Despite it being a wholly arbitrary event, there is something cleansing about tagging a new number onto the end of the date, hanging new calendars, "out with the old, in with the new", first-footing (which last year involved Paul tying a piece of string to a box of shortbread and dragging it into the house just after midnight - don't ask) and generally hoping for a better year X+1 than year X was.

So what are my new year's resolutions?

• Lose 20lb. I say I'll do it every year, but I only achieved it in 2006 when there was a wedding dress involved. I have a very kind workmate who bakes weekly and always brings it in. I need to discipline myself with that. I need to stop eating half an extra-large pizza when we order it (although recently I've started to feel queasy after more than two or three slices, which is good). I need to avoid eating whole tubs of Baileys ice cream. I need to eat more vegetables. Basically if by the end of the year my mother greets me at her front door by poking me in the ribs rather than grabbing my love-handles and jiggling them, I'll be happy.
• Get these two papers (Cetiosauriscus and the ornithopod morphometrics stuff) off to a publisher - JVP for the former and Journal of Morphology for the latter. I don't care if they're only in review or if they're in press (they probably won't be published by the end of 2008) but I want them away from my desk, out of my hair and off Mike Taylor's mind! I don't think I'm going to have anything to present this year at SVP. But I'm going. Whether I go to SVPCA I don't know. My holiday allowance is very precious, and I might have to spend a fair bit of time on the East Coast after SVP.
• Paul's already mentioned it, but I want to make sure that everything we eat or drink is a) organic, b) fair trade or c) locally sourced. Now it's almost impossible to get something fair trade and locally sourced (although if we buy directly from the farmer that's as fair as we can get), but we should be able to manage some combination of the others. We need to go to the supermarket this afternoon (yes, I know we should be buying from local shopkeepers rather than a multi-national corporation but we would have to travel about 10 times further to find a butcher that sold local meat than we do to get British meat at the supermarket - and we recycle the packaging), so we'll make a start a few hours early.

I think that's enough to get on with. I'm making no resolutions regarding the blog, because I don't know what lies ahead. I might continue to do Cool Organism Thursdays, I might not. They will be less frequent as I'm running out of animals (and am determined not to sink into Cool Diapsid Thursday!).

Happy new year to all my readers - let's hope for a better 2008!

First, on 19 December, the Daily Mail (ridiculous Nazi-supporting right-wing fascist tabloid) reported that: "Tigers maul tourist to death as he tries to take photo through cage bars" (PLEASE NOTE the link does contain a graphic image so if you are squeamish you may wish to avoid clicking through). The man had climbed over a safety barrier at the zoo in Guwahati, north-eastern India, to get a close-up photograph of the Bengal tigers. Tragic though the man's death is, I am sure I'm not the only one contemplating submitting it for the next Darwin Awards.

Next, Brian alerted us to: "Christmas carnage: 3 tigers slaughtered for TCM". Three Amur tigers, a female and two cubs, were butchered - decapitated, skinned and their legs taken. Brian wonders if the park officials in Chongqing, China, were in on it, and I'm tempted to agree.

Finally, to top off the three, you must all have heard about the incident at the San Francisco News: ""Tiger kills San Francisco Zoo patron, injures two others". The last thing I read was that the victims are believed to have been dangling over the wall, possibly taunting the Siberian tiger.

I'm saddened by all three of these incidents, as at least two out of three resulted in the deaths of the tigers concerned. The Bengal tiger, Panthera tigris tigris is endangered, and the Amur or Siberian tiger, P. tigris altaica is critically endangered. So, "better", you might say, to kill a captive animal than one of the natural population (since captive populations aren't as far as I'm aware considered when assessing the conservation status of a species), whether it is as "punishment" for an attack, for traditional Chinese medicine, or to protect the human population (why there weren't tranquiliser guns I do not know). And there are many people who say zoos are inhumane - sometimes I agree, especially when the animals are forced to live in an area many many times smaller than their natural habitat. But zoos are DNA repositories for endangered species.

