I first published this during August of 2020 during the middle of the pandemic. It has less than 100 views.
August 17, 2023The short answer is it is against regulations. I first published this article in July of 2019 and it has 2115 views.
August 10, 2023A 9 Mile Long Dogwood and Magnolia Grove in Alabama (circa 1775)
July 27, 2023I first published this article in July of 2018. It has just 70 views. I’m proud of my hypothesis. I proposed the 9-mile-long forest of dogwood and magnolia that Bartram encountered in 1776 was created by a passenger pigeon roost.
When William Bartram traveled through the south from 1773-1776 he observed many environments that today are either extinct or very rare. In southern Alabama just east of Mobile he journeyed through a grove of dogwoods and magnolias that was 9 miles long. This is how he described it.
“We now enter a very remarkable grove of Dog wood trees (Cornus florida) which continuing nine or ten miles unalterable, except here and there a towering Magnolia grandifloria; the land on which they stand is an exact level; the surface a shallow, loose, black mould, on a stratum of stiff, yellowish clay; these trees were about twelve feet high, spreading horizontally; their limbs meeting and interlocking with each other, formed one vast, shady, cool grove, so dense and humid as to exclude the sun beams at noon-day. This admirable grove by the way of eminence has acquired the name of the…
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Gulf Fritillary and Passion Flower Vine
July 20, 2023I first published this article in August of 2018. It has 218 views.
Butterfly migration is even more amazing than bird migration. Bird migration includes the same generation, but butterflies that begin migrating north never live long enough to return south. Instead, butterflies gradually expand their range north as the weather warms; breeding, laying eggs, and dying. The next generation advances farther north. Then, several generations later, they begin moving south, retreating before killing frosts. The gulf fritillary (Augraulis valinae) is an example of a migratory butterfly. They winter in Florida, south Texas, and Mexico, but generations of them migrate as far north as Pennsylvania. Gulf fritillaries were named because they are some times seen fluttering over the Gulf of Mexico. Their larva feed upon passion flower vine (Passiflora incarnata) foliage. The adults obtain their energy from nectar in flowers , and as the below photo represents, they often find some nutrition in animal feces. Gulf fritillaries are particularly…
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The Friesenhahn Cave Fossil Site in Bexar County, Texas
July 13, 2023I first published this article in November of 2017. It has 980 views. The cave still has a wall of embedded fossils waiting to be excavated.
Rob Nelson stood next to a wall of fossils on 1 episode of Secrets of the Underground, a Science channel tv series. He was visiting Friesenhahn Cave in Bexar County, Texas about 20 miles north of San Antonio during the taping of the series he hosts. The tusk of a mammoth or mastodon, a baby mammoth tooth, and many small fossils were visible; and they were cemented together. It’s remarkable that such an undisturbed matrix could still exist here because people have been excavating fossils from this site off and on for about 100 years. Specimens collected by local amateurs were first described from this site in a paper published during 1920. For awhile the landowner stopped permitting people to collect fossils in the cave, but then in 1949 Mr. Friesenhahn himself invited some professors to excavate fossils in the cave. They found the complete skeletons of scimitar-toothed cats…
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Revisiting Lewis and Clark
July 6, 2023I first published this blog article in May of 2017. Long journeys through primeval wilderness always fascinate me. It has 223 views.
I haven’t written about the Lewis and Clark expedition before because I try to keep my blog focused on southeastern North America and most of their famous route went through the northwest. However, the diary of their journey is probably as close as we could ever get to a written account of a theoretical trip by western scientists through a Pleistocene wilderness. So it is worth covering here. Lewis and Clark saw western North America when it was thinly populated by Indians and a few white traders. Humans had not yet completely ruined the environment then.
Route of Lewis and Clark expedition.
I recently reread the journal of this expedition, and I was struck by how barbaric some of their practices were. Though this was considered the Age of Reason, they still retained some medieval methods of problem-solving. Soldiers who broke the rules were whipped. One man was sentenced to 25…
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The Ghost Boundary of the Last Glacial Maximum Ice Margin
June 29, 2023I first published this article in March 2017. It has 1368 views. It fascinates me so many species of trees have not colonized the deglaciated region of eastern North America. It suggests they grew right up to the glacial boundary during Ice Ages alongside spruce forests, despite the lack of pollen evidence.
The southern margin of the Laurentide Ice Sheet is still evident today in the range maps of at least 19 species of eastern trees. During the most recent Ice Age about 20,000 years ago glaciers advanced to their farthest extent, a time period known as the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). This giant sheet of ice pushed boulders, obliterated forests, and even blocked and bent major rivers. After the glacier began retreating many species of plants colonized the nearby deglaciated territory, but 19 species of trees never advanced and remain locked in the same ranges within which they probably occurred during the Ice Age. Though the ice margin is long gone it still marks the northern limit of these trees, serving as a kind of ghost boundary.
A majority of paleoecologists long thought a boreal forest consisting of spruce and northern species of pine existed for hundreds of miles south of the ice sheet…
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Donald Grayson’s Disingenous Case Against Overkill
June 22, 2023The most popular year for my blog was 2017 when it reached its peak in views. This article was first published in January of 2017 and has 255 views. I invited Grayson to rebut this article, but he did not because he knows he was being dishonest. Many anthropologists and archaeologists just can’t comprehend paleoecology.
I almost chose not to read Donald Grayson’s most recent book, Giant Sloths and Sabertooth Cats: Extinct Mammals and the Archaeology of the Ice Age Great Basin. Grayson is a long time skeptic of the hypothesis that man overhunted Pleistocene megafauna to extinction, and he has authored and co-authored a number of papers explaining his position. In my opinion overhunting by man is the only explanation for the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna that makes sense. I’ve read his papers and consider his arguments highly illogical and unfair. But I did purchase his book because I try to absorb all the knowledge I can about my favorite subject–the late Pleistocene ecology of North America. I don’t have to agree with an author about everything to enjoy their work. I saw his chapter on extinction was short, just a small portion of the book, and I assumed he would simply rehash his tired old…
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Before Cows were Cowed
June 15, 2023I first published this article in June of 2018. It has 191 views.
One of the comments below a youtube video showing water buffalo (Syncerus caffer) defending a calf from lion predation expressed ridicule toward the big cats for being chased away by “a bunch of cows.” The word, cow, used as a verb, descends from the Old Norse word, Kuga, meaning to oppress, intimidate, or easily herd; and the word, coward, originates from the Latin word, cauda, meaning tail or tail between the legs. The origins of the 2 words might be interrelated, though the noun form of cow is likely a verbalization of the lowing sound cows make. Modern cows were bred to be cowed, as in easily herded. However, the ancestor of the cow, the aurochs, (Bos primigenius), was anything but easily herded. They were larger and fiercer than modern cattle and readily attacked man on sight. Nevertheless, they became extinct. The last known aurochs was…
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GeorgiaBeforePeople 