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Carl Akeley’s African expeditions, 1896-1927

by Chris Taylor
17
Feb
2010

Adventurer archetype Carl Akeley (1864-1926) was an exceedingly productive taxidermist, sculptor, explorer and inventor.  His interest in ornithology begat a need to preserve specimens, so young Akeley read up on the subject and taught himself the basics of taxidermy.  He subsequently landed a job with science education supplier Ward’s Natural Science Establishment, then further refined his craft in jobs with a series of increasingly prominent museums.

Hearing of his achievements the British Museum in London offered him a position, but on his way, he stopped in Chicago where he was enticed to join their Field Museum of Natural History instead. Winning Carl over by the promise of African travel, he led two major expeditions while in their employment, the first in 1896 and later in 1905.

– “Carl Akeley.”  Wild Film History.  Web.  17 February 2010.

Chicago’s Field Museum has posted 136 of Akeley’s hand-coloured slides and black-and-white photographs to Flickr, a selection of which I have excerpted below.  See their Africa Expeditions set for more.

View of trees, hills, grass. Lake Elementeita, Mau Escarpment, British East Africa, c1906.

View of trees, hills, grass, originally uploaded by The Field Museum Library.

Trees and scenes, mountain in background. Diorama accessory study. Voi, British East Africa, c1906.

Trees and scenes, originally uploaded by The Field Museum Library.

View on river shore with large canoe or boat, abandoned. Mombassa, British East Africa, c1906.

View on river shore, originally uploaded by The Field Museum Library.

Camp, three tents with expedition members inside. British East Africa, c1896.

Expedition camp, originally uploaded by The Field Museum Library.

Small child holding an unidentified object, camp tents in background. British East Africa, c1906.

Small child in front of tents, originally uploaded by The Field Museum Library.

Young cheetah growling at camera, teeth bared. British Somaliland, c1896.

Cheetah growling at camera, originally uploaded by The Field Museum Library.

Young mammal, possibly Bovidae Oryx. British Somaliland, c1896.

Young mammal, possibly Bovidae Oryx, originally uploaded by The Field Museum Library.

Berbera at night. Berbera, Woqooyi Galbeed, British Somaliland, c1896.

Berbera at night, originally uploaded by The Field Museum Library.

Akeley died during his fifth and final African expedition, and is buried in Albert (now Virunga) National Park.  He left behind an enormous and meticulously catalogued collection of specimens—his crowning achievement.  Today, three-quarters of a century after it was first opened to the public, that collection of 28 stunning dioramas continues to amaze visitors to the American Museum of Natural History.

In total, Carl launched five collecting trips to the African subcontinent, joining Theodore Roosevelt on his 1909 expedition while he was working for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Filmed by Cherry Kearton for the feature, With Roosevelt in Africa (1910) it also provided many specimens still on display in the museum in a wing named in Carl’s honour – the Akeley Hall of African Mammals.

– “Carl Akeley.”  Wild Film History.  Web.  17 February 2010.

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Antarctica’s first aeroplane

by Chris Taylor
03
Jan
2010

The Air-tractor, c1912 / photographed by Frank Hurley (State Library of NSW, Item No. ON 144/H475)

Freed from an icy grave after almost a century, parts of the first aircraft taken to Antarctica—also the very first aircraft produced by Britain’s Vickers factory—have been located in Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay.

Australian geologist Sir Douglas Mawson had planned to conduct an aerial survey as part of his 1911-1914 Australasian Antarctic Expedition, but the plan was scuttled when the aircraft’s wings were damaged in an October 1911 demonstration flight.  Mawson had no time to repair the aircraft prior to departure, so he ordered his electrical engineer/motor expert, Francis H. Bickerton, to remove the wings and convert it into an “air-tractor”—essentially a propeller-powered sled—to haul supplies.  After hauling gear across a plateau for sixteen kilometres, the engine could not cope with the extreme cold and quit.  The aircraft was eventually hauled back to the encampment and abandoned.  When Mawson returned to Australia, the engine was returned to Vickers in the UK to help pay down debts; the rest of the fuselage frame was left behind at Cape Denison, and was visible up to the mid-1970s when it was presumed to have been swallowed by the ice.

