Day: November 2, 2017

typhlonectes:

‘Lost’ Salamander Rediscovered After 42 Years

By Stephanie Pappas

A lost species of salamander has been rediscovered alive and well in Guatemala.

The Jackson’s Climbing Salamander (Bolitoglossa jacksoni), a
brilliant yellow-and-black amphibian, was last seen in 1975 and feared
extinct. But this month, a guard at the Finca San Isidro Amphibian
Reserve (also called the Yal Unin Yul Witz Reserve) in the Cuchumatanes
Mountains spotted a juvenile of the species while out on patrol.

The
guard, Ramos León, snapped a photo and sent it to Carlos Vasquez, a
curator of herpetology at USAC University in Guatemala, who confirmed
its identity.

Vasquez himself had spent more than 3,000 hours hunting for the salamander since 2005, and trained León and his fellow guards on how to search for it.

“We had started to fear that the species was gone, and now it’s like it
has come back from extinction,” he said. “It’s a beautiful story and
marks a promised future for the conservation of this special region.”

Read more: Live Science

photograph by
Carlos Vasquez Almazan

unnonexistence:

welcome to Mealtimes With Executive Dysfunction, please have a look at our menu:

  • leftovers from the last time you had a Real Actual Meal (you lucky bastard)
  • leftovers from the last time you had a Real Actual Meal (you lucky bastard), except they aren’t actually there anymore because you ate them for lunch
  • staring into the fridge and whining
  • plain rice
  • tuna straight from the can
  • tuna ON TOP OF PLAIN RICE WHAAAAAAT *air horn noises*
  • something that’s probably gone bad a little but you don’t have the energy to care
  • something you actually like but you’re too tired to cook it properly
  • something you hate but it’s still slightly better than all the other options
  • canned soup
  • cheese???????
  • peanut??? butter?????????????
  • guilt about eating canned soup for the 6th time this week
  • oh thank god i have vegetables in the freezer 
  • the fresh vegetables you accidentally left to rot because preparing them was too much effort
  • the easiest & least appetizing of 5 ways you know how to cook eggs
  • 12 different snack foods over a period of 5 hours

soilrockslove:

zozi-schlegel:

clatterbane:

I also have to get amused sometimes at the snotty “No History” trope, especially coming from certain people. Because, even by fairly conservative estimates now? There’s been continuous human habitation where I grew up for at least twice as long as in the British Isles and some other chunks of Northern Europe. Because it wasn’t frozen solid.

Kind of like the political relevance of human population migration patterns tens of thousands of years ago, I guess what constitutes History is in the eye of the beholder. And some of the standards demonstrated are…interesting.

I read the other day that “marginalised cultures have been provided with their own history by scholarship” which is, uh… what took that history away in the first place? I’m pretty sure NYU wasn’t desperate to record the history of Native North American people…

^^^This.

I’m not an expert on what was going on Back East.  So I can’t add anything there.  But Tucson has been continuously inhabited for *at least 4,000-5,000 years. (The earliest object we’ve been able to get a hard date on was from ~2,200 BC, as I recall.) But there’s a lot to suggest people have been here for a lot longer…

And that’s part of why the anti-Mexican-American Studies stuff is so frustrating. With mainstream “US History” classes you typically only get as far back as the Gadsden Purchase (1854) with maybe a brief note about Cortez or the founding of the Missions if you’re lucky.  MAS classes may not always do a great job of covering all the Native stuff, but they at least go a *little* farther back.

alisondeluca:

meduseld:

penroseparticle:

My favorite thing is that Europe is spooky because it’s old and America is spooky because it’s big

“The difference between America and England is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, while the English think 100 miles is a long way.” –Earle Hitchner

THERE ARE OLD PLACES IN AMERICA

… They’re just not European