For every One of Us There Are 200 Million of Them a). Qa BTEC 2 DISC SET Discover a World Teeming : i . with Secrets and Surprises Join David Attenborough on his groundbreaking exploration. Thanks to technical innovations in lighting, optics andcomputerized motion control, the turbulent, super-organized world of invertebrates is finally revealed from the perspective of its extraordinary inhabitants. Available on DVD May 2 EVEN AMERICA SHOP www.bbcamericashop.com |B B) eS © 2006 BBC Video Limited. Photo; Jozsef L. Szentpeteri Ye Ese JEM OLGIDPULQ By Hosted by Da CF NUUCIIE SAR MAY 2006 VOLUME 115 COMMENTARY COVER STORY 136 COOKING THE CLIMATE | WITH COAL | In the U.S., China, and elsewhere coal is booming. But the boom may lead to environmental disaster. | JEFF GOODELL FEATURES 42 DECODING THE TRIBE Carl Schuster’s remarkable quest to trace humanity’s ancient iconography EDMUND CARPENTER 7 \f 48 HOME ABOVE THE RANGE iat Pairs of aplomado falcons are nesting in the Southwest again, showing off their incredible hunting and flying skills. W. GRAINGER HUNT, TOM J. CADE, AND ANGEL B. MONTOYA ON THE COVER: Smokestack and emissions ne from a coal-fired power plant in Ohio. Photograph by Mitch Epstein D-E-PA-RT Mee Nas 56 58 62 63 67 68 72 THE NATURAL MOMENT Camargue Cavalcade Photograph by Steve Bloom UP FRONT Editor’s Notebook CONTRIBUTORS LETTERS SAMPLINGS News from Nature NATURALIST AT LARGE Golden Tomb Fit for a Que John S. LaPolla THIS LAND Virginia Is for Hikers Robert H. Mohlenbrock BOOKSHELF Laurence A. Marschall nature.net Gas Trap Robert Anderson OUT THERE Sizing Up Pluto Charles Liu THE SKY IN MAY Joe Rao AT THE MUSEUM ENDPAPER My Kingdom for a Crown Roland W. Kays en. “ 63 PICTURE CREDITS: Page 60 — Visit our Web site at www.naturalhistorymag.com Dr. Sylvia Earle’s office covers two thirds of the Earth’s surface. Her job is a little more difficult to define. Marine biologist. Oceanographer. Botanist. Aquanaut. And explorer. She’s spent more than 6,000 hours underwater, discovering things we never knew existed. At 1,250 feet, she set the world record for the deepest untethered, solo ocean dive. To Dr. Earle, it was just one more thing in the endless pursuit of science. We ROLEX ERPETUAL AND SEA- DWELLER ARE TRADEMARKS. STE PETUAL SEA- Fie NW.ROLEX.COM 7 FOR AN OFFICIAL ROLEX JEWELER CALL |- 800- “* 6539) ROLEX WeOYSTER P NEW YORK 6 THE NATURAL MOMENT ~ See preceding two pages hotographer Steve Bloom stood waist-deep in marsh water of the Camargue, swatting mosquitoes while he waited for a riderless caval- ry to storm his camera. And, action! A local farmer herded a group of free-roaming horses toward Bloom. A few splashes later, the horses— icons of the Camargue—whooshed past, leaving Bloom to shake the water out of his trusty camera, now in need of repair. Bloom and other naturalists have long been enchanted with the breed of horses living in the Camargue, the triangular delta in southern France where the Rhone River meets the Mediterranean Sea. The horses— which, at a height of only thirteen or fourteen hands, actually qualify as ponies—have lived there for at least 2,500 years. They share the marsh- lands with millions of migratory birds, not to mention a growing population of human beings. Easily observed, yet generally un- constrained, Camargue horses have been a boon to scientists studying their behavior and environment for several decades. Unfortunately, though, their most recent scientific contribution has been to serve as an unwitting test bed for the spread of West Nile virus. First infected in the early 1960s, the Camargue popula- tion suffered a second outbreak in 2000, when twenty-one horses died. The episode sparked a contro- versy about insect control—and hu- man intervention. Now the coastal sanctuary may be facing another invasion: the H5N1 avian flu virus. Camargue watchers like Steve Bloom will keep monitor- ing the wildlife, and weighing the need to intervene. © —Erin Espelie NATURAL HISTORY May 2006 UP FRONT ieee Playing with Fire nyone paying attention to the news knows that many of the world’s flashpoints—the war in Iraq, the politics of the Mid- dle East, terrorism and its consequences—have grown large- ly out of just one issue: energy. Of course, every major effort to har- ness energy since the control of fire has come with serious drawbacks. But fossil fuels now pose a global problem that probably transcends even war, politics, and terrorism: the threat of global warming. When fossil fuels burn, they release carbon dioxide (CO), a gas that contributes to the atmospheric greenhouse effect of trapping solar heat at the Earth’s surface. And of all fossil fuels, by far the big- gest troublemaker for the climate is coal. As Jeff Goodell points out (“Cooking the Climate with Coal,’ page 36), for every kilowatt-hour of usable energy from coal, 2.1 pounds of CO, are pumped into the atmosphere. (The same energy from oil releases 1.4 pounds of CO,; from natural gas, 0.8 pound.) Yet new coal-fired power plants ex- pected to be built in the next twenty-five years would add more than 1,350 gigawatts to the present generating capacity. If those plants are built, Goodell notes, they will produce more CO, in their sixty-year operating lives than all the coal burned in the past 250 years. B ut so what? If sea levels rise, can’t we simply move back from the shore? If the heat becomes uncomfortable, can’t we just shift farther from the equator? Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, reviewed in this issue by Laurence A. Marschall (‘““Bookshelf;’ page 58), describes why some of the changes may not be so easy to swallow. Warmer temperatures are expected to drive more intense storms. Displacement of ecosystems may stir up deadly strains of bacteria or viruses. Warmer temperatures may also trigger effects that could snowball unpredictably. The Greenland ice cap—a big snowball if there ever was one—1s slipping toward the sea, and the slippage is accelerating, perhaps because meltwater is lubricating the base of the ice. Organic matter in Arctic permafrost is only partly decayed; as it thaws, decay recommences and more carbon enters the atmosphere, thawing the permafrost even more. In “Gas Trap” (page 62) Robert Anderson describes what may be the scariest snowball scenario of all: Methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times more potent than carbon dioxide, is also locked up in the permafrost. So melting permafrost could also release methane into the atmosphere, further accelerating the warming trend. There is some middling-good news, though. As Stephan Reebs reports (“Sink in the Sea,” page 12), scientists have recently discov- ered two “sinks” for carbon whose importance had been underesti- mated: krill convey organic matter to the seafloor, and mangroves, when they decay, inject dissolved organic matter into the oceans. Unfortunately, mangrove forests are declining worldwide. Neil deGrasse Tyson is taking a break from his “Universe” col- umn this month. He'll be back next month. —PETER BROWN The fastest way to learn# a language. Guaranteed. * Finally, a different approach that has millions of people talking. Using the award-winning Dynamic Immersion™ method, our interactive software teaches without translation, memorization or grammar drills. 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Nowadays he attempts, in photographs such as his thrilling image of galloping horses in the Camargue (“The Nat- ural Moment,” page 4), to capture animals’ spirits. Two new books of his photographs will be published this year, Spirit of the Wild (Thames & Hudson) and Elephant! (Thames & Hudson). More of his photos can be viewed on his Web site (www.stevebloom.com). JEFF GOODELL (“Cooking the Climate with Coal,” page 36) be- came interested in the coal industry in the spring of 2001, when he began research on the topic for an article for The New York Times Magazine. He 1s a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, and the author of numerous books including The New York Times bestseller, Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith (Hyperion, 2002), based on the experiences of nine Que- creek miners who were trapped underground, and Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family (Villard, 2000). In June, Houghton Mifflin will publish his latest book, Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future, from which his article is adapted. As anthropologist EDMUND CARPENTER (“Decoding the Tribe,” page 42) explains, the independent scholar Carl Schuster (1904-1969) devoted his life to documenting ancient and tribal graphic designs. No less remarkable than Schuster’s 1s Carpen- ter’s career, which has ranged from collaborations with the mass- media guru Marshall McLuhan, to ethnographic fieldwork in the Arctic and New Guinea, to archaeological investigations 1n Siberia. Carpenter is an officer of the Rock Foundation in New York, which supports anthropological publications and films. His books include Oh, What a Blow That Phantom Gave Me! (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972) and, with Schuster, Patterns That Connect: Social Symbolism in Ancient & Tribal Art (Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1996). ty x Y W. GRAINGER HUNT (“Home i above the Range,” page 48) and his co-workers at the Chi- huahuan Desert Research Insti- tute near Fort Davis, Texas, be- gan to work on aplomado re- covery in the late 1970s, when they brought the first pairs of aplomados to the United States from Mexico for captive breeding. He joined the Peregrine Fund in 2001, as senior scientist for the California condor and aplomado falcon restoration projects. TOM J. CADE is professor emeritus of or- nithology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and founding chairman of the Peregrine Fund. He has had a lifelong interest in birds of prey, particu- larly falcons, and is the author of The Falcons of the World (Cornell University Press, 1982). ANGEL B. MONTOYA: interest in aplomados began in 1991, while he was a student intern at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge in Rio Hondo, Texas. There he learned that the last known nesting of the aplomado in the U.S. was near his hometown of Deming, New Mexico, and he has mon- itored and studied aplomados in the grasslands of Chihuahua, Mexico ever since. He joined the Peregrine Fund as a research scientist in 1999. Cade Montoya NATURAL HISTORY May 2006 PETER BROWN Editor-in-Chief Mary Beth Aberlin Steven R. Black Executive Editor Art Director (on leave) Board of Editors Erin Espelie, Rebecca Kessler, Mary Knight, Vittorio Maestro Jennifer Evans Assistant Editor Geoffrey Wowk Assistant Art Director Hannah Black Picture Editor Graciela Flores Editor-at-Large Samantha Harvey, Intern Contributing Editors Robert Anderson, Avis Lang, Charles Liu, Laurence A. Marschall, Richard Milner, Robert H. Mohlenbrock, Joe Rao, Stéphan Reebs, Adam Summers, Neil deGrasse Tyson CHARLES E. HARRIS Publisher Edgar L. Harrison Advertising Director Gale Page Consumer Marketing Director Maria Volpe Promotion Director Sonia W. 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HARRIS President, Chief Executive Officer CHARLES LALANNE Chief Financial Officer Juby BULLER General Manager CECILE WASHINGTON General Manager CHARLES RODIN Publishing Advisor To contact us regarding your subscription, to order a new subscription, or to change your address, please visit our Web site www.naturalhistorymag.com or write to us at Natural History P.O. Box 5000, Harlan, [A 51593-0257. Natural History (ISSN 0028-0712) is published monthly, except for combined issues in July/August and December/January, by Natural History Magazine, Inc., in affiliation with the American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, NY 10024. E-mail: nhmag@natural historymag.com. Natural History Magazine, Inc., is solely responsible for edito- rial content and publishing practices. Subscriptions: $30.00 a year; for Canada and all other countries: $40.00 a year, Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. 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SUBSCRIBE TODAY ¢ ENJOY THESE YEARLY BENEFITS: b A free (one-time only) general admission pass to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City > A discount on a ticket to the Museum’s spectacular IMAX* Theater during your visit > Discounts on unique items in Museum gift shops, including books, crafts, jewelry and collectibles THREE EASY WAYS TO ORDER: CALL TOLL-FREE: 1-800-234-5252, (OUTSIDE THE U.S.: 1-515-247-7631) ONLINE: www.naturalhistorymag.com FAX: 1-712-733-1277 Nittory 10 PETERS CRS OTS Warning Scents? Uldis Roze [“Smart Weapons,” 3/06] and his colleagues identified R- delta-decalactone as the chemical behind the scent of an angry porcupine. But how can they be sure that the other components of the scent were unimpor- tant? Perhaps nonhuman animals smell things that to a person are odorless. Or, perhaps other parts of the porcupine odor register more strongly in nonhu- man animals. Colin MacKenzie Mission Hills, California ULpIs ROZE REPLIES: Colin MacKenzie’s point 1s well taken. Of the thousand or so olfactory receptor (OR) genes in the mammalian genome, roughly 60 percent are turned off (encoded as pseudogenes) in humans. That percentage 1s far higher than the corresponding per- centage in other mammals that have been tested. But since the OR genes for R- delta-decalactone have not been turned off in humans, they must be important for survival, and they probably have not been turned off in other mammals either. Hence for other mammals, the olfactory portrait of a porcupine might include ad- ditional notes, but it is prob- ably not missing a note of R-delta-decalactone. The porcupine has cho- sen well in basing its warn- ing system on that chemical. Besides being universally recognized by potential mammal predators, R-delta- decalactone 1s volatile, un- usual, and present 1n high enough concentrations to NATURAL HISTORY May 2006 pack the desired punch. No other component of the warning mixture can claim all those features. Ancestral Disputes Russell L. Ciochon and Gregg F Gunnell [“Our Anthropoid Roots,” 03/06} claim that recently discov- ered fossils contradict the longstanding view that am- phipithecid primates lie near the base of the anthropoid lineage. Actually, improved knowledge of amphipithe- cid anatomy strengthens their anthropoid status. In contrast to adapoids and other primitive pri- mates, anthropoids had a reduced reliance on the sense of smell. As a result, the snouts and jaws of early anthropoids were compact- ed, yielding a more abbre- viated, monkeylike face. Amphipithecid jaws reflect that distinctive evolutionary change: their lower premo- lars are reduced and crowd- ed in a way that never oc- curs in adapoids. No com- petent paleontologist would confuse amphipithecid jaws with those of adapoids. Amphipithecids and other fossil primates show that the roots of our extended family tree germinated in Asia mil- lions of years earlier than was previously thought. Chris Beard Carnegie Museum of Natural History Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania On page 56, Russell Cio- chon and Gregg Gunnell present a graphic summary of traits that distinguish prosimians and anthro- poids. But they omit the ectotympanic, an “ear bone” that occurs in two forms 1n primates. Anthro- poids have a tubular form, whereas prosimians (except tarsiers) have a ring form. But New World and Aegyptopithecus monkeys, specimens of which were discovered in the Fayum desert in Egypt, have ring- shaped ectotympanics. Does that imply the Fayum anthropoids are not the ancestors of modern an- thropoids? If so, from which primate fossils did modern anthropoids arise? The tubular form of the ectotympanic seems to first appear in early Miocene dryopithecines, the earliest species to resemble modern apes. Are paleontologists looking at a set (or sets) of parallel evolutionary se- quences between “ring an- thropoids” and “tubular anthropoids”’? Lyle Hubbard Dallas, Oregon Russell Ciochon and Gregg Gunnell propose a primate family tree (on page 57) that is more conjectural than it needs to be, given current evidence. Their proposed link among lemurs, galagos, adapoids, amphipithecids, and omomyids is not supported by any shared, advanced characteristics, whereas links among omomyids, tarsiers, and anthropoids are. The authors also confuse time and morphology. Evolution is about docu- menting the morphological changes across time from primitive to more advanced forms. A species’ phyloge- netic position 1s decided by morphology, not time. If new 10-million-year-old specimens of African Homo erectus were found this week, the evolutionary po- sition of Homo erectus rela- tive to modern humans would remain the same, because the morphology of Homo erectus would not change. Similarly, the mor- phology of Eosimias marks it as a primitive member of the anthropoid lineage; its age 1s immaterial. Daniel L. Gebo Northern Illinois University DeKalb, Illinois RUSSELL L. ClIOCHON AND GREGG F GUNNELL REPLY: Chris Beard seems to have nussed the point of our ar- ticle—that until skeletal ev- idence of amphipithecids was discovered, their dental remains could be interpret- ed in a variety of ways. Now, however, skeletal ele- ments are known that clearly indicate they were adapoids. Dental features shared by amphipithecids and anthropoids might well be convergences, a point we have discussed in detail elsewhere. Mr. Beard ap- parently cannot envision the possibility that a short- faced adapoid existed, but we can. We predict that when additional skeletal re- mains of the amphipithe- cids are uncovered, they will show the same primi- tive adapoid features. The ectotympanic (the bone the ear drum is stretched across) takes a va- riety of shapes in primates, including, as Lyle Hubbard notes, a tubular and a ring form. The distributions of shapes suggest that a ring fused into the outer wall of ~ ie the middle-ear covering, like the one in New World monkeys, is primitive for anthropoids. The same configuration occurs in ad- vanced Fayum anthropoids such as Aegyptopithecus, making them good candi- dates for being identified as the ancestors of all later- occurring and more de- rived anthropoids. Daniel L. Gebo is more willing to accept the dubi- ous evidence he and his colleagues have presented linking omomyids, tarsiers, eosimiids, and anthropoids than we are. Our figure de- picts what is actually known. As for confusing time and morphology, the only thing that is confused is Mr. Gebo’s interpretation of our figure. His exagger- ated example of a 10-mil- lion-year-old Homo erectus reflects the flaw in his argu- ment—at some point logic must override parsimony. Signs of Life Neil deGrasse Tyson’s arti- cle, “Exoplanet Earth” [2/06], reminded me of a few questions I have had for decades: What would atom- ic explosions in the atmos- phere look like to an ob- server far from Earth? Could they be seen from nearby stars? If so, wouldn't a nu- clear explosion on a small, rocky, water-covered planet be an unnatural event in the universe and, thus, clearly a signal of the presence of a technological civilization? John Marshall Beaverton, Oregon NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON REPLIES: Remarkably, an asteroid slamming into our atmosphere would be largely indistinguishable from the air blast of a large nuclear bomb. Each repre- sents an enormous and sin- gular deposit of energy. So, to an eavesdropping alien, the simplest explanation for mushroom clouds on a small, rocky planet would surely be asteroid im- pacts—not the preposter- ous idea that the planet had evolved creatures stu- pid enough to harness nu- clear power for mutual ex- termination. The famous 1908 Siberian air blast (the “Tunguska event’’) was caused by the explosion of an asteroid the size of a Expedition to the Chilean Fiords & Cape Horn Sail through some of the world’s narrowest and most scenic fjords. Only a small vessel like the Clipper Adventurer can sail the “inside passage” — the English Narrows —of Chile's fjords; larger ships must remain mostly outside in the open Pacific. November 8~12, 2006 Aboard the 122-Pas peer _ Clipper P : a Call (600) 964-0500 or Contact Your Travel Consultant “A, \ Tino > & CLIPPER ~~. The Beauty of Stall Ship Adventure Travels _ www.clippercruise.com/nhe If you eat, drink or breathe, you're 4 fitteen-story building when it hit Earth’s atmos- phere. In an instant, it released the energy equiv- alent of sixty atomic bombs of the kind dropped on Hiroshima. As for smaller asteroids, about the size of houses, the U.S. Strategic Com- mand reports several dozen of them burst in the air per year, each re- leasing the energy ofa single A-bomb. Natural History welcomes cor- respondence from readers. Letters should be sent via e-mail to nhmag@naturalhistorymag .com or by fax to 646-356- 6511. All letters should include a daytime telephone number, and all letters may be edited for length and clarity. Why? Because our lawyers are working to protec the air, land, water, and wildlife from big polluter Help us win at earthjustice.org or |-800-584-6 C) EARTHJUSTICE Because the earth needs a good lawyer . Kn S. 460 SAMPLINGS ER ES ca Sink in the Sea When fossil fuels burn, carbon compounds, once sequestered deep in the ground, turn into carbon dioxide and ascend into the at- mosphere. There, they contribute to global warming. Scientists want to know more about any natural systems—called “carbon sinks”—that reverse the process and pull carbon out of circulation. Two recent studies highlight one of Earth's most important car- bon sinks: the entrapment of organic materi- al deep in the oceans. Krill are small invertebrates that feed nightly in the oceans’ rich surface waters, then descend to deep water. Investi- gators assumed that the krill descend slowly once every twenty-four hours and are thus still close to the surface when they release their waste (and the carbon it includes). Surface currents would then keep the carbon in circulation. Now, however, oceanographers Geraint A. Tarling of the Nat- ural Environment Research Council in Cam- bridge, England, and Magnus L. Johnson of the University of Hull in Scarborough, Eng- land, have observed that Antarctic krill de- scend rapidly whenever they are full, perhaps as many as three times a night. Thus krill are probably very deep (well below 130 feet) when they release their waste, which eventu- ally settles to the bottom. If so, the amount of Two carbon sinks: mangroves in Australia (above); Antarctic krill (photograph below) carbon trapped in the Southern Ocean could be 8 percent greater than previously thought. Some of the oceans’ carbon comes from land. Mangroves grow in tidal flats and, like all plants, build their tissue from carbon dioxide they extract from air. When mangrove debris rots, it leaches dissolved or- ganic matter into the sea. Thorsten Dittmar, an oceanog- rapher at Florida State Univer- sity in Tallahassee, and three colleagues estimate that though mangroves cover less than 0.1 percent of the Earth's land, they contribute more than 10 percent of all the or- ganic carbon transferred from land to sea. They reached their conclusion by analyzing carbon isotopes to determine the origin of dissolved organic matter in water off the mangrove-rich coast of Brazil. Alas, man- groves are declining worldwide; they're trap- ping less carbon in the oceans just when we need them to trap more. (Current Biology 16:R83-4, 2006; Global Biogeochemical Cy- cles 20:GB1012, 2006) |§_ —Stéphan Reebs Follow My Eyes Following someone else's gaze is irresistible, isn't it? And people aren't the only ones who do it. Many monkey species are known to follow other monkeys’ glances. It’s no mystery why this behavior evolved; after all, a fellow monkey's gaze could disclose im- Rhesus macaques: leading by looking ATURAL HISTORY May 2006 portant information—say, the location of a tasty fruit or a lurking rival. But each group has many sets of watchful eyes, and deciding whose eyes to follow isn’t always easy. The key is social status, accord- ing to Stephen V. Shepherd and Michael L. Platt, neurobiologists at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and a colleague. The team tested gaze-following behavior in rhesus macaques and observed that low- status members of the group almost immedi- ately followed the gaze of any other monkey. High-status macaques, however, followed only the gazes of other high-ranking individ- uals, and took longer to do it. The difference in response times suggests that gaze-following is both reflexive and volun- tary. Low-status monkeys behave reflexively because they face possible threats from other members of the group as well as predators. They need to monitor every Ear to the Ground When elephants bellow warnings of danger, their low-frequency calls resound in the air and rumble through the ground. Of course, no one has ever doubted that elephants hear and respond to the airborne sounds— their ears are not exactly hidden. But whether they could detect underground vi- brations has, until now, been unclear. A team led by Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell, a biologist at Stanford University, recently demonstrated that African elephants not only perceive each other's seismic warn- ings, but respond to them, too. O'Connell-Rodwell’s team recorded seis- mic components of vocal alarms. They played the alarms back to elephants at a popular watering hole in Namibia through transmitters buried three feet underground and a hundred feet away. The elephants re- sponded by grouping more closely together with their bodies perpendicular to the alarm source (perhaps to better perceive the warn- ing), and by leaving the watering hole sooner than unperturbed elephants. Acoustic alarms prompted more dramatic responses than underfoot rumbles alone did, suggesting that the elephants interpreted the seismic alarms as coming from too far away to signal any imminent danger. How elephants detect seismic signals is unknown; perhaps their trunks, pressed to the ground, or feet pick up the rumbles. Elephants thus join certain insects, amphib- ians, reptiles, and small mammals in taking advantage of underground communica- tions. (Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 59:842-50, 2006) —Samantha Harvey nearby individual. But high-status monkeys are relatively safe from most other members of their group; within the group, only their social peers present a big threat. That’s why they take a little time to make sure they know the social status of an individual before choosing to follow its eyes. (Current Biology 16:R119-20, 2006) —Nick W. Atkinson ae. % me Typhoid Athena The Plague of Athens broke out in 430 B.c. Four years later it had killed about a third of the Athenian population, contributing to the great city-state’s downfall. The historian Thucydides, who himself suffered and re- covered from the plague, recorded the epi- demic’s grim symptoms, which included fever, rash, and diarrhea. Until now, his ac- count provided the only evidence bearing on one of medicine’s most controversial enigmas: which disease, exactly, was the plague, and what pathogen caused it? Many of the usual nefarious suspects have been brought into the lineup—the causative agents of anthrax, bubonic plague, smallpox, and tuberculosis, among Dogs Gone Mild Of all domestic animals, dogs have been with people the longest—archaeology says 14,000 years, though DNA hints at 40,000 years. Artificial selection has led to a multi- tude of breeds with physical and behavioral characteristics suited to specific jobs. Mus- cular, aggressive, fearless terriers, for in- stance, were bred to catch vermin and to fight; robust, sociable sporting dogs were bred to help people re- trieve shot game. But times have changed. Kenth Svartberg, a zoologist at Stockholm University, has shown that modern dogs serve functions rather different from their tra- ditional ones, and their personalities are chang- ing accordingly. In Sweden, most dogs are now bred for shows or as family pets, no matter what their breed's original pur- pose. Only a few breeds remain popular in working trials, let alone active on the job. Svartberg rated more than 13,000 Swedish dogs, of thirty-one breeds, for aggressive- ness, curiosity, playfulness, and sociability. A dog's personality, he found, correlated bet- ter with its breed's current use as show dogs or family pets than with its traditional use. In addition, breeds now popular in dog shows, such as pinschers or dalmatians, seem to be losing their character: they scored low on all Selected, but for what? others. Now, Manolis J. Papa- grigorakis, a research dentist at the University of Athens, and three colleagues think they can issue an indictment in the cen- turies-old medical case. The investigators studied DNA from dental pulp (the soft tissue inside teeth) of presumed plague victims unearthed from a mass grave in the ancient Ker- ameikos cemetery of Athens. They tried to match genetic sequences to those of several epidemic-causing microorgan- isms. The one they found in the victims’ teeth was the bacterium Salmonella Typhi, the germ that causes typhoid fever. In ancient times, typhoid was untreatable; it is transmitted via contaminated food or water. That makes sense, the investigators note. At the time of the plague, Athens, in the throes of the Peloponnesian War with Sparta, was besieged and overcrowded. The overcrowding, together with unsanitary water supplies, might have caused the dis- ease to spread .. . like the plague. (Interna- tional Journal of Infectious Diseases, in press, 2006) —Graciela Flores four of Svartberg’s scales. In comparison, working breeds, such as border collies, are more aggressive and playful, whereas popu- lar family pet breeds, such as golden retriev- ers, are more playful and sociable. Artificial selection of dogs seems to be ongoing, though, intriguingly, it is pushing the person- alities of show dogs and pets in opposite di- rections. (Applied Animal Behaviour Science 96:293-313, 2006) —S.R. =— bette Sa Hippocrates tends the sick and dying in Athens. Goat-Getters If Neanderthals still walked the earth, they could be excused for developing an inferiority complex. Pop culture, as well as serious anthropology, has saddled them with all kinds of second-rate traits, from clumsiness to sheer stupidity. But Nean- derthals are beginning to find more friends among anthropologists. One study has already debunked the idea that Nean- derthals were clumsy tool-handlers [see “Bones of Contention,” July/August 2003]. Now a new study by Daniel S. Adler of the University of Connecticut in Storrs and his colleagues suggests that Neanderthals’ hunting skills may have been just as good as those of the Homo sapiens that followed. Adler and his team analyzed animal bones from a rock shelter in the Repub- lic of Georgia that housed Nean- derthals and then modern humans for some 30,000 years. The study shows that the two societies were equally suc- cessful at hunting prime adult Cau- casian tur, a seasonally abundant spe- cies of mountain goat. But Neanderthals’ reputations are not completely redeemed. Evidence at the Georgian site suggests both groups ob- tained raw materials such as obsidian from as far as sixty miles away. Modern humans, however, made more frequent forays and had larger territories. Adler's group believes modern humans thus de- veloped larger social networks than Nean- derthals did, perhaps because their com- munications were better. This social advantage enabled them to outcompete their now-extinct cousins. (Current An- thropology 47:89-118, 2006) —S.R. May 2006 NATURAL HISTORY 13 14 SAMPLINGS Green Repellent Frogs’ skins are veritable laboratories for synthesizing biologically active com- pounds, including antibiotics, glues, hallu- cinogens, lubricants, painkillers, and a stunning array of poisons. Now, yet anoth- er active—and potentially useful—compound has been identified in the frog’s chemistry set: an insect repellent. Health concerns have prompted a push to replace widely used synthetic insect re- pellents, such as diethyl-m-toluamide (DEET), which is toxic at high doses. To bi- ologists Craig R. Williams of James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, and Michael J. Tyler of the University of Adelaide and their colleagues, frogs—with their remark- able chemical repertoires and suscepti- Hot Rocks As our planet warms, rising air and ocean temperatures make frequent headlines. Of course, the land is warming, too—yet remarkably, until recently, no one had quantified just how much the continental landmasses have warmed. Now Shaopeng Huang, a geologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has made the first analysis of the annual change in the heat content of all the Earth’s continental land masses except Antarctica. Huang made his estimates from global meteorological records, as well as from the thermal properties of the uppermost layers of the Earth’s crust. Between 1851 and 2004, he discovered, a total of 11.7 zettajoules (10°' joules) of thermal energy has been collectively trapped by Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. That amount is equal to the world’s total energy production from 1970 until 2003, and is enough to raise the temperature of the top hundred feet of the world’s landmasses by two degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degree Celsius). Even more disturbing, 10 percent of that heat—1.34 zettajoules—was absorbed in the most recent 2.6 percent of the time interval: the four years from 2001 until 2004. The effects of the warming land on biological, chemical, and physical processes are still unknown—but, says Huang, they are likely to be profound. (Geophysical Research Letters 33:L04707, 2006 —G.F. ATURAL HISTORY May 2006 bility to insect bites— seemed a promising source of anti-insect compounds. The team collected skin secretions from five species of Australian frog. They swabbed the tails of mice with secre- tions from one species, the Australian green tree frog (Litoria caerulea), and confined the mice in chambers with mosquitoes. The mice, they found, remained bite-free for about fifty minutes. By comparison, un- treated mice had only twelve minutes of peace before the mosquitoes attacked; DEET-swabbed mice lasted two hours. The e Long Dig Unless you're a Scrabble player, you may never have heard of ganats. They are gently inclined underground channels that bear wa- ter from an upslope aquifer to a village in the valley below. The first qanats were built in Iran as early as 3,000 years ago; they also occur in arid parts of China, the Arabian Peninsula, and Mediterranean lands. To avoid flooding, qanat construction proceeded upslope from the exit to a well at the source, which could be as far as fifty miles away. The builders dug a series of vertical shafts about 200 feet apart, and linked the shafts’ bottoms to form the un- derground channel [see illustration at bot- Qanat-shaft openings recede across the Iranian countryside (above); a schematic diagram of a qanat is shown at right. Australian green tree frog repels the mozzies. investigators also discovered that the se- cretions of two other frog species exude a mosquito-repellent odor. Williams sus- pects that terpenes, insect-repellent com- pounds that the Australian green tree frog is known to accumulate from its food, may help keep the bugs away. (Biology Letters, in press, 2006) —Sion E. Rogers tom right]. But how did the ancient qanat diggers, who had only imprecise surveying instruments, manage to accurately aim their digging and keep the tunnels’ slopes even over great distances? Redundant measurements were the key to success, says Stathis C. Stiros, a civil engi- neer at Patras University in Greece. Stiros ar- gues that the dig planners measured the ground repeatedly, with various instruments at numerous times of day and throughout the year (light refraction, for instance, varies with outside temperature, and presents a common source of surveying error). The process randomized the engineers’ inevitable errors, which then can- celled one another out. The dig plan- ners paid for their precision with time. A Roman-era ganat in Algeria took fifteen years to build, but ten of them were devoted to planning alone. (Journal of Archaeological Sci- ence, in press, 2006) —S.R. THE STATE OF TEXAS | Inspiration A loss for words..................-. eo Explore a side of Texas that overlooks the rest. Explore majestic landscapes that never end. Explore the thought of a wider lens camera. Explore a place like no other. For | your free Texas State Travel Guide, Accommodations Guide and Texas | lighway Map, visit TravelTex.com or call 1-800-8888-TEX (ext. 3862). Ni like a whole other country. WH WAL (OW », Travel Tex.com/l'-6 , Travel Tex.com/C-9 », Travel Tex.com/B-7 ». Travel Tex.com/H-2 16 NATURALIST AT LARGE Golden Tomb Fit for a Queen Ancient ants preserved in amber show that the insects have farmed mealybug “cattle” for at least 15 million years. By John S. LaPolla et’s travel far back in time to a clear, sunny morning between 15 and 20 million years ago in a tropical Caribbean forest. A gentle rain the night before has softened and moistened the ground. Out through the warm, loose earth a small worker ant pokes her head and, for the first time in her life, gazes on the sunlit world. She dislikes the light and would nor- mally shun it, but today she puts up with it in order to clear a small open- ing. Several of her sisters are emerging nearby, also digging small holes that link their underground nest to the outside world. When their work is complete, the workers scurry to the safety of their dark home. Fora few minutes, all is still. Then, dozens of virgin winged queens and males crawl out of the same holes. Stretching their wings, the re- productives—as queens and male ants are collectively called—make their way up the stems of plants and the sides of small rocks to reach the highest points they can. From there, they take flight. Such an event actually took place during the Miocene period, on what today is the Caribbean island of His- paniola. Once the ants mated, the luckiest few among the queens—the ones not killed 1n accidents or through predation—started new colonies. As for the males, their goal in life was complete, and they soon died. Nuptial flights continue to this day among ants. In North America they of- ten take place from spring through fall, an event that many anxious homeown- ers mistake for an invasion of house- NATURAL HISTORY May 2006 Ancient amber from the Dominican Republic, between 15 and 20 million years old, preserves the fossil of an ant queen (Acropyga glaesaria) on her nuptial flight. In her mandibles the ant clutches a small mealybug (Electromyrmoccus reginae), whose progeny would have produced food for the new ant colony the queen might have founded. Instead, both insects became stuck in tree resin and then entombed as the resin turned to amber. The ant’s behavior— dubbed trophophoresy (“carrying food”)—still occurs in modern species of Acropyga. The image is magnified 45x. ravaging termites. But there was some- thing special about the flights millions of years ago, something shared by only a few groups of ants today. When the queens took off, each one held a small, white mealybug in her mandibles, a rare ant behavior I have termed trophopho- resy (meaning loosely, “carrying food”). The mealybugs held by the queens be- came the ancestors of herds of mealy- bugs (the ants’ “cows”’) that would be- come “corralled” in each new ant colony, providing the ants with food. But not all the ancient queens reached their new homes. Some repro- ductives met their demise when they ventured too close to a species of algar- robo tree—Hymenaea protera—and be- came trapped in its sticky resin. How- ever unfortunate the entrapment proved for the queens and the mealy- bugs they carried, it turned out to be good news for modern biologists. In the millions of intervening years, the resin turned into amber, and the ants en- tombed in the amber became fossils. Time seemed to have stopped around them, until one day their remains were discovered in a Dominican amber mine. As it happens, a few years ago I ex- amined a fossil of one ant queen and her mealybug in a piece of amber and “oood night” never experienced before. TEMPUR' Material Una SE pressure-relieving material—a remarkable new viscoelastic sleep surface that reacts to you— using your own body’s weight and temperature. It automati- cally adjusts to your exact shape—surrounding you in extra- ordinary comfort...every time you lie down...in any position. Unlike the thick padding and steel springs of most mattress- es—that can actually cause painful pressure points—our bed’s billions of memory cells absorb and redistribute your weight. Contouring precisely to your every curve... your muscles relax... you're perfectly supported... you’re snuggled into a customized cradle of deep sleep with less disturbance... and you wake totally refreshed in the morning...every morning! 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Call NOW for your FREE DEMO KIT! 800-371-9478 Call toll-free or send a fax 866-795-9367 Others Agree: Ease-of-Use Commendation By & ARTHRITIS @ ® FOUNDATION" www.arthritis.org by Michael D. Coe $29.95 hardcover / 224 pages / 41 illus. IAN HODDER | THE LEOPARD’S TALE Revealing the Mysteries of Catalhéyik by lan Hodder $34.95 hardcover / 256 pages / 150 illus. by Philip Matyszak $31.95 hardcover / 296 pages / 80 illus. , Thames & Hudson Available wherever books are sold thamesandhudsonusa.com quickly recognized that the queen was a species new to science. But the spec- imen as a whole is immensely impor- tant as well. It demonstrates that in- vestigators seeking to understand the evolution of certain behaviors—in this case, trophophoresy in ants—have on- ly to look closely at the life-forms en- cased in amber for a golden window on a former world. he H. protera tree, a long-extinct, evergreen member of the legume family, was essential to the process of fossiliza- tion. The tree exuded copious quantities of resin to protect its frag- ile inner layers when they were exposed to damage, perhaps after a violent windstorm had ripped off a branch or wood-boring beetles had attacked its trunk. Soon) “atter (the pant queens were trapped, the resin began to hard- en and draw moisture out of the ant carcasses areas for Dominican amber: La Cor- dillera Septentrional in the north, and Byaguana and Sabana in the east. The mines, according to George Poinar Jr. and Roberta Poinar, in their book The Amber Forest, are “small, tortuous tun- nels carved into the sides of the moun- tains, or sometimes pits sunk deep in- to the ground” [see photograph below]. Miners usually have to crawl through the tunnels and chip away at rock with hammers and chisels, looking for am- ber. The work is hard and dangerous, and thus helped prevent them from decompos- ing. When the trees died and disappeared, the ants and mealybugs Amber mines in the Dominican Republic are the second largest source of amber in the world, but passages are low and working conditions are often hard and dangerous. Wooden supports for the walls and ceilings often fail to prevent the mines from collapsing. remained entombed in chunks of resin that were buried at the site. As millions of years passed, the resin continued to harden, becoming first copal and, finally, amber. There is some debate about the precise differ- ence between copal and amber, but most experts agree that amber must be roughly the hardness of gypsum or cal- cite (between two and three Mohs) and that its surface should not become sticky when exposed to an organic sol- vent such as acetone. Deposits of amber fossils have been found in only a handful of places around the globe. After the Baltic region, the Dominican Republic—half of the is- land of Hispaniola—is the second largest producer of amber in the world. There are three main mining 18 | NATURAL HISTORY May 2006 and the small mines can collapse with- out warning. Most amber carries no traces of life. But fortunately for paleobiologists, many creatures did meet a sticky end. Flowers, leaves, seeds, insects, spiders, scorpions, and even small vertebrates such as frogs and lizards have been dis- covered encased in amber. Not only can such fossils tell a great deal about the form and structure of ancient spe- cies; they can also show how lineages of organisms have been distributed around the world through time. For ex- ample, one genus of ant, Leptomyrmex, which lives today only in eastern Aus- tralia, New Caledonia, New Guinea, and Seram, in Indonesia, has been dis- covered inside Dominican amber. Lep- tomyrmex, therefore, must have lived on the other side of the world, probably between 15 and 20 million years ago. hen Hispaniola formed, 65 mil- lion years ago, it did not occu- py its present position in the Caribbean. It arose between North and South America, roughly where Central America is today, as part of a group of islands that included modern-day Cu- ba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. For the first 5 million years of its existence, His- paniola was close enough to what is now southern Mexico that organisms could readily travel there from the mainland. About 60 million years ago, however, the island began drifting eastward out to sea, stranding its immigrant species. Some of those species eventually be- came extinct—such as the forests of al- garrobo trees that gave rise to Domini- can amber. Other species became the founding organisms for diverse species that evolved and radiated into a num- ber of previously unoccupied niches. When the piece of amber containing “my” ant queen and her mealybug were chiseled out of a wall in a Dominican mine, they began a new journey, one that would help fill in part of the histo- ry of an ancient genus of ants. After the amber was polished and examined, in- vestigators realized that the specimens inside displayed exactly the same kind of rare behavior I had described among modern-day ants. The queen had been frozen in the amber clutching a mealy- bugin her mandibles [see photomicrograph on page 16]. When I got the chance to study the fossil, I was thrilled to realize that the queen represented a new spe- cies with an intriguing form and struc- ture that would help me understand the evolution of the genus. I named the new species Acropyga glaesaria (glaesaria means “of amber” in Latin). Although A. glaesaria went extinct long ago, the genus Acropyga still exists today. And like their Miocene ances- tors, modern-day Acropyga still engage in trophophoresy. 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Acropyga epedana, for instance, 1n- habits the dry mountains of southeast- ern Arizona [see photograph on page 22|. he behavior of modern species of Acropyga shows a great deal about what life was probably like for A. glae- saria. All Acropyga species are small, yel- lowish ants, with workers no bigger than two to four millimeters long. The ants live almost entirely underground. The workers retreat quickly when ex- posed to light, as the burrowing work- ers on prehistoric Hispaniola may have done. Instead of foraging above- ground, a common practice among many ants, Acropyga workers remain 1n underground chambers, where they “herd” and “milk” the insect equiva- lent of cattle ihe Acropyga are small, white mealybugs “cattle” for the that feed on the underground roots of various plants. As the mealybugs feed, they secrete a sugar-rich fluid called honeydew, which seems to meet all the nutritional requirements of the ants. It seems as if each species of Acropyga has a single—or, in some cases, a few— species of mealybug associated with it. I have studied Acropyga ants from Ari- zona to Guyana to South Africa. To find them, you turn stones over one by one and patiently break apart rotting logs, looking for tiny, slow-moving golden flecks. During my field studies in Guyana, I was fortunate enough to discover three new Acropyga species, along with two new species of mealy- bugs associated with Acropyga. Finding and identifying the mealybugs that live with Acropyga is the first step in under- standing the organisms’ complex sym- biotic relationship. Some of the most familiar species of mealybug live aboveground; they are well known because some are garden pests. By contrast, the various species tended by Acropyga depend entirely on the ants for protection and survival, just as the ants rely on them for food. That special kind of symbiosis is known as trophobiosis—ants care for another or- ganism, called the trophobiont, in ex- change for food. Many other ant spe- cles, in genera other than Acropyga, gather honeydew from insects such as mealybugs and aphids. In fact, in North America it is common to see ants tend- Worker ant (A. acutiventris), belonging to the same genus as the fossilized ant in the photomicrograph on page 16, carries a white mealybug to another part of her nest. At the bottom of the image, a “herd” of mealybugs congregates near a plant root. Biologists think ants and their mealybug “cattle” may have co-evolved. 20 | NATURAL HISTORY May 2006 The three most important words in real estate: Location. Location. 1, I STJOE WaterSound \ / WhiteFence (331) (231) Tallahassee The imagination knows no limits. And across 800,000 exceptional acres, we can Jacksonville St. Johns Golf & Country Club SouthWood \ really stretch ours. 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Explore thousands of miles of rivers, marshes and lagoons. Visit Maya villages and ancient temple sites. Seek out the elusive Jaguar, if you can. Snorkel on the longest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere. All in a relaxing, peaceful country where the people are as warm and friendly as the climate. Experience the diversity of Belize, your English-speaking neighbor on the Caribbean coast of Central America, only 2 hours from the U.S. Call 1-800-624-0686 or visit our website: www.travelbelize.org ing aphids on plants such as roses. But the trophobiosis between Acro- pyga and their mealybugs 1s a particular- ly strong relationship. Acropyga’s unusu- al dependence is demonstrated by the queen’s behavior on her nuptial flight. A queen carries only one item in her trousseau: a live mealybug clamped in her mandibles. Somehow—how, exact- ly, remains a mystery—that single mealybug will proliferate into an entire herd, ample food for the queen’s new colony. Perhaps mealybugs reproduce from unfertilized eggs, as some insects do. Perhaps the Acropyga queen makes sure she carries a pregnant mealybug. Or perhaps multiple queens combine forces to found a nest together, thus supplying more than one mealybug for the herd. Some evidence suggests that ants and mealybugs have co-evolved; in other words, evolutionary changes in one might have come about because of evo- lutionary changes in the other, and vice versa. Each time a new Acropyga spe- cies evolved, a new species of mealy- bug may have evolved as well. Much more research is needed, however, be- fore investigators will know for sure. J ust as observations of modern species J illustrate how A. glaesaria probably lived, amber fossils also provide 1m- portant details about the evolution of modern Acropyga behavior. The an- cient formation of Dominican amber implies that trophophoresy is an an- cient behavior. Look at it this way: People began raising cattle for milk about 6,000 years ago, but at least 15 million years before then, A. glaesaria were already transporting their mealy- bug livestock to their new nests! The distribution and variations among living species of Acropyga lead me to think that, in fact, the genus origi- nated even earlier than the Miocene pe- riod, perhaps as early as the Cretaceous period, between 144 and 65 million years ago. My research on the forms and structures of ants indicates that the old- est Acropyga lineages live in Africa. If I am right, the genus Acropyga 1s probably much older than A. glaesaria. Acropyga species are poor dispersers, so 1t would 22 | NATURAL HISTORY May 2006 Ant queen (A. epedana) (large, golden insect), even while mating, keeps a grip on the white mealybug she is carrying in her mandibles on her nuptial journey. The male (small, dark ant) will soon die, and the queen will found a new colony. Having already shed her wings, she won't be burdened by them as she digs an underground nest. The mealy- bug will proliferate into a herd that will sustain the queen's progeny. be hard to explain their present distri- bution in tropical areas worldwide if the origin of the genus did not stretch back toa time when the continents were clos- er together. It is possible that little Acropyga queens may have been toting mealybugs to their new nests when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. The intimate and ancient relation- ship between Acropyga ants and mealy- bugs offers biologists a chance to study the evolution of a complex kind of symbiosis. Not only can this example inform questions about how symbi- otic relationships evolve between or- ganisms 1n general, but it may also have some practical implications for human agriculture. Acropyga have been herd- ing mealybugs for so long that their successes may help investigators ad- dress how people, too, can sustain agri- culture for the long term. One thing remains certain: as more field studies of Acropyga are conducted, more spec- imens are pondered under the micro- scope, and perhaps more fossils are found, there will undoubtedly be plen- ty of surprises driving further study of this fascinating group of ants. JOuN S. LAPOLLA has been fascinated by ants since childhood, when he often convinced his mother to collect ant nests with him. He is a postdoctoral fellow at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and will be taking a position as assistant professor of biological sciences at Towson University in Maryland in the fall. ~~ SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION \ 1 . Dio D1g, I he lakes and fish are MONTANA 3 a the mountains are big, the valleys are big, and even the sky is big—Montana is Big Sky Country. N MONTANA, NATURE Bis on display everywhere. Mi The eastern part of the state has badlands, plains, and the breaks of the Missouri River; the west has the tower- ing Rocky Mountain range *, and the Continental Divide, | ancient forests, and valleys formed by once-giant glacial lakes. The south has Yellowstone, the country’s first national park, and the north has Glacier National Park, with millions of acres of pristine back- country that have made it a premier destination for hikers. Both national parks are prime spots to see wildlife. In Glacier, you may see elk, moose, and deer foraging; mountain goats and bighorn sheep; and black and grizzly bears. Yellowstone has trumpeter swans, grizzly bears, elk, bison, wolves, and many oth- ers. But you don’t have to be in a national park to see wildlife; this entire state is like a gigantic nature preserve. Animals outnumber people, and there are 250 types of birds, world-class populations of wild trout, and the most diverse collection of mammals in the country. Montana has five Scenic Byways and three Back p from left National Park to right: Springtime in Glacier buffalo roams the National Bison Range, Moiese; Montana has hundreds of residents per square mile—but only six of them are people. exploring Montana on horseback; a large herd of badlands of Makoshika State Park, Glendive Country Byways, but there are scenic roads everywhere, The Beartooth Scenic Byway was named “the most beautiful roadway in America” by Charles Kuralt, Completed in 1936, the highway climbs to almost 11,000 feet above sea level as it winds its way between the northeastern entrance to the park and the town of Red Lodge, traversing a range of ecosystems—from lodgepole pine forests to alpine tundra. The highway’s summit is a sky-high world of glacial cirques, clear alpine lakes, and snow. In late June and July, the alpine tundra blossoms with wildflowers, including shooting. stars, columbine, and Indian paintbrush. In this high country—there are twenty wildlife is easy to see. There are hun and almost a thousand alpine lakes. When you reach the old mining town of Red Lodge, refuel at a downtown café, then head east on Highway 308, where you can enjoy an Old West landscape of junipers, sagebrush, cowboys, and cattle. For a complete list- ing of scenic drives and wildlife refuges in Montana, log onto www://visitmt.com. —— mountains over 12,000 feet tall—9 dreds of miles of trails along the route Find what you’re looking for in LSpre} Lf LYJI ontana is so big with such dramatically different landscapes— from mountainous forests to badlands—that it’s div ided into six vacation regions ‘ealed® countries. Russell Country USSELL COUNTRY, IN NORTH-CENTRAL MONTANA, IS M& named after the cowboy artist Charlie M. Russell, whose canvases cap- MA tured the rugged beauty of its Old West landscapes. To see these land- scapes, explore Russell Country’s trails and scenic byways. The Missouri Breaks Back Country Byway, beginning in Winifred, is a roughly two- to three- hour, eighty-mile drive through an ecologically unique and historically signif- icant area. Lewis and Clark first described the area as “deserts of America,” but fur traders later named it the “badlands.” Travelers may encounter ante- lope, white-tailed and mule deer, elk, bighorn sheep, and prairie dogs. Seventy-one-mile Kings Hill Scenic Byway, beginning near White Sulphur Hiking, Rocky Mountain Front Springs, winds its way north through the Lewis and Clark National Forest and along pristine mountain streams. You'll see plenty of wildlife on this leisurely two-hour drive. Gravel roads that criss-cross the highway lead to spectacular mountain scenery, high country lakes, trailheads, and old mines. The Northern Continental Divide Scenic Loop circles one of the largest expanses of wilderness in the lower 48 states and one of the most intact mountainous ecosystems. The C. M. Russell Auto Tour, between Great Falls and Lewistown, takes you through the landscapes that fascinated Charlie Russell. Call 800-527-5348 for a booklet comparing the paintings with the vistas that inspired them. Go to www.russell.visitmt.com for more information. aoe. | | | Whatd Sd. WHAT HAPPENS | oe ee TIN WILOINS AINA | oe ae secon a vi ye ee STAYS YAS ECR You. | off the beaten path, that provides travelers a genuine “American experience. ‘{ S 1. 2 Byways offer spectacular views and fascinat- D1 11 ing historical sites, and are organized around at least one theme—whether scenic. natural, recreational, cultural, or historical—that char- acterizes the resources along the route. Learn more about scenic byways. such as the Beartooth Highway in Montana and the Seaway Trail in New York, at www.byways.org. Take home a Russell Country travel planner. 1-800-527-5348 - russell.visitmt.com C~ N.., York State’s Adirondack region contains 3,000 ponds and lakes, 2,000 miles of hiking trails, nearly 100 campgrounds and, of course, the Adirondack Mountains. mage HE ADIRONDACK PARK, CREATED IN 1892, is as large as the state of Vermont and @ unique in that it comprises both public and private lands. To explore this region of north- HM ern New York, try one of the fourteen scenic driving tours or trails, each with its own theme. The 188-mile Adirondack Trail, from the old Erie Canal near Fonda in the south to the Ballard Mill Center of the Arts in Malone in the north, runs through the core of the Adirondacks, along mountain ponds, wild forest areas, and beautiful lakes. The spectacular 140- mile Central Adirondack Trail begins in Glens Falls, heads northwest through the heart of the Adirondack Mountains, then turns south through dense wilderness to Rome. The 112-mile Southern Adirondack Trail connects the historic Canal town of Herkimer to Lake Pleasant, tra- versing mountains, lakes, and charming villages along the way. The Black River Trail, 111 miles long, follows the western edge of the Adirondacks, crossing gorges, river valleys, and the Tug Hill Plateau, the area with the highest annual snowfall in the eastern United States. The High Peaks Byway, a 30-mile drive from the Adirondack Northway to Lake Placid, climbs through narrow passes flanked by towering mountains, sparkling streams, waterfalls, and lakes; and the Blue Ridge Road is a scenic 17- mile route connecting North Hudson and Newcomb. For information about the other byways in the region, and to download an interactive map, visit www.adk.com. YOUR VERY OWN “ADIRONDACK GUIDE” ; aie AND SCENIC BYWAYS MAP YOUR OWN ADIRONDACK Explore a land as beautiful today as it was PRIVATE ISLAND NORTH COUNTRY j Ro cren tees We hundreds of years ago. Get your free guide book nD wee and Scenic Byways & Birding map. Little St. Simons Island is a place unlike any other—-10,000 acres on Georgia’s fabled coast, 7 miles of beach—the pri ate’ domain of no ~ more than 30 guests. _“‘Nature tours, biking, birding, horseback riding, kayaking, and_fishing. Great cuisine;.gracious pat accommodations; and ™ the rate is all-inclusive. Stay 3 nights, 4th night free! ae a “ALL NOW! ) i SIMONS brit dates avail ISLAND pe —~ Call 866-450-9672 www.LittleSSI.com I NY 800.868.7235 FREEHERITAGEMAP.COM IMAGINE NEW YORK WITHOUT IT For 100 years, our own Red Cross has seen New Yorkers through every imaginable kind of disaster, natural or manmade. Now they need our help. Please give 100 — 100 pennies, dimes, dollars, volunteer hours. Every penny, every hour -- it all matters. “Give 100” at ss. or visit your local Commerce Bank Yunjin Kim Actor and New Yorker -Announcing THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE ating back to 1824, The Franklin Institute Awards Program seeks to provide public recognition and encouragement of excellence in science and technol- ogy. Since 1874, recipients have been selected by the Institute's Committee on Science and the Arts. Today, fields recognized include Chemistry, Computer and Cognitive Science, Earth and Environmental Science, Engineering, Life Science, and Physics. In 1998, the Awards Program was reorganized under the umbrella of The Benjamin Franklin Medals. The list of medal winners reads like a “Whos Who” in the history of 19th, 20th, and 21st century sci- ence. The honor roll includes: Alexander Graham Bell, Marie Curie, Rudolf Diesel, Thomas Edison, Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking—to name a few. To date, 105 Franklin Institute Laureates also have been honored with 107 Nobel Prizes. The newest awards, the Bower Award for Business Leadership and the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science, are made possible by a $75 million bequest in 1988 from Henry Bower, a Philadelphia chemical manufacturer. The Bower Science Award carries a cash prize of $250,000, one of the richest science prizes in America. The Awards Ceremony is April 27, 2006 in the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA. More information on the Awards Program can be found at www.fi.edu/franklinawards. 2006 FRANKLIN INSTITUTE LAUREATES Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science NARAIN G. HINGORANI, Pu.D, D.Sc. Consultant For the conceptualization and pioneering advancement of the Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) and Custom Power in electric power systems, and for outstanding technical contribu- tions in High Voltage Direct Current Technology, which have enhanced the quality and security of the electric power system. Dr. Hingorani received his B.Sc. in electrical engineering from Baroda University in India in 1953 and his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in 1961. For 20 years, he worked at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, California, where for five years he was Vice President, Electrical Systems Division. Bower Award for Business Leadership TED TURNER Philanthropist and Media Entrepreneur For his visionary leadership in the worlds of business and media, as well as his philanthropic commitment to the health of our planet and the well being of its people. Media visionary, philanthropist, and sportsman; rancher, environmentalist, and entrepreneur; and most recently, restau- rateur—Robert Edward (Ted) Turner III has divided his time among so many passions over the years and made so many public contributions that he has become a household name among Americans. In addition to his work in the enter- tainment and broadcast industry, Mr. Turner has made his mark as one of the most influential philanthropists in the nation, donating more than a billion dollars of his own money. Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science DONALD A. NORMAN, Pu.D. Northwestern University Nielsen Norman Group For the development of the field of user- centered design, which uses our under- standing of how people think to develop technologies designed to be easily usable. After receiving a B.S. in 1957 from M.LT. and a M.S. in 1959 from the University of Pennsylvania, both degrees in electrical engineering, Dr. Norman switched fields and earned a Ph.D. in psychology in 1962 from the University of Pennsylvania. His diverse academic and work experience gave him a unique perspective on “human infor- mation processing.” Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics GIACINTO SCOLES, FRS Princeton University International School for Advanced Studies, Elettra Synchrotron Laboratory J. PETER TOENNIES, Pu.D. University of Gottingen Max Planck Institute For the development of new techniques for studying molecules, including unsta- ble species that could not be examined otherwise, by embedding them in extremely small and ultra-cold droplets of helium. Their work also led to a bet- ter understanding of the extraordinary properties of superfluid helium, such as its ability to flow without friction. Giacinto Scoles earned a master’s degree from the University of Genoa in 1959, and completed his post- doctoral work at the University of Leiden in The Netherlands. Throughout his academic career, he has divided his time between various institutions. He now teaches at Princeton and the International School for Advanced Studies and conducts research at the Elettra Synchrotron Laboratory. Peter Toennies was born and raised in the Philadelphia area. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics at Amherst College in 1952 and a Ph.D. from Brown University in 1957. In 1969, he became the director of the Max Planck Institute in Gottingen. He currently works in Géttingen and Bonn and lectures extensively throughout the United States and the world. Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science LUNA LEOPOLD, Pu.D. (1915-2006) University of California, Berkeley M. GORDON WOLMAN, Pu.D. Johns Hopkins University For advancing our understanding of how natural and human activities influence landscapes, especially for the first com- prehensive explanation of why rivers have different forms and how floodplains develop. Their contributions form the basis of modern water resource manage- ment and environmental assessment. Engineer, meteorologist, geologist, and environmentalist—Luna Leopold wrote the first environmental impact state- ment on the Everglades that saved that wildlife refuge from sure destruction. Leopold earned a B.S. in civil engineer- ing from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1936 and a Ph.D. in geolo- gy from Harvard University in 1950. M. Gordon Wolman is B. Howell Griswold, Jr. Professor of Geography and International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University. He received his undergraduate degree from Hopkins in 1949 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in geology from Harvard in 1951 and 1953. Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry SAMUEL J. DANISHEFSKY, Px.D. Columbia University Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center For his achievements in synthetic organic chemistry, particularly for the develop- ment of methods for preparing complex substances found in nature and their emerging applications in the field of cancer treatment. Samuel Danishefsky is recognized as a leader in synthesizing the precise three- dimensional structures of many com- plex organic compounds, a field that plays a pivotal role in the discovery and development of new pharmaceuticals. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry at Harvard in 1962 and began his career at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught until 1979. He has been a professor of chemistry at Columbia University since 1993. Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science FERNANDO NOTTEBOHM, Pu.D. The Rockefeller University For his discovery of neuronal replacement in the adult vertebrate brain and the elaboration of the mechanism and chore- ography of this phenomenon; and also for showing that neuronal stem cells are the responsible agents, thereby generat- ing a completely new approach to the quest for cures for brain injury and degenerative disease. Dr. Nottebohm, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, has spent a lifetime studying songbirds. He earned a B.S. in zoology in 1962, and a Ph.D. in 1966 from the University of California, Berkeley. His entire career has been with The Rockefeller University, where he is now director of the Field Research Center for Ecology and Ethnology in Millbrook, N.Y. Benjamin Franklin Medal in Civil Engineering RAY W. CLOUGH, Sc.D. University of California, Berkeley For revolutionizing engineering and scien- tific computation, and engineering design methods through his formulation and development of the finite element method, and for his innovative leadership in apply- ing the method to the field of earthquake engineering with special emphasis on the seismic performance of dams. Ray Clough graduated from the University of Washington’s civil engi- neering program in 1942 and concluded his graduate studies in structural engi- neering at M.I.T. in 1949. He points out that earthquake engineering, at that time, was not even a recognized part of any civil engineering curriculum. Ray Clough is credited with developing the Earthquake Research Center in Berkeley, California. The contents of these pages are provided to Natural History by the Franklin Institute. COMMENTARY La a re a i Se Ri Cooking the Climate with Coal In the U.S., China, and elsewhere coal is booming. But the boom may lead to environmental disaster. By Jeff Goodell na cold morning in February 2005, the coal company, Peabody Energy Corporation, of St. school gym at Nashville Community Louis, was about to build just a few miles southwest High School in southern Illinois was — of Nashville. According to the governor, the plant, jammed to the rafters with local residents and kids. to be known as the Prairie State Energy Cam- More than 2,300 students had been dismissed from pus, would create 2,500 construction jobs, 450 morning classes and bused in from around the re- permanent jobs, and $100 million or so a RK gion. Squads of cheerleaders cartwheeled across the year in spin-off revenues. A phalanx of gym floor, while the Nashville Hornets school band Peabody executives was on hand to yy filled the gym with rousing songs. “Opportunity Re- show their support. Peabody’s CEO . turns,” a banner proclaimed, quoting Illinois Gov-_ at the time, Irl F Engelhardt, \ ernor Rod R. Blagojevich’s campaign slogan to stepped up to the microphone. bring prosperity back to southern Illinois. “The technology Prairie State c Opportunity was returning in the form ofa$2bil- — will use is absolutely the best \ lion coal-fired power plant, which the world’s largest that has been put together : f 36 NATURAL MEISTORY May 2006 ee on a coal plant,” Engelhardt assured the crowd. “Prairie State is an important step forward in terms of the cleanliness of coal plants, and ultimately will help us get to near-zero emissions from coal plants.” A few local politicians chimed in, the band struck up the Hornets’ fight song, and there was a lot of clap- ping and backslapping. Even the kids in the bleach- ers, most of them born long after the coal industry had died in the region, were on their feet cheering. “Coalis U.S.A.!” someone shouted. “Coal is U.S.A.!” F or Big Coal—the alliance of coal mining com- panies, utilities, railroads, and lobbying groups that make coal such a powerful political and eco- nomic force in America—the slogan “Opportunity Returns” is a rather coy understatement. “Boom” is more like it: the world is in the midst of an un- precedented love affair with coal. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the energy equivalent of some 1,350 thousand-megawatt coal- fired power plants will be built by 2030. Forty per- cent of them will be in China, where coal is fueling a stunning economic transformation. India will add another 10 percent or so, and most of the remain- ing half will be added in the West. In the United States, the IEA predicts, about a third of the new electric-generating capacity built by 2025 will be coal-fired. Besides Peabody’s Prairie State plant, more than 120 new coal plants are now in the works throughout the nation. Many people think coal in the U.S. went the way of top hats and corsets. In fact, the U.S. depends more on coal today than ever before. Americans consume, on average, about twenty pounds of it a day. Rough- ly half the nation’s electricity comes from coal—more than a billion tons of it a year. In fact, electric-pow- er generation 1s one of the largest and most capital- intensive industries in the country, with revenues of more than $260 billion in 2004 alone. Americans may not like to admit it, but the nation’s shiny white iPod economy is propped up by dirty black rocks. Yet coal harbors some profound character flaws, and all nations—but particularly the U.S. and China— ought to consider them carefully before transforming their whirlwind infatuation with the economics of en- ergy from coal into a long-term commitment. First, coal can be quite dangerous to acquire. For proof, one need look no further back than this past January, when twelve men died after an explosion at West Virginia’s Sago Mine, or to later that month, when two more miners died in a fire in West Virginia’s Alma Mine. A few weeks later, sixty-five miners were trapped and killed after an explosion at a Mexican mine. China’s coal mines are even more notorious death traps: some 6,000 workers are killed there each year. Furthermore, coal damages the environment and public health. Mining it levels mountains and disrupts ecosystems. Burning it yields toxic emissions that cause acid rain, polluted lakes and rivers, and poor air qual- ity. Perhaps most important, burning it emits far more carbon dioxide (CO,) per unit of usable energy out- put than any other energy source. Carbon dioxide, of Conveyor belt lifts coal out of Peabody Energy's Gateway Mine in southern Illinois. Coal and coal mining have recently enjoyed a tremendous resurgence, despite the negative effects of coal-fired power plants on global climate. May 2006 NATURAL HISTORY 37 course, is a potent greenhouse gas; the more CO, in the atmosphere, the warmer the Earth gets. In 2005, at a conference in Exeter, England, on the dangers of abrupt climate change, 200 leading climatogists and policy makers from thirty countries agreed that if the Earth’ average surface temperature should rise above pre-industrial levels by more than 3.5 degrees Fahren- heit (about two degrees Celsius), the risk of danger- ous climate change would increase dramatically. The consequences of such change have been well docu- mented and publicized: among them are higher sea levels, more intense storms, local desertification, and rapid disruption of ecosystems. Rught now the Earth is a little past the halfway mark to a rise of 3.5 degrees. The atmosphere has already warmed one degree F and another degree of warming 1s stored in the oceans. If the U.S. and China go forward with their plans to build new coal-fired power plants, the CO, they will pump into the atmosphere will make it exceedingly difficult to avert drastic climate change. Because the consequences may be severe, now is a good time to take stock of how King Coal regained its throne, and what energy choices remain. A! the root of the current entanglement with coal is a worldwide energy crunch. Between 1950 and 2000 the world’s population grew by roughly 140 percent. But fossil-fuel consumption in- creased by almost 400 percent, propelled largely by growth in the West. Moreover, by 2030 the world’s demand for energy is projected to more than dou- ble. At the same time, the remaining reserves of oil and natural gas appear to be declining, and the fu- 2.5 N fo} — on Carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour (pounds) Natural gas Petroleum Source: Natural Resources Defense Council, from data provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration Amount of carbon dioxide (CO,), an important greenhouse gas, that is emitted into the atmosphere per unit of electrical energy produced is plotted for three fossil fuels. Burning coal emits more CO, per unit energy than any other fuel. Nuclear power, as well as hydroelectric and other renewable sources, emits little or no CO. 38 | NATURAL HISTORY May 2006 ture of nuclear power and renewable energy (solar power, wind power, and the like) remains uncertain. By default, then, coal has emerged as the fuel of choice. Indeed, as oil prices climbed above sixty dol- lars a barrel last year, a long-dormant interest was re- newed in building plants that can transform coal in- to diesel and other liquid fuels—an expensive, inef- ficient process that releases large quantities of CO . Of course, coal also has a number of virtues: it can be transported by ship and rail, it’s easy to store, and it’s easy to burn. But its main advantage over other fuels is that it 1s cheap and plentiful. The Earth still harbors an estimated 1 trillion tons of recoverable coal, by far the largest reserve of fossil fuel left. And the U.S. has the geological good fortune to have more than a quarter of it—about 270 billion tons—buried within its borders. As coal boosters never tire of point- ing out, the coal in U.S. ground is enough to fuel the nation’s electricity needs, at the current rate of con- sumption, for 250 years. China has less than half as much as the U.S.—126 billion tons. But that amount will keep China’s lights on for about seventy-five years if consumption stays at its current rate. In addition to those considerable advantages, sev- eral recent historical factors have also contributed to the coal boom in the U.S. California’s rolling black- outs in January 2001 underscored the need for new investment in electricity generation and transmis- sion. The collapse of Enron helped throw the nat- ural-gas market into turmoil, sending prices sky- rocketing and making coal extremely cheap by com- parison. The 2000 presidential election was another turning point. Coal-industry executives knew that if the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, were elected, regulations to limit or tax CO, emissions would soon follow. So Big Coal threw its money and muscle be- hind George W. Bush. President Bush reciprocated by staffing regulatory agencies with former coal- industry executives and lobbyists, and by inviting Big Coal to play a prominent role in crafting the nation’s new, unabashedly coal-friendly energy pol- icy. Finally, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, made many people reconsider the high cost of depending on oil from the Middle East. What’s most remarkable about America’s current coal boom is that, unlike other recent booms, which were driven by a (perhaps irrational) exuberance, this one is driven by overwhelming fear: fear that the world is running out of energy, fear that the U.S. is losing its edge, and, most of all, fear that if Americans don’t burn more coal, not only the economic health of the nation but civilization itself is at risk. “Have you ever been in a blackout?” one coal executive asked me. “Do you remember how dark the whole world gets? Do you remember how scary it is?” Mountaintop-removal mines, such as this one in southeastern West Virginia, have destroyed more than 700 miles of streams and at least 400,000 acres of forest throughout Appalachia. Workers blast away the uppermost 800 to 1,000 feet of rock to expose layers of coal within, dumping rocky debris into nearby valleys and streams. Local residents often suffer noise, dust, polluted groundwater and rivers, flooding, and lowered property values. Once such mines close, they are replanted with grasses and trees, then left to regenerate as wilder- ness; some have been developed as golf courses, factories, or other facilities. B ig Coal frequently argues that today’s coal boom is not like coal booms of the past. And in some ways, that’s true. Mining practices in some regions have vastly improved, and the industry is safer than it was thirty years ago. Emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide at new coal plants are much lower than they are at old plants. “Increasingly clean” is the industry’s favorite sound bite. But the truth of the phrase leans heavily on the word “increasingly.” The scrubbers on new coal plants might be better, but the plants still release plen- ty of arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, sulfur diox- ide, and soot particles. They still require prodigious amounts of water for cooling, and generate millions of tons of coal ash, laden with heavy metals. Nor does “increasingly clean” exactly describe the moun- tains of Appalachia being blasted away to supply the fuel for the new plants. Mountaintop-removal min- ing, as this practice 1s called, is a recent innovation. And many of the new coal plants are much like ear- lier generations of plants in one crucial way: they, too, discharge hundreds of millions of tons of CO, into the atmosphere. Prairie State, for instance, will emit more than 11 million tons of CO, a year, only mar- ginally less than a plant of similar size built thirty years ago. That is why the coal boom is so alarming. Raght now about one quarter of the world’s CO, emissions come from coal-burning power plants; all the world’s uses of coal together account for about 40 percent of emitted CO,. The 1,350 gigawatts of new coal-fired generating capacity projected for construc- tion in the next twenty-four years will, if built, add roughly 572 billion tons of CO, to the atmosphere during the new plants’ sixty-year operating lives. That is about as much CO, as was released by all the coal burned by everyone, for every purpose, during the past 250 years. Adding that much CO, to the atmo- sphere will make it much harder to limit global warm- ing to the relatively “safe” increase of 3.5 degrees F Ironically—though many in the coal industry deny the reality of climate change poses the biggest threat to the hegemony of cheap global warming coal. Almost everyone in the industry acknowledges that in the next decade or so, laws that cap CO, emis- sions will be passed in the US. So, in a perverse way, it is precisely the likelihood of new laws that 1s fuel- ing the current mad dash to throw up coal plants. The reasoning goes like this: If new plants aren’t approved and built before power companies are forced to pay for releasing CO,, energy costs will go up, and coal plants will be underbid by wind turbines, natural gas plants, and other ways of generating electricity that have less carbon hability. What’s going on now 1s not exactly a land grab—t’s an atmosphere grab. “Cheap” coal also wouldn’t seem such a bargain if its numerous hidden costs were calculated into the price of power rather than off-loaded onto the pub- lic, as they now are. Those costs include the blighted D, oD May 2006 NATUR Al HISTORY 39 40 ATUR ISTORY mountains and economic ruin of many coal-mining regions, the medical bills for treating the heart attacks and asthma caused by air pollution, the lost future in- comes of children adversely affected because they were exposed in the womb to mercury from fish eaten by their mothers. Using data from a widely respected ten- year study by the European Commission, Robert H. Walliams, a physicist at Princeton University, estimates that the effects of air pollution from U.S. coal plants on public health would add about thirteen dollars, or 25 percent, per megawatt-hour to the price of coal- fired energy. For the oldest, dirtiest plants, the added costs could reach thirty-three dollars. In comparison, the cost of such “externalities” for a natural-gas plant is only about forty cents. In a market that accurately reflected true energy costs, coal would not be such an attractive option. Water and pulverized coal are formed into cakes at a farm in China’s southern province of Guangdong. Residents of cities and rural areas alike burn the cakes for cooking and heating. May 2006 here is a better way to take advantage of coal’s abundance: a relatively new technology that goes by the unfortunately complicated name of in- tegrated gasification combined cycle, or IGCC. In- stead of burning coal directly, as conventional coal plants do, IGCC plants cook off major impurities as they convert coal into a synthetic gas, which is then burned to generate electricity. IGCC plants burn nearly as cleanly as natural-gas plants, are 10 percent more efficient than conventional coal plants, consume 40 percent less water, and produce half as much ash and solid waste. But more important, it is far easier and cheaper to remove CO, from coal at an IGCC plant— because CO, is concentrated during gasification— than it is at a conventional coal plant. The CO, could then be sequestered underground or perhaps under the sea. Carbon dioxide sequestration 1s still a con- troversial idea that is just beginning to be tested. But the combination of IGCC technology and CO, cap- ture and sequestration at least offers a plausible way to continue burning coal without trashing the climate. Out of the hundred or so coal-powered plants slat- ed for construction in the U.S., however, only a handful are now planning to incorporate IGCC technology. Why? First, Big Coal argues, the plants are expensive: an IGCC plant costs between 10 and 20 percent more to build than a conventional coal plant does. That may be true, but if you factor in the likelihood of future limits on CO, emissions, the ad- vantages of carbon capture and sequestration would enable IGCC to operate more cheaply by nearly 20 percent. In the long run, electricity from IGCC plants will almost certainly be cheaper than elec- tricity from conventional coal plants. Second, Big Coal asserts, IGCC 1s still an unproven technology. Yet engineers have been gasifying coal for 150 years, and coal-gasification plants in the U.S. and elsewhere have been generating electric power since 1984. Some of the biggest names in power-plant en- gineering—General Electric Company, the Shell Group, Bechtel Corporation—are starting to promote IGCC. But Big Coal has been pushing instead for one more generation of old combustion plants, rebrand- ed as “clean” by bolting on some new scrubbers. ] n China, coal is everywhere. It’s piled up on side- walks, pressed into bricks, and stacked near the back doors of homes. It’s stockpiled into small mountains in open fields, and carted around behind bicycles and old wheezing locomotives. Plumes of coal smoke rise from rusty stacks on every urban horizon. Soot cov- ers every windowsill and rings the collar of every white shirt. The Chinese burn less coal per capita than Americans do, but in sheer tonnage, they burn twice as much. Coal is what’s fueling China’s eco- nomic boom: 70 percent of the nation’s ener- gy comes from coal, and Chinese leaders have made it clear that economic growth 1s their number one priority. i, The cost of China’s replay of the western = § Industrial Revolution is obvious. The World = Health Organization estimates that in East 3 Asia (predominantly China and South Korea) 3 355,000 people a year die from the effects of € 9 urban outdoor air pollution. All over China, 8 8 limestone buildings are dissolvingintheacidic 3 & air, and acid rain 1s falling on a third of the &* country, crippling agricultural production. = & Not surprisingly, pollution is becoming afo- cus of political unrest. 8 The CO, released by China’sravenouscon- — § sumption of coal poses a grave threat—not just within China’s borders but to the entire world. The Kyoto Protocol, now ratified by 162 nations (though, notably, not by the US. and Australia), calls for cutting greenhouse- gas emissions by 5.2 percent from 1990 lev- els by 2012. The coal-fired power plants that China plans to build by 2012 will generate more than twice that amount of greenhouse gases (as a developing nation, China need not reduce its emissions even though it ratified the treaty). By 2025, if China continues down its current path, it will over- take the U.S. as the world’s largest greenhouse-gas polluter—and the chances of avoiding drastic climate change will become virtually zero. In spite of such dire projections, China has done a lot to clean up its act. It has banned the use of coal for heating and cooking in cities such as Beying and Shanghai; it has moved coal-fired power plants out of urban areas and replaced them with plants that burn natural gas; it has tightened energy-efficiency re- quirements on new buildings; and it is building one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms. In some ways, China has already leapfrogged ahead of the U.S. In 2005 the Chinese government announced that by 2020, renewable sources would generate 15 percent of the country’s energy. Whether that prediction 1s an aspiration or a firm commitment remains to be seen, but in 2005 a similar provision was stripped out of the U.S. energy bill. China also has passed vehicle fuel-efficiency standards that are much stricter than the ones in the U.S. But even with all those measures, China still has a long way to go. he world faces two enormous challenges in the coming years: the end of cheap oil and the ar- rival of global warming. Coal may provide a solution to the first challenge, but only by exacerbating the MM China Hl United States {| Other developing countries MM Other developed countries * Billions of tons of CO, emitted over plants’ operating lives 700 600 188* 5 500 1387. Total 400 446 300 ‘wy is & 2 1 1 ‘| Total 200 238 10 2011-2020 2021-2030 2003-2010 [o) Source: Natural Resources Defense Council, from forecasts by the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the International Energy Agency Projected new coal-fired generating capacity is shown. The total capacity is the equivalent of 1,357 new thousand-megawatt plants, which would emit more CO, over their operating lives—572 billion tons—than all the CO, emitted by all human coal burning before 2003. second. Any serious effort to address global warm- ing must target greenhouse-gas emissions by coal- powered plants, particularly in the U.S. and China. Americans can argue about the best way to do this— ratify the Kyoto treaty and persuade China to adopt its emissions limits, tax CO, emissions, provide big- ger subsidies to clean-power development, man- date that new coal plants use IGCC technology and carbon sequestration, or give away free bicycles— but do it we must. The biggest impediment to such changes is the idea that Americans are dependent on the very thing that is killing us. That claim is made all the time: Passing laws that limit CO, emissions, or require cleaning up dirty coal plants, or restrict mountain- top-removal mining, it is argued, will cause the price of electricity to skyrocket and the economy to col- lapse. And itis true that reforming the industry could cause electricity prices to rise, and bring genuine economic hardship to some areas. But the costs and consequences of global warming are simply too high to continue the indulgence in cheap coal. Blind faith in technology is unwarranted; but people can certainly figure out less destructive ways to create and consume the energy the world needs. Ultimately, the most valuable fuel for the future is not coal or oil, but imagination and ingenuity. O This article was adapted from Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future, by Jeff Goodell, which is being published in June by Houghton Mifflin Company. May 2006 NATURAI HISTORY 41 MAY 2006 Decoding the Tribe Carl Schuster’s remarkable quest to trace humanity's ancient iconography By Edmund Carpenter | first met Carl Schuster in the late 1950s. I was living in desert California, with no phone and | few visitors. He simply appeared at my door: | “T understand you're just back from Irkutsk.” Archaeology had taken me to Siberia. But in those Cold War years, who would have believed that? And who was this stranger? I de- nothing else termined he wasn’t getting past the screen door! My visitor spoke of his own research and men- tioned photographs in his car. I thought it might be easier to get rid of him from there. The first pho- tograph showed an incised stone. He said it came from California. I corrected him: Spain. Yet the back of the photograph documented its California ori- gin. He showed me more. I suggested we go inside, out of the sun. There Schuster juxtaposed various images of ob- jects spanning 30,000 years; they exhibited strikingly similar de- signs. He made no claim to have doc- umented historical connections among them, but the internal testimony of the designs themselves, he pro- posed, pointed to common symbolic origins. Such evi- dence flew in the face of scholarly as- sumptions about cul- tural history. But to demand proof of his- torical contact, he said, would be like requiring a linguist to prove the affinity of two languages by producing tape recordings for each step in their sep- aration. The standard, in other words, would be unrealistic. Schuster’s primary interest lay in the intelligence behind the designs. To de- code the symbolism, he traced a mem- ory line from the present back to an- cient times. Paleolithic peoples, he be- lieved, invented an iconography to illustrate genealogical ideas. They paint- ed the designs on their bodies, displayed them on garments and tools, and carried them wherever they went. He offered par- allels with recent tribes—small-scale, kin- ship-based societies. One simple motf is that of an upside-down human figure. Another recurring image 1s that of a human body with two heads, both facing forward, or variations on that theme. Yet another widespread de- sign depicts human figures joined at the ex- tremities, suggestive of paper dolls, and re- peated in ranks above and below. All those patterns can be interpreted as expressions of genealogical connection, or kinship, a paramount concern 1n all liv- ing human societies, and perhaps one of the first to elicit symbolic expression. Still other patterns, Figurines depicting one body with two forward-facing heads have been made in many places at many times: Eastern Europe, ca. 4000 s.c. (left); Tahiti, nineteenth century (above right); and Mesoamerica, ca. 900-500 B.C. (opposite page at upper right). One interpretation is that they represent a common tradition, dating from Late Paleolithic times as long ago as 30,000 years, of representing a person's genealogical connection to both the mother and the father and, by ex- tension, to their respective kin groups within the tribe. The principal joints (shoulders, elbows, and so forth) in the European figurine are pierced, which serves to mark them; the marking of joints is a common device that often seems to represent ancestors and descendants. such as various labyrinths, ladders, and game boards, may relate to the progress of a human soul toward an afterlife or rebirth. Those, too, may reflect an extension of genealogi- cal thinking, for the afterlife is often regarded as the realm of the ancestors. nthropologists have been burned so often by such ambitious attempts to draw far-flung connec- tions that students are trained to be leery of them, to say the least. A symbol can mean different things at dif- ferent times and places. Its meaning can even change within one culture in the pres- ence of other symbols, just as a word’s meaning can shift from sentence to sen- tence. Any enthusiast who chooses a simple design, assigns it a single mean- ing, then bestows that meaning on all similar designs, is more likely to be ridiculed than respected. A person who bases a theory on bits and pieces from different cultures becomes the anthro- pological equivalent of Victor Franken- stein, assembling a monster by taking an arm from here, an ear from there. When Schuster juxtaposed recent and ancient motifs, then assigned to them a common explanation, what made him any different from the many “nut cases” who lurk along the fringes of anthropol- ogy? That was my initial reaction. I resist- ed his comparisons. But what I couldn't resist was the evidence. Gradually I yield- ed. We corresponded for ten years after our first encounter, and met wherever our paths crossed. I was with him when he died in 1969. He despaired that his life’s work would be lost. I offered to see it to completion. orn to a prosperous Milwaukee fami- B ly in 1904, Carl Schuster attended Phillips Exeter Academy and earned bache- lor’s and master’s degrees from Harvard University. The fam- German astrological diagram from the late Middle Ages (right) por- trays a figure divided into male and female halves, possibly conserving a tribal genealogical motif. The representation is overlain with addi- tional, contemporary meaning. The twelve signs of the zodiac are dis- tributed around the central figure, and a line across the navel further subdivides the figure into four parts, each associated with one of the four temperaments ascribed to the “humors” of the body: black bile, blood, phlegm, and yellow bile. ily fortune va- porized in 1929, however, and the young Carl moved to China ona Harvard— Yenching Institute fel- lowship, where he studied Chinese language and began to collect