People forget that a tiger is a dangerous animal, whether it is in a cage or not. Animals do not lose their instincts when you put them in an enclosure and feed them three times a day. And we are very foolish to think we can tease them. A few years ago, a friend of mine had a very fat calico cat called Carman (this cat had such amazing rolls of skin that she could sit across the back of an armchair and look like a furry antimacassar). Accidentally, one afternoon, my friend and her boyfriend discovered that if they woke her up she made a very amusing "yowl" sound. So they tried it a few times, but she started to get annoyed and they stopped. A little while later that same afternoon, my friend's boyfriend put his head back against the chair Carman had been lying on. Carman woke up, furious, and plunged the claws of all four paws AND her teeth into his scalp. She had to be prised off his head.

And that was a domestic cat.

One of the "side-effects" of having such a well-read blog about palaeontology is that I get quite a few queries - mainly high school students wanting to know what they need to study if they want to become a palaeontologist, or asking about dinosaurs. Now, I'm very happy to talk about Cetiosauriscus or any other aspect of my own studies, but when it comes to more general information, frankly a lot of other people have done it better.

One site that has really done it better is Dinobase. This is a phenomenal resource for anyone who wants to know anything about dinosaurs and how to study them. Check out the forum, and if your question isn't already answered, why not ask? There are many palaeontologists on hand to help out. And in particular, have a look at the blog of one of my regular commenters Dave Hone. There's no RSS feed, but that just means you'll have to make a point of going back daily to see if he's written anything new! I'd say "No pressure, Dave" but he's actually written more over Christmas than I have.

Right, I'm off to see what Dinobase has to say about my pet sauropod, Cetiosauriscus...

Back in November I mentioned that I wanted to visit Bedgebury Pinetum. Yesterday it was beautiful and sunny, so I bundled my poorly husband into the car and drove round the M25. He's not scowling in the photo, because the sun was so bright that he couldn't look at the camera...

Possibly to protect the rare species, there is no map showing the location of each tree, so I didn't spot some of them. So instead I took the opportunity to get some photos of the conifers, so I remember just how beautiful they can look.

I'd like to go back in the summer (probably without my reluctant botanist in tow), to hunt for as many different conifers as possible.

We did see the Old Man of Kent, the tallest tree in the county. It's a grand fir (Abies grandis) and is 167ft tall. I know all the Californians are laughing at that, but hey - dwarf island populations and all that! Joke.

I think I might use this one in homemade Christmas cards in the future though.

I know I said I might not have time to blog today, but I felt I had to share this with you...

From Saturday's Grauniad:


In case the writing isn't clear, let me reproduce the caption for you:

Giant frigging rats have been discovered in a jungle which cannot possibly be described as remote enough. The freaking things are the size of cats and have no fear of humans, a feeling which is entirely unreciprocated. The discovery of the animals in the Foja mountains of East Papua are the first persuasive argument in favour of the immediate destruction of the rainforest. Merry freaking Christmas.

The Guardian (aka the Grauniad, for the non-UK readers, because it is notorious for typos and poor editing) is the left-wing broadsheet newspaper. It is as respected as the Telegraph, Times and Independent. It contains the Bad Science column. And it has just gone up in my estimations for printing a story like that! Incidentally, the original AP article is here, and does not refer to the rats as either giant or frigging.

I'm writing my Christmas message to you all now. My boss, my favourite Starbucks barista Simon and I are the only people in the UK working on Christmas Eve, it seems, so I don't know if I'll have a chance to blog tomorrow. Plus I've had to reinstall my hard drive for the third time in six months, and I'm hoping that maybe this time PC World will listen to me, accept that there is something more seriously wrong with this machine than I can fix by reformatting the C drive, but in the meantime my wireless internet is only intermittently working. It works fine, constantly, on Paul's Macbook and on my N95 phone, so I'm reasonably sure it's a hardware issue on my computer, but what do I know - I have two X chromosomes.

Anyway, onto Christmas. I've always been under the impression that the USA doesn't really do Christmas songs in a big way. But particularly in the 1970s and 1980s the Chrismas pop song market was huge, and these songs have remained popular even 30 years on. My taste in songs (and indeed in Christmas) has changed since I was a child. In recent years, I've started to feel more contemplative and less celebratory at Christmas. And Greg Lake's "I Believe In Father Christmas" has become far and away my favourite song. It's been touted as anti-Christmas, perhaps even an atheist song, but it is nothing more than a protest against the commercialism of the festival. And it calls to me, because I like the spiritual side of Christmas. Although I describe myself as a pessimistic agnostic (or a "gentle cynic" occasionally) I will be attending Midnight Mass with my husband, I shall sing the carols and I shall commemorate the birth of a man who achieved a great deal and who would probably weep if he knew what atrocities were performed in his name.

To friends and family, many of whom are a long way away, to my 60-odd readers and to my fellow bloggers, on my blogroll and off:

I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave New Year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear

Have a very happy Christmas everyone, and I'll see you in 2008!

The working man's Grauniad (aka the Mirror) published the feat of scientific news reporting last Friday (still catching up on posts!):

WORKER'S HORROR FALL IN CYANIDE VAT

Anyone spot the mahoosive scientific error there? I know, I know, it's a tabloid newspaper and they're never that accurate on matters of science, but this one (though one word) is a biggy:

Cyanide affects the central nervous system and the heart by attacking cells in the body - and preventing them from producing oxygen.

My emphasis (just in case you did miss it). So, who convinced Jan Disley that humans can photosynthesise?

In all seriousness, cyanide is an inhibitor of one of the enzymes of respiration. Its inhibition disrupts electron transfer and thus prevents cell respiration. It prevents cells from producing adenosine triphosphate (ATP) or prevents cells from processing oxygen in respiration, but it certainly doesn't stop them from producing oxygen. The lack of chlorophyll is pretty good at doing that!

Chris over at Highly Allochthonous has posted the first sentence from the first post he made in each month of 2007. What an excellent idea! So (because, like the elephant in the room, if I don't talk about Sweetings too much on here it might resolve itself), here's my year in blogging.

• There was me thinking that attaining the grand old age of 27 in a few weeks would render me ineligible for Tony Blair's big bumper soldier-killing exercise in Iraq. (Never Too Old)
• I went out with two of my best friends last night in Clapham. ("You're Married? Oh I'm So Sorry To Hear That...")
• I have a horrible feeling this will be a running series over the course of several months or years, so I've taken the unusual step of numbering this post. (Why We Need More Scientific Literacy #1)
• For the past couple of evenings it's been really mild in London. (Maybe It's Because I'm A Londoner)
• I met with my supervisors, sorted out my plan of action for the next few months, and got my student card and e-mail address. (Anything Happen While I Was Away?)
• For the 100th post on this blog, I wanted to do something special. (One Hundred)
• My computer died on Saturday. (Dead Computer)
• The BBC has just announced the discovery of only the second coelocanth to be found in Asia. (Old Four Legs)
• I'm back from SVPCA to a chorus of "Did you have a nice holiday?" from my well-meaning workmates (they have no idea - I need another week off!). (Catching Up)
• Today's Telegraph has, on the front cover, the article Creationism can be a topic in class. (Teaching Creationism In School Science Lessons)
• I saw this, and thought of the state of science journalism in the British press. (Why We Need More Scientific Literacy #6)
• I'm back from InaDWriMo (which has evidently now morphed into CePaWriMo - Cetiosauriscus Paper Writing Month...) and from the Peak District. (Cool Organism Thursday #12)

And like Chris, I'm not sure what mine says about me. I also seem to be spending the first post of the month returning from somewhere, but I reckon there's a nice eclectic mix of posts in there.

Just naff all about dinosaurs.

