Cheddar man

Britain’s oldest complete human skeleton - dating to approximately 7150 B.C. - was excavated in 1903. The remains of an adult male who had died a violent death (and may have been cannibalized) were found in a cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset. Living just a half mile from the site, schoolteacher Adrian Targett asked his class to participate in a study commissioned as part of a television documentary. Samples of mitochondrial DNA from the cheek cells of his 15 pupils at the Kings of Wessex school, from Targett himself, and from 5 adults from old Cheddar families were compared to mitochondrial DNA extracted from Cheddar Man's tooth. The longest human lineage ever traced - 9,000 years - belonged to none other than Mr. Targett! "I am overwhelmed, a bit surprised," he said at the time. Caveman jokes have been circulating at the school ever since. ''I'm thinking of writing to the Marquess of Bath, who owns these caves, and saying, 'I'd like my cave back.' ...All those times I'd visited this cave before, and I'd never realized I was going home.''

Poisonous plants

My Mom told me a tragic story that she heard upon first moving to Florida: A family had a cookout and roasted hot dogs on sticks from the deadly oleander plant - and they all died. As it turns out, this is an urban legend that dates back to 1886! The cautionary tale has been told in the U.S. since the 1950s and often involves a troop of unfortunate Boy Scouts.

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There was a similar true story in the Washington Post last summer in which members of a family suffered nausea, dizziness, and hallucunations after eating some homemade stew. Instead of an herb from the back garden, noxious jimson weed had been added. The six family members who ate the stew ended up in the hospital, but recovered.

Hokey Pokey

My friend Rick sent the following e-mail last week:

With all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the moment, it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person, which almost went unnoticed last week. Larry LaPrise, the man who wrote "The Hokey Pokey", recently died peacefully at age 93. The most traumatic part for his family was getting him into the coffin. They put his left leg in... and then the trouble started.

Roland Lawrence LaPrise (1912-1996) did in fact hold the copyright to the song, but died a dozen years ago at age 84. Rest in peace, Larry - you are still making people smile!

Frozen fog

When I woke up this morning, there was a thick blanket of fog, which prompts me to post about the phenomena of frozen fog. I learned several years ago from one of my favorite TV shows - Wonders of Weather - that under the right conditions, fog freezes. I won't need to worry about that when I get down to Florida (movers arriving this morning to pack me up) and I may be off-line until Sunday...

Centenarians - and then some

The woman in the photo at the top recently surfaced in a census in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. According to her passport, Sakhan Dosova was born in 1879, making her the oldest person alive - she celebrates her 130th birthday tomorrow! Also pictured is Jeanne Calment (1875-1997) of Arles, France, who was declared the oldest person who had ever lived in 1996. Her 122-year lifespan has been thoroughly documented, with more records having been produced to verify her age than for any other case, but my favorite fact about her is anecdotal: When she was 14, she sold pencils to Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)!

Fossil fuels

I knew this, but wanted to confirm it. The fossil fuels - coal, oil, and natural gas - that we burn for 85% of our energy are deposits formed from plants and animals that lived up to 300 million years ago. The questions I had were all answered here:

• Much of our fossil fuel deposits are made of ocean-dwelling phytoplankton and zooplankton, transformed by pressure, heat, and lots and lots of time.
• Coal goes through a slightly different process, beginning as peat (a mass of dead and decomposing plant matter), then transforming to lignite (brownish rock that contains recognizable plant matter), then becoming bituminous coal.
• The original source of the energy that we access is the solar energy the prehistoric organisms trapped in their bodies eons ago.

And Wikipedia furnished these two astounding facts:

• Each liter of regular gasoline is the time-rendered result of about 23.5 metric tons of ancient organic material deposited on the ocean floor.
• The total fossil fuel used in the year 1997 is the result of 422 years of all plant matter that grew on the entire surface and in all the oceans of the ancient earth.

On that note, I'm going to go fill the tank of the Mother Ship up with gas for the drive to Florida...

Big fish, big snake

"Best wishes from Australia.....where the sharks go for their holidays," read the e-mail I received last night from a follower named Michael. He kindly pointed out the top photo taken at the South Australian Museum in 1914. It shows a cast of a basking shark, with the director of the museum at that time - Edgar Waite(1866-1928) - third from the left. As the second photo shows, the basking shark is a filter feeder, and can grow up to 33' long (second only to the whale shark in size). Then tonight at dinner, my friend Sheila pointed out that a fossil snake has been found that dwarfs modern snakes. It was in the same family as today's constrictors, as the vertebrae illustrate. The monstrous snake was 43' in length, weighed up to 2,500 lbs., and was wider than a doorway!

Elephant and dragon

Two current news items have caught my eye - one heartwarming, the other chilling...