folk textiles. From 1933 until 1934 he studied at the University of Vienna, re- ceiving a doctorate in art his- tory with a dissertation on Chi- nese peasant embroideries. He then returned to China, trav- eling extensively and mostly on foot, photographing de- signs wherever he went. Nothing diverted him. He lived an almost ascetic life. In rural areas, he could readily satisfy hunger with a heaping bowl of fresh rice, which cost one cent. He nev- er raised his camera to record Mao’s Long March, though he witnessed it. Detained by Japanese soldiers in rural China, he recorded the event mere- ly to explain why certain notes and negatives were missing. He literally walked through famine, revolution, and war. Back in America during the Second World War, Schus- ter worked briefly as a cryptanalyst for the Office of Strate- ~ SANGVIN ss NATURATI HISTORY 44 gic Services (OSS), then returned to research. The American Museum of Natural History provided him with a desk, and in 1945 mounted a major ex- hibition of his photographs. Then, for the rest of his life, he journeyed, again and again, around the world. A tiny cabin and vegetable garden near Woodstock, New York, served as home base. “I live like a hermit,” he noted, “and know only two people, besides shopkeepers, in my small commu- nity.” Yet he remained connected to the rest of the world through travel and correspondence. He prob- ably spent more on stamps than on food. Schuster’s correspondence file, which with the rest of his archive 1s now housed in the Museum of Eth- nology in Basel, Switzerland, includes more than 18,000 information-packed pages, which he typed single-spaced with narrow margins. Most of his cor- respondents were leading scholars, but others were self-trained, living in remote areas, who had never shared their work until Schuster ar- rived. Long after his death, let- ters from isolated places con- tinued to arrive, filled with da- ta, drawings, and photographs. Schuster may sound like a classic amateur, a dilettante, but he never wandered aim- lessly. He deduced where ev- idence was likely to be, wrote endless letters, then went di- rectly to the museum, village, or person he had identified. For example, he knew every ethnographic specimen, in- cluding two painted robes of immense historical value, that was stored—along with dried food, trade goods, and used nails—in a shed on an isolat- ed ranch in Patagonia. Little escaped him. On one occa- Female figurines from an early nineteenth-century sion, he tracked down a re- Eskimo grave in the central Canadian Arctic (left) and from the 22,000-year-old Siberian archaeologi- cal site of Malta (right) were both pierced for hang- : : ; ing upside down. Such inversion may have symbol- the Foreign Legion in North — jzeg death, indicating that the person portrayed tired physician in France who, as a medical officer with Africa, had recorded tattoos was an ancestor. on prostitutes and prisoners there and carefully annotated each sketch. One of the last specimens he photographed was a stone bead discovered by an amateur archaeologist in the Nevada desert. That a collector had spotted such a small, crude object exposed by the wind on a dune in the Humboldt Sink—and recognized it as a human artifact—is astonishing. That Schuster al- NATURAL HISTORY May 2006 most immediately found the collector is equally as- tonishing, but typical. Behind this lifelong search was pure will, betrayed at the end only by health. “I came to the brink of a very steep downgrade,” he recorded when traveling in the Southwest, shortly before his death, ‘“‘and knowing my physical disability at the time (I was having heart trouble and unable to walk even a few steps without getting out of breath), I felt unwilling to risk that slope in a desert where I could not have expected help from any passers-by.” I n ancient iconography similar forms appear again and again across wide regions. Presumably, they once had meanings. Yet the scholarly consensus is that those meanings cannot be recovered. Schuster doubt- ed this. He believed answers survived among living tribal peoples. Nevertheless, he shunned controversy: I avoid discussions of principles and devote my energy to build- ing up a picture of the world as it is, by looking at it, instead of arguing about it, and drawing in- ferences from what I see. Of the many “puzzling parallels” Schuster docu- mented, one of the simplest was the inverted figure [see photographs at left]. Many Pa- leolithic “Venus” figurines, some made as early as 30,000 years ago, were perforated at their ankles so that they could be suspended upside down. From that ancient beginning the practice continued for millennia in several parts of the world, particularly in the Arctic, where it survived into the nineteenth century, and in Oceania, until well into the twentieth. The significance in Paleolithic times of inverting a figure is surely lost to us, who live so much later in time. Or is it? Until recently, certain tribes in the interior of Bor- neo made entire necklaces of inverted female figures. Their carvers identified the figures as ancestors. And why were they inverted? Inversion, explained the carvers, symbolized death. Examples of such symbolic reversal delight the so- called structural anthropologists, who seek to tease out the logic behind symbols. Preeminent among EE Symbolic labyrinth, like the two-headed figure, occurs as a standardized form in widely divergent places and times: at an archaeological site in west- ern India, ca. 3000-4000 B.c. (above); on a rock face in Cornwall, England, ca. 1500 8.c. (top right); and ona coin from Crete, ca. 280 B.c. (right). When the design is prop- erly drawn, a single, continuous path connects the outside and the center, with no possibility of getting “lost.” (In the Greek legend of the labyrinth and the Minotaur, Ariadne gives Theseus a thread so that he can find his way back out, but that should not have been necessary.) The labyrinth may represent a pathway for the spirit to the realm of the ances- tors, where it may achieve rebirth. those scholars is the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, professor emeritus of Social Anthro- pology at the College de France, who from his life- long study of myths and rituals, has hypothesized that the mind—and ultimately the brain—uncon- sciously understands the world in terms of binary opposites. “If social anthropologists were half as in- terested in material culture as they ought to be,” wrote Lévi-Strauss, with reference to physical arti- facts, “they would probably have paid more atten- tion to Carl Schuster’s fascinating survey.” Few have. Part of the problem lies in the excesses of some popular theorists. Anthropologists have (rightly, | think) turned their backs on The Golden Bough, first published 1890 by the Scottish anthro- pologist Sir James George Frazer. Frazer’s sweeping attempt to define a common mythical element in re- ligions around the world stripped them of their in- dividuality. The German ethnographer Adolf Bas- tian’s belief that certain elemental ideas developed in disparate places because of the “psychic unity of mankind” had few takers among social scientists. The same fate befell the innate “archetypes of the un- conscious,’ proposed by the early twentieth-century Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. Such interpretations of symbolic meaning may be more a projec- tion of a theorist’s mind than a reflection of na- tive intention. In con- trast, to interpret tribal designs, Schuster drew on his experiences as a cryptanalyst. Decoding, he knew, was easier if you had some idea of what was being transmitted. To decode ancient designs, he turned to native artists. Instead of inves- tigating flow natives think—as did the French philosopher, psychologist, and ethnologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl, in works such as Mental Functions in Prim- itive Societies (1910)—Schuster asked the natives directly, “What do you think?” A motif that appears frequently in Schuster’s archives is a human figure vertically split into male and female halves (usually its right side is male, its left, female). One common version is simply a single body with the two heads, both facing forward, the sex not necessarily distinguishable [see photographs on pages 42 and 43]. In more elaborate examples, the two-headed figure bears a human face or eye at each ofits twelve primary joints: shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles. When he encountered contemporary examples of Sketching a Labyrinth One way to draw a standard labyrinth, a deceptively sim- ple design, is to begin with an array of twelve points placed around a cross. Two lines, crossing at the center, wall off the pathway; each line has two end points. May 2006 NATURAI HISTORY 45 46 | NATUR Al HISTORY the form, Schuster could ask the carvers he visited what they had had in mind when they fashioned a figure that was half male, half female. Such figures appear to have served as social diagrams: the male Indonesian shroud, woven by the Toraja of Sulawesi Island in the nineteenth century, incorporated a pattern of repeating, interconnected figures that suggest abstract human forms (left). Such patterns appear to represent genealogical descent and ancestry, depending on whether they are read “down” or “up.” half represented the owner’s connection with the fa- ther and, by extension, the father’s social group; the female half represented a similar connection with the owner’s mother. Thus the vertical split symbol- izes the division of the tribe into two halves, or moi- eties, as anthropologists call them, a common tribal configuration. The significance of the symbolism comes from the fact that, in many tribal groups, the prescribed form of marriage was between members of two distinct moieties—marriage between a man and woman from the same motety, the same subdi- vision, was considered incestuous. Schuster found that underlying that symbolism was the notion of opposites united in one, as well as the concept of many within one. Such logic is alien to contemporary Western thinking, which takes the individual as the basic unit of society, but in the con- text of tribalism, it made perfect sense: begin with the whole, and then distinguish the particular. As for the face or eye at the joints, they, too, symbolize the tribe: the upper ones represent ancestors; the ones below the navel, descendants. Examples of the same designs, ultimately dating back to Late Paleolithic times, have appeared on all inhabited continents. A few survived even in West- May 2006 ern civilization, albeit overlain with a more restric- tive meaning. Fourteenth-century German manu- scripts of the Sachsenspiegel (“Mirror of the Saxons”), a collection of customary laws compiled earlier, in- clude a diagram of the human figure that enabled the largely il- literate people of the day to vi- sualize the family relationships relevant for disputes over inher- itance. Several German astrolog- ical diagrams from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries show a figure divided down its center in- to male and female halves, with the twelve symbols of the zodiac distributed around the twelve primary joints [see illustration at bottom right on page 43]. nother genealogical mouf Schuster documented 1s the portrayal of reproduction as the budding off of a child from a woman’ (or less often, a man’s) limb, particularly the knee. Thus, in traditional trib- al thought the expression of genealogical descent or relationship does not hinge on an understanding of the biology of procreation. Perhaps the most important of Schuster’s insights concerned certain widespread graphic patterns, ranging from realistic to highly stylized portrayals, which could be interpreted as linked human figures [see photograph above and images on opposite page|. Each figure in such patterns 1s linked diagonally, through fused limbs, to neighboring figures above and be- low. Of course, continuous limbs may make no sense anatomically, but in Schuster’s view, they well rep- resented the puzzle of procreation, which has nei- ther beginning nor end. The ranks above a partic- ular figure, he believed, represented that figure’s an- cestors, whereas the ones below represented de- scendants. The device of fused limbs also reflects the fiction of procreation by budding, along with the implied genetic potency of the limbs. When read from the top down, such a genealog- ical pattern illustrates descent. Read upward, the same pattern makes it possible for tribal members to retrace their ancestry back to the founding an- cestor. Doing so, at least in the traditional way of thinking, guarantees rebirth. In most tribal societies, people have believed in rebirth, not resurrection. In Schuster’s view, many simple geometric de- signs—repeated chevrons, for instance—are related to the linked-figure patterns. Such simple designs lend themselves to being painted or even incised or tattooed on the human body, enabling the members of a tribe to mark their commonality. More elabo- rate tracings, such as a widespread traditional labyrinth design [see photographs on page 45], as well as games such as pachisi, snakes and ladders, hopscotch, and chess, may be variations of the genealogical patterns. Not only do they all involve “getting from here to there”; they also often share subtle graphic elements. I am convinced that Schuster’s work bears witness to the survival of an ancient iconographic sys- tem. Its earliest known expressions appeared in Eu- rope 30,000 years ago. It crossed continents. Artis- tic styles illustrating the various genealogical con- cepts came and went. Cultures sheltered the iconic system without changing it; it outlived most of them. American anthropologists may belittle such expressive parallels as “curiosities.” In rejoinder, it is worth recalling that the first Neanderthal skull- cap, discovered in 1856, was placed in a curiosity and probably would still be there were it cabinet not for Darwin’s Origin of Species. I asked Schuster what it all meant; he was reluc- tant to say. Someone gave him a tape recorder; he never used it. His quest was in the search itself. The If forty scholars with forty grants had labored forty years, they couldn’t have produced an equal archive. Yet Schuster worked alone. His ceaseless travels, all miracles of frugality, took him wherev- er the evidence dictated, including villages reached only by camel or dugout canoe. An open, easy man- ner brought acceptance. When I promised him I would complete his work, I reckoned the task would take a year. Eighteen years later | published Soctal Symbolism in Ancient & Tiib- al Art, a twelve-volume compendium of Schuster’s findings, 3,500 pages with 7,000 illustrations. Sets were deposited in 600 libraries around the world. Subsequently I published a more digestible one-vol- ume summary, Patterns That Connect (1996). Rod- ney Needham, a noted professor emeritus of social anthropology at the University of Oxford, expressed his admiration for the latter volume: Just to scan the illustrations and assess them in relation to their times and places is very exciting. Merely their jux- taposition poses such profound questions that it is hard to understand an anthropology that does not confront them. “T find myself lamenting the fact that Schuster 1s no longer alive,” wrote the art historian Leo Stein- 'G Designs copied from artifacts collected in various parts of the world bear a striking resem- blance to one another (left to right): New Guinea bamboo pipe, nineteenth century; Iranian pottery, ca. 3000 8.c.; pre-Columbian Brazilian pottery, A.D. 400-1300; Congolese wooden cup, nineteenth century. Because human figures are such a central subject of tribal art, these designs may have been independently invented. But the author hypothesizes that they have embodied the important social concept of genealogical connection since Late Paleolithic times and have continued to convey that concept within traditional tribal groups. too ill to eat—he mailed funds to a missionary 1n Panama, asking him to photograph day before he died a ladder crafted in anthropomorphic form, located in a distant village. He wanted the record to be as com- plete as possible. And what a record! The Schuster archive holds, in addition to the 18,000 pages of detailed corre- spondence, some 275,000 annotated photographs, more than 70,000 negatives, 5,670 bibliographic ref- erences, and more, all cross-referenced five ways, with a master catalog in thirty languages (including five alphabets). berg of the University of Pennsylvania. “A strange sentiment,” Steinberg went on, “for I never mind learning that Einstein is dead or Humboldt or Paracelsus. But with this man there is so much I would like to discuss.” Even more than this one man, though, the ele- gance of genealogical iconography evokes admira- tion. That shouldn’t cause surprise. People every- where are pattern-makers and pattern-perceivers. Our Paleolithic ancestors shared that gift. Thanks to Carl Schuster, we descendants can celebrate their achievement. C] May 2006 NATUR \l HISTORY 47 48 | NATURAI HISTORY May 2006 Female aplomado falcon (above), raised as part of a captive-breeding program, takes wing in southern Texas, not far from where she was released into the wild a year earlier. Aplomados often hunt in mating pairs, such as the couple shown on opposite page chasing down a sparrow. me $ a. Fe tp £3 Bik 54) we BS qr ds * ) yo phi Bia bond small flock of red-winged blackbirds is fly- ing fast, with the wind, when a larger bird launches upward and picks outa target from the moving group. Bird chases bird, one hunter, one prey. In level flight the hunter turns on a burst of speed—firing up its afterburners, so to speak—and closes the gap on the prey. The blackbird looks like a goner, as if somehow the wind had shifted against it or some unseen force were pulling the smaller bird toward its antagonist. Justin time, the blackbird takes evasive action, by jinking and diving for cover. But the hunter has an unusually long tail, a strong rudder that gives it agility as well as speed. Another pursuer might respond to the blackbird’s darts and evasions with a wide, banking turn before returning to the chase; instead, this hunter abruptly reverses direction and follows closely as the blackbird makes a mad, twisting, zigzag dash for a bush. Not a sec- ond too soon, the prey dives into the bush, while the hunter shoots past and climbs steeply, looking down over its shoulder at the missed prize. Many hunting birds, including the peregrine fal- con and others, give up if their intended prey reach- es cover. Incredibly, though, this hunter seems to be in two places at once. As it ris- es and circles, a second hunter—its wingman, so to speak—plunges into the bush and flushes out the hid- ing blackbird. The flying chase begins anew. In fact, there are two hunters: a breeding pair of falcons known as aplomados (Falco femoralis) that work to- gether, anticipating each other's next move. Observ- at aplomado ee are nesting in the Southwest again, Of their incredible hunting and flying skills. By W. Grainger Hunt, Tom J. Cade, and Angel B. Montoya ing a single aplomado or a cooperative hunting pair in flight is a wondrous experience. The lofty bird-on- bird chases feature thrilling, split-second escapes, as- tonishing aerial acrobatics, and often, in the end, a successful kill. Like the gyrfalcon and the merlin, the aplomado can suddenly accelerate in level flight. And, if the prey tries to escape by flying upward, the aplo- mado can follow it, climbing at a steeper angle than even the gyrfalcon. Again and again it may climb above its prey, harassing it with repeated raking passes. And unlike the far-ranging flights of the gyrfalcon or the peregrine, the aplomado’s proclivity for tight turns of- ten keeps the entire sequence within sight of the hu- man observer [see illustration on pages 52 and 53}. ot many people have heard of the aplomado falcon, let alone seen it in action. Its slow- blooming reputation has long been eclipsed by such legendary bird hunters as the gyrfalcon, the merlin, and the peregrine. As falcons go, the aplomado is about average in size, weighing in at just under a pound: smaller than both the peregrine and the gyr- falcon, and larger than the merlin. Compared to those birds, the aplomado’s most unusual characteristic is its long tail. But it is no peacock plume. The tail is reminiscent of the tails of the largely insectivorous kestrels and hobbies or, to cite other hunting birds, of the tails of accipiters— hawks known for their sharp turns—such as the Cooper’s hawk. And even the name aplomado, a Span- “lead- distinguishes only ish word meaning colored,” May 2006 NATURAL HISTORY 50 | ATUR HI sTORY Adult aplomado perches next to a raven’s nest that it has commandeered on an abandoned windmill, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Falcons do not build their own nests. the bird’s gray back, and ignores the beautiful cinna- mon-orange markings on its head and belly. Early naturalists did admire the aplomado’s color- ful markings and yellow-rimmed eyes. Yet, these “admirers” hardly countered the bird’s relative anonymity by also describing it as rather phlegmat- ic and an unexciting predator. According to their descriptions, the aplomado would perch quietly for long periods in trees or on fence posts; or, 1t would follow grass fires to catch escaping grasshoppers and other small prey flushed out ahead of the conflagra- tion. Had any of themseen the bird in hunting mode? Only the ornithologist and artist Andrew Jack- son Grayson, traveling in Mexico in the 1860s, seems to have observed aplomado falcons closely enough to fathom their true nature. He watched them chase doves and other medium-size birds— and came away impressed by their spectacular fly- ing and hunting tactics. He thought them not un- like the sharp-shinned hawk, another accipiter. Grayson was right; the assumption that the aplo- mado is an unremarkable hunter is as far from the truth as a newborn tundra peregrine is from its fu- ture wintering grounds in Argentina. No records indicate that French or Spanish fal- coners of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries knew of a bird by the name aplomado. But they did train a small falcon, known to the French as alethe and to the Spanish as aletto, that came from the New May 2006 World. Early conquistadors and explorers had en- countered the bird in Mexico and Central and South America, recognized its abilities, and brought it back to European falconry centers in France, Spain, and Portugal. In a famous popular treatise, La Faucon- nerie, first published in 1598, the aristocrat Charles d’Arcussia wrote of hunting gray partridges with the New World falcon. He favorably compared the alethe to the gyrfalcon and goshawk, for its direct flights from the falconer’s glove. D’Arcussia also referred to the bird as “high-mettled” and full of spirit. In 1995 James W. Nelson, a falconer from Ken- newick, Washington, studied those historical de- scriptions of behavior and appearance. He had, at that point, also carefully studied the hunting behav- ior of wild aplomados. The alethe, the aletto, and the aplomado, he declared, were one and the same. B ack in 1976, a young graduate student in biol- ogy, Dean P. Keddy-Hector, then at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, made the first attempt to scientifically study the behavior and ecology of the aplomado species. He drove down the coast of eastern Mexico to look for them, not being certain that there were any falcons left to study. At the time, Mexican farmers were still dusting their crops with the chemical pesticide DDT—the bane of falcon reproduction because it thins their eggshells. By then, the destruction of the aplomados’ natural habi- tat had already driven them from the United States, though the birds had lived in the southwest until the early 1900s [see map on this page]. Early naturalists had spotted them fairly often in parts of southern and western Texas, southwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Arizona. But heavy livestock grazing and fewer natural fires had turned grasslands into scrublands. Wet savannas, moreover, had been con- verted to cropland. The last sighting of aplomado nesting pairs in the U.S. was in the 1950s. But Keddy-Hector did find aplomados in Mex- ico. They stood out brightly against the blue sky in the coastal state of Veracruz, perched above the rich grasslands in the tops of