This cheered me up (as well as leaving me slack-jawed with disbelief) last week, as I was trying to stay in bed for a bit longer. At about 6:50am I listened to the dulcet tones of Steve Brusatte discussing his new paper on Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis (and damnit it's not up on JVP's website yet, nor has my sodding hard copy of JVP arrived yet). So, unable to actually blog about the peer-reviewed research, I give you Ed Stourton's amazing questions...

E: And you say this was a period when the Earth was particularly warm?
S: Yeah, it was very very warm at this time. This was the middle part of the Cretaceous period.
E: There's, I suppose, an inevitable temptation with the Bali conference beginning today to ask whether we might see this kind of thing arriving on the planet again?
S: Yeah, you know, I think it's one of the more important implications of this sort of work. I mean, I'm not going to sit here this morning and pretend like we can say something, you know, overarching about global warming, but the point is that these sorts of ecosystems from the deep past are the sorts of time periods, the sorts of species that we need to study in order to start to get a picture of how our world may change as it warms and as sea levels rise.
E: Steve Brusatte, thank you very much indeed.

Now, kudos to Steve for coming back with one helluva decent answer to a question that must have had him inwardly saying "WTF?!". I certainly detected a fair bit of barely suppressed WTF in his voice - have a listen here and see if you agree.

So are there actually lots of people out there who think that we'll get dinosaurs back if we don't reduce our carbon emissions? I suppose this means if we carry on this way I'll be able to ask Shell or BP to fund my PhD research...

Brusatte, S. L. & P. C. Sereno. 2007. A new species of Carcharodontosaurus (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Cenomanian of Niger and a revision of the genus. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 27(4). Still waiting for the DOI...

I'm only a week late with this - oh well.

The research council which funds most physics research, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has had its budget cut by £80 million. According to the Grauniad, it's the worst funding crisis in more than 20 years for the industry. I learned about it on the Today Programme (it's a bit like NPR but more left-wing and without the funding drives, for the trans-Atlantic readers). Now usually it's John Humphrys pressing on with the awkward questions (he and Jeremy Paxman are the best!), but Sarah Montague really socked it to Ian Pearson MP, the Minister for Science and Innovation!

I had to transcribe it myself, so I might have the odd word wrong here and there, but see what you think (you might be able to listen to it from here - you'll need to fast-forward to about 20 minutes in):

S: Well Ian Pearson is the Science Minister. Good morning.
P: Good morning Sarah.
S: Can you step in and help out with £80 million?
P: Well let me put this in context first Sarah. What we've seen is significant investment in science by the government over the last ten years and the science budget is actually going up over the next three years.
S: But they're short of £80 million. Can you help them out?
P: As I said the science is going up from £3.4 billion this year to £4 billion in 2010-11. And the budget for the STFC is actually going up as well by 13.6% over the next three years.
S: So you're not going to help them out with the extra £80 million?
P: We have concerns about the STFC's budgetary proposals and we've been discussing that with them over the last few days and weeks, and there clearly are problems and it's one of the reasons why, although we don't get interfering with the detail because we respect what's called the Haldane Principle which has been in place for many years; and I think in the light of this and the delivery plans that are going to be outlined by all the research councils today, I've asked Ian Diamond, chair of RCUK, to review support for physics which is a key part of our agenda on STEM - science, technology and engineering.
S: Okay, so you're going to review support with - to what end? That you will be able to help them out with the £80 million shortfall or not?
P: Well, let's put this in context again. The STFC -
S: Please - I know, I know, sorry - forgive me Mr Pearson but we have heard that. We've also heard that a lot of physicists across the country in university departments are going to be affected - they'll lose their jobs, departments are going to lose 25% of their budgets, so I'm just looking for some sort of answer from you as to whether you are going to help them out such that that will not happen.
P: Well, I'm concerned about that, Sarah. The STFC has got a budget of £1.9 billion over the next three years.
S: So £80 million is relatively small. Will you be able to help them out?
P: So, well, we will have to - to see what the review says, but certainly the health of the different disciplines - physics in particular - is something of concern to us and that's why Ian Diamond -
S: So you'll do what you can to try to help them out and get the extra money?
P: Well, nobody wants to see physics hit hard, Sarah, and this government has invested a lot in our STEM agenda, we've been investing a lot -
S: Sure, I'm just trying to understand whether that means that there isn't any more or there will be - you'll find the extra little bit.
P: Well, who can predict what the future of the review will come up with Sarah.
S: Okay.
P: Yeah - let's, let's just get this into overall perspective. Science spending is going up to £4 billion by 2011 - a big increase.
S: Thank you very much Ian Pearson.

