DocentDoings

    Thanks to Docent Elsa for the following article from the LA Times: By Jennifer Lu The biologists learned of their latest target — a mountain lion waiting to be tagged with a GPS radio collar — by text. Sent by a cage. In the Santa Monica Mountains. Lured by the meat of roadkill deer, the young male entered the trap and when the cage door slid shut, it triggered a text message that sent biologists to the scene the night of Jan. 17. This new addition, named P-95, brings the number of mountain lions being tracked in Los Angeles County by the National Parks Service to 10. Jeff Sikich, a biologist with the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, is reluctant to give too many details about how the cougars are located. The team scopes out a possible area with remote cameras, he said. When they see a lion, they try to capture it for tagging. Once they reach the cat, it is tranquilized. Scientists have roughly...

Scientists discovered remains of a sauropod that could be the largest animal to have ever lived on land By Matthew Rozsa January 19, 2021 7:36PM (UTC)   https://www.salon.com/2021/01/19/paleontologists-may-have-found-the-largest-dinosaur-of-all-time/# Pair of giant sauropods walking through water and a swarm of flying pterosaurs (Getty Images) 7K Email 5 Paleontologists in Argentina have discovered bones that they suspect belonged to a dinosaur so large, it would have been the largest land animal to ever live. Paleontologists confirmed that a pile of bones, discovered in an Argentinian section of Patagonia, belonged to a type of dinosaur known as a sauropod, according to a paper published in the scholarly journal Cretaceous Research . Sauropods were dinosaurs with extremely long necks, elongated tails, small heads and legs that resembled trunks or pillars. Brontosauruses, apatosauruses and brachiosauruses are among the most famous sau...

  Sheanderthal Not all Neanderthals were ‘cavemen’: half were women. What can archaeologists tell us about how they lived? Illustration by Tom Björklund Rebecca Wragg Sykes is a Palaeolithic archaeologist and honorary fellow at the University of Liverpool, specialising in Neanderthals. She is co-founder of the Trowelblazers website, celebrating women archaeologists, palaeontologists and geologists through the ages, and the author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art (2020). She lives in Wales. Brought to you by Curio , an Aeon partner 4,600 words Edited by Nigel Warburton Syndicate this Essay The first Neanderthal face to emerge from time’s sarcophagus was a woman’s. As the social and liberal revolutions of 1848 began convulsing Europe, quarry workers’ rough hands pulled her from the great Rock of Gibraltar. Calcite mantling her skull meant that, at first, she seemed more a hunk of stone than a onc...

From Docent Chair Carolyn Weiss, thank you Carolyn! Please open the link below to view article and pictures appearing in the Smithsonian newsletter. From: Carolyn Weiss <carolyn2604@att.net> Sent: Friday, January 15, 2021 10:48 PM To: Mary Kuhl <coolmdr@ca.rr.com> Subject: Fossil Tooth Helps Unravel Mysteries About Dire Wolf Evolution   https://www.johnsoncitypress.com/news/dire-wolf-mystery-uncovered-with-help-from-tennessee-fossils/article_7fe8997e-569b-11eb-889b-17ba12ec7224.html Diree wolf mystery uncovered with help from Tennessee fossils Contributed/ETSU By Contributed/ETSU  Carolyn      

 In memory of Susan Coltrin (December 2020): Susan was a fierce docent advocate! She served on the DRT Board for more than 10 years Had a wonderful sense of humor and fine mind. We will miss her.  

In the 1930s, This Natural History Curator Discovered a Living Fossil–Well, Sort of Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was convinced she’d found something special in a pile of fish, but it took some time for her discovery to be recognized Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer stands with the taxidermied remains of her groundbreaking discovery. (Wikimedia Commons) By Kat Eschner smithsonianmag.com December 22, 2017 It was a pre-Christmas miracle: on this day in 1938...

Since the DRT field to the Paronage of Aimee Semple MacPerson has been cancelled and the Parsonage closed due to the Covid-19 virus, the video below has been added and can be viewed in the interim while the field trip is being rescheduled.  Double click on images below to enlarge screen: