British Wildlife: S

Scelidosaurus harrisonii Owen, 1861
Scelidosauridae; Ornithischia; Sauropsida; Chordata

The Thyreophora are a group of armoured dinosaurs, most familiar as stegosaurs and ankylosaurs. The thyreophorans split into these two groups fairly early in their evolution, splitting from the basal ornithischians (bird-hipped dinosaurs: the group also including ceratopsians, pachycephalosaurs and ornithopods - horn-heads, bone-heads and duck-bills to those with a fear of Ancient Greek). Some thyreophorans, like Scutellosaurus, came about before the primal split between stegosaurs and ankylosaurs. It has been debated whether Scelidosaurus belongs in Ankylosauria or just outside it. Scelidosauridae, the family which also includes a couple of close relatives from China and Portugal, has variously been placed as a basal ankylosaur or a basal thyreophoran.



Scelidosaurus harrisonii skeletal cast
Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre, Dorset
August 2009

Despite this unsureness of Scelidosaurus' relations, there have been some wonderfully preserved specimens. One of the most recent is the one pictured above. The original, at Bristol City Museum (I didn't get a good photo of it when I was there) has been cast, and it is this cast which bedecks much of the wall at the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre, very near to where it was found. The skull, postcranial skeleton and armour plates and scutes are all preserved. Scelidosaurus is not unique to the UK (also being found in Arizona), but the more famous finds are from here. It was Sir Richard Owen who first described Scelidosaurus harrisonii in 1861, and is thus one of the first thyreophorans to be described.



Red squirrel
Sciurus vulgaris Linnaeus, 1758
Sciuridae; Rodentia; Mammalia; Chordata

The red squirrel was, at one time, the only squirrel to be found in the UK. As such, it was a common creature. It has now been replaced, almost nationwide, by the grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), introduced from North America. The grey squirrel is now one of the commonest mammals in the UK, with the red squirrel being one of the rarest. The red squirrel's strongholds in the UK are few and far between, but Scotland is where the majority of Britain's reds live.



Red squirrel
Wild in Invernessshire
June 2005

It was in that part of the UK that I saw my first, and so far only, wild red squirrel. It was feeding from a stand put up in Highland Wildlife Park, designed to attract these pretty beasts to be viewed by the public. Red squirrels also hang on in parts of Norfolk, Merseyside and the Isle of Wight, but this is due to heavy management on the behalf of wildlife biologists and conservation workers to keep grey squirrels out.



Stoat
Mustela erminea Linnaeus, 1758
Mustelidae; Carnivora; Mammalia; Chordata

The stoat, as it is known in the UK, is the larger of the two classic 'weasels' to be found in Britain. Also known as the ermine (in North America, and when in its white winter coat) and short-tailed weasel (in North America only, to distinguish it from the long-tailed weasel - M. frenata), the stoat is a voracious predator, especially on mice, voles and rabbits. The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is larger than a stoat, and considerably heavier, but the stoat often preys on rabbits, being able to enter their warrens with ease, and hauling their prey out with surprising strength for their size and build.



A pair of stuffed stoats, with the one on the right in its winter coat (ermine)
Cambridge Zoology Museum
June 2008

In the UK, we only have to distinguish between the stoat and the weasel (Mustela nivalis). Such features you can use include size (the stoat is larger), length of tail (stoat's is longer), presence of black hair at the tip of the tail (only on the stoat), and the border between the brown and white portions of the pelt (the stoat's is clear-cut, the weasel's is jagged). Also, in the UK, only the stoat will ever turn white in winter. Unless an extremely rare albino/leucistic weasel turns up, the only white 'weasel' you'll ever find in winter in Britain is the stoat. That doesn't mean, however, that any brown 'weasel' in winter will be M. nivalis. Stoats only turn white if the temperatures drop low enough for long enough (only in the mountains here in the UK). In the rest of Eurasia and North America, however, the weasel breaks the rules and turns white in winter too. Irish stoats (M. erminea hibernica) apparently never turn white.

Next week, T: a verrucose bufonid, a myopic eulipotyphlan and a Bristolian prosauropod.

It's a shrew opossum!

Another virtual point goes to J. Velez-Juarbe for guessing that the skull belongs to a caenolestid.



