Photo submitted to the Bear Valley Visitor Center in Point Reyes National Seashore by an unknown visitor.

On December 27, 2011, a hiker snapped some photos of a whale carcass stranded in a cove just south of Alamere Falls. Point Reyes ecologists forwarded the report to the Bay Area Marine Mammal Stranding Network team, a specialized group of volunteers and representatives from the California Academy of Sciences (which collects tissue samples and bones for its research collections) and the Marine Mammal Center (which leads any necropsy proceedings). In responding to such calls, their goal is to learn as much as possible from the animal's body. When you're talking about a body the size of a whale (literally), the logistics get complicated.

If you've ever hiked or biked to Alamere Falls, you'll know the beautiful spot is not easy to access. Luckily the team received special permission from the National Park Service to drive to Wildcat Camp, shortening their walk to a mile each way. Upon arriving at the scene, they quickly realized that between its location, the tide schedule, and ocean conditions, it would be impossible to access the whale during daylight hours. Unable to perform a necropsy to determine the cause of death, they left it to roll in the surf. This turned out to be a mixed blessing.

Photo submitted to the Bear Valley Visitor Center in Point Reyes National Seashore by an unknown visitor.

After just eleven days, the surf and surge had cleaned the skull and deposited it on the beach. The upside was that nature took care of the dirty work in record time. Typically to recover a skull, the team has to remove enough tissue by hand in order to transport the bones off the beach (not a task for the faint of heart). Then the skull is either buried or left to steep in a saltwater maceration tank for one to two months to finish the cleaning process. The downside to the "surf method" is that most of the smaller bones and tissue were lost in the ebb and flow.

Volunteer Rick James and Academy Collections Manager Moe Flannery of the Bay Area Marine Mammal Stranding Network towed the skull down the beach at Alamere Falls, using a cart rigged out of two dollies and some inflatable "beach wheels." Photo courtesy of California Academy of Sciences.

A week later, the tides were right to collect the skull specimen, estimated at 200 pounds. The team sought special permission to drive to a point just one mile from the skull, greatly reducing the distance they needed to carry the heavy skull. It took five people two hours and a cart rigged from "beach wheels" and a pair of dollies to get the skull to their truck.

Today, the skull is degreasing on the Academy's living roof, visible to museum-goers from the viewing deck. Over the course of the next year, its weight is expected to decrease by about half as rain and gravity work the grease out of the bones, providing nutrients for the native plants below.

When complete, the skull will be the largest of five in the Academy's mammalogy collection, and the first collected since 1992.

For the scientific community, specimens like this one serve as a record of an animal at a specific location and time, as part of a valuable library of life. For future generations, it can be used to help answer questions about the health of whale populations through time, phylogenetic relationships, even what our ancestors used to eat.

The minke whale population is considered stable through most of its range, with an estimated 500-1,000 animals along the California-Oregon-Washington coastline. Beachgoers in the Bay Area should note that all marine mammals are protected by federal law, even after death. If you spot a dead marine mammal, contact the Academy's Ornithology & Mammalogy Department. For sick or injured marine mammals, please contact The Marine Mammal Center.

Dr. Rebecca Johnson is a systematic biologist and studies the evolution of color in sea slugs at the California Academy of Sciences.

In the slow paced world of marine sea slugs, a sedentary defense can be the difference between eating and being eaten. With shelled armor, stealthy camouflage or chemical warfare, defense strategies are not only fascinating, but are a potential source of novel cancer and cardiac therapies. Of the 3,000 species of nudibranchs, or "naked-gilled" slugs, many display beautiful, vivid color patterns. These colors warn predators that the slugs are toxic.

Post-doctoral researcher at the California Academy of Sciences, Dr. Rebecca Johnson studies the evolution of color patterning in these brazen beauties. Her specialty lies within a family of 300 species called the chromodorid nudibranchs, which mainly live in shallow tropic waters worldwide.

Chromodorid nudibranch (Risbecia tyroni) Photo credit: Stephen Childs

Most nudibranchs take something from their prey to use as their own chemical defense. For example, the chromodorid nudibranchs selectively feed on sponges and steal toxic chemicals from the sponge originally intended to keep animals from living and growing on the sponge. The slugs redistribute those chemicals throughout their tissues to use for defense.

Species that eat sea anemones and other cnidarians can capture the stinging cells from their prey and store them in their tissues. The aeolid nudibranchs store these stinging cells in cerata, which are long finger-like projections that line the body.

A group of slugs that are closely related to nudibranchs, called sacoglossans, steal chloroplasts from algae prey. Instead of stealing for defense, these slugs steal for energy. They redistribute the chloroplasts throughout their tissues and can actually keep the chloroplasts photosynthesizing. These animals are essentially crawling plants.

Dr. Johnson has been named one of the 16 Rubenstein Fellows by the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL). “I am honored and excited to be a Rubenstein Fellow,” says Johnson. “With this award, I will use the Encyclopedia of Life as a platform with which to consolidate and organize historical data, new research findings, and information on chromodorid nudibranchs that is only found in the scientific literature, libraries, natural history museums, and scattered across the web.  As a fellow, I look forward to sharing the beauty of these animals with a larger audience and to making scientific information about them more widely available.”

In addition to working as postdoctoral researcher at the Academy, Johnson also works with the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary to train tide pool naturalists at Duxbury Reef—a marine protected area in Marin County—and contributes to the Academy’s exhibits and education programs, including a recent display on the Farallon Islands.

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Photo Credit: JLplusAL

The camel spider – also known as the wind scorpion or sun spider – has taken its place amongst many tall tales and urban legends. They are technically not spiders (which are within the order Araneae) as they are in the Solifugue order, which translates from Latin as "those that flee from the sun". They are desert-dwelling opportunistic carnivores that hunt nocturnally and flee from the sun during they day. Although camel spiders sightings are most often reported in the Middle East, they are also species native to the Southwest United States and Mexico. Troops coming back from the Middle East have only added more infamy to the already existing stories. So what is fact and what is fiction?

Camel spiders get their name from eating the underbellies of camels. It might be that they got their name because these creatures hide from the sun and could have often been found in the shadow of camels. Although this order spans across the world, they are only found in arid and dry desserts.

True of False: They will scream as they run after humans.

Often people have felt that camel spiders are chasing them but really they are chasing their shadow and the shade. If a person stands still, the camel spider will stay in the shade of the shadow cast. Camel spiders do not scream, some species will hiss but most do not make any sound. Camel spiders will shun the sun and during the day seek either shade or a place where they can dig a burrow to get out of the sun. However at night, light will attract a camel spider and they will run towards it. Most often, camel spiders will hunt at night and seek burrows or shade during the day.

True of False: They can run up to 30 miles per hour.

Camel spiders are fast in comparison to other invertebrates but 30 miles per hour is quite an exaggeration. The fastest camel spider can reach speeds of 10 miles per hour over a very short distance. To give a sense of their speed that is equivalent to running a six-minute mile.

True or False: If you put a camel spider on a basketball, its legs can touch the ground.

Their have been many pictures of camel spiders that been doctored to make them look much larger than they actually are. Camel spiders can grow to, at most, a length of six inches including their legs. In one picture I came across, a camel spider is compared to a package of cigarettes, although it wasn’t the Camel brand.

True or False: They have been known to anaesthetize sleeping humans and gorge on large chunks of their flesh, so much in fact they their bodies swell to the point that they are unable to move.

Camel spiders will eat insects, bugs, lizards, and perhaps small snakes but they are not known to eat prey bigger than they are. They will gorge if given the opportunity; their abdomen will swell and they can barely move after a large meal. Camel spiders are aggressive and if they are cornered or feel threatened they will bite. They have no venom glands and rely on a strong and crushing pincer known as the chelicerae to bite. Their bite is painful and if left untreated can cause infection. However, if a person does not antagonize a camel spider it will not bite.

Camel spiders in reality have more bark than bite. They look quite sinister but are fairly harmless to humans. However if you are a scorpion or insect in their path – well that’s another story.

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The world's largest butterfly species, the Queen Alexandra’s birdwing on display in the Cal Academy's collection

The California Academy of Sciences has the largest collection of biological reference materials west of the Mississippi.  The collection provides a treasure trove of biological information for scientists and researchers studying the natural world.  Of the 20 million specimens housed at the Cal Academy, 17 million are insects within the Entomology Department. Collections Manager Norman Penny gives Science on the SPOT a small peek at The Academy’s vast butterfly collection.  “Butterflies hold a special interest for people,” says Penny, “They’re easily preserved, they’re numerous, they’re brightly colored and they show a lot of biological principles.”

The Academy has a long history studying bugs.  The Entomology Department officially dates back to 1862 but the first insects and arachnids for The Academy's collection were actually received eight years prior in 1854. By 1900, the collection had grown to about 50,000 specimens. Unfortunately, most of The Academy’s collection was lost in the great fire which followed the 1906 earthquake.  However, The Academy had sponsored an expedition to the Galapagos Islands in early 1905, and when the earthquake struck, the entomology team had not yet returned to San Francisco. Thus, the specimens saved from the fire and the new insects collected by the Galapagos expedition members served as a starter of The Academy's new collection. Today, The California Academy of Sciences boasts one of the largest entomology collections in the world.

Penny opened the lids of the cases and showed us a variety of beautiful butterflies from around the world.  Bright blue iridescent morpho butterflies from South America glisten as he tilts the case.  We see monarchs and owl butterflies from North America and marvel at the huge Queen Alexandra’s birdwing butterflies from Papua New Guinea.  My personal favorite was seeing the California state insect, the Dogface Butterfly.  Once known as “flying pansies,” Dogface butterfly males have bright yellow wings with dark markings that profile a poodle’s head.

But not all of the Cal Academy’s butterfly specimens are pinned in trays.  Some are very much alive!  Each day within the warm mist of the Academy’s expansive living Rainforest exhibit, colorful butterflies flit freely from blossom to branch.  Each week the Academy receives a new batch of living butterfly specimens from the Central American rainforest.  Cooperative butterfly farmers in Costa Rica have obtained special permits to allow them to rear native butterflies and send them north.

This program is actually beneficial to the butterflies and their native ecosystems as it encourages farmers to protect pollinators and the critical host plants in the surrounding rainforest.  Farmers plant host plants on their land to feed caterpillars.  Once the caterpillars transform to pupae some are collected and sent to the Academy.

(click here to see a behind-the-scenes video of the Rainforest biologists in action)

When they arrive, the pupae are carefully unpacked and placed in temperature / humidity controlled chambers where they finish their gradual metamorphosis into colorful butterflies.   Each morning, as new adult butterflies emerge, biologists release them into the Rainforest exhibit.  Their new home is quite suited for them.  Native flowering Costa Rican plants and feeding stations, provide the butterflies here with plenty of nectar and pollen sources to eat.  But biologists also need to make sure the butterflies aren’t too happy. The insects are not allowed to reproduce within the Rainforest Dome.  Hungry caterpillars would make short work of the contained bio-dome plants.

That isn’t the case above on the Academy’s Living Roof.  Here, native plants have been brought in specifically to encourage the whole cycle of life for local butterfly populations. Nine species of native annuals and perennials have been planted, many with specific species of butterflies in mind. Miniature lupine (Lupinus bicolor), California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) and Sea pink (Armeria maritime) that produce pom-pom-like flowers, attract a number of native butterflies. California plantain (Plantago erecta) also hosts a variety of butterfly larvae, including the endangered Bay checkerspot butterfly.  And Stonecrop (Sedum spathulifolium) produces nectar for the Hairstreak butterfly and the threatened San Bruno elfin butterfly.  Although the famed Living Roof has only been in existence since 2008, a study by San Francisco State University showed that Bay Area native insects are already more prevalent on the Academy’s  roof than other areas in Golden Gate Park.

