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The skeleton of a drowned baby dinosaur was discovered in Canada.

From NBC News:

The toddler was just 3 years old and 5 feet (1.5 meters) long when it wandered into a river near Alberta, Canada, and drowned about 70 million years ago. The beast was so well-preserved that some of its skin left impressions in the nearby rock.

The fossil is the smallest intact skeleton ever found from a group of horned, plant-eating dinosaurs known as ceratopsids, a group that includes the iconic Triceratops.

Finding intact baby dinosaurs is incredibly rare.

"The big ones just preserve better: They don't get eaten, they don't get destroyed by animals," said study co-author Philip Currie, a paleobiologist at the University of Alberta. "You always hope you're going to find something small and that it will turn out to be a dinosaur."

Read more here.

Photo: Philip J. Currie, Robert Holmes, Michael Ryan Clive Coy, Eva B. Koppelhus/LiveScience

Don't let anyone tell you toxic parenting is all bad. The strawberry poison frog (Oophaga pumilio) uses to make their babies unpalatable to predators by feeding them unfertilized eggs laced with bitter alkaloids. This means of chemical defense is currently unique to the species.



That's the word from a study headed up by researcher Ralph Saporito of Ohio's John Carroll University. From National Geographic:

For their study, the researchers measured alkaloid content in strawberry poison frogs during different stages of development.

In one group, tadpoles were reared and fed by their mothers, and a second group was reared by the researchers and fed with eggs from another species of frog not known to harbor alkaloids.

As the tadpoles from both groups developed, the team analyzed their alkaloid contents. The results were clear-cut: Tadpoles reared by mom contained alkaloids in most stages, whereas tadpoles from the second group showed no sign of these chemicals, according to the study, published November 12 in the journal Ecology.

Read the full story here.

Photo: Robert Pickett/National Geographic

After 30 years of captivity, two sea turtles named Touche and Daisy were released off the Desert Islands in Portugal. How's that for a happy ending?

See the release in the video blow.

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A new study from the University of Waterloo shows that snakes can optimize their vision by controlling the blood flow in their eyes when they perceive a threat.

Kevin van Doorn, PhD, and Professor Jacob Sivak, from the Faculty of Science, discovered that the coachwhip snake’s visual blood flow patterns change depending on what’s in its environment. The findings appear in the most recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology.

"Each species' perception of the world is unique due to differences in sensory systems," said van Doorn, from the School of Optometry & Vision Science.

Instead of eyelids, snakes have a clear scale called a spectacle. It works like a window, covering and protecting their eyes. Spectacles are the result of eyelids that fuse together and become transparent during embryonic development.

When van Doorn was examining a different part of the eye, the illumination from his instrument detected something unusual.

Surprisingly, these spectacles contained a network of blood vessels, much like a blind on a window. To see if this feature obscured the snake’s vision, van Doorn examined if the pattern of blood flow changed under different conditions.

When the snake was resting, the blood vessels in the spectacle constricted and dilated in a regular cycle. This rhythmic pattern repeated several times over the span of several minutes.

But when researchers presented the snake with stimuli it perceived as threatening, the fight-or-flight response changed the spectacle’s blood flow pattern. The blood vessel constricted, reducing blood flow for longer periods than at rest, up to several minutes. The absence of blood cells within the vasculature guarantees the best possible visual capacity in times of greatest need.

"This work shows that the blood flow pattern in the snake spectacle is not static but rather dynamic," said van Doorn.

Next, the research team examined the blood flow pattern of the snake spectacle when the snake shed its skin. They found a third pattern. During this time, the vessels remained dilated and the blood flow stayed strong and continuous, unlike the cyclical pattern seen during resting.

Together, these experiments show the relationship between environmental stimuli and vision, as well as highlight the interesting and complex effect blood flow patterns have on visual clarity. Future research will investigate the mechanism underlying this relationship.

"This research is the perfect example of how a fortuitous discovery can redefine our understanding of the world around us," said van Doorn.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada supported this project.

Photo: Kevin van Doorn/ University of Waterloo

Snake venom and other harmful substances can save lives as well as take them.
From LiveScience.com:

"Poisons can be bad for some things and good for others, including humans," said Michael Novacek, senior vice president of the American Museum of Natural History, at an opening of a new poison-themed exhibition Tuesday (Nov. 12).

[...]