The aircraft was found on New Year’s Day by a team of Australians dedicated to preserving the site of Mawson’s first Antarctic encampment.

AN HISTORIC monoplane – a relic of Sir Douglas Mawson’s 1911-14 expedition – has been found in Antarctica thanks to freakish luck after a three-year search.

An Australian heritage carpenter stumbled on the remains of the craft – the first Vickers aircraft ever made – on New Year’s Day at Cape Denison.

The cast iron framework of the plane was revealed by an unusually low tide and reduced ice cover.

“It’s a remarkable find in remarkable circumstances,” chairman of the Mawson’s Huts Foundation David Jensen said.

“We began the search three summers ago and thought we might have a reasonable chance of finding it with all the equipment provided to us by sponsors.”

Nearly a century after it was abandoned by Mawson, the old Vickers was spotted sitting among rocks in a few centimetres of water during one of the lowest tides recorded at Commonwealth Bay.

“They would not have been found had the tide not been so low and the ice cover at Cape Denison at its lowest for several years – it was a fluke find,” Mr Jensen said in a statement.

– “Sir Douglas Mawson’s monoplane found.” Australian Associated Press / Adelaide Now, 3 January 2010. [Emphasis in original]

Mawson's Vickers REP monoplane No. 1, before the accident that ended her flying career.

The Vickers REP monoplane was designed in France by Robert Esnault-Pelterie (hence REP), but built by Vickers in Britain.

There is also a slight Canadian connection, since the Oxford-born engineer Bickerton made his home in Newfoundland during the Roating Twenties.  He is reported to have travelled between that colony and Britain quite frequently, easily shifting gears between the lifestyles of a New World outdoorsman and a fashionable London partygoer and man-about-town.

For more information on the finding of the aircraft—and the current state of the Mawson huts in general—the Expedition Blog of the Mawson’s Hut Foundation is probably the best source (especially these posts; 1, 2).

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Images from the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911-1914)

by Chris Taylor
03
Jan
2010

The State Library of New South Wales has posted a collection of images taken by photographer Frank Hurley during Australia’s first tentative explorations of the planet’s ice-bound southern continent.

Students of polar history will know that Mr. Hurley and several other AAE members would go on to greater fame for their perseverance in Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1916); not to mention service in the Great War.

Mushroom ice formation, 1912 / Frank Hurley, originally uploaded by State Library of New South Wales collection.

F. Bickerton looking out over seas near Commonwealth Bay, originally uploaded by State Library of New South Wales collection.

See the entire Flickr set for more.

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Mawson’s Huts Conservation Programme

by Chris Taylor
03
Jan
2010

A fascinating summary of the original expedition, and the modern effort to conserve its still-extant facilities.

Part One:

Part Two:

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Palaeontology News

by Chris Taylor
19
Oct
2009

260cv82

  • Palaeontologists have discovered a “missing link” between early and late pterosaurs; an animal which combines some of the notable features of each.  Dubbed darwinopterus (or “Darwin’s wing”), it features “a tail and hind legs like the older pterosaurs, but pointy teeth and a head/neck shape both almost identical to later species.”  It bolsters support for the theory of modular evolution—that the evolutionary process assembles new genes from copies of pieces of various older genes, rapidly building new features and functions from a new arrangement of already reliable parts.  Abstract from the Proceedings of the Royal Society (Biological Sciences) available here.
  • Generally regarded as the archetypal early bird, archaeopteryx (Greek for “ancient wing”) has been found to be much more like its slow-growing land-bound cousins, lacking the rapid bone growth common to all current-day birds (who grow and mature in a matter of weeks).  Microscopic analysis of fossilised archaeopteryx cells and blood vessels indicate that it took several years to grow from juvenile to adult.  In the words of lead paleobiologist Greg Erickson, “We learned that the adult would have been raven-sized and taken about 970 days to mature.  Some same-size birds today can do likewise in eight or nine weeks. In contrast, maximal growth rates for Archaeopteryx resemble dinosaur rates, which are three times slower than living birds and four times faster than living reptiles.”  Abstract from the Public Library of Science (PLoS ONE) available here.
  • One-third of the dinosaur species currently identified may not have existed, because they are actually juvenile forms of other species and not a separate species in their own right.
  • In 1863, a family of Virginia palaeontologists discovered a hidden valley of living dinosaurs; the Union Army attempted to weaponise them into tools of mass mayhem and destruction against the secessionist South.  Hollywood’s latest summer blockbuster?  Nope.  The premise of a Civil War theme park in Natural Bridge, Virginia.