The butterfly collection at the Cal Academy, old and new, pinned in trays or flying free help us better understand and appreciate the world around us.  As Norm Penny said, “A lot of the biological principles we study are based on the bright color patterns you see.  Scientific study is very vividly displayed on the wings of butterflies.”

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A view of the “Devil’s Teeth.” The rocky Farallon Islands from the New Superfish, out on a shark diving expedition.

In San Francisco the chilly summer fog is being replaced by the warm sunshine of the autumn season.  And seemingly with the return of the sun, come a group of wayward San Francisco natives from their annual vacation in the great Pacific.  The Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary is a gathering spot for whales, sea birds, seals, sea lions, and other marine life. 

Located just 27 miles off the coast, The Farallon Islands are also the wildest part of the City of San Francisco. The most famous residents of this area are the magnificent great white sharks. And each fall they return from their wanderings to these islands so rich with life.

On Saturday, September 18th 2010, the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park will debut a new Farallones display within the Altered State: Climate Change in California exhibit.  The new exhibit will feature specimens, audio stations, and a live webcam from the Farallon Islands, providing an intimate look at this wildlife sanctuary beyond the Golden Gate.

So to celebrate the return of the great white sharks and the opening of the new Farallones exhibit at Cal Academy, QUEST presents “The Great White Shark Song: Live at the Farallones!” by Andy Brandy Casagrande IV.

We were fortunate to meet Andy on our last trip out to the islands and he was kind enough to share his song.  Andy is a wildlife cameraman for National Geographic TV and has a lot of experience with great white sharks.  His original music video for this song has gained a certain amount of notoriety as he jumped into the water with his guitar and serenaded a group of inquisitive white sharks off the coast of South Africa.  I forgot to mention, he was not in a shark cage.  As you can see, Andy is a special kind of crazy.

His “Live at the Farallones!” version is a salute to the great white sharks in the green waters around the Farallon Islands, and features underwater shark footage taken (with permit) by white shark expert Scot Anderson and the Tagging Pacific Predators Program.

Over the years QUEST has been fortunate to produce many unique stories on Farallon Islands from land, sea and air.  Our comprehensive coverage includes an educator guide and multiple stories on television, radio, and interactive.

As you can probably tell, we think the Farallones rock!

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

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Happy 15th Birthday, Claude! Image courtesy of Ron DeCloux © California Academy of Sciences.

I have a birthday month in common with Claude, the Albino Alligator at the California Academy of Sciences! On Wednesday morning, September 15, 2010 – Claude celebrated his golden birthday and turned 15 years old. He was serenaded by staff and guests alike signing happy birthday and several children, also with September birthdays, fed Claude cupcakes that aquarium biologists had made. They were not chocolate or vanilla but fish flavored especially to suit Claude’s taste buds.

When born, Claude only weighed 2 ounces. At fifteen, he has tilted the scales at 181 pounds and sprouted to over eight feet. At his last physical earlier this month, biologists counted 76 teeth. He can often be found on his favorite rock in the swamp exhibit which is heated between 78 and 95 degrees. I first saw Claude when he arrived with Bonnie back in 2008. He was taken out of his crate given and vet check and then put back into the crate and hoisted over the railing into his new home. Since then, Bonnie has moved to a farm in Florida. "Because he is albino, he has reduced vision. Claude would go into the water and bump into things, and Bonnie would snap at him…Claude has been more active since Bonnie left," biologist Brian Freiermuth said. "He is better by himself, as he was stressed out with her there. He has interactions with his turtles. He is eating well. He knows his name and responds to whistle commands."