The strongest of poisons occur in evolutionary arms races, Siddall explained. For example, opossums can feed upon some venomous snakes thanks to a resistance to the snakes' venom. In response, the snakes over generations have amped up the toxicity of their venom to keep these marsupial predators at bay. Meanwhile, the opossums continue to evolve resistance to the ever-stronger venom, he said.

Read the full story here.

Photo: kingsnake.com user cochran

Florida commercial fisher Eddie Toomer was awarded the Gladding Memorial Award by the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute for his lifetime commitment to protecting endangered sea turtles.

From KBTX.com:

Toomer is most renowned for his important contributions to the design of turtle excluder devices (TEDs) for shrimp trawlers. "TEDs maximize shrimp harvest while allowing endangered sea turtles to escape. Shrimpers' use of TEDs has spared hundreds of thousands of endangered sea turtles around the world," said Pamela Plotkin, director of Texas Sea Grant and author of the book, Biology and Conservation of Ridley Sea Turtles.

With his mom and dad and a dozen or so others, Toomer also is responsible for the 3 million-acre no trawling pink shrimp nursery area in the Gulf.

"I feel fortunate to be a part of the history of the TED," said Toomer. "Finding a successful design was achieved by joining the practical experience and creativity of fishers, with the design ideas and studies of scientists."

Read the full story here.

Veterinarians in Germany didn't just treat the injuries on an injured tortoise brought in to a local animal shelter after being inured. They raided the toy box and built him a prosthetic wheeled leg.

From The Local:

"First we fitted a double wheel but it was difficult for him to turn corners so we replaced it with a single wheel and that is much better for him," Dr Panagiotis Azmanis told The Local.

He works at the Birdconsulting International veterinary practice of Marcellus Bürkle in Achern in Baden, and ended up raiding the toy box of the practice manager's daughter for wheels and spacer blocks.

Initially though the focus was on saving the tortoise's life. "He was in pretty bad shape when they brought him to us. The lower part of his front leg was missing, and the upper part was very bad, with bone showing, and maggots in necrotic flesh."

One the animal had been stabilized, the vets amputated the injured leg at the shoulder and treated him with antibiotics and fluids, as well as giving him pain killers.

Then came the question of lifting his fourth corner so he could move around.

"Tortoises need to run free in gardens, so he needed a prosthetic," said Azmanis.

Read the full story here.

Photo: DPA

A Florida paleontologist says climate change may turn back the species clock to a day when mammals were tiny and reptiles huge.

From NBC News:

"You see the size of these animals dancing with the climate," said Jonathan Bloch, a paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Bloch delved into the connection between body size and global temperatures, particularly during a hot time known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, on Monday during the ScienceWriters2013 conference here in Gainesville. Like so many facets of global change, the lessons from the distant past don't make the far future look all that sunny. Super-snakes, anyone?

Read the full story here.

Photo: Artist’s conception of the largest snake the world has ever known from Jason Bourque / University of Florida.

Considering they're still making news 66 million years after going extinct, dinosaurs are clearly one of humanity's favorite animals. Here is a round-up of dino-centric stories from the last week:

From National Geographic:

An enigma for decades, a giant dinosaur known only for its brawny arms actually towered over the local tyrannosaurs, paleontologists report. It also ate plants and perhaps sported a surprising sail or hump on its back.

The dinosaur Deinocheirus mirificus (which means, essentially, "terrible hands that look peculiar") had been a stubborn fossil enigma for nearly 50 years.

Nothing except the dinosaur's eight-foot-long arms, tipped in three huge claws, and a handful of other bone fragments had ever been found.

But at the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference held in Los Angeles last week, Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources paleontologist Yuong-Nam Lee presented a wealth of new fossils that make Deinocheirus stranger than anyone had previously imagined.

From Discovery.com:

A nursery of bizarre-looking dinosaurs known as therizinosaurs has been found in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.

The nesting colony contained at least 17 clutches of eggs.

"Not only is this the largest colony of nonavian theropods, but this is the best documented site," said study co-author Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, a vertebrate paleontologist at Hokkaido University in Japan, who presented the findings here at the 73rd annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference.

The finding suggests the odd little creatures were social animals. Read more...

From NBC News:

Paleontologists on Wednesday unveiled a new dinosaur discovered four years ago in southern Utah that proves giant tyrant dinosaurs like the Tyrannosaurus rex were around 10 million years earlier than previously believed.

