Footprints

News just broke about the discovery of the earliest footprints showing evidence of modern human foot anatomy and gait. The 1.5 million-year-old footprints - attributed to Homo erectus - display signs of a pronounced arch and short, aligned toes, and their size and spacing reflect the height, weight, and walking style of modern humans. Two sets of footprints, one five meters deeper (and approximately 10,000 years older) than the other, were found separated by layers of sand, silt, and volcanic ash near Ileret in northern Kenya. It was in Laetoli, Tanzania, in 1978 that British archaeologist Mary Leakey (1913-1996) discovered the oldest sets of hominid footprints, made by Australopithecus afarensis 3.7 million years ago. After examining them, Louis Robbins from the University of North California observed, "The arch is raised - the smaller individual had a higher arch than I do - and the big toe is large and aligned with the second toe … The toes grip the ground like human toes. You do not see this in other animal forms." The Laetoli prints are suffering from erosion and exposure, which was addressed by the Getty Conservation Institute, but continued deterioration demands a long-term solution. Quigley's Cabinet is compelled to point out that the 80-meter trail of footprints of two hominids walking side by side were found by a member of Leakey's team while throwing elephant dung at a co-worker.

Chilblains

As I drove to work on one of these cold mornings, I wondered, "What the hell is a chilblain?" I remembered the word from Victorian fiction and imagined it to be an outdated word for frostbite. I found that chilblain is still in medical use and that mild frostbite is termed frostnip:

chilblains - Small, itchy, red areas on the skin that may become swollen, blue, painful, and cracked. They are caused when blood leaks into the tissues after exposure to the cold in temperate humid climates. Chilblains are treated with lotion and, if the skin has cracked, with an antiseptic. (top photo)

frostnip - A mild form of frostbite in which only the skin freezes, frostnip presents as yellowish or white areas of the skin that are accompanied by a painful tingling or burning sensation. They usually disappear when the skin is gradually warmed. (bottom photo)

frostbite - Freezing of the skin and underlying tissues, which becomes white, waxy, and numb. If not treated immediately by passive or active rewarming, frostbite is irreversible and results in nerve damage, discoloration, and blistering. The frostbitten areas may become gangrenous and often require amputation. (middle photo)

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When Beck Weathers climbed Mount Everest in May 1996, eight of his fellow climbers lost their lives. Weathers was left for dead, but regained consciousness, staggered to safety, and was evacuated with - among other injuries - a frostbitten nose. Surgeons amputated the nose, cut an appropriately-shaped upside-down piece of skin from his forehead, and - while leaving it attached to its blood supply at the bridge - twisted it down to form a new nose. It took several operations, but have a look (if you are not squeamish) at the before and after pictures.

Stonework

There are two men who can put stone together like no others - British artist Andy Goldsworthy and American designer Lew French. The photos speak for themselves.

Underwater creatures

A fish with a windshield and a woman with a tail! A photograph of the first intact specimen of the Pacific barreleye fish (Macropinna microstoma) was released earlier this week. The 6" fish - with its highly sensitive, barrel-like eyes topped by green, orblike lenses and housed within a transparent dome - was found in deep waters off the coast of California. Meanwhile, Nadya Vessey of Auckland, New Zealand, has fulfilled her wish to become a mermaid. A double-amputee below the knee since childhood, Vessey challenged Weta Workshop - a special effects studio - to come up with a realistic and functional tail. "She was very patient. We haven't always been able to fulfill some requests. We were engaged in it pretty quickly because it was a challenge," said studio director Richard Taylor. A team of 7, led by Weta costumer Lee Williams created the suit using wetsuit fabric and plastic moulds, covered it in a digitally printed sock, and painted the scales by hand. Now Vessey can look like a mermaid and swim like one, too!

Airplane crashes

They say they come in threes...After Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger's spectacular crash landing in the Hudson River, there was the plane crash on the house in a Buffalo suburb, and now - as of this morning - the crash of a Turkish airliner in Amsterdam. The extraordinary photo at the top is from an accident in 2007 in which a small plane disintegrated aound the pilot.

Big bunny

It's Ash Wednesday in the Christian calendar, the start of the 40-day period of Lent, ending on Easter Sunday, April 19th this year. The symbols of rabbits and eggs are pagan in origin, but I couldn't resist marking the beginning of the season with this big bunny!

Preserved in amber

Quigley's Cabinet is featuring fossils in amber this morning. None of these are from my collection, though I do have a few small specimens. Clicking on the images will lead you to their provenance. Amber, as you may well be aware, is fossilized tree resin. Plants and insects are sometimes beautifully preserved when the resin flows over and encases them. Amber deposits are found throughout the world, but actually washes up on the shores of the Baltic Sea. Dominican Amber is also well-known. Amber may be up to 345 million years old. Copal is also fossilized tree resin, often found in Mesoamerica and Madagascar. Characterized as "young amber," copal may be 10,000 years old, but as it turns out, this distinction between amber and copal is disputed - fossilized resin is fossilized resin! And tree resin has captured some fine specimens...

Man on Wire

Did you watch the Academy Awards last night? The highlight was the acceptance speech for Man on Wire, which won for Best Documentary Feature. Director James Marsh and producer Simon Chinn invited the subject of the film onstage to accept the award, whereupon he made a joke, did a magic trick, and balanced the Oscar on his chin! Philippe Petit, now 59, is quite an engaging character, and was featured on CBS Sunday Morning and interviewed on The Colbert Report. Man on Wire tells the story - through interviews, archival footage, and the testimony of Petit himself - of 6 years spent planning and finally executing an illegal feat of tightrope-walking between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. Embarrassed to admit I haven't seen it yet, it's next on the list. Somehow, this directed risk-taking is more acceptable to me than the potential deadliness of living with a wild animal.

Follow-ups

James Taylor sent this link. For $43,000 you can be styling with a pair of stilettos ornamented with taxidermy. Designed by Bruno Frisoni for Roger Vivier, they are described as follows: “The ‘Dovima,’ an 11cm, spike-heeled confection of gilded silk mesh and jewels, is embellished with a pair of rose pink-dyed, taxidermy birds with gold and crystal heads.”

The book I mentioned in my post on Abraham Lincoln, Stealing Lincoln's Body, has been made into a very interesting two-hour documentary of the same name. It premiered earlier this month on the History Channel and features interviews with the author. The website describes the program as "the strange story of Lincoln's un-rest."

Charla Nash, the 55-year-old woman attacked by her friend's chimpanzee, is still in the hospital and faces many surgeries. She lost her eyes, her nose, and her jaw in the vicious attack and may be a candidate for a face transplant. The 2005 chimp attack victim mentioned in my post, St. James Davis, spent months in a medically-induced coma and has undergone more than 60 surgeries. Of Nash's mauling in Connecticut, he said, "It's so much like my story...I hoped it would never happen again." And yet, he doesn't support new restrictions on people who wish to keep potentially dangerous wild animals in their homes.

RIP Socks

Socks (c. 1989-2009) lost his battle with cancer on Friday. The cat had been adopted by Chelsea Clinton in Arkansas in 1991 and came with the family to the White House. My friend Cris held Socks when she worked White House events like the Easter Egg Roll during the Clinton administration. By that time, the cat had bonded with Bill Clinton's personal secretary Betty Currie and often curled up on the chair next to her desk. At Betty's request, the Clintons left Socks with her in Hollywood, Maryland, when they left the White House. When the cat stopped eating and could no longer stand, Betty had him euthanized and cremated. I dreamt about Betty and Socks last night.

Snake handlers

Roughly 1,000 Indian snake charmers marched on Calcutta earlier this month, demanding the right to perform with live snakes. They were protesting a 1991 law that banned performances that include cobras and other snakes, making what they do illegal. Though their ancient profession is dying, snake charmers rarely do - the sluggish cobras are often kept out of bite range, may have their fangs or venom glands removed, or sometimes have their mouths sewn shut.

Not so the serpent-handlers in some Appalachian churches, whose estimated 2,000 congregants still interpret the Holy Bible literally and take the following passages to mean that they can handle poisonous snakes with impunity:

"And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."~Mark 16:17-18

He replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."~Luke 10:18-20

"There are over 100 documented deaths from serpent bites," says Ralph Hood, a professor of social psychology and the psychology of religion at the University of Tennessee. "In every tradition, people are bitten and maimed by them. They risk their lives all the time by handling them. If you go to any serpent-handling church, you'll see people with atrophied hands, and missing fingers. All the serpent-handling families have suffered such things."

Twenty minutes into his service in rural Georgia in June 1996, preacher Spencer Evans, 23, felt the Spirit move him, reached into a box, and brought out a rattlesnake - which promptly bit him on the wrist. Such a bite should have proved fatal in no more than a couple of hours, but Evans' life was saved at the hospital over a period of days. Upon his release, the preacher returned to handling serpents. "I done took 'em up. I still believe it's right. The Bible didn't say they wouldn't bite,'' he says emphatically.

There are others who take up snakes as pets - not rattlers that bite, but constrictors that squeeze....Amanda Ruth Black, 25, was attempting to give some medicine to her pet snake in Virginia Beach, Virginia, in October 2008. Her husband came home to find her on the floor in front of the open cage. The 13' reticulated python was found in an agitated state; it had asphyxiated Amanda in the bedroom of their home. Richard Barber, 43, of Aurora, Colorado, owned a large (8-10') Burmese python he called "Monty." Barber had allowed the snake to wrap itself around his neck and upper torso as usual in February 2002 when it became aggressive and began to strangle him. Barber's new roommate Kimberly Brown called 911, summoning police officers who were unsuccessful at prying the snake loose with their batons. A few minutes later, 7 firefighters disengaged the snake, but by then it had been squeezing Barber's neck for 10-15 minutes. They transported the man to the emergency room, but he died of asphyxiation shortly thereafter. Ted Dres, 48, of Cincinnati, Ohio, was discovered by an acquaintance in December 2006. Dres was inside his pet snake's cage with the 13' boa constrictor still wrapped around his neck. Police officers worked with members of an animal protection group to remove the snake from its dead owner. Andy Mahlman, spokesman for the Cincinnati Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, warns, “People who keep these type of animals as pets should know exactly what they’re doing and what they’re capable of... They don’t realize they could be a few seconds away from death." Thankfully, a search of babies killed by the family snake turned up only 5-month-old Gabriella Vry's close call with salmonella after her father handled their Columbian rainbow boa.

There may be more than one reason that we have an inborn ability to recognize and avoid snakes, as scientists have recently discovered.

Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey (1925-2000) was an American illustrator of more than 100 macabre books that are enjoyed by children and adults alike. He did his pen and ink drawings at his house in Cape Cod, Massachusetts - he called it Elephant House, but it is now a museum celebrating his life and works. These include the opening credits for "Mystery" on PBS and one of his best-known books, The Gashlycrumb Tinies. My favorite of the A to Z drawings it contains is "F is for Fanny, sucked dry by a leech" (depicted above). My favorite story about the Elephant House - which was filled with his collections of books and odd things - was that when he found out that pansies came in black, he planted them around the perimeter!

Patricia Lay-Dorsey

On February 11th, my boss Jim Schaefer sent me this link with the

subject line "self-portraits by a woman w/ MS." I had a look within the next couple of days and was quite moved by Patricia Lay-Dorsey's photo essay on Burn. I made a note to mention it in the next entry on my §Health Diary (right column, scroll down) and did so last night. Afterward, at exactly 7:49pm, I posted a comment, ending with "I'd love to hear from you." At 10:17pm, I did and we are now in touch!

Killer chimpanzees

I had a friend in high school who told tales of growing up alongside a pet chimpanzee--taking spoons to a half gallon of ice cream together, pushing each other on a swing. Cute, huh? You might not think so if you heard what happened in Stamford, Connecticut, yesterday...or in Havilah, California, in 2005.

Sandra Herold, 70, had raised "Travis," a male chimpanzee, almost as one of her own children. He appeared in TV commercials, rode in the towtruck operated by the family, and playfully held up traffic during an escape in 2003. He bathed and dressed himself, brushed his own teeth, drank wine and ate steak and lobster, and channel-surfed the television. But at the age of 14, Travis weighed 200 lbs. "Despite their appearances, chimpanzees are known to possess astonishing power, with the average adult male having four to five times the upper-body strength of an adult human. As pets, they can be extremely difficult. They typically act aggressively toward their owners when they reach adulthood, and once reared by humans, they cannot be re-introduced into the wild because other chimpanzees will reject them, experts say." When Travis became agitated on Monday and let himself out of the house, Herold called friend Charla Nash, 55, for help. As soon as Nash got out of her car, Travis viciously attacked her, although he had known her for years. After unsuccessfully attempting to stop the chimp's attack by hitting him with a shovel and stabbing him repeatedly with a butcher knife, Herold called 911. While paramedics treated Nash, Travis went after one of the police officers in the seat of his patrol car. The traumatized officer used deadly force, and a trail of blood led to Travis, who had returned to his cage in the house to die. Nash remains listed in “extremely critical” condition with multiple broken bones, disfigured hands, and much of her face torn away.

