How do you draw an extinct animal?

A recent study found that the prehistoric sea creature Dunkleosteus terrelli had the strongest jaws ever for a fish. Artists' drawings of the animal show an iron-jawed fish, sometimes with a nasty underbite. But how do artists draw animals that no one has ever seen? This article from Slate magazine looks at how scientists help artists to create images of such extinct creatures.

China's White Dolphin

An recent expedition searching for the rare Yangtze River dolphin (pictured right) ended without a single sighting and with the team's leader saying one of the world's oldest species was effectively extinct.

The white dolphin known as baiji, shy and nearly blind, dates back some 20 million years. Its disappearance is believed to be the first time in 50 years that a large aquatic mammal has been driven to extinction.

A few baiji may still exist in their native Yangtze habitat in eastern China but not in sufficient numbers to breed and ward off extinction. Around 400 baiji were believed to be living in the Yangtze in the 1980s. The last full-fledged search, in 1997, yielded 13 confirmed sightings, and a fisherman claimed to have seen a baiji in 2004. At least 20 to 25 baiji would now be needed to give the species a chance to survive.

The expedition also surveyed another dwindling species, the Yangtze finless porpoise (pictured right), finding less than 400 of them. The finless porpoises are declining at an alarming rate, and are also at risk of extinction.

Undiscovered life in Antarctica's ice caves?

Mount Erebus (pictured right) is a volcano located in Antarctica, and is the southernmost active volcano on Earth. According to this story from the Smithsonian Magazine, the volcano constantly sputters hot gas and lava which sculpt cool ice caves and create towers of ice that resemble chimneys.

The sides of Erebus are spiked with hundreds of these ice towers, called fumaroles. Gas and heat seeping through the side of the volcano melt the snowpack above, carving out a cave. Steam escaping from the cave freezes as soon as it hits the air, building chimneys as high as 60 feet! Below are examples of these neat ice chimneys and caves:





Erebus and the rest of Antarctica will be studied closely in 2007, as scientists head there for the fourth International Polar Year since 1882. They'll try out new monitoring techniques, study how Antarctica and the Arctic influence worldwide weather, and examine what kind of life could exist in the extreme cold and winter-long dark of the poles.

The ice caves at Mount Erebus are among the most promising places for undiscovered life in Antarctica. Though they grow or shrink depending on how much heat the volcano emits, inside they maintain a temperature of about 32 degrees (very warm for Antarctica!).

Undersea volcano-dwelling fish!

According to this BBC article, scientists have witnessed the extreme lifestyle of tonguefish that like to skip across pools of molten sulphur on the ocean floor. The animals - a type of flatfish - were filmed on three expeditions to undersea volcanoes in the western Pacific. Huge numbers were seen to gather around the sulphur ponds which well up from beneath the seafloor. Researchers are trying to figure out how they survive in such a hostile environment.

There are a lot of toxic heavy metals coming out of these active volcanoes. The water is very warm and can be very acidic, with pH levels as low as two (similar to sulphuric acid).

The area of interest is the Mariana Arc, a 745 mile chain of volcanic seamounts and islands between Guam and Japan. It hosts a number of hydrothermal vents - rock systems that draw water through cracks in the seafloor, heat it to temperatures which can be well above boiling, load it with dissolved metals and other chemicals, and then eject the hot fluid back into the ocean. This type of habitat will support a range of specialized animals such as crabs, shrimp, mussels, and worms - but very few fish. And the flatfish seen on the Mariana Arc seamounts are a first.

Sea Creature Photos

Below are just a few examples from this neat photo gallery of sea creatures called "Why We Dive":

Creature Origami

If you have always wanted to have a pet dancing crane, praying mantis, cicada, or owl, but could never seem to catch one in your backyard, now you can create your own with these neat origami crease patterns:

Animals in utero

According to this CNET article, scientists have used advanced ultrasound technology to capture three-dimensional images of animals inside the womb. Below are some of the pictures from the article. The scientists also hired artists to create models of the developing mammals (similar to production for a computer animation film), to create a video of the animals throughout gestation (click here for a brief preview). The video is featured in National Geographic's special entitled In the Womb: Animals.

