Scientists working with fossilized remains generally needed an entire limb or cranium to puzzle out the sex of a prehistoric mammals they examined. The shape or size of the fossil were the bases for determining gender.
As DNA testing advanced, researchers were able to determine sex from fossil fragments, even though usable DNA is not always available in twenty-thousand-year-old remnants. Better DNA testing, though, is confirming what visitors to natural-history museum have noticed: most fossilized specimens are male. Apparently it was a man’s world in prehistoric times.
Were there many more male than female mammals in the ancient world? Not likely. Scientists have concluded that the preponderance of male fossilized remains is probably the result of reckless male behavior. Male mammoths, for example, especially young ones, were much more inclined to travel alone, away from the wisdom and protection of the herd, and more likely to get into some kind of fatal trouble. On their own, chances of getting stuck in a pit or encountering human hunters greatly increased. Meeting their demise in bogs or crevices or lakes is good for scientists as those death sites are good at preserving their remains.
Some things don’t change. As one paleontologist said, young males “were more likely to do silly things, like die in tar pits.”
Category: Places
Places I remember
Wooden It Be Nice
Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is more than four hundred parts per million, a concentration greater than at any time in the last three and a half million years. Back then, mid-Pliocene, there was little ice at the earth’s poles and sea level was sixty feet higher.
Those who do not accept that humankind has passed the environmental tipping point place great hope in carbon capture and sequestration. CCS, in simple terms, means capturing CO2 and burying it deep underground where it cannot escape for many millennia. (Kinda like all the methane gas below rapidly-melting tundra.) Carbon-dioxide removal doesn’t just slow or stop the increase of CO2, it reduces it. Skeptics warn that forcing carbon underground will increase earthquake activity. (See fracking.)
The Short Life, Death and Rebirth of Surfridge
When your plane takes off from LAX — Los Angeles International Airport — you swing out over the Pacific Ocean before banking into the general direction of your destination. Depending on your flight and on weather conditions, you may get a good view of breaking surf, downtown L.A. and 
Dodger Stadium. Between the end of the runway and the surf, you may notice remnants of abandoned streets. That used to be the prosperous town of Palisades del Rey, better known as Surfridge.
Continue reading “The Short Life, Death and Rebirth of Surfridge”
Aliens Killing Our Cattle?
Ranchers in eastern Oregon have been unsettled by what they lately have been discovering on remote areas of their land. Over the summer five carcasses of young purebred bulls have been found north of the town of Burns. The bulls were bloodless, their tongues and genitals surgically removed. There was no sign of coyotes or buzzards or any other scavengers. The ground around the desiccated bodies was undisturbed, no boot prints, no paw or hoof prints, no vehicle tracks..
Our Trust-Busting Justice Department
Republicans emphatically oppose an overreaching Federal Government interfering with business. Except when they don’t. Republicans are strongly in favor of the rights of states to handle their own internal affairs. Except when they aren’t.
As part of the current occupant of the White House’s War on Anything Obama, the Environmental Protection Agency rescinded regulations mandating increased automobile fuel economy. The regs, issued in 2011, required automobile manufacturers to produce average fuel economy of 50 miles per gallon by the year 2025. The present-day EPA stated that fewer emissions was a noble goal but it would make cars more expensive and somehow less safe and so isn’t worth it
Continue reading “Our Trust-Busting Justice Department”The Other Green Monster
No, not the Green Monster at Fenway Park. (If you’re a baseball fan, you know what the Green Monster is; if you’re not a baseball fan, you don’t care.)
Continue reading “The Other Green Monster”