A woman who harbored a zoo elephant in her backyard during the "Belfast Blitz" during World War II is being sought to acknowledge her role in saving Sheila, who was returned to the zoo and lived on until 1966. Other animals - including a tiger, a black bear, a lynx, a hyena, two polar bears, and six wolves - had been killed preemptively in case they escaped and endangered the public. Instead, Sheila was led to a red-brick house on Whitewell Road where she spent several months in the safety of an unidentified woman's backyard. As it celebrates its 75th anniversary, the Belfast Zoo hopes to document this gap in their history by identifying the "elephant angel" known only from a couple of grainy photographs.

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Meanwhile, a man in Indonesia has been killed by Komodo dragons after trespassing on a small island in Komodo National Park to pick sugar-apples. Muhamad Anwar, 32, bled to death as he was being transported to a nearby clinic by other fishermen. Komodo dragons are the heaviest lizards on earth. They can grow up to 10' in length and their bite is poisonous.

Toads encased in stone

Stories of animals - mostly toads - found alive when a stone (or a lump of coal) is broken open date back centuries. Some of the better-known examples from more than 200 instances described since the 1500s are listed below:

• 1733: Two quarrymen working for master builder Johan Gråberg in Wamlingebo, Sweden, were cutting large blocks of sandstone from more than 10' below the surface. One of them discovered a large frog sitting in the middle of a sizeable boulder he had just cut in two with his hammer and wedge. Part of the stone nearest the frog was so porous that the violence of the blow had fragmented it, destroying the impression of the animal’s body. Since the frog was in a lethargic state, Gråberg could not provoke it to move, even when he lifted it out on a spade. When he touched its head with a stick, it closed its eyes. Its mouth was covered with a yellow membrane. Gråberg killed the frog with a shovel, an act for which he berated himself “for being the Slayer of that extraordinary Animal, which might have lived for many hundreds of years within its stony Prison.”
• 1761: French surgeon Ambroise Paré (c. 1510-1590) wrote, "Being at my seat near the village of Meudon, and overlooking a quarryman whom I had sent to break some very large and hard stones, in the middle of one we found a huge toad, full of life and without any visible aperture by which it could get there. The laborer told me it was not the first time he had met with a toad and the like creatures within huge blocks of stone."
• 1821: Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine wrote that stonemason David Virtue found a lizard embedded in a chunk of rock from 22' below the surface: "It was coiled up in a round cavity of its own form, being an exact impression of the animal. It was about an inch and a quarter long, of a brownish yellow color, and had a round head, with bright sparkling projecting eyes. It was apparently dead, but after being about five minutes exposed to the air it showed signs of life. It soon ran about with much celerity."
• 1865: The Hartlepool [England] Free Press related this account following an excavation of magnesium limestone from 25' underground: "The cavity was no larger than its body, and presented the appearance of being a cast of it. The toad's eyes shone with unusual brilliancy, and it was full of vivacity on its liberation. It appeared, when first discovered, desirous to perform the process of respiration, but evidently experienced some difficulty, and the only sign of success consisted of a 'barking' noise, which it continues to make invariably at present on being touched....The toad, when first released, was of a pale colour and not readily distinguished from the stone, but shortly after its colour grew darker until it became a fine olive brown."
• Mid-19th c.: Scientific American reported that silver miner Moses Gaines found a toad inside a 2' boulder: "[The animal was] three inches long and very plump and fat. Its eyes were about the size of a silver cent piece, being much larger than those of toads of the same size as we see every day. They tried to make him hop or jump by touching him with a stick, but he paid no attention."
• Mid-20th c.: A British soldier was quarrying stone during World War II to make roads and fill in bomb craters. After a planned explosive detonation, the stone slab was pried away from the quarry face to reveal "in a pocket in the rock a large road and beside it a lizard at least nine inches long. Both these animals were alive, and the amazing thing was that the cavity they were in was at least 20 feet from the top of the quarry face."

In an article in Fortean Times, which features the above illustrations, British doctor Jan Bondeson reexamines the case studies and the contemporaneous experiments conducted to replicate the disputed phenomenon. Evidence still extant includes a toad that had been found inside a flint nodule in a Lewes quarry c. 1900, now mummified and on display at Brighton's Booth Museum. Bondeson concludes:

The entombed toad is an anomaly in the true sense of the word. The phenomenon is not only irrational but completely inexplicable. There appears to be no reasonable explanation for this remarkable series of observations of toads and frogs discovered inside blocks of stone. The counter-arguments proposed here are hardly sufficient to exorcise these prematurely buried toads, which have led their own slumbering, accursed half-life outside the boundaries of biology for several centuries.

Rosamond Purcell

Rosamond Purcell is one of my favorite photographers. She does much of her work in museums, including the Mutter Museum and the Kunstkammer and has collaborated on books with F. Gonzalez-Crussi and Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002). She is drawn to desiccated objects, as she explains in an interview on NPR, and her studio is her own cabinet of curiosities.

