Shoveler ducks wintering in Utah, USA, from where?

Posted on July 17, 2015 by petrel41

This is a northern shoveler video.

From The Wilson Journal of Ornithology in the USA:

Breeding origins of Northern Shovelers (Anas Clypeata) wintering on the Great Salt Lake, Utah

Anthony J. Roberts, and Michael R. Conover

ABSTRACT

The breeding origin and migratory connectivity of wintering birds are important to address how population changes on wintering areas are impacted by changes elsewhere in the birds’ annual cycle. In addition, identifying important point sources of nutrients used throughout the annual cycle can assist managers in identifying sources of toxins or pathogens.

We used stable hydrogen isotope ratios to identify breeding locations of Northern Shovelers (Anas clypeata; henceforth shoveler) wintering at the Great Salt Lake (GSL), Utah. Stable-isotope likelihood-based assignment placed the largest number of shovelers collected during winter on the GSL as breeding in the western US and southern Canada, similar to a small sample size of banding records.

Shovelers wintering on the GSL generally did not breed locally or at the northern extent of their breeding range, rather wintering shovelers came from across their nesting range.

Ordovician echinoderm fossil from Utah, USA

Posted on January 30, 2015 by petrel41

This video is called Life Science – Echinoderms.

From Fossil Roulette:

30 January 2015

Name: Haimacystis rozhnovi
Location: Utah, USA, Wah Wah Limestone
Age: 466-488 million years ago, Ordovician Period

The early history of major groups of animals is often messy and mysterious. The suite of features that make those groups distinctive today show up piecemeal in different combinations in early species, like Haimacystis.

A long, thin column of discs and a flattened pod with a few wispy arms make up the body of this individual of Haimacystis. The animal is part of the same group that includes living sea stars, sea cucumbers, and intricately crowned sea lilies. The group also includes little-known, extinct animals like rhombiferans and corkscrew-armed gogiids.

Sea stars, sea lilies and other living animals in that group all have skeletons of calcified plates. All have five-part bodies that are usually symmetric.

Individuals of Haimacystis share some features with living members of their group, but their other features blur the neat distinctions that make five-part animals so different from other groups. They have calcified plates but they also have nineteen arms instead of five or ten. At best, they have two-part symmetry.

Haimacystis wasn’t a forerunner of its living relations or a species “on the way” to a more recognizable animals like starfish. Multiple species of sea lilies, one species of animals distantly related to sea stars, and at least six species of other early, irregular, extinct animals lived alongside Haimacystis. Haimacystis is its own subplot in the story of five-part animals.

Specimen Number: 1810TX5

References:

Sumrall, Colin D., James Sprinkle, and Thomas E. Guensburg. “Comparison of flattened blastozoan echinoderms: Insights from the early Ordovician eocrinoid Haimacystis rozhnovi.” Journal of Paleontology 75(2001):985-992.

Where are similar fossils found?

Bonus: The fossil’s name has an interesting backstory. “Haimacystis is a compound of the Greek haima, flowing blood, and cystis, sac, referring to the blood dripping from superficial leg wounds suffered by one of the co-authors when the biggest slab of specimens described herein toppled over and almost crushed him.” – Sumrall et al. 2001, p. 992

Utahraptor dinosaur mass grave discovery

Posted on January 7, 2015 by petrel41

This video from the USA says about itself:

Gastonia vs Utahraptor– Epic!

This fight was a real fight that was recorded in bones! The Utahraptor was attacking such an armed dinosaur cause it was about to die by lack of food during a drought. And in the end both animals died, the Gastonia died by its wounds which the Utahraptor inflicted on its belly and legs. And the Gastonia died only 10 feet away after walking from the dead Utahraptor.

From the Washington Post in the USA:

Fossil treasure trove in quicksand reveals ancient dinosaur death trap

By Rachel Feltman

January 7 at 9:35 AM

Reports of what looked like a human arm brought Utah state paleontologist James Kirkland to a particular sandstone hill in 2001. But it turned out that his graduate student had actually found something entirely different — a veritable mass grave of Utahraptor dinosaurs. Now they’ve found the remains of six individual dinosaurs, and there may still be more inside of the 9-ton sandstone block they’re excavating.