Dusky shrew opossum
Caenolestes fuliginosus Tomes, 1863
Caenolestidae; Paucituberculata; Mammalia; Chordata
Cambridge Zoology Museum
June 2008

The caenolestids, shrew opossums, rat opossums, or flap-lips (!) are a family of three extant genera (Caenolestes, Lestoros and Rhyncholestes) in their own order of marsupials, the Paucituberculata. Shrew opossums, as I prefer to call them, are restricted to South America, much like the related opossums of Didelphimorphia, but even more so, not being found outside the Andes Mountains and southern 'boreal' forests of Chile, Argentina and the rest of western South America. As a result, they are poorly known, but exhibit a few distinctive features visible on the skull.

Marsupials can either be polyprotodont or diprotodont. The terms relate to the number of incisors in the upper jaw. The majority of Australian marsupials are diprotodont, having two large incisors at the front of the upper jaw, and two in the lower as well. Opossums and other related orders are all polyprotodon, with as many as five incisors on each side of the upper jaw. The Paucituberculata is one of these orders. All other polyprotodont families also have many incisors in the lower jaw, but the shrew opossums only have two, and these are extremely procumbent (forward-pointing), reminiscent of diprotodonts like kangaroos. There's also the inflected angular process (indented part of the lower jaw) present in all extant marsupials.



Dusky shrew opossum (stuffed)
Oxford Museum of Natural History
July 2008

The caenolestids are rather shrew-like in appearance, as can be seen in the above specimen. They are thought to occupy a similar niche, and since only a couple of shrew species of the genus Blarina have made it to South America, they have remained 'successful' (despite a reduction in the number of genera).

British Wildlife: R

Rhamphorhynchus jessoni (Lydekker, 1890)
Rhamphorhynchidae; Pterosauria; Sauropsida; Chordata

The rhamphorhynchoids were a group of pterosaurs, basal to the short-tailed pterodactyloids. It used to be thought that they formed a true grouping, but it seems that only the pterodactyloids form a true group within the Pterosauria, with the rhamphorhynchoids representing everything that doesn't make it into that group.

Well-preserved Rhamphorhynchus fossils are known from Germany, but some less well-preserved ones hail from England. Rhamphorhynchus had a long pointed snout (the name means 'beak snout') with a few sharp, pointed teeth that overlap each other when the snout is closed. It was very likely a fish-eater, flapping and gliding over the sea surface catching the odd fish by submerging its head. The long tail, ending in a diamond-shaped vane, is one of the most obvious features.



Cast of wing of Rhamphorhynchus muensteri (Goldfuss, 1831)
Oxford Museum of Natural History
July 2008

The wing membrane of Rhamphorhynchus has often been preserved, as you can see in this photo of a cast of the type species of the genus. I have reconstructed the animal with 'fur' because some members of the family, most notably Sordes pilosus, have been found well-preserved with a hairy integument. The purple is just whimsy.



Water rail
Rallus aquaticus Linnaeus, 1758
Rallidae; Gruiformes; Aves; Chordata

The coot (Fulica atra) and the moorhen (Gallinula chloropus) are ubiquitous in Britain near any body of water. Water rails, however, although widespread across Eurasia, and indeed in the UK, are rarely seen. I've never seen one, despite a lot of searching of reed beds at nature reserves. You'd expect a bird with a long bright red bill and zebra stripes down its flanks to be quite conspicuous, but that's not so. Like other rails and crakes, the water rail has long toes to enable it to walk on floating vegetation.



Robin
Erithacus rubecula (Linnaeus, 1758)
Muscicapidae; Passeriformes; Aves; Chordata

The robin is Britain's national bird. It's a symbol of Christmas and one of the most familiar of all small birds to the British public. Its influence on worldwide avifauna has been significant: small birds with red on their breast are found in five continents other than Europe, despite not being related to robins. Europeans named such birds 'robins' due to their resemblance to 'little robin redbreast' of the old country. The American robin (Turdus migratorius), for example, is a thrush, and the Australian robins of the genus Petroica are not related to either family.