lone acacia trees. They laid their eggs in the abandoned nests of other large birds and in bromeliads, or air plants [see photograph on opposite page|. And, like all tropical falcons, they ate insects. Keddy-Hector showed, however, that insects make up only a small part of the aplomado diet— mados also steal any prey the intruders may be car- rying, giving them yet another reason to stay away. y the late 1970s, the loss of breeding aploma- dos in the U.S. had stirred enough regret among conservationists that they began taking action. Eggshell thinning caused by DDT in eastern Mex- ico was also detected by Keddy-Hector, attracting more attention. People began wondering whether the aplomado in Mexico might be going the way the peregrine had two decades earlier: total loss of breeding pairs in the eastern U.S. The Peregrine Fund, an organization founded in 1970 by one of us (Cade), was already restoring peregrines to their native habitat by releasing captive-bred young. So it was a small step to suggest that aplomados might benefit from similar intervention. With the cooperation of the Mexican govern- ment, John Langford, a biologist at the Chihuahuan Desert Research Insti- appetizers, you might say, though still impor- tant to young, inexperi- enced falcons learning to hunt. The staff of life for aplomados proved to be other birds: a myriad of resident and migratory species passing through the falcon territories. The aplomados could catch these prey from standing starts in treetop perches. And, once in the air, they could easily close a quarter-mile gap in pursuit of, say, a pass- ing flock of doves. Hunting is not the on- ly chance for aplomados to show off their talent for stupendous flying. They are fiercely territo- rial and seek to drive [- a ia: a Bs tute in Alpine, Texas, and er te Lu N ia E D s TA Vale Ss. his coworkers brought i ot aa ae Arizona New ©) Current known aplomado range ns Mexico 1) Historically known aplomado range | _ cnnetiiamen tres te eeatnne enim ena Chihuahuan Desert — Research Center . ye ~ Chihuahua { Austin ~ Matagorda Island ~ Laguna Atacosa Wildlife Refuge Brownsville Gu if of Mexico MEXICO LF , * Veracruz % PACIFIC & OCEAN N Current and historically known ranges of aplomados in the U.S. and Mexico are plotted above. Colored question marks indicate historical ranges that are not well documented. The small areas in Texas marked as current ranges are regions where aplomados have been reintroduced. The species also occurs in Central and South America. Texas caress. i eight young aplomados from Mexico back to diexasy dihieres ine 82) the first captive-born hatchling emerged. In 1990 more birds from Mexico were bred, in or- der to enrich the genet- ics of the original seed population. After fits and starts with artificial insem- ination, rearing meth- ods, and pilot releases, more than fifty young aplomados were being raised and seemed ready for release. Conserva- tionists were finally in a position to make the first large-scale attempt at restoring the species to nature. But where? The savannas of coast- away any large bird that enters their turf. Highest on their list of undesirables are other aplomados; nests are therefore widely spaced across the land- scape, usually miles apart. Other species singled out for special disdain are hawks, owls, and ravens—and for good reason. The low trees of the savanna offer little protection from such predators for aplomado nestlings. The best strategy for parent aplomados, then, is to attack on sight, giving the territory itself a hostile reputation. Whenever they attack, the aplo- al southern Texas seemed to offer the best chance for re-establishment. The region had included vast savannas at the time of the Spanish settlement in the 1600s. Brush invaded, though, and by the ear- ly 1900s, most of southern Texas was either devel- oped as farmland or blanketed in brush. But even with such large-scale loss of habitat, aplomados bred just north of Brownsville, Texas, until the mid- 1940s. The final loss of the species in southern Texas coincided with the arrival of DDT in 1947 for cot- May 2006 NATURAL HISTORY 51 ton production. With DDT in their diets, aploma- dos had little chance of reproducing. By the early 1990s, though, DDT contamination was 1n decline, and many species that had been harmed by the pesticide were rapidly recovering in other parts of the U.S. So J. Peter Jenny, Brian D. Mutch, and William R. Heinrich, all biologists with the Peregrine Fund, began looking for pockets of open savanna on the big ranches and wildlife pre- serves of southern Texas. Most promising were tracts near the Gulf Coast, particularly where grasslands were being improved through controlled burning and other methods of brush removal. Cc aptive aplomados were first released on a sub- stantial scale in 1993, via a technique invent- ed by European falconers called hacking. Groups of fledgling aplomados were placed in protective, ven- tilated boxes on the tops of wooden towers. Atten- dants covertly placed food in the boxes, then, after a few weeks, opened the boxes so the birds could fledge on their own. Soon the young aplomados were exploring their environs and returning to the tower for food. As they did so, however, a potent predator emerged: the great horned owl, a species that had benefited from the centuries-long invasion of thorny brush. New release areas had to be careful- ly screened for owls—ideally, as far from brushy ar- eas as possible. Maturing aplomados posed another, unexpected threat to the newly released young. Once the older falcons learned to be self-sufficient, they dispersed into the landscape, only to return the following year to defend territories close to the hacking towers. There they became aggressive to- ward the young falcons being released. Workers thus had to prospect constantly for new release sites. In May 1995, the first wild, productive breeding pair was discovered in southern Texas; since then at least two centers of breeding have emerged. Twen- ty-six breeding pairs now nest in the vicinity of the Laguna Atascosa Wildlife Refuge near Brownsville, and thirteen more pairs nest on Matagorda Island north of Corpus Christi [see map on preceding page}. Both areas make ideal habitats for foraging aploma- dos—the landscapes are vast, open, replete with birdlife, and moderately free of owls. Biologists are cautiously optimistic about the growing aplomado Cooperative hunting sequence, similar to one observed in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi, is depicted as it unfolds, from left to right, in the schematic diagram. A male aplomado— perched with his mate in an acacia tree—tries to intercept a passing dove, but the dove evades him. The male chases the dove until it takes refuge in a dead acacia. The female enters the tree from below and flushes out the dove; the male, which has been circling, plummets and drives the dove into the grass. The female then dives in for the kill. She carries the dove to the nest tree (a honey mesquite), and deplumes it in an upper branch before feeding it to her three young. Oh oe population. And as visitors to Laguna Atascosa know, southern Texas has become a place to watch aplo- mados in action. |i the 1970s and 1980s, people had come to think that regions farther west, such as the desert grass- lands of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, were de- void of nesting aplomados. But rare sightings of lone falcons suggested the possibility of a population in nearby Mexico. One of us (Montoya) became so cu- rious that, in 1992, he and two other biologists— Robert Tafanelli, then at New Mexico State Uni- versity in Las Cruces, and Manuel Bujanda, now at the University of Chihuahua, Mexico—began ex- ploring the back roads of the Mexican state of Chi- huahua. One day, as they were traveling through an immense grassland with a scattering of tall yuccas, they happened upon a pair of aplomados perched on adjoining fence posts, preening nonchalantly in the sunshine. During the next few years, Montoya, Tafanelli, and Bujunda discovered nearly forty pairs scattered among the cattle ranches of the region. Why did aplomados persist in Chihuahua, when they had vanished from the U.S., only a few hun- dred miles away? The answer has largely to do with the history of ranching. In the US., by the 1870s, the railroad had connected the grasslands of south- ern New Mexico with the markets of the East, al- tering the economics of cattle production. A sea of fertile grasses, once largely inaccessible to livestock, was opened up as trains carried equipment for drilling wells and building windmills, earthen dams, and watering tanks. The supply of grassland seemed limitless, and entrepreneurs showed little interest in long-term sustainability. But the cattle caused mas- sive erosion. Woody plants such as creosote bush and mesquite moved in, smothering the open grasslands. Desert savannas in Mexico were affected far less extensively than their counterparts in the U.S., in part because the development of man-made water sources for livestock in Mexico was so long delayed. Groups of hostile Apaches on the Mexican side of the bor- der in the late 1800s also made remote ranching risky and unprofitable. The Mexican Revolution of 1910 further retarded the development of the region. he persistence of suitable habitat for nesting aplomados in Chihuahua also owes much to the long-established ranching families who man- aged their lands with care through long cycles of wetness and drought. Enrique Baeza, the owner of a 100,000-acre ranch called the Tinaja Verde, in eastern Chihuahua, belongs to such a family, and he knows the aplomado well. To him, nesting aplo- mados show how well he is caring for his ranch: My dad wanted to pass this ranch on to his kids, and that’s what I want to do for mine. The advice Dad gave me was to graze as if [drought conditions] next year will be worse than this one. That’s what we do. We graze year round, but we graze lightly—tt’ a tradition with us. Aplomados are a thermometer for what we're doing. The thirteen pairs of aplomados nesting at Tinaja Verde are indeed good indicators of the health of the grasslands. They occupy a key node in a food web that includes grasses, seeds, insects, and small birds. Some of the species in the web, such as the meadowlark, reside in the grasslands year-round; others, such as the chestnut-collared longspur, arrive from northern prairies in fall and depart in spring. Both are important, but the pres- ence of wintering birds is cru- cial, particularly at the begin- ning of the aplomado nesting season. That’s when the falcons are storing fat to produce and incubate their eggs. Thus, the aplomado also depends on the habitats that nurture the mi- grants—some from as far away as Alberta, Canada. Alberto Macias-Duarte, now at the University of Arizona in Tucson, studied the migrants and other factors affecting aplo- mado ecology at Tinaja Verde and at the neighboring Coyamito Ranch. He ex- amined the impact of bird abundance on falcon breeding success, and showed how both were af- fected by the severe drought that has gripped the region since 1993. The drought, he suggests, has led to such severe declines in the abundance of prey birds that the falcons must travel extra distances from their nests to forage. That demands more energy, and exposes the young falcons to increased preda- tion by ravens and others. Releases of aplomados on two cattle ranches in west Texas began in 2002, but they are still in the early stages. Unlike southern Texas, where food 1s abundant and predation 1s the central issue, food may be the biggest challenge for aplomados in the desert grasslands. Time will tell whether west Texas, with its vast open lands and vegetation so similar to that of neighboring Chihuahua, will have enough doves, meadowlarks, and other medium-size birds to sup- port a breeding population of aplomado falcons. n the tall weeds of a derelict landing strip on the far end of Matagorda Island, Texas, two of us (Hunt and Cade) have joined Erin J. Gott and Paul W. Juergens, both biologists for the Peregrine Fund. Gott and Juergens are taking turns peering through a telescope, attempting to identify the band num- bers of a pair of aplomados perched on a low shrub. The falcons are trying to decide whether to accept the new nesting platform provided for them, or to lay their eggs in an abandoned nest in a nearby bush. The male glances up and spies a white-tailed hawk casually soaring 400 feet above. Flashing off his low 54 | NATURAL HISTORY May 2006 Aplomado banks into a dive. perch and climbing effortlessly at a steep angle, the — falcon begins to attack the much larger hawk. Ina _ matter of thirty seconds, the falcon is above the q hawk; he stoops sideways and down, as the hawk — flips over to present its talons. The hawk soars high- er. The observers are spellbound. . The hawk and his mate are neighbors of the nest- ing aplomado pair. We see the female hawk take off — from a bush near her nest and join her mate; the two birds soar high over their nesting territory. The male _ aplomado intensifies his attack on both hawks, fly- ing back and forth from one to the other, executing shallow, slashing stoops over their backs, some- times actually hitting — them. After several min- utes our group begins tim- = _ ing the encounter, which ms *. ‘lasts about forty minutes; ~ never once does the little fal- con stop attacking or set his wings in a glide or soar. Run- ning at fifteen to twenty times his resting metabolic rate, he is consuming a huge amount of energy in the continual, rapid beat of his wings. Nothing is more important for survival and reproduction than de- fending his nest and food supply, and his behavior shows it. According to Juergens, the falcon and hawk pairs fought relentlessly during last year’s breeding season, but both still managed to raise their young. In spite of such tenacity, aplomados have disap- peared from much of their former range. That 1s one reason the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service list- ed them as an endangered species in 1986, even though the population in coastal eastern Mexico 1s extensive. There is little immediate hope for an aplo- mado comeback in much of the drier ancestral re- gion to the north, because of the large-scale brush invasion. But, as Enrique Baeza has learned, what is good for aplomados 1s good for cattle ranching. Biologists are pinning their hopes for the species on that fact. The presence of this beautiful falcon is a sign of prosperity, of landscape richness; its reap- pearance is a sign that things are going well. If the aplomado makes a full recovery over the long term, breeding aplomados will spread across the Chihuahuan Desert grasslands of northern Mex- ico and the southwestern U.S. For an increasing number of us, the sight of two adult aplomados perched together on the spike of a tall yucca, look- ing out across a sea of yellow grasses for the move- ment of an oriole or longspur, or racing together toward a soaring, absent-minded redtail, is a re- minder of how much our lives and livelihoods are nourished by such natural processes. O SciTech Hands On Museum Aurora, IL Gr a A SCIETECH } www.scitech.museum 630-859-3434 March 27 — Sept. Supported by: City of Aurora & Hollywood Casino U.S. Premiere 4, 2006 This exhibition is curated by the Grupo de Gestores Patrimonio Cultural Latino Americano under the auspices of the Cultural Division of the Foreign Ministry of Argentina. tah ; 56 THIS LAND Short Horse Mountain, part of Massanutten Mountain, looking south from Storybook Trail Virginia Is for Massanutten Mountain has forest trails, streams, shale barrens, a muskeg, and spectacular views. By Robert H. Mohlenbrock he Appalachian Mountains, which extend 1,600 miles _ from Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula to the coastal plain of Alabama, embrace several ranges that roughly parallel the Atlantic coast of North America. In Virginia three main swaths of mountains are distinguished: the Allegheny Moun- tains in the west, the Blue Ridge Mountains to their east, and a com- bination of mountains and major river valleys in between. One of the “in between” moun- tains 1s Massanutten, comprising two parallel ridges that extend fifty miles, from near Harrisonburg in the southwest to near Strasburg 1n the northeast. Rising to nearly 3,000 feet, the mountain is heavily forest- ed: dry forest covers the crests, and moist forest 1s found in the riparian, Mountain laurel blooms on Massanutten Mountain in early May. or streamside, zones. Most of Massa- nutten Mountain lies within George Washington National Forest, which maintains forest roads and trails. A visitor center along U.S. Highway 211, where it crosses the mountain le Hikers east of New Market, 1s open from mid-April through October. Massanutten Mountain is formed from layers of sedimentary rock— shale, sandstone, limestone, and more shale—that was deposited by shallow coastal seas. When the Ap- palachian Mountains arose, between 480 million and 300 million years ago, those layers were folded into a U-shape, creating the two parallel ridges visible today. The Storybook Trail, a short hiking trail off Forest Development Road 274 (Crisman Hollow Road), about two miles north of the visitor center, offers several displays depicting the moun- tain geology. The trail ends at a spectacular overlook. Among the trails that originate at the visitor center are Discovery Way and Wildflower Trail, both short, and Bird Knob Loop Trail and Wa- terfall Mountain Loop Trail, each more than eight miles long. For the ambitious backpacker, the seventy- one-mile-long Massanutten Nation- al Recreation Trail is accessible from many points along its way. The trail is a loop that follows one ridge and backtracks along the other. Near the midpoint of the moun- tain, east of Edinburg, my wife Bev- erly and I explored the Peters Mill Run Trail. (That trail, it’s worth cau- tioning, is open to all-terrain and off-highway vehicles.) Along it we came to a boggy area kept wet by seepage from the adjacent hillside. We were careful to observe it from the periphery, both because some plants rare for the region grow there, and because the black muck would have made for hard walking. In one place the boggy soil is four feet deep, and it trembles if you walk on it. Such boggy areas, more common far to the north of Virginia, are called muskegs, from a Native American word that means “grassy bog.” Vir- ginia botanists are quite familiar with this one, locally known as the Mas- sanutten Muskeg. It harbors several northern plant species that here reach their southern limits. Habitats Dry forest Common trees include black gum, black oak, blackjack oak, black walnut, eastern red cedar, northern red oak, pignut hickory, rock chestnut oak, slippery elm, sassafras, Virginia pine, white ash, white oak, white pine, and wild black cherry. Among the smaller trees and shrubs are black haw, black raspberry, com- mon blackberry, deerberry, hillside blueberry, and mountain laurel. Wild- flowers often present are common blue heart-leaved aster, goat’s rue, hemp dogbane, oxeye daisy, trailing arbutus, wrinkle-leaved goldenrod, and yellow wild indigo. Riparian forest Mountain maple, sug- ar maple, sweet birch, and yellow poplar (also called tulip tree) are the dominant trees, rising above a middle forest layer of downy serviceberry and redbud and a ground layer of At the other extreme from that soggy habitat are shale barrens, dry, ex- posed places where crumbling rock, sear- ing summer tempera- tures, and acidic soils limit growth to a few well-adapted species. Shale barrens are known only from a few areas in Mary- land, Pennsylvania, Vir- ginia, and West Virginia. One is the Browns Hol- low Shale Barren, on Massanutten Mountain a few hundred feet south of the visitor center. Steep south- and east-facing shale slopes rise as high as 120 feet above Browns Run, a stream that flows through the hollow. ROBERT H. MOHLENBROCK Is a distin- guished professor emeritus of plant biology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. bland sweet cicely, mayapple, pink la- dy’s slipper, large twayblade, white avens, and wild geranium. The wettest areas support box elder, northern hackberry, red maple, and shellbark hickory, along with the shrubby spicebush and such wild- flowers as American water-willow, clearweed, dwarf crested iris, fringed loosestrife, southern three-lobed bedstraw, and Virginia dayflower. Muskeg Black ash, unusual for the mountains of Virginia, grows with red maple, sweet birch, and yellow poplar. Shrubs include such wetland species as arrowwood, ninebark, spicebush, and winterberry, as well as species that prefer drier habitats, such as American hazelnut, fringe tree, pawpaw, and witch hazel. Bog-loving orchids thrive in the muskeg. Among them are club-spur George Washington National Forest 7 oy Be ae “Mort VISITOR INFORMATION Lee Ranger District George Washington and Jefferson National Forests 109 Molineu Road Edinburg, VA 22824 540-984-4101 www.fs.fed.us/r8/gwj/lee/ orchid, grass-pink, Loesel’s tway- blade, purple fringed orchid, ragged fringed orchid, showy lady’s slipper, and yellow fringed orchid. Species uncommon this far south are Ameri- can golden saxifrage, marsh marigold, meadow phlox, round- leaved sundew, swamp lousewort, and tawny cotton grass. Cinnamon fern, lady fern, marsh fern, royal fern, and shining club moss are among the spore-producing plants in the bog. Shale barrens A sparse woodland of eastern red cedar and Virginia pine grows above the herbaceous plants. Some of the latter are common, such as little bluestem and Pennsylvania sedge. Others are endemic to shale barrens, such as shale barren golden- rod, shale barren rock-cress, Virginia whitehair leather flower, and white- hair leather flower. May 2006 NATURAL HISTORY 58 BOOKSHELF Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006; $22.95 Reus a scientific standpoint, one might argue, we don’t need another book on global warming. Everyone, it seems, knows about melting icecaps and hyperactive hurricanes. If you ski, you curse the warmer winters. If you own beachfront property—or reside on a coral atoll—you fear rising sea levels. What is more, scientists seem to be in general agreement about the para- meters of the scientific problem, even if some details of the current thaw re- main to be determined. Few scientists doubt that the Earth’s mean tempera- ture has been rising at a rate unprece- dented in recent geological history. Erosion on Sarichef Island, Alaska, from storms and rising sea levels has forced the inhabitants to abandon the island for the mainland. Few question the increased concentra- tion of greenhouse gases in the atmos- phere, and few deny that the burning of fossil fuels is the major source of this increase. And though computerized models lead to divergent predictions about which factors ultimately have the most effect on future climate, there is little disagreement that some kind of climatic change is in progress. Dra- matic changes have taken place in the past, and there is no reason to expect today to be any different. Scientifically NATURAL HISTORY May 2006 speaking, global warming is old news. But because of the nature of global warming—transnational in scope, and very likely tied to pollution caused by human activity—what to do with the bare facts is a political problem. From that point of view, Elizabeth Kolbert’s book 1s more than welcome. Politi- cians, as you may have noted (more and more these days), are relatively insensi- tive to the raw power of scientific ar- guments. Faced with proof that the sky is indeed falling, decision makers still need to feel the will of their con- stituents: voters who would prefer that the sky not fall, and who make it clear that public and private funds should be devoted to keeping the sky from falling. Elizabeth Kolbert presents a series of succinct and astutely written bulletins from the front lines of the climate- change community, and her assembly of the “old news” may still change the right minds in the right places. Rather than re- viewing the usual evi- dence, she has sought out voices who speak with knowledge and conviction about what is happening to the planet. The most dra- matic effects of global warming, she notes, occur in places where the fewest people live, so she journeys to a small island in the Arc- tic Ocean, barely ten feet above sea level. Vladimir E. Roma- novsky, a Russian geophysicist who has been watching the island crumble in the past decade as its permafrost melts, ges- tures at the eroding blufts. “Another dis- appearing island,” he says. Climate change is “moving very, very fast.” te moving just as fast on Greenland’s vanishing ice sheet, where the Jakob- shavn Isbrae, a moving river of ice, has more than doubled the rate of its slide to the sea, from 3.5 miles per year in 1992 to 7.8 miles per year in 2003. And By Laurence A. Marschall it’s moving fast in Iceland, too, where Kolbert views the Solheimajokull, a glacier that has retreated a fifth of a mile in the past decade. By the end of the century, an Icelandic glaciologist tells her, the island, which has been contin- ually glaciated for at least 2 million years, will be virtually ice-free. What climatologists worry about most, Kolbert writes, is that humanity may reach a tipping point, the state of “DAI,” or Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference, where calamitous change becomes inevitable. Climate modelers such as James E. Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whom Kolbert visits in New York City, are hesitant to predict when the Earth will cross the DAI line, or whether we have crossed it already. But Hansen— who recently made headlines when he complained of being muzzled by po- litical appointees in his agency—and many of the other scientists, agency functionaries, and political veterans interviewed by Kolbert express dismay that what seems to be the policy in the face of the gathering storm 1s “business as usual.” It’s hard not to share their concerns, especially when Kolbert conveys their insights with such immediacy and co- gency. Take, for instance, the comment made by another NASA scientist, sip- ping coffee in a tent atop Greenland’s melting ice sheet: “To put it nicely, we are heading into deep doo-doo.” Wave-Swept Shore: The Rigors of Life on a Rocky Coast by Mimi Koehl; photographs by Anne Wertheim Rosenfeld University of California Press 2006; $39.95 Se symbiosis—the kind that makes green algae and sea anemones flourish in the intertidal zones along sea- coasts—takes place between organisms whose disparate talents complement each other to the benefit of both. The anemones, whose short, barrel-shaped bodies are firmly anchored to rocks, pro- ES I (EI OL DE ERR Rem | peering eae ig ee vide a sheltered habitat for the algae, which might otherwise be swept away by the waves. When tides are high, the anemones un- furl their crowns of tentacles into the sea, snagging mussels that float by. At the same time, pho- tosynthetic algae in their guts, ex- posed to sunlight, provide added nourishment to both themselves and their anemone hosts. Algae and anemones forma partnership that works. So, too, do Mimi Koehl and Anne Wertheim Rosenfeld. Koehl, a Berkeley professor, 1s an expert in biomechanics. She has made her mark in studying how the structures of organisms help them function in particu- lar environments. Why, for 1n- stance, aren’t starfish peeled from rocks by the surf ? (The an- swer: hard grit embedded in ex- posed areas of soft tissues makes them stiff enough to resist breakage; underneath, hundreds of tubelike feet hold the starfish in place.) Rosenfeld, by contrast, is a veteran nature pho- tographer; eighty-seven of her exquis- ite pictures of the creatures and micro- inhabitants alonga short stretch of Cal- ifornia coast provide an eye-catching and instructive accompaniment to Koehl’s descriptive prose. Wave-Swept Shore is a field guide not to the creatures that inhabit the inter- tidal zone, but to the processes that en- able them to live together in such a challenging habitat. In a few short chapters Koehl shows how their design helps them deal with the challenge of an environment that is alternately dry and wet, scoured by surging currents and dessicating winds. How do plants and animals anchor themselves? How do they protect their bodies against the relentless stress of flowing water? How do they find food, eliminate wastes, and reproduce? Leafing through the book, it’s clear that nature has devised a variety of so- lutions to these problems. Some littoral creatures barnacles, for instance Eddies that form between rocks as tides ebb and flow stir up the water and draw away wastes from the animals and plants that live on the shore. secrete a remarkable glue that bonds them so firmly, even to wet surfaces, that they can weather the fiercest storm. When they get amorous, though, they are, literally, stuck. Unlike crabs, which can scuttle long distances in search of a mate, barnacles can only marry, as it were, the girl next-door. To this end, each one (barnacles are hermaphro- dites) has a penis long enough to reach other nearby barnacles. “If you bolt a camera to the rocks to record what bar- nacles do when the tide is in,” writes Koehl, you'll see that, when they are not filtering food from the water, they are “snuffling around the neighbor- hood with their penises, perhaps checking out potential mates.” For barnacles and most other crea- tures of the intertidal zone, the con- stant waves are both a curse and a bless- ing. Many adaptations are, in essence, protective measures against the flow of water—protective shells, streamlined shapes, suckers that cling and adhesives that stick. But tidal creatures also de- pend on moving water to bring in the microplankton they eat, to scatter eggs and distribute larvae, and to dilute and flush away wastes. “Try to feel the en- vironment met by the animals and plants clinging to these rocks,” Koehl advises. Together she and Rosenfeld ably do just that, conveying the feeling that—for sea squirts, mussels, and goose barnacles at least—the rocky coast is the best of all possible worlds. Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting and the Discovery of the New World by Brian Fagan Basic Books, 2006; $26.95 In have been a culinary delicacy in most cultures, yet oddly, in most of medieval Europe, they were regarded as something of an acquired taste. For centuries, the Catholic Church judged that eating fish was a form of self- denial, and permitted its consumption on fast days when other, more desirable foods were banned. The days of fasting and penance included the forty days of Lent, as well as Fridays and miscellaneous holy days. As the Church came to dom- inate European society, an enormous demand for fish developed that, even- tually, local resources could not supply. Brian Fagan, emeritus professor of an- thropology at the University of Califor- nia, Santa Barbara, weaves these themes together into a fascinating history of the fishing industry in Europe, from Roman times until the colonization of North America in the 1600s. It would be an overstatement to argue that the New World was settled because Catholics needed fish to obey ecclesiastical stric- tures. But Fagan makes an excellent case that the lure of rich fishing grounds should be given equal weight, with the quest for gold and spices, as forces that drove Europe’s westward expansion. Until the eleventh or twelfth century, according to Fagan, most fishing was done locally. Eels were among the most abundant species, and were so prized that in some markets they were used as a form of currency (one can only imag- ine how modern vending machines would work if the practice had contin ued). Herring were also abundant, but The HEART & SOUL of the Desert. No matter how hard the others try, no place can match the spectacular beauty of Tucson. Tucson! Real, Natural. Arizona. Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau 1-888-2-Tucson | www.visitTucson.org FOR A VACATION GUARANTEED TO TAKE YOU FULL CIRCLE, VISIT NEWMEXICO.ORG OR CALL 1-800-733-6396 EXT. 3244. harder to preserve, even if heavily salted. Coastal villagers may have relished them, but away from the coast they were viewed with distaste, food fit only for the poor. Pond-raised carp were also de- voured by the devout, but it was not cheap to raise them, and their muddy flavor was not to everyone’s taste. C od, however, had become the sta- ple fish of European Catholics by the dawn of the great voy- ages of discovery. First fished by the Norse, it is a flaky white flesh that is nu- tritious and palatable even to finicky eaters. More im- portant, cod was readily air-dried in northern cli- mates, to produce plank- like filets called stockfish that would keep as long as five years. Stockfish could also be turned back into white flesh with a few min- utes of pounding and a who kept their knowledge secret for centuries. Fagan makes a convincing case for the merchants of Bristol, in Western England, who financed ships bound for the New World in increas- ing numbers in the 1500s. The first set- tlements in New England were fishing stations, not colonies of Pilgrims, and the fish trade ultimately brought Eng- land more profit than trade in any other commodity from the New World. he Lee) Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (known as I] Sodoma), Story of Saint good soaking in water. It Benedict (detail), sixteenth century satisfied the appetites of a growing population of Catholics, and served as a form of K rations for armies and navies throughout the continent. Some of the history of cod has al- ready been told by Mark Kurlansky in his 1997 bestseller, Cod. But despite their superficial similarity (both books are punctuated by fish recipes that made this reader head for the kitchen), Fa- gan’s book is heavily annotated and the more scholarly of the two. It also dif- fers with Kurlansky on the question— always contentious—of who discov- ered the rich cod-fishing grounds off Newfoundland and New England. Kurlansky thinks it was the Basques, Whether Fagan overstresses the role of fish and ships on the European voy- ages of discovery, his book is a reminder of how important movements in his- tory can be shaped by forces of every- day commerce, which are often over- shadowed by the glitzier themes of con- quest and riches. Put this book on your reading menu, even if you aren’t par- ticularly fond of fish on Fridays. LAURENCE A. MARSCHALL, author of The Supernova Story, is WK.T? Sahm Professor of Physics at Gettysburg College in Pennsylva- nia, and director of Project CLEA, which pro- duces widely used simulation software for edu- cation in astronomy. PICTURE CREDITS Cover: ©Mitch Epstein/Getty Images; pp. 4-5: OSteve Bloom; p. 12(top): Kathie Atkinson/OSF; p. 12(middle): ©Flip Nicklin/Minden Pictures; p. 12(bottom): ©Bernard Castelein/naturepl.com; p. 13(top): OMary Evans Picture Library; p. 13(bottom): ©Terry Deroy Gruber/Getty Images; p. 14(top): ©Marian Bacon/Animals Animals; p. 14(bottom left): ORoger Wood/CORBIS; p. 14 (bottom right): Hannah Black; p. 16: Courtesy of the author; p. 18: ©Yale Goldman; pp. 20822: ©Alex Wild 2004/2005; pp. 36-37: ©Seth Perlman/Associated Press; pp. 38&41: Illustrations by Ian Worpole; pp. 39&40: © 2005 Gary Braasch; p. 42(left): ©Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY; pp. 42-43(middle): ©The British Museum, London; p. 43(top): Photograph from the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico (Abrams book), ©Javier Hinojosa; p. 43(bottom): ©HIP/Art Resource, NY; p. 44(left): ©Malcolm E. Osman/Pitt Ravers Museum; p. 44(mght): ©2006 State Hermitage Museum, Russia; p. 45(top left & right): ©Jeff Saward/www.labyrinthos.net; p.45(top middle): ©Topham/The Image Works; pp. 45(bottom) & 47: Courtesy of the author; p. 46; ©The Textile Museum, Washington DC; pp. 48-49: ©John C. Abbott Nature Photography; pp. 49(inset) 50 & 54: ©Christie Van Cleve; p. 51:Map by Joe LeMonnier; pp. 52-53: Illustration by Patricia J. Wynne; p. 56(top): OSusan M. Glascock; p. 56(bottom): ©Pat & Chuck Blackley; p. 57: Map by Joe LeMonnier; p. 58: ©Scala/Art Resource, NY; p. 59: ©2005 Gary Braasch; p. 60: OAnne Wertheim Rosenfeld; p. 63: ONASA, ESA, H. Weaver, A. Stern, & the HST Pluto Companion Search Team; p. 72: ©Chnistian Ziegler 60 | NATURAL HISTORY May 2006 x GALAPAGOS ... The Trip of a Lifetime Specializing in comprehensive, professionally-led, natural history and photo tours of the Galapagos Islands. Monthly departures on 14-16 passenger yachts. 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In geologically challenging villages, see cultures confronting modernization TILLER INTERNATIONAL TOURS INC P O Box 475637 San Francisco CA 94147 Tel (415) 921-8989 E Mail: tillerinternational@yahoo.com ADVENTURE §3 7 = ~~ > - 4 South & Central America” Travel Spécialists 800-344-6118 adventure-life.com Take a Walk on the Wild Inthe Amazon ee? ; Exceptional Joumeys Since 1989 Ecotour E xpe ditions wi Free Brochure: 800-688-1 822 America’s Pompeii Intact Rhino Skeletons jax a i ie Buried IB Ct ae Ash Ashfall Fossil Beds St Hist Park Royal, Nebraska 402.893.2000 http://ashfall.unl.edu ADVENT U Ream s Small Group Adventures, & Safaris & Expeditions on all 7 Continents Wildlife encounters andy expeditions in the Ar ‘ic Amazon, Galapagos) ’ Antarctica THE BEST PRICES IN THE GALAPAGOS! www.gapadventures.com 1-800-676-6415 nature.net Gas) Tina By Robert Anderson he steady blue flame glowing be- neath my pancake griddle 1s, for the most part, burning methane. A sim- ple molecule with four hydrogen atoms bonded to a central carbon (CH,), methane 1s a clear, odorless gas. Al- though it cooks our comfort food and is a vital source of energy, methane also has a dark side. It 1s a powerful green- house gas, trapping twenty times as much heat in the atmosphere as a sim- ilar volume of carbon dioxide. The real worry 1s the methane now trapped in ice. At low temperatures (around thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit) and moderate pressures (about thirty at- mospheres), methane and water form an ice called methane hydrate. Rela- tively unknown until the 1970s, most methane hydrate is locked up in sedi- ments along continental shelves. A “,..a wonderfully accessible account of the science involved in cloning and of the moral issues that surround it.” - Mary Warnock The science and ethic smaller amount is buried in Arctic per- matrost. Together, those deposits hold twice as much carbon as all the Earth’s reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas combined. If even a small percentage of that methane hydrate melts, it could dramatically increase global warming. At the National Oceanic and Atmo- spheric Administration’s “Ocean Ex- plorer’” Web site (oceanexplorer.noaa. gov/explorations/deepeast01/background/ beneath/beneath.html), Peter A. Rona, a marine geologist at Rutgers Univer- sity in New Brunswick, New Jersey, conducts a virtual tour to the depths of the eastern Atlantic. There, as he shows the viewer, are vast reserves of methane hydrate. At the bottom of the Web page is a diagram comparing the simple lattice of ordinary ice with the more complex one of methane hy- drate. The methane molecules in the complex ice are locked inside “cages” of frozen water. Methane hydrate does have a good side. Entire communities of deep-sea “.,.a wonderfully accessible account of the science involved in cloning and of the moral issues that surround it.” - Mary Warnock The science and ethic Hii CAMBRIDGE Yq EF UNIVERSITY PRESS www.cambridge.org/us “...a wonderfully accessible account of the science involved in cloning and of the moral issues that surround it.” ~ Mory Warnock The science and ethics of cloning creatures have evolved the means to thrive on its energy. Texas A & M University’s Web page “Lair of the ‘Ice Worm’” (www-ocean.tamu.edu/Quarter deck/QD5.3/macdonald.html) describes a colony of polychaete worms whose home is a hydrocarbon seep at the bot- tom of the Gulf of Mexico. If investigators figure out how to tap methane hydrate safely, the deposits may help meet humanity’s insatiable demand for fossil fuels. Listen to “Min- ing Methane” at www.cbc.ca/quirks/ archives/03-04/jan03.html to hear Scott Dallimore, a geotechnical engineer at the Geological Survey of Canada, de- scribe his team’s exploration of hydrate deposits in the Arctic. For a world map of known methane hydrate deposits, go to walrus.wr.usgs.gov/globalhydrate/ and choose the poster at the left in a format for either screen-viewing or printing. he big fear of many climatologists is that some poorly understood part of Earth’s climate system, pushed to a tipping point by human emissions, might trigger a runaway greenhouse ef- fect. Perhaps the most ominous clues to the threat posed by methane hydrate come from the distant past. According to a NASA news item (earthobservatory. nasa.gov/Newsroom/NasaNews/2001/2001 12106303.htm!), 55 million years ago a large release of the frozen seafloor gas heated the Earth by thirteen degrees F Gavin A. Schmidt, a NASA climatol- ogist, explains how ratios of isotopes of carbon suggest that methane hydrate was to blame for that dramatic warm- ing (www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/ schmidt_02/). The most chilling scenario of all, however, comes from the end of the Permian period, when Earth under- went its largest mass extinction. Dan Dorritie, a paleontologist in California, regularly updates his online book on the role the he, among others, thinks methane hydrate played in that horren- dous event (www.killerinourmidst.com/). Dorritie warns, it could happen again. ROBERT ANDERSON its a freelance science writer living in Los Angeles. 62 | NATURAI HISTORY May 2006 OUT THERE el Sizing Up Pluto The runt of the solar system turns out to have three moons. By Charles Liu got in your e-mail, you'd think size is everything. So pity poor Pluto. When the American astron- omer Clyde W. Tombaugh discovered it back in 1930, it was immediately dubbed the ninth planet of our solar system. Most astronomers thought it was as big as the gas-giant planets Uranus and Neptune—maybe even bigger. But almost immediately after its discovery, astronomers agreed that Pluto would have to shrink; then, as telescopes got progressively more powerful, Pluto got even smaller.To- day, we astronomers know it’s not even as big as Earth’s moon. Total shrinkage: more than twenty times the original estimate. But Pluto lovers were in for even more distress. In 1978, when as- tronomers discovered Pluto’s moon Charon, they realized that both bod- ies revolve about a center of mass that does not lie inside either one of them. Pluto was not a single planet, but half of the Pluto-Charon double-planet system (though Charon continues to be called a “moon”). Worst of all was the recent discovery of 2003 UB313, an object larger than Pluto yet farther from the Sun [see “Number Ten?” by Charles Liu, October 2005 |. With that, the case became even stronger that Pluto was misclassified in the first place—it’s not even a “real” planet! Before you get all teary-eyed over Pluto’s waning status, though, con- sider this: if astronomers are really so down on Pluto, why did we work so hard to launch a new spacecraft if f you believed half the spam you recently to probe it? Just as you should trash all that silly “ENlaarge it” spam as hype, you might also delete the notion that size is all that matters in a heavenly body. In fact, in the past decade astronomers have sent several spacecraft to “minor” tar- gets: NEAR-Shoemaker to the aster- oid 433 Eros, Stardust to Comet Wild 2,and Deep Impact to Comet P/Tem- pel 1. The largest of those targets, Eros, is barely twenty miles across. Yet each of those missions has yielded important insights about the compo- sition and history of our solar system. As for the current mission to Plu- to, New Horizons is perhaps the most sophisticated space probe ever launched—certainly not just a bone tossed toward a B-list planetary body. It left Earth’s vicinity at nearly 36,000 miles an hour (the fastest ever launch speed) and passed the Moon’s orbit in approximately nine hours. (Apollo 11 took three days to do the same thing.) If all goes well, New Horizons will reach Jupiter in thirteen months, then take advantage of the giant plan- et’s gravity to slingshot on to Pluto sometime in July 2015. As it turns out, an unexpected bonus—two, actually—will greet New Horizons when it reaches its primary target: a pair of tiny moons whose existence was confirmed’ barely a month after launch. ince Tombaugh’s time, Pluto may have given up its claim to be a gas giant, but as of this year its new status as a many-mooned planet fi- nally enables it to join the ranks of Uranus and Neptune. In May 2005 Harold A. Weaver of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Labora- tory in Laurel, Maryland, and S. Alan Stern of the Southwest Research In- stitute in Boulder, Colorado, trained the Hubble Space Telescope on Plu- to for some of its most detailed im- ages ever. The astronomers saw two dots of light, each about 35,000 miles from Pluto—much farther from the planet than Charon is, but only about one-seventh the distance between the Moon and Earth. To verify that the dots were moons, the team re- viewed past data and found evidence of them, in different positions with respect to Pluto, on images dating back to 2002.They calculated orbital paths for the two objects and took (Continued on page 66) Enhanced-color images of Pluto made by the Hubble Space Telescope on February 15, 2006 (top of page), and March 2, 2006 (above), reveal the faint light of two newly discovered moons (small white dots). Their movement relative to Pluto (brightest spot at center of images) over time led investigators to conclude that they orbit the planet. Charon, smaller than Pluto but substantially larger than the two new moons, appears to the upper right (in the top image) and to the upper left (in the above image) of the planet. May 2006 NATURAL HISTORY 63 ADVENTURE TRAVEL/TOURS 1. ADVENTURE CANADA Travel on the 104-passenger, zodiac- equipped M/S Explorer and discover the art, culture and wildlife of Arctic Canada and Greenland. 2. ADVENTURE LIFE JOURNEYS Small group travel in the Andes, Amazon, Galapagos, Patagonia, Antarctica, and Central America. Expert local guides lead our cultural and ecological explorations. 3. ADVENTURESMITH EXPLORATIONS Small ship cruise and adventure travel experts. Explore nature up close and in style aboard luxury yachts, small ships and wilderness lodges. 4. 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Discover mountains, prairies, open skies and endless coastlines. Discover it all in your FREE Texas State Travel Guide. Discover why Texas really is like a whole other country. OU TARRMEIRE RRR (Continued from page 63) another picture of Pluto this past Feb- ruary 15. Sure enough, the two dots were exactly where the calculations had predicted they would be. Now directly confirmed as Pluton- ian moons, $/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2 will receive official names from the International Astronomical Union in due course. Meanwhile, two questions spring to mind: How did they get there? And why were they never seen before? Reading Naturally This Land ROBERT H. MOHLENBROCK Foreword by Mike Dombeck Part armchair travelogue, part guide book, this 3-volume series introduces all 155 national forests across the country. For about half of the forests, Mohlenbrock has provided sidebars on the biological or geolog- ical highlights, drawn from the columns he has written for Natural History since 1984. A Guide to Western National Forests A Guide to Central National Forests A Guide to Eastern National Forests $24.95 paperback each volume Wave-Swept Shore The Rigors of Life on a Rocky Coast TEXT BY MIMI KOEHL, PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANNE WERTHEIM ROSENFELD “Allows the non-specialist to interpret and appreciate life in the remarkable rocky shore habitats.... Anyone who enjoys the seashore will enjoy this book.” —Richard Strathmann, Professor of Biology, University of Washington # 39.95 hardcover At bookstores or order (800) 822-6657 * www.ucpress.edu It’s a lot easier to answer the second question than the first. Frankly, no one looked hard enough—or, more to the point, no one could see the two moons well enough in the dark. Remember how Pluto has shrunk so dramatically over the decades? Of course, Pluto nev- er really changed size; it’s held steady for eons at about 1,400 miles across. What has changed 1s our ability to dis- tinguish relatively faint, little objects billions of miles from Earth. The two new moons are only about one four- Green Inheritance Saving the Plants of the World ANTHONY HUXLEY Foreword by Sir David Attenborough This new edition of Huxley’s global overview of our plant kingdom portrays the beauty, diversity, and history of wild and cultivated plants. Encyclopedic in scope this remark- able book emphasizes just how essential our green inheritance. $29.95 paperback NEW IN PAPERBACK Frozen Earth The Once and Future Story of Ice Ages DOUG MACDOUGALL “An enlightening tale.”