More prepared for fell hiking

I spent most of yesterday gathering everything I need to bring, putting everything in plastic bags (my backpack is not water-proof) and packing it in an efficient way. Late in the evening, it was finished (barring a few items that were forgotten or need to be acquired today).

The result was very comforting:

Preparing for fell hiking

 

For about a week now, I have made preparations for a hiking trip with three friends to the fell (the mountainous landscapes in Scandinavia, and parts of England) of Jämtland (a province in western Sweden).

We will start off our one-week adventure the next Wednesday, the 1^st of August, and I still have more things to do before that, but I though I’ll write a short post about it now, before I am all set, to tell a bit about how I expect this to be. Then, I hope to write more once I am finished packing, about how I have prepared. Finally, I will – of course – post once we are back, to tell all about our epic journey!

Track tale

A few weeks ago, I found three trackways of different animals in the same place in the forest. It had been raining the day before, so the first ones were clearly visible in the mud. Looking around to see if I could figure out in what direction it had gone further, I found another series of tracks from a different animal in drier mud, so they might have been made significantly earlier. As if that was not enough, I later discovered a third track type close by.

I took some photographs to document the discovery, and though I should dedicate some time to research on what animals that could have made these tracks, but, frankly, it was not difficult to guess. But, to make sure, I compared them to pictures from a Google Images search on tracks from my suspects, and got a good match.

Recall that I have plans to make a slideshow with pictures of my rock collection (which I am still building up) – I thought I’d do the same with these tracks, mostly just to try it out and get some practice for the “big one”. This slideshow took about five hours in total to make, so it is tremendous work to compose such a thing, and it will probably take weeks of work to make the rock collection clip.

Still, I am rather proud of how well this turned out, at least for being my first, and using the shitty programmes I have been struggling with…

I could not upload it here, so I put it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLy7JxQ_OeU

Work find II

Well I'll be – I found another vertebra in a sample at work today (see previous post)!! At least, I am pretty sure it is a vertebra. 

The pictures are not very good, but at least the last of the three shows its characteristic shape (sort of...). Just trust me, it looks far better under a stereoloupe.

Work find

About a week ago, I got new work – well, I have worked there every year since the first time, about six years ago – in the Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). In fancy terms, I could be said to be sorting benthic invertebrates, meaning that I pick out small, bottom-dwelling creatures from samples of lake or river bed, separating them from mud, debris and various types of plant material they come with. This is the rough work before experts take over to determine the species of the animals, and use that data to assess certain environmental parameters (e.g. acidity) of the water. Previously, I have also been doing some gross classification into major groups.

The benthic zone is a more technical term for the bottom of a body of water. Here, we are only concerned with Swedish freshwater bodies, so there are no marine creatures. We do not specifically look for invertebrates, but there are no bottom-dwelling vertebrate animals, at least not in Swedish lakes and rivers; thus, we only find invertebrates in the samples – with a few exceptions, such as occasional fish that accidentally are caught with the sample (which gives it a horrid smell, I might add), and another that I will describe soon.

My old essay on dinosaur warm-bloodedness

I learned that it is not possible to upload files on blogger. If you would like to read the assigment answer, please email me (ib08sose@gmail.com) and ask for it, and I will be happy to send it. 

A new basal theropod dinosaur with feathers, and what it means

Well, “new” is perhaps not the best word, since the astonishing find was made some year ago, but the paper was published recently. I have not accessed the paper, but made some basic research over the internet, after seeing a post on Paleoexhibit. This dinosaur, a juvenile megalosaur called Sciurumimus albersdoerferi (new genus and species, or, as scientists would say, gen. et sp. nov.), from the Late Jurassic period, is a fantastic discovery, not as much because it is the most well-preserved theropod found in Europe, but because it had feathers!

Image from http://www.globochannel.com/wordpress/2012/07/03/fossile-piumato-riscrive-la-storia-dei-dinosauri/. Apparently, the feathers are supposed to be visible under ultra-violet light.

Feathered dinosaurs are found virtually all the time in these days, especially in Asia and South America, but they are always closely related to early birds. Sciurumimus is indeed a theropod, the major group of dinosaurs from which birds evolved, but it is a megalosaur, a much more primitive member of the thropod group. Thus, this discovery shows that feathers appeared much earlier than in bird-like dinosaurs.