One day, a politician will come along who is capable of answering a straight question. And when he or she arrives, people will be queuing up to vote for him or her. Unfortunately, Ian Pearson MP, Minister for Science and Innovation, is not that politician.

If you're feeling brave, head over to my husband's personal blog, read tonight's entry, read some of his other posts, especially the one with the photos, and see why tonight, for the first time ever, I made myself a tequila slammer at home.

So many posts I want to write and so little time. I'm still struggling to write all my Christmas cards (and still waiting for my dad's present to arrive - aaagh!), but we have the Christmas dinner bought (a week earlier than last year). Coming up this week (in true Darren Naish teaser-style):

• The crisis facing the funding of physics in the UK
• The "relevance" of Carcharodontosaurus to climate change
• Creationism taking over Lancashire
• More on my Jurassic leaf-babies

Yes, I did have time to nip up to the garden centre today. Paul and I have been trying to get a new tree (our old one is missing one row of branches and it looks a bit odd). We wanted a pre-lit one, but I didn't want fibre-optic because I think they look ugly on a large scale. In the end we ran out of time and all the pre-lit trees everywhere have sold out. So on Thursday night, rather than providing you all with a Cool Organism Thursday, I single-handedly assembled the old tree, while Paul was out on the razz. Having worked out a technique for carrying the lights round the tree with me using an old record bag, I managed it all, baubles, the lot, in just shy of an hour and a half. So the lights can stay as they are.

But I've been concerned about whether the plastic option is really the most eco-friendly. I presume it is better to have an old plastic one than to keep getting a real one each year - even if it's a sustainable source and the trees are recycled, I would necessarily have to drive a good four miles' round trip to collect the tree. But what about a real one that can be got out each year? So I am now the proud owner of a 4ft Picea abies, a Norwegian spruce. Hopefully it'll be 5ft by next Christmas and we can bring it inside. I've heard that there can be a problem with bringing a tree indoors, but our lounge is well below 15°C during the day, so it shouldn't be too "unseasonably" warm for it.

On my way through the garden centre, looking for all the world like one of Malcolm's soldiers carrying Birnam Wood to Dunsinane, I saw an unusual plant in the indoor section. It was a tiny Araucaria heterophylla. You know I bought it. Same genus as the monkey puzzle tree, and another "living fossil". I thought it was a stroke of luck to see it for sale, as they're vulnerable in the wild. Feel a bit bad for that, but I suspect it has all been propagated "in captivity". I'm a little freaked out to read that it can reach 50-65m high. We're going to need a bigger house.

But for now, it's two feet tall. It has five tiny branches right at the top of the stem, making it look as though it already has a star on top. And it droops over to one side like Charlie Brown's tree. So Charlie Brown it has become.


Not all the plants have names. The Wollemia was named Matildus by one of my best friends, on the back of half a bottle of pinot grigio, although I tend to just call it Wally. And the Cycas is Bastard, on account of that being the word it has "heard" most often since its purchase. And the Nephrolepis is Sideshow Bob because it resembles that character's haircut. Photos will follow...

With possibly the most popular debut post ever, The Olive Tree has arrived in the blogosphere. The wife of Laelaps, I'm looking forward to reading what Lycaon has to say (and I love her use of the binomial Olea europea as the blog URL, not to mention the fact that the dark colour scheme is very green and energy-saving).