Robin
Broxbourne, Hertfordshire
September 2009

Robins sing throughout the year, one of the only birds that does, and can always be heard on walks in the country, even in winter. They are regular visitors to bird feeders and bird tables in gardens, and most gardens have a resident pair, or are at least visited by them in their search for food. They are extremely territorial, singing to proclaim their patch as their own, and are very bold for their size, fending off predators many times bigger than themselves, such as cats, by singing at them. This extremely high pitched call seems to be coming from somewhere else, and this ventriloquism works, as the cats seem confused by it all!

Next week, S: a primitive thyreophoran, a tufted-eared rodent and a sinuous mustelid.

Ganges River Dolphin! And guess the skull III

You've done it again! Indeed, the skull from the previous post has been correctly identified by J. Velez-Juarbe:



Ganges river dolphin
Platanista gangetica (Lebeck, 1801)
Platanistidae; Cetartiodactyla; Mammalia; Chordata
Cambridge Zoology Museum
June 2008

It's those overgrown squamosals (part of the jaw) that give it away as one of the two members of the Platanistidae. The Ganges river dolphin is one of three truly freshwater dolphins currently extant. The franciscana (Pontoporia blainvillei) of South America, although classed as a river dolphin, is mostly estuarine, and the baiji, or Yangtze river dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer) is now considered extinct. Some wonderful photos of the Amazon river dolphin, or boto (Inia geoffrensis) have been highly commended in this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, including a pair of botos playing with a fruit.

The next one I think is difficult, but there are enough clues visible to get it if you know your mammalian orders!

It's a tenrec! And guess the skull II

The answer, as J. Velez-Juarbe correctly guessed, to the question I posed in the previous post is the tailless tenrec, Tenrec ecaudatus.



Tailless tenrec
Tenrec ecaudatus
Tenrecidae; Afrosoricida; Mammalia; Chordata
Cambridge Zoology Museum
June 2008

Tenrecs are hedgehog-like mammals exclusive to Madagascar and some nearby islands. Their closest relatives, apart from the African otter shrews, are the also African golden moles of the Chrysochloridae. They were all formerly considered members of the Insectivora (also called Lipotyphla), but are now placed within the Afrotheria group, containing such odd bedfellows as elephants, sengis (formerly elephant shrews), sirenians (manatees and dugongs), hyraxes and aardvarks. All orders of Afrotheria supposedly originated in Africa, where the majority of the members still live.

So what's this then?

Guess the skull...

I've been feeling quite crappy of late, I think I've got a cold. Anyway, I've been working heavily on my book for the last couple of weeks, hence a lack of posts apart from the Sundayly A-Z ones. When I feel up to it, I'll reveal some of the more interesting names I've researched.

Until then, however, I'll leave you with a skull. Guess the mammal whose skull appears below for a virtual point.

British Wildlife: Q

Quinquecosta williamsi Tripp, 1965
Pliomeridae; Phacopida; Trilobita; Arthropoda

Quinquecosta is a trilobite of the family Pliomeridae, belonging to the order Phacopida. The phacopidans were capable of rolling into a ball, most likely for defence, and many fossils of this type of trilobite are found in such a shape. They had large eyes with visible lenses, the schizochroal eye, yet members of the Pliomeridae had the more typical holochroal eye, with much smaller lenses which are not separate from each other.



Purple hairstreak
Quercusia quercus (Linnaeus, 1758)
Lycaenidae; Lepidoptera; Insecta; Arthropoda

This is a female purple hairstreak: although she is wonderfully purple, the male is even more so. I wasn't aware of this when I was drawing Q for this alphabet! Quercus is Latin for 'oak', and the name reflects this insect's lifecycle. The female lays her eggs on oak buds, and the larva lives inside the buds. The adults then spend much of their time in the canopy of mature oak trees. The genus is also known as Neozephyrus, but that doesn't begin with 'Q', does it?



Quail
Coturnix coturnix (Linnaeus, 1758)
Phasianidae; Galliformes; Aves; Chordata

The common quail is Britain's only native migratory game bird. It only spends the summer months in the UK, but is often kept as a farm bird for its flesh, but more frequently for its eggs, which are considered a delicacy.



Adult common quail
Geçitköy, North Cyprus
April 2009

Quails are hard birds to spot in the wild. They are naturally shy and very cryptically-coloured, but can betray their presence with their distinctive call, often transcribed as 'wet my lips, wet my lips!' I don't see the similarity myself.



