Tuesday, 4 March 2014

Quick and to the points

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Shark family trees are a thorny issue. There has been a long-running disagreement over the relationship between Carcharocles megalodon and ...
2 comments:
Friday, 20 December 2013

Oh No! Viruses!

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'Good afternoon, Mr Wood's Fossils.' Long pause, some mumbling and muffled sounds. 'Hello, is that Mr Dale?' '...
1 comment:
Tuesday, 15 October 2013

First class

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I collect teeth and £2 coins. I used to collect the little grey rubbery bits from the inside of fizzy drink bottles. Despite once being give...
Thursday, 8 August 2013

Fake fin film fuss

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I like sharks. I like megalodon teeth and the idea of a 60ft shark. I also like yeti, Nessie, oran pendek and cryptozoology in general. It...
Monday, 29 July 2013

It was boys

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'Do you have any meteorite geodes?' 'Geodes? Do you mean meteorites that have been cut in half?' 'Well, we saw some on...
Monday, 3 June 2013

Missing people

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There are considerable differences between humans and our closest relatives, chimps and bonobos. It might not always seem like it at a kids ...
Wednesday, 15 May 2013

Malawania - swimming against the tide of 'informed' opinion.

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Sometimes, analyses don’t give you the results you are expecting.  Sometimes that is down to human error – but at other times it is simply b...
Tuesday, 12 February 2013

Happy landings

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As well as being the anniversary of Charles Darwin's birthday, February the twelfth is the 66th anniversary of the fall of the Sikhote-A...
Wednesday, 9 January 2013

Mr Leeds’ Blood-Biting Super-Predator: Recognition, After a Hundred Years.

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The report of a new ‘super-predator’ – a carnivore well-adapted to feeding on prey as large or even larger than itself – in the fossil rec...
1 comment:
Friday, 14 December 2012

Dino crisis

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Tomorrow is the day of the talk at the Botanics. I've put more time into preparing for this thing than anything since university, but I...
Sunday, 25 November 2012

In the garden

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 I've been asked to give a talk on fossils to accompany an art exhibition currently running at the Botanic Gardens . It's by the ...
1 comment:
Tuesday, 23 October 2012

On shaky ground

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Six Italian seismologists and a civil servant were sentenced to six years in prison yesterday for manslaughter. For failing to predict an e...
Friday, 19 October 2012

Just deserts

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That global warming is currently happening should not be a matter for debate any more. It is happening, and the evidence for that, from man...
Monday, 10 September 2012

Stan Wood

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Stan Wood died yesterday. He was an amazing man and a hero of palaeontology. He wasn't a fossil collector, he was a fossil hunter . Hi...
1 comment:
Wednesday, 5 September 2012

Pointed

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Siccar Point is a cliff in Berwickshire, not far from Cockburnspath. James Hutton , known by many as the 'father of modern geology...
Monday, 20 August 2012

Watch the birdy!

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Charles Darwin wasn't an expert on birds, and we can forgive him that. He collected a huge pile of birds on the Galapagos, but didn...
Thursday, 9 August 2012

A man in time

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Homo rudolfensis had been known from solitary skull found by Lake Turkana in Kenya in 1972, and has seen a couple of name changes since. On...
Tuesday, 3 July 2012

Feathered

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The idea that birds and dinosaurs were closely related actually appeared fairly early on - Archaeopteryx had been named in 1861, two years ...
Monday, 11 June 2012

Editorial

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There's a story on The Guardian 's site at the moment that's not of great interest for its content, but is well worth a look for...
Tuesday, 29 May 2012

Rinky dink

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The Pink Panther was a diamond, first of all. In the original 1963 film, with Peter Sellars and David Niven, a famous diamond was stolen and...