Like Herold, St. James and LaDonna Davis raised a chimpanzee they named "Moe" as their son. When he reached his early 30s, the chimp bit off a woman's finger and was removed from their home in West Covina, California. On the occasion of his 39th birthday, the Davises brought a cake to celebrate with Moe at the Animal Haven Ranch, a private sanctuary in Havilah. The couple were standing outside Moe's cage when two young male chimps - Ollie, 13, and Buddy, 15 - escaped their cage and charged Mr. Davis (after biting off his wife's thumb). He lost all the fingers from both hands, an eye, part of his nose, cheek and lips, and part of his buttocks. His testicles and foot were also torn off during the 5-7 minute attack. Spraying water from a hose did not stop the chimps, so they were shot and killed with a .45 caliber revolver by the son-in-law of the sanctuary's owners. Moe was uninjured.

The moral of the story: get a cat or dog.

Fossil find on the map

I have crawled up out of the water (see previous posts) and landed on the beach! And a particular beach it is, with the following coordinates: 50° 36'20.99”N 2° 30'22.16”W. It is this beach that my first official follower Antler and her partner scoured on January 11th of this year for the fossils depicted here. They are lovely miniature things - lots of belemnites, a crinoid, and two ammonites - and I continue to carry them around and show them off. They are contained in a matchbox about 2" x 3" (I should have included a penny for size scale) and were found on the Jurassic Coast of England. Antler writes, "The beach is on a bit of a headland sticking out into water known as 'The Fleet' (Where Barnes Wallace tested 'Bouncing-Bombs' before the end of WW2).... The odd looking formation on the land is an army firing range." Thanks to Google Earth, you can beach yourself, too!

Megafishes

Aquatic ecologist Zeb Hogan is directing National Geographic's Megafishes Project, a 3-year global survey of giant freshwater fish. And they do mean giant! Hogan hopes to document more than 20 species of fish that are at least 2 meters in length or 200 lbs. in weight. These largest inhabitants of the freshwater ecosystems on 6 continents are often threatened by pollution and overfishing. They are also the oldest, as Hogan explains: "Fish have what's called 'indeterminate growth', meaning fish will keep growing larger as long they continue to live and are unchecked by disease. That means the larger fishes also tend to be the oldest ones." Hogan is pictured at the top with a 13' specimen of giant freshwater stingray he and his team discovered in Cambodia. The photo at the bottom shows the most recent world record holder for the biggest freshwater fish: a 9' (646 lb.) Giant Mekong catfish caught in China in May 2005.

Marine creatures

Another feisty octopus, a lucky lobster, and some unfortunate turtles...

First, the sad news. Just last week, some 1,900 Olive Ridley sea turtles came ashore at the Gahirmatha marine sanctuary in Orissa, India - not to lay their eggs, as scientists were expecting, but to die. According to the story, "thousands of Olive Ridleys get killed along the Orissa coast every year by getting entangled in the nets of the trawlers that operate illegally in the prohibited zones when lakhs of these endangered species congregate for mating." The damaged turtles are now decomposing and being scavenged by stray dogs.

Meanwhile, this guy has been given a reprieve from the dinner table by virtue of the fact that he has reached the grand age of 140! The release of the 20 lb. lobster from a seafood restaurant in New York was lobbied for by PETA. "George" was returned to the ocean in mid-January via a rocky cove in Kennebunkport, Maine.

And lastly, another rascally octopus! "Sid" was living in a tank at an aquarium in Dunedin, New Zealand, until he made his move. He mysteriously went missing last month. Five days later, he was spotted by a staff member making a dash for the door. Sid had been hiding out in a drain, which pumps fresh sea water into the aquarium! He was persuaded to return to his tank, but senior aquarist Matthew Crane decided Sid had done his time: "We are realising he is getting a little older in his life and maybe searching for a mate so that's why we've gone ahead and set his release." Watch the video in this linked article to see him swim away. The next occupant of the tank has some stories to live up to: Sid's predecessor "Harry [Houdini]" was once found halfway up a staircase!