That “arm” was actually a foot, and the fossil bits just kept coming. The site is now the largest find ever for this particular species, which was a large, feathered cousin to the more familiar Velociraptor. It seems that these unfortunate raptors were trapped in quicksand — sand so heavy with water that it loses much of the friction between its grains. Quicksand isn’t actually the deathtrap for humans that cinema would have us believe, but for a frightened animal who couldn’t gain purchase, it might have meant suffocation or slow starvation — or simply getting stuck until a bigger predator arrived to finish the job.

Brian Switek for National Geographic reports that a plant-eating dinosaur was found at the site, too, which could mean that the raptors all died at the same time while hunting the trapped creature. That would be exciting, because despite their depiction as pack hunters in the “Jurassic Park” films, we don’t have much evidence about whether dinosaurs like these came in droves or hunted solo.

If the researchers can show that the raptors grew tangled up together as they struggled to get free, or find evidence that the same weather patterns affected their bones when they died, it would add weight to the notion that raptors liked to rumble in gangs.

You can see clips of the excavation in progress over at National Geographic.

Grand Canyon wolf killed by hunter?

Posted on January 1, 2015 by petrel41

This video from Arizona in the USA is called Grand Canyon National Park.

From daily The Independent in Britain:

US hunter ‘shoots dead’ historic first grey wolf seen in Grand Canyon for 70 years

‘Echo’ attracted national attention when she made her way to the Arizona landmark through several states

Laura Zuckerman

Wednesday 31 December 2014

A gray wolf killed by a Utah hunter may have been “Echo,” a female who attracted national attention after wandering through several states to become the first of the protected animals seen at Arizona’s Grand Canyon in 70 years, officials have said.

The hunter, who was not named by authorities, told Utah wildlife officers on Sunday that he accidentally shot and killed a wolf equipped with a radio collar near the Arizona border after mistaking it for a coyote.

Wolves in Utah are protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which bans killing of imperiled animals without a special permit, but coyotes in the state are allowed to be shot on sight.

The incident, which is coming under sharp criticism by conservationists, is being investigated by federal and state conservation officers as a possible violation of U.S. and Utah wildlife laws, authorities said.

Information gleaned from the radio collar shows the wolf killed in Utah was a 3-year-old female that was captured and collared in January in northwest Wyoming, said Utah Division of Wildlife Resources spokesman Mark Martinez.

The wolf spotted near the northern rim of the Grand Canyon in October was also a young female, which had apparently roamed hundreds of miles (km) south from the Northern Rockies, according to an analysis of droppings near where she was seen.

It may be weeks before additional testing reveals whether the wolf killed in Utah is the same one, which was nicknamed Echo in a contest.

Echo was the first gray wolf seen in the Grand Canyon since the 1940s, when the last wolf there was killed as part of an extensive eradication campaign, said Chris Cline with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The gray wolf is protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in most states.

Utah regulations require hunters to properly identify their target before shooting but cases of mistaken identity sometimes happen, Martinez said.

“It’s something we train people for in hunter education classes but it’s not a unique thing,” he said.

The hunter who shot the wolf near the city of Beaver in southwest Utah immediately contacted the state to report the incident as required by law, Martinez said. He said several coyotes in Utah have been equipped with radio collars tied to a research project.

Wildlife advocates said the death was shameful, whether or not the wolf was Echo.

“It’s very sad either way,” said Michael Robinson, conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity.

Hellbenders in Appalachia, USA

Protests in Utah against NSA spying base

Posted on November 21, 2014 by petrel41

This August 2014 video from the USA is called Illegal Spying Below: Activists Fly Anti-Surveillance Airship over NSA‘s Utah Data Center.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Utah mulls cutting NSA surveillance centre’s water

Thursday 20th November 2014

Desert spying base under attack

Utah state Representative Marc Roberts questioned on Wednesday whether or not a National Security Agency base near Salt Lake City should have its water cut off over privacy concerns.

