Natural History
Monthly Archive: December Natu
On the Rocks Again — in which a pair of intrepid palaeontologists head for the hinterland.
Ah, the romance of fieldwork. There’s nothing quite like waiting for the morning sun to rise high enough to illuminate a cold, wet outcrop, so that one can spend the next 8 or 9 hours kneeling in mud and splitting razor-sharp rock slabs. But we have hot coffee in the thermos, dry gloves in the pack, and — hopefully — there are some new fossils to be found!
Bugs are moving in (not bed bugs this time)
Question: It’s fall, why are all these bugs coming into my home? I’ve never seen them before!
Western conifer seed bug; copyright ROM images
Is Burton Pipistrelle a Budding Superhero?
Burton & Isabelle Pipistrelle out of the bat cave, by Denise Dias, Illustrated by Tara Winterhalt
The Butterflies of Toronto
To educate and foster appreciation for these much-loved colourful insects, the City of Toronto, in partnership with the ROM and Livegreen Toronto, has published a new book, Butterflies of Toronto: A Guide to their Remarkable World. With hundreds of full-colour photographs, this new publication shares the local history of butterflies and details on where they live in Toronto. It is part of a Biodiversity Series being produced by the City to commemorate the Year of Biodiversity 2010.
How Do I Identify a Space Rock?
Originally published in ROM Magazine, Fall 2010.
I found a blackened rock that I think might be a meteorite. How can I tell for sure?
Update from Dawn’s Exploration of Vesta
Yellowjackets (a.k.a. Late Summer Picnic Pests)
We love picnicking outside in the summer but in August and September our meals are inevitably cut short because of wasps. What are they and what can we do about them?
Space junk: what goes up …
The ability to place man-made devices – satellites – in orbit around our planet has revolutionized the ways in which we communicate and allowed us to study our planet, our solar system and our universe in ways not otherwise possible. In fact, satillites are so useful that there is a growing lack of space in outer space. Our planet is surrounded by literally tens of millions of pieces of man-made material ranging from dust and flecks of paint, to multi-tonne satellites and spent rocket components.
Summerasuarus: Dino Storage
Recently, we visited at the Vertebrate Palaeontology Lab to see how dinosaur bones are extracted from their plaster field jackets after they are hauled back from the field by palaeontologists like Dr. David Evans.
But where does the ROM store these fossils once they are free from their rock matrix? Welcome to Vertebrate Palaeontology Collections room, housing more than 75,000 fossilized bone specimens ranging in size from small toes to an entire row of Hadrosaur skulls!
From the Field: Farewell Churchill
July 27
The weather forecast was pretty much on the money, and a dismal dawn yields to thunder-squalls rolling across the tundra. But, after breakfast and a second cup of coffee, the rain eases and we are a shade more optimistic about our flight out later this morning. Time for one last walkabout of our temporary home.