Moving to the German-language Scienceblogs.de is Tiefes Leben, a blog I do try to read, although I can't do it without Google Translator. I shall be recommending it to my future sister-in-law, a German teacher, as an excellent source of brief science articles for her students to get to grips with.

I am absolutely bloody knackered. I'm mishearing things all the time. Today I heard the announcer say there were delays on the tube due to "relationship engineering works" rather than "late-finishing engineering works". And I'm still trying to work out what "the Mexican branch of Al-Qaeda" could really have been.

I'm also after a couple of interview transcripts from the Today programme, but I have a feeling I'll be transcribing the relevant bits myself over the weekend. I have two things I want to rant about - the lack of funds for UK physicists and possibly the most completely out of left-field interview question I have heard asked of a scientist ever.

I've been tagged by Brian (possibly because he knew I was off work today and therefore had no excuse not to follow suit!). So here goes with the old lineage thing:

• Father: Laelaps
• Grandfather: Greg Laden
• Great Grandmother: The Ridger
• Great Great Grandmother: Grrl Scientist
• Great Great Great Grandmother: Tabor
• Great Great Great Great Grandmother: Maya's Granny
• Great Great Great Great Great Grandmother: Busha Full of Grace

So (now I've written "Great" so many times I'm not sure that's how to spell it anymore), here are my seven random snippets of information:

1. Paul and I are spending Christmas in our flat just the two of us. It's the second year we've done it (so since we got married). While we love to see our families, it's so relaxing to do our own thing.
   
   
2. I honestly don't know who to vote for in our next General Election. Labour are no longer a left-wing party. The Tories have some really fascist ideas about immigration. The Lib-Dems are impotent. The Greens and the Socialists, while very effective in local government, lack any real means of getting into Parliament. And the BNP and UKIP make me feel sick to the stomach.
   
   
3. Sometimes, when Paul's out all evening and I have to feed just myself, I'll eat boiled rice with soy sauce poured over it. It's a guilty pleasure.
   
   
4. I have extremely low blood pressure. Nothing to do with fitness - it's all genetics.
   
   
5. I hate it when (fortunately only a few) Americans feel they have the right to tell me how badly I personally (!) treated Diana, Princess of Wales (in one case hitting me repeatedly in the arm with a rather heavy textbook), and how awful the Duchess of Cornwall is. No other nationality does it, it's been none of their business since 1776, and it's bloody rude. And yes, I happen to like the Duchess of Cornwall very much and think she should have been allowed to marry the Prince of Wales 30 years ago.
   
   
6. I think Cowboy Troy is the dog's bollocks. If I own four or more cowboy hats (as I do), can I have honorary hick-chick status please?
   
   
7. I am currently wrestling with the question of whether it is ethical to have children, given the impact on the environment of more people, and the likely state of the planet my offspring would inherit. It may form a blog post at some point, once I've thought out the arguments.

And here are the rules...

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and or weird things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

So I tag The World According To Ben, the ethical husband, Make No Bones, Highly Allochthonous, microecos, Dinochick and Son of Schism Schasm. No pressure, guys and gals - I'll leave out the commenting thing, so if you see this you can respond as you wish.

Observed on someone's Facebook page (not one of my friends, I hasten to add - none of them would be so idiotic)...


No irony there whatsoever. What a daft bint.

I've shifted a few categories around (if you think your blog should be in a different category do let me know) and added some new blogs. First up, The Osterley Times, written by our next-door neighbour Kel. And no, I'm not going to destroy the mystique by telling you Kel's gender either. And two former Wash U buddies have just entered the blogosphere - new dad Brian and real-life-Magical-Trevor Mitchell.

Some sciencey blogs next - The Open Source Paleontologist will be helping us all use world-class software for a fraction of the cost of the commercial stuff. And I shall be following Traumador's progress in The Tyrannosaur Chronicles. Even the ethical husband thought All Of My Faults Are Stress Related was a very clever name, and he has no geological background whatsoever. He doesn't know what Clastic Detritus is though.

The carnivals The Accretionary Wedge and Linnaeus' Legacy are linked to as well. You need cool buttons like The Boneyard, guys!