A full skeletal replica of the carnivore — the equivalent of the great uncle of the T. rex — was on display at the Natural History Museum of Utah alongside a 3-D model of the head and a large painted mural of the dinosaur roaming a shoreline.

It was the public's first glimpse at the new species, which researchers named Lythronax argestes (LY'-throw-nax ar-GES'-tees). The first part of the name means "king of gore," and the second part is derived from poet Homer's southwest wind. Read more...

Photo: National Geogrphic

The Chicago Herpetological Society is caring for a two-foot alligator found under an escalator at Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

From the Chicago Tribune:

The group has about 500 members, including about 30 in the Chicago area who open their homes, bathtubs and backyards to reptiles and amphibians who need a place to stay or recover. While by many accounts this was the first alligator found at the airport, it's not the first Floridian reptile found in Illinois that the volunteers have taken in.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources confiscates a dozen to two dozen alligators every year, said Scott Ballard, the department's expert in herpetology, the branch of zoology that pertains to the study of reptiles and amphibians.

No one in the state, other than zoos and licensed facilities, should have one. Because the reptile is protected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Endangered Species Act, a permit is required to own one in Illinois. The state stopped issuing permits for people to keep them as pets about a decade ago, Ballard said. While violators can be convicted of a Class A misdemeanor under the state's Endangered Species Protection Act, a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department said there is no criminal investigation into the abandoned animal at O'Hare.

Read the full story here.

Photo: Chicago Tribune

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Tenants in a Georgia apartment complex are suing over what they call an invasion of snakes on the property -- indoors and out.

From WSB TV:

Shawn Davis told Channel 2's Tom Regan she spotted one slithering down her hallway and another in a fruit bowl.

"The first was a baby copperhead; the second was a rat snake. My husband said since the last two snakes, he found two more. But he didn't want to tell me about it, cause I'm a nervous wreck," Davis said.

Residents first contacted Channel 2 Action News about the problem in September. They reported sightings of a half-dozen snakes, including a six-foot-long copperhead that was trapped in an apartment breezeway and killed.

Davis and her husband, Paul Patterson, said they repeatedly reported their concerns to management and requested moving into another building but were told that was not possible.

Earlier this week, they filed a lawsuit accusing apartment management of negligence in failing to control the population of venomous snakes. The suit seeks unspecified damages.

Read the full story here.

Photo: kingsnake.com user mrtigger

In a world where "rattlesnake round-ups" are considered good family fun, the arrest of a Florida man who tortured and killed a rattler comes as a refreshing change.

From Tallahassee.com:

According to the weekly Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission law enforcement report for Oct. 25, in mid-September, Ward Lee Waff "taunted the pygmy rattlesnake continuously … kicked the snake into the roadway, attempting to get a car to run over the snake," and then shot it repeatedly with a .22 caliber rifle, sending it flying off the roadway.

In the video, Waff, 45, asks the snake if it would "bite one of my dogs. Would you bite one of my children?" before capturing it and holding it before a number of braying dogs in the back of a truck. He can be heard laughing as he torments the reptile.

[...]

In the report, Waff is described as having a criminal history with FWC and is "currently on probation for fish and wildlife violations that were committed in the past."

Read the rest of the story here.

Photo: kingsnake.com user SalS

Scientists from the Philadelphia Zoo are working to save the frogs of Haiti.

From Scientific American:

As much as 99 percent of Haiti has been deforested over the past few decades, as the country’s desperate people have cut down trees to make way for agriculture or charcoal production. This massive habitat loss has put the entire nation’s biodiversity at risk. Only a few untouched habitats remain.

The La Hotte land frog’s habitat is one of those areas. "It’s a very beautiful forest," (Carlos) Martinez (Rivera, amphibian conservation biologist with the Philadelphia Zoo,) says. "There are a lot of tree ferns, pines and magnolia trees. It feels like going to any other tropical rainforest. But it’s a very tiny patch of forest." The trees are still being cut down to produce charcoal or to clear land for cash crops such as parsley, celery, broccoli and carrots.

With so much of the country already deforested and more trees likely to be lost in the coming years, the Philadelphia Zoo in 2010 set out to save some of Haiti’s endemic frogs that live in those fading forests. They captured 154 frogs from nine species and brought them back to Philadelphia to establish a captive breeding program. "You can protect wildlife like frogs in a small space," says the zoo’s chief operating officer, Andy Baker. "Trying to keep a genetically viable population of tigers takes the entire global zoo community, whereas in a relatively small room you can hold a genetically and demographically viable population of an entire species of frog. Our return on investment on species protection for animals like reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates can be very high."

