Superoceras

Greetings!

Welcome to Superoceras, a blog about science and natural history, slightly biased towards paleontology and zoology, but inclusive of all sciences. Started in October of 2009, my goal is to communicate scientific knowledge (and the occasional piece of nonsense) in an informative and entertaining manner. Feel free to contact me with questions, comments, concerns, or criticism at superoceras(at)gmail(dot)com, and follow me on Twitter @Superoceras for all that and more in 140 characters or less!

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Winter Migration

Like many of my avian cousins, I've migrated south this winter. As you may already know (if you follow me on Twitter) I'm currently in Florida at Blue Spring State Park, accompanying a group of University of Maryland students on their Alternative Break trip. As soon as we got to the park, I immediately started taking photos, and when I get home and have a more reliable internet connection, I'll be sure to upload a bunch of them.

But for now, I'll leave you with this. There are four critters hiding somewhere in the photo. Can you find them?

Friday, January 06, 2012

Virtual Birding Roundup (Part 1)

Time to talk birds, specifically the ones I posted photos of in my "end of year bird quiz" . To spice things up a bit, instead of just listing as each species and writing about it a little, I'm going to throw them all onto an ever expanding cladogram. Hopefully this way both the readers and myself will be able to learn a little about the individual animals themselves, and their relationships to one another. Ornithology is certainly not an area of specialization for me. But birding is one of the "outdoor" activities I engage in most often. This is primarily because it can be done anywhere, even the comfort of your own home. So I think this will be a fun little project and I'm excited to be able to share it with you all. But a word of warning: apparently a lot of the traditional bird groupings are not supported by molecular data, and many of their true relationships have yet to be resolved. So I'll be doing my best to show true monophyletic groupings and relationships. But if you know something I don't, please let me know. That being said, let's dig right in and start with the birds from my quiz! Read no further if you'd like to give it a shot before I start naming names.

Happy National Bird Day!

I finished 2011 with a post on birding, and figure starting 2012 in a similar fashion is not a bad way to go. Unfortunately, my yard was not full of wonderful native birds when I got home. In fact, when I got in today, I was greeted with this sight:

Not cool, man.