Now, in Cool Organism Thursday I mentioned ferns growing in the limestone caves of the Peak District. Earlier this week I went to another climate change conference, where a guest speaker made a point along the lines of the following:

If you want to solve the carbon problem, grow a load of trees, chop them down, plant new ones in their place and shove the old ones down a coal mine. It's where coal came from after all.

Now, he didn't actually say that if we left the trees a few years we'd get coal, but I have a horrible feeling that's what he meant.

I mentioned this statement to a fellow delegate, and asked if he thought the speaker had been joking. My colleague didn't think he was. Then he put his foot in it too by saying it would be better to sequester the trees in concrete and stick them at the bottom of the ocean. But he didn't know what that would do to the sea levels.

The next climate change conference I go to, I want the moderator/chairman to have a PhD in climate-related science. And I want that PhD to be given a large inflatable baseball bat. And whenever a speaker comes out with something really fucking stupid, I want the PhD to bash them one in the back of the head.

Does that sound fair?

I did promise a photo of my scowling husband on an outcrop, didn't I? Well, as I said in COT, we're back from our little break in the Peak District. Arrived in Grindleford just after lunch and hiked up Padley Gorge to Hathersage Moor, where this photo was taken. Actually Paul was surprisingly happy and totally posed this grimace. He'd had a great hike, was enjoying a coffee and a Yorkie bar, and liked the fact that if he looked in one direction he could see no sign of humanity but if he looked in the opposite direction there was the calming presence of the A6187 to civilisation.

Despite the wind, Paul was determined to get up on top of the crag. He's standing on an outcrop of millstone grit, which gives the Dark Peak its name (as opposed to the White Peak which is limestone). Have a look here for a good summary of the geology of the area.

Now, last week I said that quite crucially I would be north of the Tees-Exe Line. South of the Tees-Exe Line, the pale ale is king. The rocks are Mesozoic or younger, the water is harder from all the chalk, and for chemical reasons I don't understand the beers are brewed with a lighter taste - a pint of Spitfire or Greene King IPA will refresh on a summer's day. In contrast, the bitter, mild and porter rules supreme north of the Tees-Exe. I personally prefer these darker more flavoursome beers. They have spicy undertones, can be a bit stronger than pale ales and warm on a cold winter's night. So here - one ethical palaeontologist with a very welcome pint of Black Sheep. And it was only the second of three, so the fact that I look sozzled is a figment of your imaginations...

So, up bright and early and off to look at a freakin' awesome landslide. Mam Tor, aka "The Shivering Mountain" has slipped and slid so much that the old road across the mountain has crumbled away and been forced to close. Which is what happens when you make mountains out of shale. Underneath the mountain are the Blue John Caverns (home of the wall ferns I told you about yesterday), and further down is Speedwell Cavern, a long boat trip down a very dark tunnel. We could also have gone to Treak Cliff Cavern and Peak Cavern, but both of us felt we could only show interest in how caves are formed in limestone (necessarily using words of only two syllables for the non-geologically-minded visitor) so many times.


Then it started chucking it down with rain for a bit. So we went for a drive, and because I have a death wish, I decided to take Christine along the A57 Snake Pass, one of the most notorious roads in the UK. It's a popular training road for cyclists aiming for Le Tour De France because it has such steep gradients and blind bends. If it snows in the Peak District it's one of the first main roads shut to traffic. It divides Kinder Scout (the highest peak in the National Park) and Bleaklow (the second highest peak), both of which I've climbed in the past (climbing the latter resulted in a query stress fracture to my metatarsal...).


What I find most amazing is that the photo above was taken on Snake Pass, 22 miles from Sheffield and 16 miles from Manchester. Manchester has a population of 2.24 million, Sheffield 640 thousand. So it's probably peanuts to most US cities, but I don't know of many other places where you can be such a short distance from two major cities and be in the middle of wild country.