Read more here.

Photo: Carlos C. Martínez Rivera, the Philadelphia Zoo

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Planning on heading for next year's G20 Summit in Australia? Don't bring your snake.

From the Brisbane Times:

Police have been granted the power to search anyone carrying eggs, cans of beans, model planes, surfboards, insects or reptiles near security areas, under new laws for the G20 summit.

The G20 Safety and Security Bill was passed in Parliament on Tuesday night, making it easier for police to strip search and arrest trouble makers during next year's G20 summit.

Included in the bill is a vast list of items banned from designated "security areas" in Brisbane and Cairns.
As well as knives, swords, guns and explosive tools, the list of prohibited items includes glass bottles or jars, metal cans or tins, eggs, reptiles and insects.
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Under the laws, a police officer may seize a prohibited item if the officer reasonably suspects a person in a security area has possession of the item without a lawful excuse, or if the person is about to enter the restricted area with a prohibited item without a lawful excuse.

Read the full story here.

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An alligator snapping turtle was found in Oregon reservoir last week.

From KGW.com:

It was the first time the invasive species was found in eastern Oregon, according to Rick Boatner of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The species is native to the southeastern United States, Boatner said. It can grow to 250 lbs.

"I'd hate to see these turtles get established in Oregon," Boatner said. "We already have problems in the Willamette Valley with common snapping turtles."

He added that the alligator snapping turtle can be very aggressive, and it's a safety hazard to people.

"It has quite a bite," he said.

Read the full story here.

Photo: Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife

Let's go surfin' now, all the snakes are learnin' how...

Okay, not all the snakes. But some Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnakes have been spotted on a Florida beach and in the ocean recently.

From WFTV.com:

Valeh Levy shot video Friday New Smyrna Beach but said her son was one of the first surfers to spot the snake in the waves.

"My son came running up toward my minivan and he said, 'Mommy, you're not going to believe this but there's a rattlesnake in the surf,'" Levy said.

Witnesses estimate it was 4-5 feet long and came onto the beach from the ocean. Levy said her son described how surfers tried to avoid the snake swimming right by them.

"He said the coolest part was that the snake raised half of its body up and looked out towards the surf and a wave was coming and the snake turned towards the beach and kind of let the wave bump it on in," Levy said.

Experts said it isn't common to see a rattlesnake in the ocean, but Smyrna Dunes Park near where the one was spotted is a natural habitat for them where they eat rats, small rabbits, and even baby raccoons.

Read the rest here!

Photo: WFTV

Why are so many humans afraid of snakes? Scientists may have the answer.

From the LA Times:

We’re not born with a fear of snakes, but it sure seems to develop early.

Now scientists may be closer to a explaining why ophidiophobia ranks among the top fears of humans, and seems to be shared with other primates.

Researchers inserted probes into the brains of Japanese macacques and found that neurons in a part of their brain that controls visual attention were more strongly and quickly activated in response to images of snakes, versus other objects.

The results, published online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, appear to support a theory that early primates developed advanced perception as an evolutionary response to being prey, not as an adaptation that may have made foraging or hunting easier.

Read the full story here.

Photo: kingsnake.com user cochran

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People broke the law, but it's the alligator who died.

Because Florida law prohibits relocating alligators larger than 4 feet in length, this healthy, 11-and-a-half foot animal was killed after some idiot tethered him to a tree behind an apartment complex.

From the Tampa Tribune:

That alligator gator stretched 11 feet, 6 inches and may have hatched when Richard Nixon was president, said Phil Walters, the licensed trapper called out Wednesday afternoon to corral and kill the beast behind the Rivertree Landing Apartments off Sligh Avenue, east of 56th Street.

The back of the complex borders a scenic stretch of the Hillsborough River just south of Temple Terrace.

“We had heard that a couple of people had caught and tied the gator to a tree,” Walters said.

That was indeed the case. A stretch of parachute cord stretched from a tree over a 4-foot seawall and into the river, where the gator floated at the other end of the line.

Walters said some residents told law enforcement that unidentified people “had caught it and was feeding it cats,” keeping it as a backyard pet of sorts.

Whether the cat diet rumor is true or not, Walters was unsure. He does note that it’s a bad idea to feed an alligator anything because the free food makes the reptiles lose their fear of humans and associate people on the shore with getting a snack.

