Sea Lion Migration

For a month or more, I've been seeing stories about San Francisco Bay's missing sea lions. Then back around Christmas, I saw a very short blip saying they had apparently turned up in Oregon. I thought it was interesting, but there was very little supporting information. Specifically, I wanted to know where they were turning up; Oregon's coast is several hundred miles long, and is very diverse in its physical and biological aspects.

I had my suspicions, though...... and they have turned out to be accurate. According to KGW (a Portland TV station),

Officials with Sea Lion Caves, a private preserve near Florence, Ore., say huge pods of the animals — now numbering about 2,000 — began showing up in October, about the same time they started leaving Pier 39.

Kim Suryan, a biologist with the Marine Mammal Institute in Newport, Ore., says the numbers are much higher than usual.

The photo above is one I took a bit before Christmas a year ago, and first posted here, where I also discuss a little of the geology of this magnificent cave.

Followup: While I was putting this post together, OregonLive posted the story too, with another photo and a link to a San Francisco Chronicle article that is much more thorough, and has a few more pictures.

This Is So Awesome At So Many Levels!

Rocks and Structures! Star Wars! Optical Illusions! Humor! Smartness!
If there were pizza, puppies or kitties in this picture, I'd be dead now. Via Epic Win.

Pocahontas on Pandora

A couple of days ago, I saw this at BuzzFeed. I found it amusing, but nothing that I didn't already know, more or less...
Then a few minutes ago, I found the trailer at EpicPonyz... James Cameron's "Pocahontas!"

I haven't seen either one. But it sort of looks as if I see either, I will have seen both. Also too, will someone put together clips of Avatar, with the soundtrack dubbed from Pocahontas?

OK, This Made Me Laugh

For reasons I have explained before, I generally find FailBlog more exasperating than entertaining. Take a funny photo (without attribution), slap your watermark on it, then print "FAIL" on it. The photo is funnier without a caption. But this is, well, pretty funny.

Tetrapods!

There are a couple of articles on an exciting new fossil footprint find, one at BBC, and another from AP. The photo above is from the BBC article, where there is also a video clip of some of the collected specimens. According to BBC,

Perhaps the most notable fossil in this story is an organism called Tikaalik rosea, an animal that had features intermediate between fish and tetrapods.

But Tiktaalik lived about 375 million years ago; and although there are slightly older transition fossils, the Zachelmie Quarry tetrapods break the neat and simple timeline.

"The discovery of undoubted trackways from the earliest period of the Eifelian - that is 379 million years ago - pushes back the divergence between fishes and the four-legged vertebrates by about 18 million years, if not probably more," commented Dr Philippe Janvier from the National Museum of Natural History, Paris, France.

"I suspect that now we can push the divergence back to the Emsian stage, maybe 400 million years ago. That's surprising, but this is what the fossil evidence tells us," the independent researcher told BBC News.

For all the great comics regarding the transition from an aquatic life to (at least partially) terrestrial life- the Far Side panel of a pair of fish, one with a bat over his shoulder, looking at a baseball up on the beach comes to mind- this event is a profound one. I haven't thought much about it recently, but it's an environment I enjoy exploring in my imagination. I'm glad to have more information from the world of science to help flesh it out.

Followup: Here's the abstract of the paper from Nature. Via The Lancet, where the author, Martin Brazeau, says he'll post a detailed update soon.

Followup 2: The Guardian chimes in, with much the same info, but adding a nearly 10-minute long video that really helps clarify the details and importance of this find. Maybe a bit too docudramatic, but I enjoyed it. Field trip!

Followup 3: Nat Geo chimes in.

Yeah, It's Rainy

But I've had my windows open a few inches since Monday evening. The fresh air at night has been delightful. At 6:30 this morning, the temperature was 54. I'll take that.

They're forecasting freezing rain tomorrow night and Friday, but this balmy interlude has been much appreciated.

Barack Has a New Family Member

Right here in Corvallis!

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama have a new nephew. He is Austin, son of the first lady's older brother, Craig Robinson, and his wife, Kelly.

(...)

Craig Robinson is the head coach of the Oregon State men's basketball team, the Beavers.