Mr Roberts said there were serious questions about privacy and surveillance surrounding the centre and several Utah residents who spoke at a legislative committee hearing agreed.

Salt Lake City-based internet provider XMission founder Pete Ashdown called the centre a stain upon the state and its technology industry.

During their last session, Utah legislators opted to delay a decision on Mr Roberts’s Bill to cut off the facility’s water.

Local politicians insisted they were not intent on shutting down the $1.7 billion (£1.1bn) site and the committee chairman acknowledged the concerns, but said there might be another way to get the point across.

“We may look at some type of strong message to give our representatives to take back to Congress,” said Republican Senator David Hinkins.

The largest NSA data storage centre in the US was built in Utah after the state was chosen over 37 other locations because of open land and cheap electricity.

It sits on a National Guard state military base in the town of Bluffdale.

NSA officials claim it is key to protecting national security and allowing US authorities to watch for cyber threats.

But the centre attracted attention last year after whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA had been collecting millions of US phone and digital records stored by internet providers.

The US National Security Agency has been authorised to intercept information concerning all but four countries worldwide, top-secret documents say, according to The Washington Post: here.

In a letter addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson this week, leading US Senators requested information about the use of “StingRay” and “dirt box” devices and other cell phone surveillance and data mining systems by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other US government agencies: here.

Dinosaur with big nose discovery

Posted on September 19, 2014 by petrel41

This video is about hadrosaurs.

From North Carolina State University in the USA:

Hadrosaur with huge nose discovered: Function of dinosaur’s unusual trait a mystery

September 19, 2014

Call it the Jimmy Durante of dinosaurs — a newly discovered hadrosaur with a truly distinctive nasal profile. The new dinosaur, named Rhinorex condrupus by paleontologists from North Carolina State University and Brigham Young University, lived in what is now Utah approximately 75 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period.

Rhinorex, which translates roughly into “King Nose,” was a plant-eater and a close relative of other Cretaceous hadrosaurs like Parasaurolophus and Edmontosaurus. Hadrosaurs are usually identified by bony crests that extended from the skull, although Edmontosaurus doesn’t have such a hard crest (paleontologists have discovered that it had a fleshy crest). Rhinorex also lacks a crest on the top of its head; instead, this new dinosaur has a huge nose.

Terry Gates, a joint postdoctoral researcher with NC State and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and colleague Rodney Sheetz from the Brigham Young Museum of Paleontology, came across the fossil in storage at BYU. First excavated in the 1990s from Utah’s Neslen formation, Rhinorex had been studied primarily for its well-preserved skin impressions. When Gates and Sheetz reconstructed the skull, they realized that they had a new species.

“We had almost the entire skull, which was wonderful,” Gates says, “but the preparation was very difficult. It took two years to dig the fossil out of the sandstone it was embedded in — it was like digging a dinosaur skull out of a concrete driveway.”

Based on the recovered bones, Gates estimates that Rhinorex was about 30 feet long and weighed over 8,500 lbs. It lived in a swampy estuarial environment, about 50 miles from the coast. Rhinorex is the only complete hadrosaur fossil from the Neslen site, and it helps fill in some gaps about habitat segregation during the Late Cretaceous.

“We’ve found other hadrosaurs from the same time period but located about 200 miles farther south that are adapted to a different environment,” Gates says. “This discovery gives us a geographic snapshot of the Cretaceous, and helps us place contemporary species in their correct time and place. Rhinorex also helps us further fill in the hadrosaur family tree.”

When asked how Rhinorex may have benefitted from a large nose Gates said, “The purpose of such a big nose is still a mystery. If this dinosaur is anything like its relatives then it likely did not have a super sense of smell; but maybe the nose was used as a means of attracting mates, recognizing members of its species, or even as a large attachment for a plant-smashing beak. We are already sniffing out answers to these questions.”