On the way back to the B&B (The Four Seasons in Castleton: thoroughly recommended - Jenny and Alan are very friendly hosts and we fully intend to go back there) we stopped off at Derwent Dam. I'd driven Paul insane all afternoon singing The Dam Busters March, so it was only fair to go and see the stretches of water the airmen practised on. Paul went to get change for the car park, and came back with a bag of duck food. We were standing in the middle of the car park (which was almost deserted), when suddenly all these ducks started walking towards us, appearing from nowhere. It was adorable and terrifying in equal measure.


The photo is a bit blurry (should have changed the flash setting) but I think it shows a) how many of the little buggers there were and b) how frenzied was their feeding. Some of them had obviously worked out that tugging on trouser legs got the attention of the feeder (it did), but they were also so tame I could have picked one up and taken it home with me. Still a bit freaked out by the two that followed us into the woods and up to the dam though.

We'd hoped for a beautiful day on Monday, and it started out really well. We were the only ones on the whole site of Peveril Castle and the light was perfect. So I hoped to get up Winnats Pass as it had been too wet on Sunday. But it started chucking it down, and by the time we'd paid and displayed it was hail/sleet. Determined to get our £3 worth Paul pushed me on to the path. But after less than 100m it was clear we were on a hiding to nothing, and it would be insane to continue. How odd that I used to have to go out in that sort of weather on fieldwork and I complained like nobody's business, but now I don't have to go out in the rain if I don't want to, I actually chose to!

I did play around with the camera a bit and came up with some photos I quite like. Feel free to download, print off, frame or set as your desktop picture any of these (but if you use them on a website please credit me as the photographer as "Julia Heathcote" and leave me a link in the comment form):

 

 

I'm back from InaDWriMo (which has evidently now morphed into CePaWriMo - Cetiosauriscus Paper Writing Month...) and from the Peak District. And with my return comes that of the Cool Organism Thursdays. This week it's an opportunity for me to stick a couple of holiday snaps in.

While Paul and I were away over the weekend we did a lot of hiking and a lot of hanging out in caves. On the Saturday we did a circular route round Padley Gorge. It's mainly an oak forest (a proper greenwood), and Paul commented that even though there were no leaves on the trees the forest was very much alive. Moss and lichen covered every available rock, and there were ferns everywhere. Bracken (Pteridium aquilinum) popped up between the boulders. Smaller ferns (I reckon they're Dryopteris or Polypodium) were growing on the dry stone walls, seemingly with very little substrate save the organic matter underneath the accompanying moss, and in some places even in the fork of an oak tree.


I wish I'd taken a photo of the ferns in the tree, but I was quite tickled by the little "outcrop" on the wall on the way back down the gorge.

Even more impressive was going to Blue John Cavern and seeing the little buggers! With apologies for the really crappy picture, here one was, about 20-25 feet up the wall of a cave some 200 feet below the surface.


I also saw what I now know to be a maidenhair spleenwort (Asplenium trichomanes). The cave environment is perfect for these "wall ferns" - same ambient temperature all the year round, plenty of moisture and now some rather handy electric lights which are switched on for up to 10 hours a day. Really, they've got it made.

On Monday I dragged Paul up Winnats Pass in the sleet to try to find the Asplenium scolopendrium that allegedly clung for dear life to the limestone cliffs, but it was so cold, wet and windy that we made it to the first cliff face before turning round and heading back to the car absolutely soaked through. Saw more maidenhair spleenwort, about 10 feet above me, but my waterproof jacket was not really fulfilling its side of the bargain so I wasn't sure the case of my camera would keep the water out either.

I sat in the car dripping wet and shivering, full of new-found respect for wall ferns and the conditions they put up with - freezing conditions and wind-chill, a lot of snow and frost (Winnats Pass is one of the first roads to close in the winter in the Peak District) and naff all substrate to cling on to. I went away on Saturday wondering whether I should be fleecing up my ferns for the winter, and returned on Monday with the conclusion that I would be mad to do so.

Wall ferns. Very cool.