Common quail chick
Geçitköy, North Cyprus
April 2009

Quails of the genus Coturnix are commonly kept as ornamental and farmyard birds, with Asian members of the genus (Chinese, or blue-breasted quail, C. chinensis, and Japanese quail, C. japonica) the most popular. In Europe, however, it is predominantly the common quail which is kept.

Next week, R: a long-tailed purple pterosaur, a cryptic gruiform and Britain's national bird.

British Wildlife: P

Polacanthus foxii Owen, 1865
Ankylosauridae; Ornithischia; Sauropsida; Chordata

Polacanthus is Britain's best-known ankylosaur. Despite this, the entire skeleton has not yet been found, and indeed, the skull is very poorly known. It was found in the Isle of Wight, and was contemperaneous with such dinosaurs as Eotyrannus and Neovenator, with the latter possibly large enough to have been a potential predator.



Various bones and osteoderms (armour plates) of Polacanthus foxii
Dinosaur Isle Museum, Isle of Wight
May 2008

One of the most notable features of Polacanthus, and its close relatives Gastonia and Mymoorapelta of North America, is the sacral shield, a large plate of armour covering the lower back, hips and upper portion of the tail. This, like the rest of the armour plates, was made of dermal bone, hence it was embedded in the skin and not attached to the skeleton.



Great crested grebe (in breeding plumage)
Podiceps cristatus (Linnaeus, 1758)
Podicipedidae; Podicipediformes; Aves; Chordata

One of my favourite freshwater birds is the great crested grebe. It's always a thrill to see it on medium-sized to large bodies of water, even in areas very close to human habitation (the photographs that follow were taken in Hyde Park, very close to the centre of that little town called London). They tend to stick to the centre of such water bodies, mainly because they dive for their food, but also because they're a little shy and wary of humans.



Adult great crested grebe in breeding plumage
Hyde Park, London
September 2008

Adult great crested grebes hang on to their breeding plumage until quite late in the year, when they take on a more sedate hue for the few months of winter. At that time of year, the four British members of the genus Podiceps (red-necked grebe - P. grisegena; Slavonian grebe - P. auritus; black-necked grebe - P. nigricollis; and great crested grebe) all look quite similar and are hard to tell apart. The great crested grebe is the largest and is less likely to take to estuaries and coasts in winter than its congeners.



Immature great crested grebe
Hyde Park, London
September 2008

The chicks are endearing little things; when very young they climb aboard one of their parents' backs and stay there, as adult grebes do not make nests. What they are known to do, however, is collect twigs as 'presents' to each other, a behaviour I have witnessed in early spring. The young have a bold striped pattern, which remains on the face until late in the year, when they moult into the adult winter plumage.



Puffin
Fratercula arctica (Linnaeus, 1758)
Alcidae; Charadriiformes; Aves; Chordata

The puffin is one of the most recognisable of birds; short stubby wings, black and white plumage and the tri-coloured bill reminiscent of a toucan, not to mention the triangle around the eye giving it a clown-like air. Puffins are auks, with relatives including guillemots (or murres) and razorbills. Most are unknown to the general public, except when a wandering auk from the other side of the globe ends up in British waters and has its picture and ultimate fate published in tabloids. The other infamous auk is the great auk (Pinguinus impennis), pushed to extinction in the 19th Century.



Stuffed and mounted Atlantic puffin
Bristol City Museum
September 2009

The Atlantic puffin is one of three species in the genus Fratercula ('little monk'), and the only one that breeds in Britain. Colonies exist on deserted cliffs and islands, and are quite approachable, if only for the reason that they will only fly if they have to, due to their short wings. Despite this, they are capable flyers, and are able to take off and land proficiently, in order to reach their clifftop nest. The nest is created in a burrow, but they don't create them themselves. Puffins have declined significantly in number in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, partly due to hunting (it is an Icelandic delicacy), but overfishing is also to blame.

Next week, Q: a trilobite, a butterfly and a game bird.