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Ardipithecus ramidus

by Chris Taylor
05
Oct
2009
Illustration by J.H. Matternes; graphic by The Washington Post (Oct. 1, 2009)

Illustration by J.H. Matternes; graphic by The Washington Post (Oct. 1, 2009)

Ethiopian paleoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie has discovered an interesting biological clue about our hominid ancestors.  They lacked a few of the traits that we associate with modern day ape-ness:

The story of Ardi takes us back 4.4 million years to a corner of northeast Ethiopia that today is a desert where erosion constantly exposes fossils from the dawn of humankind.
In all, scientists have discovered fossilized bones and teeth in the area representing three dozen individual Ardipithecus specimens, including much of Ardi’s skull, pelvis, lower arms and feet. Until now, Haile-Selassie says, much of what we knew about our ancient past derived from comparisons with the other apes, and especially chimps, and from Ardi’s younger ’sister’ — Lucy, the 3.2-million-year-old specimen of another hominid species, Australopithecus afarensis, discovered in 1974, also in Ethiopia. Lucy’s discovery showed that human forebears walked upright that long ago.
But Ardi, Haile-Selassie says, shows our first erect steps took place more than a million years earlier and that is much closer to the last common ancestor (or LCA) that the human line shares with the ape line after the two split some six million years ago.
Until now, it has been assumed chimps and gorillas have retained many of the supposed traits of that last common ancestor, among them knuckle-walking and climbing ability.
Now, Haile-Selassie says, we know that isn’t true.
Ardi shows that unlike modern apes, which are knuckle-walkers, her species — and by extension all the ancestors of all apes and humans — descended from a common ancestor that in turn was not a knuckle-walker, he says.

The story of Ardi takes us back 4.4 million years to a corner of northeast Ethiopia that today is a desert where erosion constantly exposes fossils from the dawn of humankind.

In all, scientists have discovered fossilized bones and teeth in the area representing three dozen individual Ardipithecus specimens, including much of Ardi’s skull, pelvis, lower arms and feet. Until now, Haile-Selassie says, much of what we knew about our ancient past derived from comparisons with the other apes, and especially chimps, and from Ardi’s younger ’sister’ — Lucy, the 3.2-million-year-old specimen of another hominid species, Australopithecus afarensis, discovered in 1974, also in Ethiopia. Lucy’s discovery showed that human forebears walked upright that long ago.

But Ardi, Haile-Selassie says, shows our first erect steps took place more than a million years earlier and that is much closer to the last common ancestor (or LCA) that the human line shares with the ape line after the two split some six million years ago.

Until now, it has been assumed chimps and gorillas have retained many of the supposed traits of that last common ancestor, among them knuckle-walking and climbing ability.

Now, Haile-Selassie says, we know that isn’t true.

Ardi shows that unlike modern apes, which are knuckle-walkers, her species — and by extension all the ancestors of all apes and humans — descended from a common ancestor that in turn was not a knuckle-walker, he says.

…The researchers say the surprising findings mean chimps and gorillas have specialized greatly since then and are poor models for a common ancestor and for understanding human abilities such as walking.