The scientific dewscription of this new species is here.

Utah dinosaur tracks site open to the public

Posted on August 30, 2014 by petrel41

This video from the USA is called Dinosaur Footprints Set For Public Display In Utah.

From Associated Press:

Site of dinosaur tracks to be unveiled

by Brady Mccombs

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – A dry wash full of 112-million-year-old dinosaur tracks that include an ankylosaurus, dromaeosaurus and a menacing ancestor of the Tyrannosaurus rex, is set to open to the public this fall in Utah.

There are more than 200 tracks near the city of Moab from 10 different ancient animals that lived during the early Cretaceous period, said Utah Bureau of Land Management paleontologist ReBecca Hunt-Foster.

They were first discovered in 2009 by a resident. Since then, paleontologists led by a team at the University of Colorado at Denver have studied them and prepared them to go on display for the general public.

The tracks include a set of 17 consecutive footprints left by [a] Tyrannosaurus rex ancestor and the imprint of an ancient crocodile pushing off into the water.

The site is one of the largest areas of dinosaur tracks from the early Cretaceous period known to exist in North America, she said.

“We don’t usually get this,” said Hunt-Foster, a paleontologist for 16 years. “It is a beautiful track site, one of the best ones I’ve ever seen.”

There are footprints from duckbilled dinosaurs, prehistoric birds, long-necked plant eaters and a dromaeosaur similar to a velociraptor or Utahraptor that had long, sharp claws.

In one rock formation, a footprint left behind by a large plant eater is right in the middle of prints from a meat-eating theropod, Hunt-Foster said.

The imprint of an ancient crocodile shows the chest, body, tail and one foot. Paleontologists believe it was made while the crocodile was pushing off a muddy bank into water.

Paleontologists believe the tracks were made over several days in what was a shallow lake. They likely became covered by sediment that filled them up quickly enough to preserve them but gently enough not to scour them out, Hunt-Foster said. Over time, as more sediment built up, they became rock. They’re near a fault line, where the land has moved up and down over the years, she said. Rain slowly eroded away layers of the rock, exposing the footprints.

Steppe bison discovery on Texel island

Posted on May 31, 2014 by petrel41

This video says about itself:

BBC Monsters We Met – 1 of 3 – The Eternal Frontier

Episode 1: Eternal Frontier (Alaska, United States, North America, 14,000 years ago) Woolly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) American Lion (Panthera leo atrox) (live-acted by a African Lioness) Homotherium (Scimitar-tooth Cat) Smilodon (Saber-tooth Cat) Megalonyx (Jefferson’s Ground Sloth) Camelops (Giant Camel) (live-acted by a Dromedary Camel) Arctodus (Short-Faced Bear) American mastodon (Mammut americanum) Steppe Bison (live-acted by an American Bison) Hagerman Horse (live-acted by a Grevy’s Zebra) American Cheetah (live-acted by a Snow Leopard) Wild horse (live-acted by a Przewalski’s Horse) Grey Wolf (live-acted) American Bison (live-acted) Andean Condor (live-acted) Brown Bear (live-acted) Muskox (live-acted) Caribou (live-acted) Saiga (live-acted) California Condor (live-acted) Dall Sheep (live-acted) … Wolverine (live-acted).

Steppe bison are an extinct species, ancestral to both today’s American bison and European bison.

Recently, a former employee of Ecomare museum found a steppe bison astralagus bone in the dunes of Texel island. Probably, it had landed there from the North Sea; which was land when steppe bison were still alive.

The discoverer gave the bone to Ecomare.

Wildlife biologists recently scanning photographs taken by a trail camera in the Uinta Mountains last winter, saw something never before captured in Utah: the first official photographs of a wolverine: here.

Leaked Document: Scientists Ordered to Scrap Plan to Protect Wolverines: here.

Barn owl nest webcam

Posted on April 12, 2014 by petrel41

This video from the USA is called Utah Barn Owl Nest box 2.