Eco-Friendly Xenarthran

Southern long-nosed armadillo skeleton
Dasypus hybridus (Desmarest, 1804)
Dasypodidae; Xenarthra; Mammalia; Chordata
Cambridge Zoology Museum
May 2008

I was looking at this photo and felt like sharing it: it shows some wonderful features of armadillos and xenarthrans in general. The southern long-nosed armadillo is a close relative of the nine-banded armadillo (D. novemcinctus) from North America, often seen as roadkill in southern states (I once saw two black vultures - Coragyps atratus - pecking at an almost stripped armadillo carcass near Orlando, FL). Where D. hybridus differs from its northern cousin is, of course, fuel consumption - it doesn't rely solely on petrol or diesel, and can use biofuel or electricity. Of course, I'm referring to the specific name 'hybridus', which refers to their chimaeric-looking blend between a pig and a reptile. The southern long-nosed armadillo has fewer 'bands' than the nine-banded armadillo, six or seven usually, but there are already taxa named 'six-banded armadillo' (Euphractes sexcinctus) and 'seven-banded armadillo' (Dasypus septemcinctus).

Let's start with that skull, specifically the dentition. Anteaters and sloths, together making up the rest of the extant members of the order (or superorder) Xenarthra, are known for being toothless, or almost so, hence the former ordinal name Edentata ('toothless'). Anteaters are truly edentate, but sloths and armadillos possess small, peg-like teeth with little function. These are made up of molars and premolars only in Dasypus. Next, look at those cervical vertebrae (neck bones). They are fused together! This strengthens the neck, allowing the animal to dig and forage in hard soil without damaging the spinal cord and vital blood vessels in the neck.

The ribs are worthy of note: they are very broad and unlike those seen in any other mammalian order, and again probably serve to protect the animal's viscera whilst in heavy earth.

British Wildlife: O

Ornithocheirus simus Seeley, 1869
Ornithocheiridae; Pterosauria; Sauropsida; Chordata

Ornithocheirus simus, often referred to the genus Criorhynchus Owen, 1874, is a medium-sized pterodactyloid pterosaur formerly found in Europe and South America during the Late Cretaceous period. The genus is a taxonomic nightmare, as often a fragment was named as an entirely new species: 28 species of Ornithocheirus were named by Seeley within two years! Only one of those remains valid, O. simum.



Piece of bone from tip of snout of O. simus
Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Cambridge
June 2008

O. simus remains one of the largest British pterosaurs, with Istiodactylus latidens (formerly of the genus Ornithodesmus) about the same size.



Great bustard
Otis tarda Linnaeus, 1758
Otididae; Gruiformes; Aves; Chordata

The family Otididae consists of about 25 species of turkey-sized birds from Eurasia, Africa and Australia. The heaviest flying bird is the kori bustard (Ardeotis kori) from Africa. The Eurasian great bustard is almost as heavy, and often has difficulty in taking off. It is a muscular, and therefore meaty, bird, a fact which led to its extinction in the British Isles.



Great bustard (stuffed)
Natural History Museum
March 2008

It was thought to have been eaten to extinction by the upper classes: by the middle of the 19th century there were none left in the UK. Their last stronghold was Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire in the south of England, famed for being the location of Stonehenge. Reintroductions of Russian birds are in progress; one of the only hitches being the chicks getting eaten by foxes.



(Eurasian) Otter
Lutra lutra (Linnaeus, 1758)
Mustelidae; Carnivora; Mammalia; Chordata

Otters are highly social, semi-aquatic (or sometimes wholly) mustelids, with a distinctive shape. They are found in five of the world's continents, and marginally into one of its oceans (the sea otter, Enhydra lutris, lives in the north Pacific, and the marine otter, Lontra felina, in the south-east Pacific). The most wide-ranging species is the Eurasian, or European, river otter, found from western Europe throughout Asia to Indonesia. Despite its wide range, it is almost threatened with extinction, due to conflict with humans.



Awful picture, but the only one I have of a live Lutra lutra
Highland Wildlife Park, Invernessshire
June 2005

I came close to seeing a wild otter when I visited the Isle of Rum off the coast of western Scotland in 2004. Every morning there were excursions to the shore to try and spot them. It was October, the sun hadn't even risen yet, and it was bloody cold. I think I went one morning, and was put off not just by the darkness and cold, but also the stench of rotting seaweed, a smell that has yet to leave me. The last morning I decided to have a lie in and not go out to look for otters, but regretted it: the hardcore few who went managed to see one.

Next week, P: an ankylosaur, a grebe and a harlequin-like auk.