Frederik Ruysch

Mentioned in my last post was Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731), a Dutch botanist and anatomist known for his preservation of wet specimens in liquor balsamicum and for his tableaux (pictured here). The public was invited to view his anatomical collection, five rooms of which were open two days a week. It was at his museum in 1697 that Ruysch and Peter the Great met and found they had many common interests. In fact, it was Ruysch who taught Peter I how to pull teeth! On the czar's second visit in 1717, he convinced Ruysch to part with his collection of curiosities for 30,000 guilders, but Ruysch wouldn't help with the packing. He immediately began amassing a new repository, sold after his death. While a number of Ruysch's specimens survive, these dioramas did not. They are only known through the detailed engravings by Cornelius Huyberts (1669-1712). Ruysch created about a dozen of them, with themes of vanity and the brevity of life. What appear to be rocks are kidney- and gallstones; the trees are injected and hardened arteries and veins; the bushes are preserved lung and other organ tissue; the worms and snakes are intestines; and the handkerchiefs held by the fetal skeletons are abdominal membranes.

Kunstkammer

Keeping with the theme of eccentric dentists, I wanted to point out that Czar Peter I of Russia (1672-1725) - Peter the Great - considered himself an accomplished amateur dentist and carried with him a bag of teeth he had pulled, mostly from unwilling victims. The teeth (pictured) have become an exhibit in the Kunstkammer, Russia's first state public museum. Peter was extremely interested in anatomy and had amassed a collection of the remains of human marvels - including conjoined twins, animal oddities, and other unique specimens. The caretaker was supposedly a dwarf, who was accessioned upon his death. Decrees that Peter issued to deliver human anomalies to him, and his purchase of the collections of Albertus Seba (1665-1736) and Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731), rounded out the exhibition of oddities, which first opened to the public in 1714 and may still be visited today in St. Petersburg.

Martin van Butchell

Have you heard the strange (but true) tale of Martin van Butchell (1735-1814)? He had his wife embalmed when she died in 1775 and displayed his "dear departed" - as he referred to her - in the front window of his home. The corpse drew both crowds and criticism, and he maintained that their marriage contract provided for his income as long as she remained above ground. It turns out that this was a rumor he spread to drum up business for his dental practice, which he operated out of his residence. He had called on his teacher of surgery and anatomy William Hunter (1718-1783) to inject Mrs. van Butchell with a rosy-colored preservative fluid. Her body was outfitted with glass eyes, dressed in a fine lace gown, embedded in a layer of plaster of Paris, and exhibited in a glass-topped coffin. By the time Dr. van Butchell's second wife Elizabeth voiced her objections, the body had begun to deteriorate. It was donated to William Hunter's brother John Hunter (1728-1793) and became part of the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London, where it was destroyed in 1941 in a German bombing raid.

Octopus fossils

As you can imagine, the boneless body of the octupus rarely becomes part of the fossil record. Science Daily calls it "about as unlikely as finding a fossil sneeze." There have been a handful preserved, some with ink and intact suckers, but for the first time an octopus fossil has been found - in 95-million-year-old Cretaceous rock in Lebanon - that is almost indistinguishable from modern species. This remarkable find (pictured above) pushes back the origins of modern octopus by tens of millions of years. Other octo-fossils are pictured below.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Poisonous fumes

NEVER MIX BLEACH AND AMMONIA! I heard on the news this evening that a family had been overcome by fumes and found the story on-line: About 1am this morning, a man in Fort Worth, Texas mixed Drano and bleach while cleaning a bathroom drain. The mixture created deadly chlorine gas which sent 7 of the 11 members of the family - including 4 children - to the hospital with breathing difficulty. They were released, the house was ventilated by the fire department, and disaster was averted. "We won't mix anything else, not even peanut butter and jelly," said resident Sykea Davis. This happens to be National Poison Prevention Week.

Iceman

The Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, has released a detailed photoscan of the iceman. "Ötzi," as he is known, was found frozen in the Alps by two German tourists in 1991. A dispute over the discovery of the body was not settled until 2008, but the still-frozen mummy has been on display to the public since 1998 at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology. The iceman has been subject to detailed study that has revealed the following about his life in the Copper Age (c. 3300 B.C.):

