Posted: February 5th, 2010 under Have A Good Weekend.
Comments: none

Until last week, paleontologists could offer no clear-cut evidence for the color of dinosaurs. Thanks to melanosomes, researchers have provided evidence that a dinosaur called Sinosauropteryx had a white-and-ginger striped tail. Melanosomes are pigment -loaded sacs that survive for millions of years in fossil bird feathers. The shape and arrangement of melanosomes help produce the color of feathers, so scientists are now able to get clues about the color of fossil feathers from their melanosomes alone. The discovery, which the researchers reported last week in Nature, supports research showing that birds are dinosaurs, having descended from a group of bipedal dinosaurs called theropods. More at the NYT.

Posted: February 5th, 2010 under Flora/Fauna, History.
Comments: none

The Way Of The Scout and The Tracker were always being read and discussed when I was young, largely in part because of Trevor, a friend who was obsessed with sneaking around the farms adjacent to his house and practicing psychological warfare on the farms’ owners. (Psychological warfare is not at all the plot or message of either of the books.) We pretended we were trackers while we crawled around Horizon Farms, switching flags and dodging the barn’s motion censored lights.

Tom Brown Jr. is a guy from New Jersey who was taught tracking skills by a Lipan Apache elder named Stalking Wolf, who he refers to as “Grandfather” in his writings. He’s the author of many field guides and owns a survival school in Manahawkin, NJ.

In addition to his books, Brown started Tracker Magazine and wrote numerous articles for Mother Earth News throughout the 80s. Brown’s Mother Earth News column was called “At Home In The Wilderness” (the logo looks a little familiar, eh?) and the topics ranged from fire, shelter, hunting and traps to making natural cordage. Scroll to the bottom here to read the articles in full.

Posted: February 5th, 2010 under Magazines/Catalogs/Advertisements.
Comments: 2