Monday Science Links

Here's this week's sciency goodness.

• John at archy tells us the story of how the planets got their names - and all the infighting that accompanied it. "As astronomers began looking at the region in which Ceres had been found, they promptly found three more tiny planets. These were named Pallas, Juno, and Vesta. Naming planets after kings had proved to be a non-starter, so the astronomers stuck with classical mythology. On the other hand, naming elements after planets was very popular. Soon after the four tiny planets between Mars and Jupiter, chemists isolating the elements gave us Cerium and Palladium. Juno already had a month named after her, but poor Vesta didn't get squat, which is a shame because Vestanite would be a much cooler name than Rutherfordium or some of the other lame names for the tranuranium elements."
  


• Brian at Clastic Detritus posts photos from a great week in Tierra del Fuego. The focus of the conference was to revisit the variable mechanisms of sediment delivery from river mouths and coasts to the shelf and/or into deep-marine basins. It was very nice to go to such a focused conference like this … I have mostly been to the big meetings so far in my career. This conference had about 40 people and most everybody gave a talk or poster … so everybody was involved and engaged in the topic. There was three days of talks and then two days of a field trip to examine some Miocene outcrops on the northeastern (Atlantic) coast of Tierra del Fuego.


• Judith at Zenobia: Empress of the East rejoices that Zenobia is back in America: When she produced the towering Zenobia in 1859, the work was met with disbelief that a woman created it. “Zenobia is one of the most famous — and controversial — objects produced during the ‘golden age’ of American classical sculpture," says John Murdoch, Director of the Huntington Art Collections. "Some critics at the time questioned whether a work of such sublime expression, on such a scale, and requiring such power of hand and arm in the carving could have been done by a woman."


• Everything Dinosaur posts an exciting (well, locally so!) article on dinosaur tracks in Maryland. Now a new study of fossil trackways in Maryland, north-eastern USA has provided a glimpse into a thriving dinosaur based eco-system. Many of the trackways, have been found just a few miles drive out of Washington D.C. Trackways and footprints are called trace fossils. Trace fossils preserve evidence of the activity of animals such as their trackways, borings or burrows. The problem with most sets of footprints, even the very best preserved ones, is that, unless the animal is found fossilised at the end of the trackway, scientists can never be 100% certain as to the species or genus that actually left the prints. Trace fossils such as footprints do have a significant advantage over other types of fossil such as fossil bones, most are direct in situ evidence of the environment at the time and place the organism was living. (If I could have figured out how to post a comment, I'd have told him Maryland isn't "north-eastern USA" but hey, he lives in the UK.)
  


• Benny at Zooillogix shows us that wolverines are back in California, or one is anyway. Definitive proof of a wolverine living in California has emerged for the first time since the 1920's. Kate Moriarty, a graduate student at Oregon State University was hoping to snap a picture of an American marten in Tahoe National Forest, but instead she captured this image of a wolverine. Her motion sensing camera took the photo on February 28th.