The Asian elephant fetus (shown below) is unique for its 22-month gestation period, the longest pregnancy of all mammals. In the fetus, the elephant develops a unique mammalian feature called nephrostomes, or funnel-like ducts in the kidneys. These ducts can be found in freshwater fish and frogs, leading scientists to believe that elephants may have evolved from aquatic beginnings, when they used their trunks as snorkels. In fact, elephants can swim more than 15 miles without stopping by using their trunks to breathe!



Pictured below is a dog in the womb. At 60 days in the womb, three days before birth, the puppy has developed a full coat of hair, with nails and paw pads, and the body is covered with touch-sensitive nerve endings. It has also displayed its characteristic panting in the fetus, a behavior that helps the dog regulate its own body temperature in the absence of ample sweat glands.



Below is a dolphin in the womb. At one month in the womb, dolphins develop tiny leg-like limb buds that vanish within two weeks, and the animals swim in amniotic fluid for the next 11 months of gestation. Scientists say that evolutionary trick is a sign that the highly intelligent mammals descended from dog-like land creatures. At nine months, the dolphin has no more room in the mother's uterus, so the fetus curls inside the uterine wall. Hairs like tiny whiskers on the dolphin will fall out after birth as a result of water pressure, but the pores will remain open. At birth, the dolphin can see and swim, and has the musculature to follow its mother to the top of the ocean to get its first breath. When dolphins breathe, they exchange 80 percent of the oxygen in their bodies. Humans, in contrast, swap out only 17 percent.

Surprising Octopus Videos

This first video shows an octopus squeezing its body through a one-inch hole. Amazing what can be done when you're an invertebrate!



The next video was taken at an aquarium. Scientists there were confused as to why shark carcasses kept showing up at the bottom of the tank, so they stayed up late one night to learn something surprising and new about the culprit!

LEDs to start replacing light bulbs soon

Experts say that light-emitting diodes will become economically viable as replacements for conventional light bulbs in about two years, which could lead to massive conservation of electricity.

Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, last about 100,000 hours, which is far longer than conventional filament bulbs. Unfortunately, the LEDs that can do this currently cost about $60. But prices have been declining by 50% a year, so two years from now the same LED should cost around $20.

Approximately 22% of the electricity consumed in the United States goes toward lighting, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Conventional light bulbs are incredibly inefficient. Only about 5% of the energy that goes into them turns into light. The majority gets dissipated as heat.

If 25% of the light bulbs in the U.S. were converted to LEDs, the U.S. as a whole could save $115 billion in utility costs, cumulatively, by 2025, and it would alleviate the need to build 133 new coal-burning power stations. In turn, carbon emissions in the atmosphere would go down by 258 metric tons.

Bogs

A bog is a type of wetland that accumulates acidic peat, which is a deposit of dead plant material. Bogs are widely distributed in cold, temperate climes, mostly in the northern hemisphere. Some of the world's largest wetlands are the bogs of the Western Siberian Lowlands in Russia. Many bogs are also found in Europe, including Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Estonia, Finland, and northern Germany. They are also found in Canada and Alaska.

One of the interesting aspects of bogs is their ability to preserve organic material. This aspect has given rise to the term "bog bodies," as more than a thousand preserved human bodies have been found in bogs. These bodies have been dated as far back as 10,000 BC. Click here for Slate's "Explainer" podcast on how bogs are able to preserve organic material so well.

One of the most famous bog bodies is that of "Tollund Man" (pictured on the right). Radiocarbon dating has placed his death at approximately 350 BC, yet you can still clearly see is face and the rope around his neck that killed him. The man's stomach and intestines were also intact, and scientists discovered that his last meal had been a kind of soup made from vegetables and seeds, some cultivated and some wild: barley, linseed, gold of pleasure (Camelina sativa), knotweed, bristlegrass, and camomile.