Read the full story here.

Photo: Phil Walters/Tampa Tribune

On Monday, we reported on an immune system characteristic that leaves amphibians particularly susceptible to the chytrid fungus, which is responsible for massive declines in amphibians populations around the world. Now, it looks like the herbicide atrazine is also increasing the susceptibility of frogs to chytridiomycosis.

From Phys.org:

USF Biologist Jason Rohr said the new findings show that early-life exposure to atrazine increases frog mortality but only when the frogs were challenged with a chytrid fungus, a pathogen implicated in worldwide amphibian declines. The research is published in the new edition of Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"Understanding how stressors cause enduring health effects is important because these stressors might then be avoided or mitigated during formative developmental stages to prevent lasting increases in disease susceptibility," Rohr said.

Read the full story here.

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A thriving population of green anoles is living in a Los Angeles neighborhood.

From KCET.org:

The lizards that biologists just found thriving in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles aren't a new species: they're the extremely well-studied green anole. But as the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum's Lila Higgins reports, the discovery marks the first confirmed established population of the common reptile in Los Angeles County, and scientists are curious as to what effect the little lizards may be having on native wildlife.

Green anoles are native to the southeastern U.S. and nearby islands, where --- ironically they're in trouble due to competition from exotic reptiles. Hancock Park isn't the first beachhead green anoles have made in the state: a population has been established in San Diego's Balboa Park for many years, and reptile watchers also report a thriving colony of the sleek lizards in and around Temecula. Individual green anoles have been documented in places like Northridge and Chino Hills.

And according to Higgins, Hancock Park neighbors have told Natural History Museum herpetologist Greg Pauly that the anoles have been there as long as they can remember.

Read the full story here.

Photo: PiccoloNamek/Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons License

Scientists are honing in on the immune factor that is allowing amphibian populations to succumb to the fungal disease chytridiomycosis, which has caused a loss of nearly 4 percent of amphibian populations every year between 2002 and 2011.

From Popular Science:

It's been most baffling, given the amphibians' complex immune systems, not far off from the immune complexity of humans and other mammals.

"There's been a big question in terms of why the amphibian immune system hasn't been able to respond to this nasty skin infection," Louise Smith-Rollins, an associate professor of pathology, microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt, tells Popular Science. "The question is, if it's a failure to recognize the pathogen, what's the defect?"

Rollins-Smith has been studying this immune response for more than 10 years, and she and her team have found another clue as to why amphibians can't clear this fungus. This week in Science, a paper she co-authored brings in new information to understanding the answer to that question. The study, led by Vanderbilt graduate students J. Scott Fites and Jeremy Ramsey, shows that it may be the second line of immune defense where the breakdown occurs.

The first line of defense, antimicrobial peptides produced in the skin, seemed to be effective at producing an immune response. But during the next stage, something happened to stop the usual inhibiting response.

"It appears that the defect is that the fungus itself is able to release factors that target vulnerable lymphocytes and induce them to commit suicide," Rollins-Smith says. "Mediators that should be regulating and calling in the troops, they're stopped right there."

Read the rest of the story here.

Photo: Joel Sartore/Popular Science

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Scientists working to protect loggerhead sea turtles know how to save them; they just can't get stakeholders to cooperate.

From Mission Blue:

It's been our experience that those who would spend two decades or more working closely with fishermen to understand and protect sea turtles typically have the best interests of both people and nature in mind, although sometimes they are called "turtle-huggers" or scapegoated over another competing agenda.

Back in the early 1990’s when we learned about the mass mortality of loggerhead sea turtles off the Pacific coast of Baja from geographers Serge Dedina and Emily Young, we responded immediately.

Here’s how Dr. Dedina describes what they found:



"We first started noticing the mortality of loggerheads on Magdalena Island on the trip out to Cabo San Lazaro in the Spring of 1994 when we noticed a few animals stranded on the beach. But as summer progressed we saw more and more. What was fascinating was to see the correlation between stranded loggerheads and the abundant coyote population who fed on the animals as they washed up. There were literally dozens of coyotes sitting in the dunes apparently satiated after a night of feeding.

By July 1994, on one return trip from San Lazaro, we counted more than 224 dead loggerheads, so many, that the fishermen we were with were clearly embarrassed. They all knew that the turtles were being caught in gill-nets. In fact we had been out shark fishing with fishermen in the spring and had seen the problem ourselves."

Read the full story here.

Photo: Mission Blue