Muskox Musings

In old news, over a month ago I read that a Muskox (Ovibos moschatus) had been seen in the the forests of northern Alberta, five hundred kilometers south of where it would normally be found. (I first learned of the sighting on Cryptomundo, which is a good place if you want to keep up on what's happening with Bigfoot, which you probably don't.)

The appearance of a Muskox in the boreal forest is perplexing given that the Muskox is is currently found only in the tundra, and is considered to be ecologically limited to that particular habitat.  I speculate, though, that the Muskox's restriction to tundra habitats maybe be an artifact of thousands of years of hunting by humans.  The tundra may simply have been the only part  of the Muskox's natural range in which human population density was low enough that Muskoxen could avoid being completely wiped out.  Now that the Muskox enjoys legal protection from hunting, it may be expanding southward into suitable areas.  A good analog might be the Caribou (Rangifer tarandus), which inhabits both the tundra and the taiga, and in historic times was found as far south as Maine.

Iguanodon Thumbs

Over the past few days I've been reading a book about the famous Iguanodon site at Bernissart, Belgium.  (Well, okay, maybe the site is only famous among vertebrate paleontologists.) 

Iguanodon is a dinosaur perhaps best known for the spikes on its thumbs.  It is unknown if the spikes were used for defense against predators, in intra-specific combat, or in feeding. I've been thinking, though, that the thumb spikes would have been perfect for hitch-hiking. 

This theory could have been the basis for a Far Side cartoon, showing an Iguanodon standing next to a highway thumbing a ride, with the caption "The real reason Iguanodon had thumb spikes", along the same lines as the famous "The real reason dinosaurs became extinct" cartoon.  

Or, alternately, the cartoon could show a car pulling up to an Iguanodon on the side of the road, who angrily declares, "I'm not hitch-hiking, I'm an Iguanodon!", with the same sense of saurian outrage displayed in the "Well, of course I did it in cold blood,you idiot! ... I'm a reptile!" cartoon.  

(I was surprised to learn in researching this post that there is apparently no official online archive of Far Side cartoons.)

On a side note, from what I understand, hitch-hiking is still popular in Europe, but it has been virtually extinct in the United States for decades.  In the course of my entire life I can recall seeing only one or two hitch-hikers.  There is an odd sort of "mutual assured destruction" doctrine in people's minds—if you go hitch-hiking, the person who picks you up will murder you, and if you pick up a hitch-hiker, the hitch-hiker will murder you.  

Perhaps we would be less apprehensive about hitch-hiking if we had thumb spikes to defend ourselves.  

One for the Taphonomically Inclined

(Click the image for a larger version.)

About ten days ago I found this dead hawk.  I think that it is a Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus), but hawk identification is not one of my strong points. It was lying on a nearly vertical stream bank, about a foot above the waterline.  

It had been lying in this position long enough for several twigs to accumulate on it, without having been disturbed by scavengers.  The feathers were still in a configuration which was nearly perfectly life-like. At the same time, what appear to be the neck vertebrae were exposed, indicating that the hawk's soft tissues had been removed, presumably by the action of insect larvae.

The hawk reminds me somewhat of Archaeopteryx specimens with preserved feathers.  It is interesting to consider the length of time that the hawk's feathers and skeletal structure had remained undisturbed, and how this would affect the potential for long-term preservation, in the rare event that such a dead bird would eventually be covered by sediment.    

An Important Ridley Question

The movie Prometheus, from director Ridley Scott, will be opening Friday.  I don't think that I will see it, because I don't see a lot of movies, and in general I am really tired. But for years, every time that a Ridley Scott movie has come out, I have been plagued by a vexing question: If Ridley Scott were to fight the Ridley Sea Turtle, who would win?

I suppose that, since the turtle only weighs around 100 pounds, the director would win.  But, as in many things, the outcome of the battle would probably be determined by where it took place—on land, or in the water. 

American Idolatry

Last week American Idol crowned this season's winner, who was . . . um . . . somebody.

I have never watched a single episode of American Idol, and I am proud of that fact.  The entire point of America Idol is to find the next Celine Dion.  I don't think that we need another Celine Dion.  I'm not even sure that we need the Celine Dion that we have now. 

(I once tried watching Dancing with the Stars, but every time that they would dance I would fall asleep, and I would only wake up when the dancers were being criticized.)

For the first two or three years that America Idol was on the air, whenever someone mentioned Ryan Seacrest, I would be reminded of the time that he proposed to Angie Harmon on The Tonight Show.  But it turns out that that was actually Jason Sehorn, who is an entirely different person.  

When I was young, we didn't have American Idol; all that we had on television was Urkel.  (Urkel was on Dancing with the Stars recently, but that's beside the point.) And when I was really, really young, we had Fonzie.  But that's a whole other story.  

Maybe what stands out most in my mind about American idol and other competition-based reality shows is that when we watch them, we see people being told that they are no good and having their dreams crushed. Do we really need television shows doing that?  Doesn't real life crush people's dreams enough as it is?  

The Kentucky Derby and Geology

  I noticed that there were not one but two horses at last week's Kentucky Derby with names related to somewhat geological topics. 

First there was Gemologist.  A gemologist is, of course, someone who studies gems. 

Then there was Sabercat.  Sabercat is a term used for extinct felids such as Smilodon, which were once known as sabertoothed tigers, but which were not closely related to modern tigers.  

(The Kentucky Derby website has a page for each of the horses, as linked above, but the information  there was mostly genealogical.  I wish that the pages had included more personal details, such as the horses' favorite movies and television shows, where the horses went to college, and who their horse role models are.)  

One Word

I don't watch much prime time television.  The only three prime time shows that I watch on a regular basis are The Office, Parks and Recreation, and 30 Rock.  (Fortunately they are all broadcast on the same network on the same night.)

I noticed something while watching the April 12 episode of 30 Rock.  Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) was told that his mother had been fitted with a heart pump. He replied that it was the the same kind of pump that "my good friend Dick Cheney had".  But the word had sounded a little off.  I imagine that the phrase was originally "my good friend Dick Cheney has", because the show had presumably been taped prior to Cheney's March 24 heart transplant.  And that one word had to be changed in post-production to keep the show's story seemingly up to date.  

I'm probably not the only person to have noticed this.  But I am too lazy to do the research necessary to find out.  

If nothing else, though, I have learned that the name Cheney is not accepted by my computer's spellcheck feature.