Posts

Land of Lemurs

Image
The great allure of Madagascar is the uniqueness of its wildlife, first and foremost the spectacular variety of the endemic lemurs (see Herrera 2017 for a discussion of their adaptive radiation). On a journey in August 2019, I finally had a chance to encounter these wonderful animals in the wild, in the distressingly few remaining areas of forest. At one end of the scale is Indri indri, the largest extant lemur (the gorilla sized Archaeoindris being now extinct). At the miniature end of the scale are the charming and tiny mouse lemurs, including the smallest primates on the planet. And then, there are the different styles of locomotion to observe and enjoy, from the ballet-like leaps of the sifakas to the all-fours scampering of the Eulemurs and the scurrying of the mouse lemurs. There is also a prize for weirdness, which goes to the nocturnal aye-aye. Eight families of lemurs have been recognized, three of which are extinct. Cheirogaleids are the dwarf lemurs, including the smal
Post a Comment
Read more

A Merovingian Croix Ancrée Tremissis, Sutton Hoo, and Declining Gold Content in the 7th Century Coinage

Image
In the recent Netflix film "The Dig" there is a scene in which Basil Brown's character shows a small gold coin, known as a tremissis, to Edith Pretty, confirming that the ship burial at Sutton Hoo is of Anglo Saxon age as he had previously suspected. A Merovingian tremissis found in Kent, 10 mm across 37 such coins, all from Merovingian Francia, were found at Sutton Hoo, associated with the remains of an elaborate purse. These coins have commanded a great deal of attention as a potential means to constrain the date of the burial. This is a highly imprecise process (the coins are not datable to within a range shorter than 16 years), relying on recognising issues associated with known rulers, identifying the youngest of these, speculating from there as to how much younger the undated coins may be, and then how much later the assembled group was deposited in the ship burial. Plan of  the Sutton Hoo Mound 1 burial chamber in Burger et al (2016), combined from versions by Phil
Post a Comment
Read more

A New Statue of Alfred Wallace and Ali - and a Standardwing Bird of Paradise - in Singapore

Image
Friday 30th August 2019 saw a delightful gathering at Singapore's Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum . The event, in Singapore's 200th anniversary year, was the unveiling of a new bronze statue of Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, and his trusted Sarawakian assistant Ali. Wallace had arrived in Singapore in April 1854 and used the city as a base for his explorations, including his ascent of Mount Ophir later that year. The crowd assembled for the unveiling gathered in the foyer of the museum and was then ushered out by a keen group of volunteers to a tented area in front of the museum's steps. A curved poster announcing "Launch of Wallace & Ali statue" stood behind a dark green sheet covering the hidden statue. After a lively introduction by Professor Peter Ng, senior minister Teo Chee Hean delivered an elegant speech on the significance of Wallace and Ali for Singapore and the merits of a spir
Post a Comment
Read more

Stone axes from the highlands of Papua New Guinea

Image
The story of first contact in 1933 with the peoples of the central Wahgi Valley in the Papuan highlands is a remarkable one. An unsuspected group of thriving stone-age cultures came to the attention of the outside world when the Leahy brothers first flew over the area and later reached it on foot. Tribal men carried elaborate stone axes and this contact with extant stone-age cultures provided fascinating insights on how their stone tools, such as axes and adzes were hafted. The available evidence was collated in Burton's (1984) Thesis at the Australia National University, on "AXE MAKERS OF THE WAHGI: Pre-colonial industrialists of the Papua New Guinea highlands." I saw a number of these old axes during a visit to the highlands near Mount Hagen in October 2019 (see the Paiya chief photograph below). The area of that journey is shown in the google Earth image shown below. The upper Wahgi River valley with locations of Paiya Village, Mount Giluwe and Mount Hagen t
Post a Comment
Read more

Moluccan Paradise Kingfishers in Wallace's "The Malay Archipelago" and in the present

Image
I had seen pictures of the amazing paradise kingfishers in books. Beyond the normal colourful kingfisher body, they have incredible long tails terminating in flared tips. The other weekend on the island of Halmahera in the northern Moluccas of Indonesia, I saw a paradise kingfisher in person for the first time. The bird did not present itself in the open for a photograph so I had to peer through the undergrowth, with many blocking leaves and do the best I could under the circumstances. Here it is. Paradise kingfisher, Tanysiptera galatea , near Weda, eastern Halmahera, Saturday 9th March 2019 Alfred Russel Wallace devoted part of his 1869 book "The Malay Archipelago" to these beautiful birds. " I also obtained one or two specimens of the fine racquet-tailed kingfisher of Amboyna, Tanysiptera nais , one of the most singular and beautiful of that beautiful family. These birds differ from all other kingfishers (which have usually short tails) by having th
Post a Comment
Read more

"A great prize, no less than a completely new form of the Bird of Paradise" - an encounter with Wallace's Standardwing

Image
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a Wallace's standardwing bird of paradise, named for Alfred Russel Wallace in 1859 by G.R. Gray, " for the indefatigable energy he has hitherto shown in the advancement of ornithological and entomological knowledge, by visiting localities rarely if ever travelled by naturalists ." Standardwing ( Semioptera wallacii halmaherae Salvadori 1881), Saturday 9th March 2019, Weda, Halmahera Alfred Wallace , co-discoverer of the Wallace-Darwin theory of evolution by natural selection, had a particular fascination with the birds of paradise, but, " Five voyages to different parts of the district they inhabit, each occupying in its preparation and execution the larger part of a year, produced only five species out of the fourteen known to exist in the New Guinea district. " On a visit to Batchian Island (Bacan these days), however, there was a great treasure awaiting. When his assistant Ali one day brought him a " curious
Post a Comment
Read more