http://reptilis.net The rants and ravings of the webmaster Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:49:10 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I'm a little behind on this now 3 day old story. It's been hard to get back into the proverbial swing of things. I believe part of it has to do with the large dearth of nothing that occurred during my "vacation." The other part probably has to do with ... http://reptilis.net/2008/04/23/lizards-prove-evolution-can-happen-rapidly/ The last few days of my Sydney trip were spent in relative internet silence. During my stay Windows Vista had incurred one of those OS crippling problems that it is so often known for. In this case, I was trying to watch a video of something that wouldn't open in ... http://reptilis.net/2008/04/22/stateside-and-xped-again/ I was hoping I would have been back in the saddle by now, but not so much yet. I'm spending the rest of this week in Sydney, Australia (beautiful place, even if I did come at the wrong time of year). There still hasn't been much in the way of herp ... http://reptilis.net/2008/04/08/killing-time-in-sydney/ I'll be off for the next couple of days. I have an overseas trip to take. Once I've settled in, things should be back to normal. Till then, the site is going to be slow... Not like it hasn't already been slow. During the past week, the only real news in ... http://reptilis.net/2008/04/01/taking-a-trip/ High speed pictures of Cosymbotus platyurus running up a vertical surface I don't know why, but for some reason herp news stories always seem to come in twos. Announced today (or yesterday by the time I get this posted), scientists at UC Berkeley have found geckos to be one of the most ... http://reptilis.net/2008/03/27/amazing-acrobatic-geckos/ Recently published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, scientists in Brazil have found the remains of a prehistoric crocodyliforme that used to roam the oceans of the Paleocene. The critter has been given the name: Guarinisuchus munizi, which translates out to: Muniz's warrior crocodile. Despite the "crocodile" in its name, ... http://reptilis.net/2008/03/26/bow-down-to-the-warrior-croc-_guarinisuchus-munizi_/ So I've been working on dragging the rest of my site into the 21st century. While most of this work has been just transcribing of old code to new code, I didn't want to just wind up rehashing all of my old info. I mean there are only so many ways ... http://reptilis.net/2008/03/23/site-update/ It has been a painfully slow week in terms of herpetology and paleo. I've noticed that when I tend to talk about things being slow, there is usually a sudden surge in topics. Here's hoping that will happen this time too. Until then, let's all congratulate Chrysemys picta bellii for ... http://reptilis.net/2008/03/21/bloody-slow/ Astute observers may remember the news story about the mysterious death of gharials in the Yamuna river. A recent report by the National Geographic Society suggests the the culprit is the food being fed to these animals. They suggested that as the fish moved from polluted rivers into the Chambal, ... http://reptilis.net/2008/03/17/update-on-gharial-plight/ There were two new papers released today in the Journal of Experimental Biology. The first one is the biggest, as it received a news story. Uriona, T.J., and Farmer, C.G. 2008. Recruitment of the diaphragmaticus, ischiopubis and other respiratory muscles to control pitch and roll in the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis). ... http://reptilis.net/2008/03/14/alligators-can-shift-their-lungs-and-lizard-ecology-determines-movement/