Smilodons, Glyptodons, and Beetles, oh my!

This is a pretty cool story in the field of paleoentomology and ecology:

Paleoecological and Taphonomic Implications of Insect-Damaged Pleistocene Vertebrate Remains from Rancho La Brea, Southern California (Journal Article)

(If you don't want to slog through the jargon of a scientific journal article, here's a link to a news piece covering the story, in more accessible language!)

Researchers from the LA County Natural History Museum used modern dermestid* and tenebrionid beetle larvae to reconstruct the succession of insect larvae feeding on dead but as-yet-unsubmerged large vertebrates caught in the tar pits, based on damage done to the bones of these specimens by prehistoric beetle larvae.

A few thoughts:

The majority of the damage is on the feet of the larger vertebrates, which (to me) would seem to indicate that they were belly-up in the tar pits.  Seems odd, but also appropriate given that...

Their findings indicate that some of these carcasses may well have been stuck in the tar, still not completely submerged, for 17 to 20 weeks!  The animal would likely have been long dead by the time the beetles were chewing away at its bones, but it certainly does make the prospect of dying in a tar pit a bit grimmer than I would have envisioned.  If sinking at such a slow rate, it seems that the animal may well have starved to death before drowning/suffocating.  Neither is glamorous, but the drawn out death of starvation seems much worse, once your fate is sealed in tar anyways.  Anyways, once the animal died, but still had a lot of sinking to do, I can imagine it would have fallen over into the tar, thus potentially exposing the feet for the beetle larvae to consume.  A researcher on the paper also postulates that opportunistic vertebrate predators or scavengers would have turned over some of these carcasses to get at the belly, and maybe dismembered the carcass, thus exposing the feet in the process.  This is obviously supported by the large number of smilodon and dire wolf fossils recovered from the tar pits, as well.

On a related note, I would have initially guessed that a beetle who laid her eggs on an animal carcass which was sinking into a pit of tar had simply made a poor choice, dooming her offspring to "go down with the ship", as it were.  Accidental landings in suboptimal habitat are not unknown, especially among flying insects which are easily blown about (there was a popular anecdote in the entomology lab I worked in as an undergraduate about a former professor at the university finding low-elevation grasshopper species packed into a snowdrift on top of Mt. Evans).  With a solid 17-20 weeks, though, I would revise that guess - one has to imagine they had plenty of time to feed and pupate into adults (for reference, the development period (from egg-laying to pupation) for modern dermestids ranges from as little as the development period (from egg-laying to pupation) for modern dermestids ranges from as little as 7-8 weeks up to about a year).  It would not be surprising at all to find that there were sub-species, or at least populations, which thrived specifically on such carcasses.  The whole scenario becomes pretty reminiscent of large organic matter falls, such as a whale carcass that sinks to the sea floor, supporting a wide array of scavengers and decomposers (and potentially as a stepping stone for the larvae of hydrothermal vent species!).

Anyways, that's enough rambling from me - hope you enjoyed the story!  Next time you're in LA, visit the Page Museum and think about those poor ground sloths and glyptodons, sinking for several months on end.

* Interestingly, these guys are a major pest, and a problem in many museum collections as they can cause a lot of damage to all manner of specimens.

Sutton Hoo now on the Google Cultural Institute

Artifacts from the Sutton Hoo ship burial, a famous excavation of an Anglo-Saxon burial site, have been posted to the Google Cultural Institute.  They've got decent information, and very nice images of a lot of the objects from the exhibit, so if you're not able to get to the British Museum (or the exhibit was closed for renovation last time you were there, like me...), then this is a good way to see it.

The reconstructed Sutton Hoo helmet, and a replica of the helmet, side-by-side

Some pretty cool stuff, click through their gallery!

http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/exhibit/sutton-hoo-anglo-saxon-ship-burial/gQOPNM9M?projectId=historic-moments

Kerplunk!

Well I fiddled around with the idea for a while, and finally decided to start a blog which will be a bit of a catch-all for my various geeky interests - mostly biology (entomology in particular), collecting/building/painting miniatures for wargaming, and spending way too much time in natural history and archaeology museums.

I suppose this first post will be sort of uneventful and aimless, just a "what I've been up to in Europe" for those of you whom I haven't been in as close contact with.

We got a bit ambitious and decided that while we were here, we'd better see as much as we can, so we've been doing a lot of traveling around.  Most recently London (this one I'd been planning on, as I've always really wanted to go to Salute, the King-daddy of game shows), and we had a fun but very busy weekend.

We lucked out and caught both the "Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum" and "Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind" exhibits at the British Museum, plus I dragged Aubrey to the European galleries to check out Lindow Man and the Lewis Chessmen, so that was a success.  Sadly, neither special exhibit allowed photography (which is a shame, since it seems like that was allowed when the Pompeii exhibit visited Denver last winter), but I did snap a few before I was scolded by museum security and caught one of the translation to a mosaic depicting a typical night in a bar, in which two patrons are using some awfully colorful language in an altercation after a board game:

"The two men square up to each other.  One, raising his fist says: 'You nasty bit of work! I got a three! It was me who won' (NOXSI A ME TRIA ECO FUI).  The other shouts back: 'Now look here you cocksucker, it was me who won!' (OR TE FELLATOR ECO FUI)."

In terms of miniatures, I've been occasionally painting a mixture of Quar, World of Twilight (not vampires/werewolves!), and gladiators.  I also picked up a rule set called SAGA, for skirmish gaming in the Viking Age, and a handful of plastic Dark Ages miniatures to go along with it.  I'll do a more detailed post about Salute and some pictures of the miniatures in a little bit, but I did want to squeeze in a mention for this kickstarter, which is the first one I've backed (a meager $30 pledge, but with 15mm scale minis that still gets you a decent starting setup):

Ghosts of Hefei

The setting is definitely heavily inspired by Bladerunner and I, Robot, where rival groups compete for control of "fabricants" (either as hired muscle or for illegal fabricant trade). The rules allow for NPC control of 3rd party characters, which sounds pretty cool, and there's an element of hacking to control the fabricants on the battlefield (some gangs are primarily fabricants, with hackers on the sidelines controlling them).  It's only got a little over a day to go, and hasn't quite reached its goal yet, so it may not get funded, but I'm crossing my fingers since it looks like a fun game (and I know the guy that's sculpting the minis).

Alright, well, that's it for a kind of frenetic first post, but more later!