Do Chimpanzees Mourn For Their Dead?

Note: The next addition of the Four Stone hearth will at This is Serious Monkey Business on February 2nd. Pleas get your submissions in! That seems to be the way the press is portraying the video below. The video was released in conjunction with an article published in the American Journal of Primatology (the article [...]

Interesting Science Picture: Part XV

The picture below comes from an interesting article on a case of mutalism between pitcher plants and bats. Service benefit provided by N. r. elongata to K. h. hardwickii. (a) Aerial pitcher of N. rafflesiana var. elongata. (b) The same pitcher with the front tissue removed to reveal a roosting Hardwick’s woolly bat. (c) The [...]

Cave of Forgotten Dreams: A Film By Werner Herzog

Apparently Werner Herzog has made a 3-D movie about Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc. A trailer for the film is below the fold.

Interesting Science Picture: Part XIV

A bug with bifocals: Figure 1. Illustration of the Third-Instar Larvae of Thermonectus marmoratus and Its Principal Eyes (A) Picture of the entire animal. (B) Scanning electron micrograph of the larval head, showing the two large lenses of the principal eyes (E1 and E2) on each side of the head. (C) The gross optical and [...]

Interesting Science Pictures: Part XIII

Picture Source: Concealed Neuroanatomy in Michelangelo’s Separation of Light From Darkness in the Sistine Chapel Suk, Ian BSc, BMC; Tamargo, Rafael J. MD, FACS Neurosurgery: May 2010 – Volume 66 – Issue 5 – p 851–861 doi: 10.1227/01.NEU.0000368101.34523.E1

Interesting Science Pictures: Part XII

This is from an article in PaleoAnthropology. The map, of the find locations for the Ngangdong specimens, hasn’t been seen in 75 years. Picture source: Huffman et al (2010) Provenience Reassessment of the 1931–1933 Ngandong Homo erectus (Java), Confirmation of the Bone-Bed Origin Reported by the Discoverers. PaleoAnthropology 2010:1-60 doi:10.4207/PA.2010.ART34

Interesting Science Pictures: Part XI

Figure 3. Comparison of the femur (a, anterior view; b, posterior view) and ulna (c, lateral; d, medial) of Antillothrix bernensis (top) and a male Cebus apella with unfused epiphyses (bottom). Scale bar, 1 cm. See electronic supplementary material, figures S5 and S6. From: Rosenberger et al (2010) First skull of Antillothrix bernensis, an extinct [...]

Interesting Science Picture: Part VIII

Fig. S3. (A) Detector count maps for all elements of the feather region clipped so that white corresponds to the 95th percentile of the overall count distribution. Two calcium maps are shown, one measured in low-Z configuration and one in high-Z configuration as discussed in the text. (B) Full set of elemental images corresponding to [...]

Illinois Archaeology Video

This video from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency is pretty cool! Here is the description: This short, narrated video shows the discovery and investigation of a one-thousand-year-old Native American village in what is now East St. Louis, Illinois. The video graphically demonstrates why archaeological investigations are performed and what we can learn from these investigations [...]

Interesting Science Picture: Part VII

While we wait for the Science article with the South African hominins, I thought I would mention that other interesting finds have come from Sterkfontein.

Interesting Science Picture: Part VI

FIG. 1. Representation of the amino acid relationships of the minimal pore regions of the voltage-gated ion channel superfamily. This global view of the 143 members of the structurally related ion channel genes highlights seven groups of ion channel families and their membrane topologies. Four-domain channels (CaV and NaV) are shown as blue branches, potassium-selective [...]

Interesting Science Picture: Part V

Fig. 3. Independent, adaptive molecular evolution in the skeletal muscle sodium channel (Nav1.4). Amino acid replacements at sites important in TTX ligation in the P loops of Nav1.4 are found only in TTX-resistant garter snakes and appear uniquely derived. (A) Structure of the-subunit of Nav1.4 showing the 4 domains (DI–DIV), their 6 transmembrane segments (S1–S6), [...]

Interesting Science Picture: Part IV

A: Longitudinal/buccolingual thin-section of a human upper deciduous central incisor (Urn no. 5817) with a 9.7 µm-thick NL on the buccal (right) side, close to the external enamel margin; the relatively thin postnatal enamel and the distance of the NL from the tooth apex (5.222,5 µm) suggest that the individual survived postpartum at least 10 [...]

Interesting Science Picture: Part III

From here

Interesting Science Picture: Part II

Figure 1. Melanosomes in the feathers of the male zebra finch. (a) Optical photographs of lateral (top) and ventral views of the specimen sampled. (b, c) Optical photographs of breast feather (b) and flank feather (c). (d-i) SEM images of melanosomes inside barbs and barbules. (d-e) Eumelanosomes (at arrows in (e) in the barb of [...]