The Boneyard - Edition #18

Archaeozoology

Here's a blog carnival which until recently was unknown to me - it has as its main focus the very distant past and what the fossils that have been recovered from that era can tell us about the type of creatures that once populated this planet tens and hundreds millions of years ago, long before humankind existed in any shape or form.

Thus we join this blog carnival in its 18th manifestation, hosted at Archaeozoology, with whom readers of palaeoanthroplogy blogs might be more familiar, but from time to time it's well worth taking a look into a more distant past, if only to give more context to the very recent and incredibly fast rise to global domination that has marked the evolution of humans - as well as reminding us that extinction is as much a part of our past as the vast numbers and types of creatures which adorned it.

I enjoyed all the posts, and one that caught my eye in particular was a book review by GrrlScientist, looking at a possible cause for the extinction of the dinosaurs...

"never once did I think of the dinosaurs as being plagued by biting insects and other blood-sucking arthropods; mosquitoes, flies, ticks and mites were creatures that haunted camping trips, picnics and attics, not the majestic dinosaurs!"

To read this and the other posts, all you need to do is hit the link and you're there.

see/hear also :: BBC Radio 4 : In Our Time - The Permian/Triassic Boundary

image of Gorgosaurus from Laelaps