At a barn owl nest on Texel island in the Netherlands, there is a webcam. It is here.

Bahamas barn owls: here.

Male Mormons exclude women

Posted on April 6, 2014 by petrel41

This video is called USA: Mormon women march for gender equality in church.

From Reuters news agency:

Mormons exclude women seeking ordination from male-only meeting

• Campaigners seek admission of women to lay priesthood
• Ordain Women brave bad weather to press case

Salt Lake City

Sunday 6 April 2014 15.05 BST

Hundreds of Mormon women who want ecclesiastical equality were denied admittance to a male-only session of their faith’s spring conference on Saturday, in their attempt [to] promote the ordination of women into the lay priesthood.

Adorned in purple, members of Ordain Women marched through a hailstorm from a park to the Salt Lake Tabernacle on Temple Square, the heart of a four-block campus that is the global home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They were seeking unfilled seats at the evening priesthood meeting at the faith’s biannual conference.

This follows the group’s attempt last autumn to gain admittance to the meeting. The actions have led to tensions between church officials and the women, who say they are steadfast in their faith but want to play a more significant role in the life of a religion that claims over 15 million adherents worldwide.

One by one, the women and some male supporters were politely turned away by a church spokeswoman. High school student Emma Tueller, 16, fought back tears after the rejection, which came with a hug from the church representative, who encouraged her to watch the proceedings of the meeting online.

Tueller, a resident of Provo, Utah, joined Ordain Women in the previous action last autumn. “This time it was more painful,” she said. “I love this church and I think my personal gifts and my personal talents could be much better utilised if I had the priesthood.”

In advance of Saturday’s event, church officials had asked Ordain Women to refrain from bringing their cause to Temple Square, saying it would detract from the “spirit of harmony” at the two-day conference, which includes four events open to both genders and the male-only priesthood meeting. In a statement late on Saturday, church officials expressed displeasure with what they called the women’s “refusal to accept ushers’ directions and refusing to leave when asked”.

Ordain Women has objected to being characterized by the church as protesters. “We’re not activists. We’re not protesters,” said Kate Kelly, a Washington, DC-based human rights attorney and lifetime Mormon who last year co-founded the group with about 20 other women. “We’re people on the inside. We are investing in an institution … not critiquing it to tear it down,” she said.

Men ordained to the priesthood in the Mormon church can perform religious rituals, including baptisms, confirmations or blessings and can be called to lead congregations. Boys enter into the priesthood as deacons at age 12 and grow in authority and responsibility as they get older or are called to service by more senior church leaders.

Initially, about 200 people appeared to be taking part in the action, but a spokeswoman for the group put the number of participants at 510.

Women are powerless in matters of church governance and can make no autonomous decisions, even at the highest levels, Kelly said.

Church officials declined an interview request in advance of Saturday’s event.

“Ordination of women to the priesthood is a matter of doctrine that is contrary to the Lord’s revealed organisation for His Church,” said last month’s church letter to the group.

Outside the gates to Temple Square, church member Nate Brown said he does not object to the idea of women in the priesthood, but does not like the tactics of Ordain Women. “I perceive [their asking] not as a civil action, but more of a challenge of church leaders,” said Brown, 59, who came from Salem, Oregon, for the conference.

Brown is not alone. A 2011 Pew Research study found Mormons overwhelmingly disapprove of women joining the lay priesthood.

But Brown said he would welcome the ordination of women if a church president, whom Mormons consider a prophet who communicates with God, changed church policies. “I believe in following the prophet,” Brown said.

Since Ordain Women first pushed their cause last fall, church leaders have taken some actions to show their regard for women. For the first time, a woman was asked to pray at the conference and the men’s priesthood meeting was broadcast live on cable television and the internet.

That is a far cry from the 1990s when the faith’s leaders excommunicated some women who advocated for gender equity, said Nadine Hansen, a lifetime church member and an attorney who published her first article about women’s ordination nearly 30 years ago. “I appreciate the changes they are making,” said Hansen. “They are listening.”