– Meaney, Ken.  ”Evolution: Discovery may change the way we think about evolution, ourselves.” Canwest News Service, 3 October 2009.  [Emphasis mine]

This further underlines the somewhat little-understood distinction that humanity is not descended from “monkeys”, but that apes and humans shared a common ancestor. It’s a big difference, and it’s important to remember that a lot of the ape traits that we see today actually evolved long after our developmental paths began to diverge.  So while we can learn something from our modern simian relatives, they offer limited utility in understanding how we developed the unique capabilities that make us Homo sapiens.  For that we have to go to the fossil record and continue to mine our own history.

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Antarctica

by Chris Taylor
18
Sep
2009

Our planet’s most southerly continent is notionally one of those awe-inspiring places I would like to visit.  At least for a couple of hours.  Ideally it would be as one of those C17 aircrews that flies in a load of gear and people, then jets right back out an hour later.



Of course there is the incredible visual poetry of the place, which is no doubt part of the enchantment that drove such as Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton to hazard their lives in exploration of it.



But it’s not all sweetness and light. The weather has rough days.



And so does the sea, too.

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Swine flu still shaping up to be a pretty ordinary flu

by Chris Taylor
06
May
2009

Health Canada microbiologists confirm that the Mexican, American and Canadian variants of the swine flu are all the same strain:

Canadian scientists who sequenced Canadian and Mexican samples of the swine flu virus say it is the same strain, even though the virus seems to cause more severe symptoms in Mexico.

Scientists at Health Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg genetically sequenced and compared samples of the H1N1 flu virus from Nova Scotia, Ontario and Mexico. It's the first time the sequence has been completed on samples from Mexico and Canada, said officials during a news conference in Ottawa Wednesday.

The results have ruled out a mutation to explain why the Mexican cases have been much more severe than elsewhere, said Dr. Frank Plummer, the chief science adviser of the national lab.

"Essentially, what it appears to suggest, is that there is nothing at the genetic level that differentiates this virus that we got from Mexico and those from Nova Scotia and Ontario, that explains apparent differences in disease severity between Mexico and Canada and the United States," said Plummer.

– CBC News, "Swine flu is same strain in Canada and Mexico", May 6th, 2009.

So what makes it so deadly in Mexico?  Pre-existing medical conditions?  Environmental stimulus?  Genetic predisposition?  Quality of care?

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Launch every ‘Zig’ for great justice

by Chris Taylor
02
May
2009

cyborg_beetleAlthough this has just brought our world one giant leap closer to an enormous insectoid apocalypse (as envisioned in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers), there is something kinda cool about a big scary cyborg bug.

Give it a theme song full of wailing guitars and you’ve got the makings of a kickass Saturday morning kids cartoon.

If I see that thing in the kitchen though, I’m killing it.  Jus’ sayin.

(Via Instapundit.)

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Keep swine flu in perspective

by Chris Taylor
28
Apr
2009

Keep your thinking cap on when you're reading breathless media accounts of "swine flu", a.k.a. influenza A virus, subtype H1N1.  We are a long, long way from it being an "oh my G-d, we're all going to die" pandemic.

I have a hard time getting worked up over a flu where the vast majority of its sufferers recover, and whose only confirmed North American fatalities are twenty unfortunate Mexicans.  That's a small number.  Tragic for those families, but still small.

By contrast, over 2 billion people (one-third of humanity!) have contracted hepatitis B.  That's a pandemic.  About 84,000 people die every year from hepatitis B (and complications arising from it).  Hep B will kill far more people in your lifetime than swine flu ever will.

UPDATE:  As Wanda mentioned to me this evening, remember that SARS thing back in 2003?  Forty-four people died in Toronto due to that respiratory disease.  Remember how the world media was freaking out about it, and WHO instituted a travel warning?  Remember seeing tourists on the subway wearing surgical masks, even though 99% of the city's population had never, ever been exposed to SARS?  And then the number of tourists that showed up took a giant nosedive?  95,000 people in the tourism industry laid off, 30-40% decline in hotel occupancy rates, etc cetera.

Well, that's how Mexico is feeling right now.  Except the impact to tourism will probably be much more catastrophic in some areas.

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