• At the time of his death, Ötzi was about 45 years old, stood 5' 5" tall, and weighed about 110 lbs.
• He ate the meat of the chamois (a goat-like animal) and the red deer, wheat bran (possibly in the form of bread), sloes (plum-like fruits), and legumes (which may have been domesticated crops).
• He may have been a high-altitude shepherd and was possibly involved in copper smelting.
• He suffered from arthritis in his joints and had 57 tattoos that may have been related to acupuncture to relieve the pain.
• He had an intestinal parasite and had been sick 3 times in the 6 months before he died.
• He wore a cloak of woven grass; a coat, belt, leggings, loincloth, and shoes, all made of various leathers; and a bearskin hat.
• He carried with him a pouch containing a scraper, drill, flint flake, and bone awl; a copper axe, flint knife, quiver of arrows, bowstring, and longbow; berries, birch bark, and several kinds of dried mushrooms that may have been used for medicinal purposes; and a fire-starting kit consisting of fungus for tinder and pyrite for creating sparks.
• He had an arrowhead lodged in his shoulder (the shaft had been removed), cuts and bruises on his body, and head trauma that indicated death either from a fall or being hit by a rock.
• He had traces of blood from four people on his gear, including an arrowhead that had been retrieved after shooting two human victims.
• His positioning indicated that he did not die alone and may have been part of an armed raiding party.

The studies that have suggested his biography include analysis of his hair, fingernails, bones, intestinal contents, and tooth enamel; sequencing of his DNA; and x-rays and CT-scans. A memorial was put in place where the body of the iceman - which has revealed so much - was found. The discovery was aided by a below-average snowfall in 1991, and a Saharan dust fall that also accelerated melting.

Kangaroo home invasion

I almost passed over this story in last week's weird news - but for the ironic twist. On Sunday in Canberra, a kangaroo crashed through the window of a house occupied by a Swiss family. The only warning was the barking of their dog, then the animal broke through the glass, bloodying itself, and bounced on the bed several times. Father Beat Ettlin admitted screaming like a girl as it rampaged through the master bedroom and bounded into the bedroom of Ettlin's 10-year-old son Leighton. But then - mindful of the danger to his children - he heroically wrestled the 6-foot, 90-lb. kangaroo to the floor, put it in a headlock, and pushed it out the front door. Mr. Ettlin, a chef who recently became an Australian citizen, has perfected a means of cooking kangaroo meat. But he now says: "I think I might take a bit of a break from native cuisine."

Designer legs

These ain't no pirate peg-legs... Aimee Mullins is an athlete, an actress, and a model. While she was an undergraduate at Georgetown University (I spotted her once on campus), she competed against able-bodied athletes in NCAA track and field events and set Paralympic world records in the 100-meter dash (15.77 seconds) and the long-jump (3.5 meters). She has been featured in several books and has acted in five films. She also delivers motivational speeches and when I watched one on Ted.com last night, I knew she would be the subject of my next post. The lady has 12 pairs of legs! Born without fibulas, which required double-amputation at the age of 1, she has used prosthetics as more than functional devices. Her designer legs give her superpowers: speed, beauty, an extra 6" of height. She uses them to redefine her body, both showing and telling how they have transformed her "disability." Aimee has been named one of the fifty most beautiful people in the world by People. She wore the hand-carved wooden legs, made from solid ash, on the runway in 1999 while modelling for British fashion designer Alexander McQueen.

Seahorses and sea dragons

An exhibit of seahorses opened today at Underwater Adventures in the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. The exhibit features more than 300 examples of 6 of the 32 species of seahorse, and has a conservation message: "Seahorses have really taken a beating out in the ocean," said Craig Atkins, general manager of Underwater Adventures. "They are threatened by pollution, habitat destruction, harvesting for medicines and the tourist trade. To protect wild populations, Underwater Adventures purchased its seahorses from aquafarms mostly in the United States." My sister introduced me to the closely related leafy sea dragon - her favorite animal - when we visited the Oregon Coast Aquarium a few years ago. The 2 species of sea dragon - leafy (pictured, bottom) and weedy (middle) - are also threatened, and the leafies have never reproduced in captivity. Before my sister pointed them out, I had no idea that such a perfectly camouflaged creature existed! Here is a leafy sea dragon in action.

Shark attack capital

My Mom and stepfather Del recently went house-hunting in New Smyrna Beach, in preparation for my joining them in Florida, but decided we will stay put in their current house (which is across from a lake, rather than on the coast). New Smyrna Beach - as I remembered from sensational news over the past few years - is the Shark Attack Capitol of the World. According to the International Shark Attack File, there were 59 unprovoked shark attacks worldwide in 2008. Of this total, 32 were in Florida, 22 were in Volusia County, and 21 were specifically at New Smyrna Beach. The New Smyrna encounters are chronicled here. Even so, the beach is home base for champion surfer Amy Nicholl. Nicholl is inspired by another surfer on the national circuit, Bethany Hamilton, who lost her arm to a shark while surfing in her home state of Hawaii. Bethany's tale is told in a documentary called, "The Soul of a Surfer: The Bethany Hamilton Story," including her return to the sport just 3 weeks after the attack. Neither personal experience nor statistics deter die-hard surfers in search of the perfect wave. Case in point: in celebration of its 30th anniversary, the Smyrna Surfari Club will be hosting the Land Shark Spring Surfari Pro event at New Smyrna Inlet in April...