds! I won’s say any more, because I don’t want to spoil the exhibit—but you should really go if you can.

Adventures in Oz: The Croc Man

You don’t have to know me very well to know that I like biomechanics. If you know me a little better, you may know of the direct relationship between how dangerous the animals in a study are, and how much I like that study. The plot looks something like this:

Figure 1. Dangerous Animals and their Coolness. Blue Line: Note that more dangerous animals get exponentially cooler. Red Line: Note that as animals get more dangerous, K is more willing to work with them. Except arthropods. (Which I’m afraid of, but working on it)

This trend is exactly why I jumped at the chance to talk to Dr. Steve Salisbury, head of the Vertebrate Paleontology and Biomechanics Lab at the University of Queensland. Dr. Salisbury specializes in the biomechanics of modern and extinct crocodilian species–which, according to my graph, is super cool. A good part of our discussion revolved around the evolution and functional morphology of the crocodile vertebrae. Here’s the story:

Orange is the old black?

Hey everyone! I apologize for the lack of updates recently, but a new finding has just woken me from my winter lethargy. This one was even good enough to make Science Magazine. And National Geographic. And the NY Times. I just figured you’ll read about it here because you appreciate my witty commentary and explanations, and/or, you’re my mother. That’s fine–I’ll take readers where I can.

Hair by Phaeomelanosomes. (Talent sold separately)

Apparently, we no longer need to use our imaginations (or those of Steven Spielberg, Ishiro Honda, Don Bluth, et al.) to speculate on some dinosaurs’ color. Dr. Michael Benton, of U. of Bristol, and his colleagues found pigment sacs in fossilized dinosaur feathers.  The pigment sacs, called melanosomes, exist today in colored markings. Eumelanosomes, containing the pigment eumelanin, are found in black hair and feathers. Red-tailed hawks and red-heads, however, have phaeomelanosomes. The different melanosomes are structurally distinct–which is how the scientists could tell regions of color apart.

Sweet Spots and Glyptodonts

Anyone who’s ever played baseball knows that, ideally, the ball should hit the bat’s “sweet spot”–its center of percussion. At least, that’s where you should hit the ball if you don’t want to hurt your hands.

Let’s call the point where you grip the bat the “pivot point”. If you hit the ball with the bat’s center of gravity, the entire bat will move with translational velocity. If you hit anywhere other than the center of gravity, the bat will have both translational and rotational velocity, which could potentially occur at the pivot point. The beautiful thing about the center of percussion is that if a horizontal impulse hits that point, there will be no reactive force at the pivot. The backward translational velocity of the bat and the forward rotational velocity will cancel out. In other words, no matter how hard the ball hits the bat (or the bat hits the ball, whichever you prefer), your hands at the pivot point won’t feel a painful backlash. No wonder my P.E. teachers kept going on about the sweet spot. For those of us who don’t play baseball, many swinging objects have centers of percussion. Including the hammer-like tails of glyptodonts.