One morning, when I was with the biologists, I saw Claude coming to whistle and station calls. They would use the whistle to show audibly where they were throwing food. The biologists and Claude work very well together during feeding time! Claude has become a favorite amongst staff and guests alike and is become one of the icons of the new Academy.

What is wonderful about this is that he also conveys our mission in a truly unique way. Carol Tang, Director of Public Engagement, noted, “There are no white alligators in the wild because they're too show-offy…They get eaten in the wild. So, you can use that to talk about food chains and adaptation. You can talk about how alligators are green because they live in the swamp where there are plants and trees and they can be camouflaged…You can also use Claude to talk about variation, which is the fuel of evolution. It's one mutation in Claude's DNA that causes this kind of albinism. That shows how sensitive our DNA can be.”

Claude can live up to 80 years in captivity which is a far measure longer than he would have survived in the wild. He is still a young alligator on his golden birthday and he will be a beloved and celebrated icon of the Academy for years to come.

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Artist's rendering of A. afarensis using stone tools. By Viktor Deak, copyright California Academy of Sciences

Originally reported for KQEDnews.org.

The next time you reach for your high-carbon, stainless steel chef’s knife to trim the excess fat off a bone-in Porterhouse steak, you may want to raise a glass to your ancestors who roamed Africa millions of years ago.

A Bay Area researcher and his team made a startling discovery when they unearthed a pair of bones recently in northeastern Ethiopia: the earliest evidence of stone tool use by upright human ancestors 3.4 million years ago – nearly a million years earlier than scientists previously had believed.

“The moment that sort of primitive species, not so primitive anymore, started to use those tools, it started to open up the type of species we are today,” said Zeresenay Alemseged, chair of the anthropology department at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

“That primitive stone tool they made 3.4 million years ago is the precursor for all the technologies that we have today.”

Alemseged’s research appears in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature.

Zeresenay Alemseged in his office at the California Academy of Sciences. Photo by Sheraz Sadiq

Meat at the ancient watering hole

The discovery could help rewrite understanding how humans evolved, because stone tool use and meat eating were key steps taken along the evolutionary path leading to the big-brained species we are today.

“Brain tissue is extremely expensive to grow and maintain, so meat provided a dense source of calories, and additional nutrients like fats and proteins that are important for growing big brains”, said Teresa Steele, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Davis.

The species at the center of the research bore only a passing resemblance to today's Homo sapiens. Known as Australopithecus afarensis, the human forebears were long-limbed, about four feet tall, resembling chimpanzees that walked upright but also partially lived in trees. They were thought to have eaten mostly leaves and fruits. But now scientists have a more accurate picture of their diet and behavior.

“This new discovery clearly shows that the picture we had was wrong, because the species was not only using tools, but was using tools to interact with large mammals, to exploit meat from very large mammals and no other non-human species can do that,” said Alemseged.

They weren’t so much hunting their meals as scavenging them, he said, because their legs weren’t built for chasing prey. Alemseged believes they would venture into the open grasslands of East Africa to find dying or recently deceased animals, like antelope, and use their tools to obtain the nutrient-rich meat. Then, they would need to work as a team in a landscape teeming with other hostile, hungry predators.

“When some were using tools to carve the meat off the bone or break the bones to access the marrow, some maybe were watching for hyenas or lions. And that’s why I can confidently say that when we revise the textbooks for the earliest evidence for stone tool use and meat eating, we will have to revise also the picture of the species Australopithecus afarensis on the ancient landscape,” he added.

The behavior suggests a certain level of intelligence and planning, which is impressive considering that “Lucy,” a partial skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis unearthed 36 years ago, had a brain that was roughly a third the size of a human brain, which first started cogitating in modern human form about 200,000 years ago.

Humans and chimps share a common evolutionary ancestor, and chimps also use tools, such as twigs to dig for termites in mounds or rocks to break open nuts. Humans, however, are the only primate species to intentionally make sharp-edged tools to hunt or scavenge prey much larger than themselves.