—Natural History $15.95 paperback Lizards Windows to the Evolution of Diversity ERIC R. PIANKA AND LAURIE J. VITT Foreword by Harry W. Greene “A beautiful book crammed with a wealth of information.... Fascinating reading.” —Copeia Organisms and Environments $29.95 paperback LH UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS thousandth as bright as Pluto—rough- ly the difference between a bathroom night-light and all the rest of the light bulbs in your house combined. As for the moons’ origins, the jury is still out, but Weaver and Stern present a plausible scenario. Computer simu- lations suggest that, like the Earth- Moon system, the Pluto-Charon system formed billions of years ago in a giant collision. An intruder may have crashed into the young Pluto, depositing much of its mass onto the planet and so in- creasing its size. The rest of the mater- ial may then have splashed outward in- to orbit around Pluto, forming Charon. Large shards from the impact may have survived while in orbit and eventually coalesced into the two small moons. o do Pluto’s new moons make the little ice ball into a big player after all? Surely any object big enough to at- tract not one but three moons deserves to be called a major planet? Well, yes and no. Pluto’s trilunar system has certainly increased the planet’s reputation beyond what the Pluto-Charon duo once had. But some minor planets, a.k.a. asteroids, have moons too. The first such moon, Dactyl, was discovered orbiting the as- teroid 243 Ida, itself a mere thirty-five miles across, by the Galileo spacecraft more than a decade ago. It may only be a matter of time before my planetary- astronomer colleagues find an asteroid with two, three, or even more moons. Here’s the bottom line: No matter what we call it or how we classify it, Pluto will remain a fascinating object to study. It will no doubt continue to yield big scientific surprises, and ulti- mately, may provide new and funda- mental insights into the history of our solar system. And when New Horizons approaches Pluto and its moons almost a decade from now, wide-eyed and angling for a better look, we will once again see that, in the grand scheme of the cosmos, it’s not how much mass you have—it’s how you use it. CHARLES LIv is a professor of astrophysics at the City University of New York and an associate with the American Museum of Natural History. 66 | NATURAL HISTORY May 2006 THE SKY IN MAY unre pe re TI Mercury reaches superior conjunc- tion, passing behind the Sun’s disk, on May 18, one day after the planet cross- es the ecliptic and begins to move north against the sky. Because it will also be at perihelion (the planet’s clos- est approach to the Sun) on the 21st, the speedy planet will quickly move into view by about the 29th. On that night Mercury begins a good appari- tion that lasts through June. With binoculars, look for it low in the west- northwest during evening twilight. Thirty minutes after sunset Mercury shines bright at magnitude —1.1, about five degrees above the horizon. Venus doesn 'trise until shortly after first light. Once it does, however, it is so bright that its rays easily pierce the ad- vancing veil of daylight. The planet continues to rise at dawn every morn- ing as viewed from the mid-northern latitudes, but it doesn’t get very high before it’s lost in the glare of sunrise. Venus recedes from Earth as it races ahead of us in its faster orbit around the Sun. A slender crescent Moon appears well to the left and slightly above Venus on the morning of the 24th. Mars is in the western evening sky, ap- pearing only one-fortieth as bright as it did six months ago. And the Red Planet continues to fade, dimming in magnitude from 1.5 to 1.7. All month, it is comparable in brightness to the stars Castor and Pollux, in the con- stellation Gemini, the twins. Mars forms a nearly perfect straight line with Castor and Pollux on the evening of the 31st. Watch the stars for a few days before and after that date for a clear view of Mars’s motion. This month, Mars moves twenty degrees east, through Gemini and into the boundaries of the dim constellation Cancer, the crab. A thin crescent Moon appears above and to the right of Mars on the evening of the 30th. Jupiter is in the western part of the constellation Libra, the scales, this By Joe Rao month. The planet arrives at opposi- tion (on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun) on the 4th, and so on that night it rises at sunset and sets at sunrise. Shining at magnitude —2.5, Jupiter is second in brightness only to Venus. By mid-month it is well up in the southeast as darkness descends and forms a rather conspicuous triangle with the stars Spica and Arcturus. Saturn shines at magnitude 0.3 in the constellation Cancer. The gas giant is more than halfway up in the south- southwestern sky as darkness falls at the beginning of the month. It sets just after 2 A.M. on the Ist and a couple of hours earlier by month’s end. On the night of the 3rd a fat crescent Moon hovers well to the right of Saturn as the pair descends in the western sky. But that is only the first of two Moon- Saturn pairings this month. On the evening of the 31st a thinner crescent Moon passes about three degrees above Saturn. The Moon waxes to first quarter on the 5th at 1:13 A.M. and to full on the 13th at 2:51 A.M. Our satellite wanes to last quarter on the 20th at 5:20 A.M. and to new on the 27th at 1:26 A.M. During mid-month, observers might catch a glimpse of Comet 73P/Schwass- mann-Wachmann 3, asmall, faint comet that completes one full circuit around the Sun roughly every 5.3 years. In 1995 it unexpectedly fractured into at least five pieces and in the process became just visible to the unaided eye. On the 12th, en route toward the Sun, the biggest of the fragments (fragment “C”’) passes within 7.3 mil- hon miles of Earth. For a few nights around that date the fragment might again be visible to the naked eye. The Web site tinyurl.com/8tcxz offers maps that depict the comet’s track across the constellations. Unless otherwise noted, all times are given in eastern daylight time. May 2006 NATURAL HISTORY | 67 AFRICA & EGYPT 19- to 33-day Cruise Tours from $3,799 »» Experience the many wonders of Africa and Egypt in o uniquely personal way with Orient Lines, the Destination Cruise Specialists. Three-night safari packages to Amboseli National Park and Tsavo National Park are included in many of our new CruiseTours, and optional five- and seven-day safaris are also available before or after your cruise. All CruiseTours offer pre- and/or post-cruise hotel stays and sightseeing tours in captivating cities like Athens, Nairobi and Cape Town. ORIENT LINES’ THE DESTINATION CRUISE SPECIALISTS orientlines.com For reservations, see your travel agent. For brochures, call 1-800-333-7300. At the Museum AMERICAN MUSEUM 6 NATURAL HISTORY i) www.amnh.org Extremely Long-Necked Sauropod Named by AMNH Paleontologists Artist’s conception of the living E. ellisoni wo American Museum of Natural History paleon- tologists have described a new species of sauropod, Erketu ellisoni, that had an extremely elongated neck, one of the longest necks proportional to trunk height of all known sauropods. The truly impressive fea- ture of this dinosaur was not its bulk or overall length, but the length of its neck—especially in comparison to the rest of its body. Most sauropods had long necks extending from large bodies, but E. ellisoni took this to an extreme. A single neck vertebra from E. ellisoni measures more than half a yard (nearly two feet) long. Based on the partial neck recovered from this specimen, the Museum team esti- mates that the full neck was more than eight yards long. The new finding is described in the peer-reviewed journal American Museum Novitates by Daniel T. Ksepka, a gradu- ate student enrolled at Columbia University who studies at the American Museum of Natural History, and Mark A. Norell, Curator in the Museum’s Division of Paleontology. The fossil, which also includes a chest plate, two lower leg bones, and a potato-sized anklebone, was discovered in 2002 during the exploration of a new site, Bor Guve, WVHH9OnNows Nosvi pe pe CLO PODIis Te “iy as part of the Museum’s annual joint paleontological ex- peditions to the great fossil beds of Mongolia’s Gobi Desert with the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. The neck vertebrae of E. ellisoni illustrate some of the in- teresting evolutionary strategies sauropods used to re- duce the burden of their long, cumbersome necks. The sides of the bones feature large concavities where air sacs would have existed. Computed tomography (CT) scans re- veal that the vertebrae are not solid, but instead are filled with numerous small pneumatic chambers that would have reduced their weight. Also, spines along the top of some of the vertebrae were split into two parallel tracks rather than one, as with the human spine. The channel between the two spine rails probably allowed room for a ligament to help support the neck. The generic name for the new sauropod comes from Erketii, one of 99 deities chronicled from pre-Buddhist Mongolian shamanistic tradition; Erketii was the god of might. The species name honors Mick Ellison, Senior Principal Artist at the Museum, whose work has signifi- cantly contributed to dinosaur research. PEOPLE ATTHEAMNH Extended until June 23, 2006! Raymond Salva Assistant Director, Traveling The Butterfly Conservatory: Exhibitions and Planetarium Shows Tropical Butterflies Alive in Winter fe) zal Zz Zz = > <= z x [o] aul Zz cS Zz > < Zz 36 Kids and adults alike are mesmerized and delighted by the fluttering iridescent creatures that might hitch a ride on an arm or shoulder. Truly a hands-on learning experience, The Butterfly Conservatory has been a fa- vorite of Museum visitors for eight years. hen Ray Salva joined the Museum in September 2003, he was looking for a career change, seek- ing rewards of a more personal nature. After years of working in the corporate This exhibition is made possible, in sector, he hoped to apply his skills to a part, through the generous support meaningful role in a not-for-profit orga- Sn Morean eliace nization. Even as he describes his job here, after several years, his enthusi- asm and appreciation for the Museum are apparent. “It is a rare honor to work with such dynamic, focused, and dedicated teams in an environment brimming with stimuli, where you are constantly learning and growing.” As an Assistant Director in the Department of Business Development, Ray works to create relationships with domestic and international cultural insti- tutions to bring AMNH’s state-of-the-art planetarium shows, traveling exhibitions, Science Bulletins programming, and the Digital Universe to museum, science center, and planetarium audiences world- wide. Among his greatest challenges thus far was organizing the very first col- laborative production project between the Museum and partners in Asia. Most recently, Ray put together the collabora- tion to create the Museum’s new Space Show, Cosmic Collisions. “In helping to bring the Museum’s work around the world, the rewards have been immeasurable. It’s incredibly satis- fying to know that my role plays a part in i . veal our educational outreach and the overall Lizards & Snakes: Alive! impact that AMNH has on its visitors, Opening June 24, 2006 as well as the visitors to our many part- ner institutions around the globe.” When not working, Ray and his wife of 16 years take full advantage of all Live lizards and snakes are the center of attention in this engaging exhibition that will explore these creatures’ remarkable adaptations, including projectile tongues, deadly venom, amazing camoufl imes isi ; - SS a ; 8 a ou Ate 2 a in modes a thatliving in New York has toloffen, ment. Fossl Sf ACMA 1fe-S1ze me els, V1 Soe and interactive stations will com- enjoying dining, live music, art, theater, plement the live animals representing 20 species. Brelihaceiall! THE CONTENTS OF THESE PAGES ARE PROVIDED TO NATURAL HisToRY BY THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Museum Events AMERICAN MUSEUM o NATURAL HISTORY 1) EXHIBITIONS Darwin Through August 20, 2006 Featuring live ani- mals, actual fossil specimens collected by Charles Darwin, and manuscripts, this magnificent ex- hibition offers visi- tors a comprehen- Sive, engaging exploration of the life and times of Darwin, whose discoveries launched modern biological science. The American Museum of Natural History gratefully acknowledges The Howard Phipps Foundation for its leadership support. Significant support for Darwin has also been provided by Chris and Sharon Davis, Bill and Leslie Miller, the Austin Hearst Foundation, Jack and Susan Rudin, and Rosalind P. Walter. Additional funding provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Dr. Linda K. Jacobs, and the New York Community Trust— Wallace Special Projects Fund. Darwin is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (www.amnh.org), in collaboration with the Museum of Science, Boston; The Field Museum, Chicago; the Royal Ontario Mu- seum, Toronto, Canada; and the Natural History Museum, London, England. The Butterfly Conservatory Through June 23, 2006 A return engagement of this popular exhibition includes up to 500 live, free-flying tropical butterflies in an enclosed habitat that approximates their natural environment. This exhibition is made possible, in part, through the generous support of JPMorgan Chase Voices from South of the Clouds Through July 23, 2006 China’s Yunnan Province is revealed through the eyes of the indigenous people, who use photography to chronicle fe) al Zz z <= > < Zz cc The scrupulous re-creation of Darwin’s study in the exhibition Darwin their culture, environment, and daily life. The exhibition is made possible by a gener- ous grant from Eastman Kodak Company. The presentation of this exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History is made possible by the generosity of the Arthur Ross Foundation. Vital Variety Ongoing Beautiful close-up photo- graphs highlight the diversity of invertebrates. LECTURES Darwin in the 21st Century: Science at AMNH Wednesday, 5/3, 7:00 p.m. Museum curators provide in- sights into the work being done in their areas of research. The River of Doubt Thursday, 5/4, 7:00 p.m. Candice Millard, former National Geographic staff writer, discusses Roosevelt’s hardships in the Amazonian rain forest. Adventures in the Global Kitchen: Michael Pollan and Peter Hoffman on the “Cornification” of America Tuesday, 5/16, 7:00 p.m. With Michael Pollan, Botany of Desire, and Peter Hoffman, chef and owner of Savoy. Vietnam: A Natural History Tuesday, 5/23, 7:00 p.m. With Eleanor J. Sterling, Director of the Museum’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, and Martha M. Hurley and Le Duc Minh, Biodiversity Scientists. FIELD TRIP Evening Bat Walks in Central Park Friday, 5/12, and Friday, 5/19, 7:30 p.m. Join the New York Bat Group for a walk through Central Park at dusk. FAMILY AND CHILDREN’S PROGRAMS Science in the Galapagos: Bird Adaptations Sunday, 5/21, 11:00 a.m.— 12:00 noon and 1:00-2:00 p.m. (Ages 5—7, each child with one adult) An introduction to birds of the Galapagos. Observing Worms Sunday, 5/7, 11:00 a.m.— 12:30 p.m. (Ages 4-6, each child with one adult) Observe live worms and learn how they transform the soil. www.amnh.org Adventures in the Global Kitchen for Kids and Families: A Taste of Brazil Saturday, 5/6, 12:00 noon Food, culture, and authentic recipes. Stories of the Sky Saturday, 5/6, 11:00 a.m.— 12:30 p.m. (Ages 4-5, each child with one adult) and 1:30—- 3:00 p.m. (Ages 6-7, each child with one adult) Learn the ancient tales of the Sun, Moon, and stars. Astrofavorites: NASA Astro- naut Training Mission Three Thursdays, 5/11-25, 4:00-5:30 p.m. (Ages 4-6, each child with one adult) Learn about the human body in space and more. STARRY NIGHTS Live Jazz ROSE CENTER FOR EARTH AND SPACE 6:00 and 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 5 David Weiss Starry Nights is made possible, in part, by Fidelity Investments. * a eee ae 4 =< amt Robots In Space II HAYDEN PLANETARIUM AAO oe “afl a (Intermediate) PROGRAMS 1 rn nis eee | . | Three Wednesdays, 5/10-24, TUESDAYS IN THE DOME “ | 4:00-5:30 p.m. (Ages 8-10) Virtual Universe ce | Design increasingly Veni Vidi Venus A VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCE go POWERFUL YOU CAN FEEL THE INE complex robots. Tuesday, 5/2, 6:30-7:30 p.m. Space Explorers: Star Party This Just In... Cosmic Collisions was developed in col- Hypnotic visuals and rhythms ; : , : laboration with the Denver Museum of : : Tuesday, 5/9, 4:30-5:30 p.m. May’s Hot Topics NEnee scante Goronneciele, take viewers on a ride through (Ages 10 and up) Tuesday, 5/16, 6:30-7:30 p.m. Japan; and the Shanghai Science and fantastical dreamspace. On the second Tuesday of Nsselelay NSeutae. SonicVision is made possible by generous : ; ; ‘oh lj Made|possiplesnrauenihe;geherous sponsorship and technology support from each month, kids (and their Celestial Highlights support of CIT. as ase peer a parents) can learn under All Things Being Equal... Cebiile CONIA SesiGCeuss ley iis American Museum of Natural History the stars of the Hayden Tuesday, 5/30, 6:30-7:30 p.m. with the major support and partnership LARGE-FORMAT FILMS Planetarium. of the National Aeronautics and Space LeFrak IMAX Theater Administration’s Science Mission Direc- Z ze LECTURES torate, Heliophysics Division. Galapagos explores the z= Visit www.amnh.org/hayden unique fauna of the islands Be for details on May Frontiers in SonicVision and the surrounding sea. 7 Astrophysics and Distin- Fridays and Saturdays, IMAX films at the Museum are made ? 2= guished Authors in Astron- 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. Bessible Py.ConEdison ot ag omy lectures. re c INFORMATION HAYDEN PLANETARIUM Reflection nebula NGC 1333 Call 212-769-5100 or visit www.amnh.org. SHOWS Dr. Nebula’s Laboratory: Cosmic Collisions TICKETS AND REGISTRATION Planetary Vacation Journey into deep space— Call 212-769-5200, Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m.—5:00 p.m Sunday, 5/21, 2:00-3:00 p.m. well beyond the calm face er uicn cnet A ee es z ae . : eee (For families with children of the night sky—to explore ee. Saeco iy, All programs are subject to change. ages 4 and up) cosmic collisions, hyper- anaes i es a sa Paget AMNH eNotes delivers the latest information on Museum ebula’s voyage to explore i l Bias: thevplancts ise alee of a ae Narrated:by programs and events to you monthly via email. Visit .amnh.org to si today! our solar system. Robert Redford. PS EUS Jehan Become a Member of the American Museum of Natural History BEHIND THE SCENES Available tn Hardcover and Softcover WINDOWS ON NATURE As a Museum Member, you will be among the first to embark on new journeys to explore the natural world and the cultures of humanity. You'll enjoy: Ansricen Mtsnai af Notural History, by Steven C. Quinn ¢ Unlimited free general ¢ Free subscription admission to the Museum to Natural History and special exhibitions, magazine and to Rotunda, and discounts on Space our newsletter Shows and IMAX films Here, at long last, is the story of how the Museum's world-famous displays came to be, fusing art and science to capture life in the wild—and captivate children and adults alike for generations. Lavishly illustrated, this book is a treasure for nature, art, and museum lovers everywhere. ¢ Invitations to Members- * Discounts in the Museum only special events, Shops and restaurants and parties, and exhibition on program tickets previews Call our Personal Shopper at 1-800- 671-7035 or shop at www.amnh.org. THE MUSEUM TEN Central Park West at 79th Street » NYC SHOPS he) 212-769-5100 * www.amnh.org For further information, call 212-769-5606 or visit www.amnh.org/join. THE CONTENTS OF THESE PAGES ARE PROVIDED TO NATURAL HISTORY BY THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL History 72 he first time my col- leagues and I captured Bobby, an oversize ocelot, I knew he was the local king. At thirty-four pounds, he was the largest ocelot we had ever seen— and certainly the largest on Pana- ma’s Barro Colorado Island (BCI). It was clear he was a fighter, fresh from battle—and not against some easy, smaller prey, but with other, fearsome ocelots. These predators often rely on size and strong, sharp teeth to defend turf and establish social rank. Many of Bobby’s battle wounds came from an ocelot’s bites; he had tooth marks on his fore- head, two punctures in his chest, and a deep gash across his left nostril. Rucardo S. Moreno, now a graduate student in wildlife ecology at the University of Costa Ruca, was my trap-and-release partner that day. “Id hate to see the other guy,’ he quipped. Later that year Rucardo did see the other guy. Rucardo was out one night, radio-tracking a male ocelot some years younger than Bobby. Just as Ru- cardo crested a hill, he caught the very end of an ocelot fight. Bobby was standing unfazed in the middle of the trail, while “the other guy” was tumbling down a hillside. Then, with a glance back at the slack-jawed Ri- cardo, Bobby sauntered leisurely down the trail. The King was at the top of his game. For the next two years we tracked Bobby with various equipment, old and new. He covered more than three and a half square miles on his nightly patrols—just over half the island. Once, we inadvertently caught Bobby in a trap intended for a puma, baited with a red brocket deer that we pre= sumed had been killed by the puma the night before. Finding Bobby in ATURAL HISTORY May 2006 Stalking the forest at night, an ocelot searches for a meal (above). Turf battles with other ocelots or tussles with prey severely damaged Bobby's canine teeth (skull at right); the broken canines may have led to his demise. ENDPAPER My Kingdom for a Crown By Roland W. Kays the trap was a shock, but it did allow us to check his weight and replace his radio collar before its batteries ran down. We were stunned by his new weight: forty-one pounds. That made Bobby the largest ocelot in the world—now or ever, as far as we can determine from museum records and published studies. arnivores lead bloody lives, killing every time they need a snack. So it’s no surprise their aggres- sions spill into their social lives as well. All fifteen ocelots we have cap- tured on BCI have had battle scars, even the females; the worst case was a male that had lost his left ear. Most flesh wounds heal, but broken teeth—another fight casualty—do not. Canine teeth can break in fights with other ocelots, or while the ani- mal is trying to catch prey, such as agoutis or sloths; broken teeth are common in all older carnivores. Not only does a broken canine com- promise defense, but it also makes it much harder to get the next meal. That may have been what led to Bobby’s demise. Three and a half years after our first encounter with Bobby, we found his rotting remains being pecked at by a king vulture. His canines were reduced to broken stubs with exposed-pulp cavities that held arteries and nerves. Ellis J. Neiburger, a forensic dentist based near Chicago, noted that Bobby’s exposed pulp “would hurt and make this critter rather nasty in temperament.” Certainly his stubs would have done little for him in dominance battles. Bobby probably stumbled from his social throne before he ended up in the streambed where we found him dead. I picked Bobby up, wrapped him in wire mesh, and buried his carcass under leaf litter to let the insects clean the bones. I realized that Bobby had claimed a special place in my memory with his ferocity and strength, even though some new animal had already claimed the role of top ocelot. But would the other BCI cats miss Bobby, or celebrate his reign? Apparently not. When I went back to retrieve his cleaned bones, I found that another ocelot had paid final respects . . . by depositing scat on top of Bobby’s bones. It’s not easy being king. ROLAND W. Kays is the curator of mammals at the New York State Museum in Albany, and a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. George T. Morgan was one of America’s greatest coin designers. His most famous coin is the legendary Morgan Silver Dollar that was first struck by the United States Mint in 1878. 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