Fossilized bone fragments from Dikika, Ethiopia that show evidence of stone tool use. Copyright California Academy of Sciences.

Leaving no fossil unturned

Alemseged’s latest discovery grew out of the Dikika Research Project, which he has led since 1999, looking annually for fossils in the Afar region of Ethiopia — a dry land once dotted with forests and grassy savannahs on which the earliest upright human ancestor would have taken its first two-legged steps six million years ago. In early 2009, just six miles from where Lucy was found, this “cradle of mankind” as Alemseged calls it, offered up the tantalizing find announced this week.

“We took everything back to the camp and a group of us was sitting in the camp and just everyday going through each bone. And then our paleontologist noticed something on the foot bone of an antelope, and when we looked at it, there were cut marks evidently,” Alemseged said.

Although that bone didn’t turn out to have the cut marks that were indicative of stone tool use, two bone fragments did – one from the rib bone of a cow-like animal and one from the leg of a goat-sized antelope. But the team had to be sure, because the marks could have been caused by abrasion over the years or by the teeth of another predator. So Alemseged received permission from the government of Ethiopia to send the bones out of the country to Arizona State University, where they were examined by high-tech forensic tools.

An environmental scanning electron microscope enlarged the cut marks to reveal a pattern consistent with a scraping and pounding motion from a sharp-edged stone tool. Within one of the cut marks on one of the bones was further irresistible proof of early human activity.

“We discovered a rock that has a completely different chemical composition from the bone itself. So that means that it came into the cut mark when someone was using a sharp-edged igneous rock to cut the bone or the meat. Based on chemical analysis we were able to show that that cut mark was made by stone and done before the fossil fossilized,” Alemseged said.

Since massive volcanic eruptions 3.42 and 3.24 million years ago spewed layers of volcanic ash into the basin where the cut-marked bones were found, dating the bones was relatively straightforward. The research team settled on a date of 3.4 million years because the bones were found in a sediment layer close to the layer containing the volcanic ash from 3.42 million years ago.

Under a microscope, one of the bone fragments reveals evidence of a scraping motion. Photo courtesy of Hamdallah Bearat, Arizona State University

Where are the tools?

Alemseged, a 41 year-old, Ethiopian-born paleoanthropologist, had already made a name for himself with his discovery in 2000 of “Selam,” the oldest and most complete remains of an Australopithecus afarensis child who lived more than three million years ago.

As he once more enters the world of this ancient human ancestor, a key mystery remains.

“The most obvious question is, ‘where are the tools?’”, said David Braun, a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town in South Africa who studies fossils bearing marks of early stone tool use. “These early tools will actually represent the dawn of human culture and will likely be difficult to identify”, said Braun.

The oldest found stone tools – made of basalt, quartz and flint – were also discovered in Ethiopia, dating back some two and a half million years ago. If they still exist, it will be a challenge to find stones with sharp, flaked edges that could have been used to butcher meat more than three million years ago, now dispersed and lying hidden for millennia under layers of soil. And while these ancient human ancestors now appear to have been using tools, whether they actually made them is likely to be a subject for debate. “There is currently no evidence that they actively chipped stone to make tools. The earliest tools are most likely sharp-edged stones that were opportunistically used”, said Braun.

When they’re in the field, Alemseged and his team of scientists and graduate students works up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week for a month or more, combing an area not just for large, readily identifiable bones, but also for fragments which require further scrutiny.

“The fact that we made this discovery is because we changed the way we were collecting the fossils, so we need to continue to look for more cut-marked bones and really show that it is a standard thing to do and then find the stone tools that were used to inflict those marks on the bones,” he said.

“We’re trying to address one of the most important questions in humanity: who we are and where do we come from. This individual who carved that stone tool contributed to your genes, my genes, to every person’s genes on this planet.”

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