Happy Thought for Friday 9 September 2022

Have a Happy Thought: 

 The interaction of art and science is just amazing.

Check out these drawings done for a recent paper, mapping out how food webs have changed due to extinction of megafauna (large animals).

 

Here’s a drawing of animals that used to (in grey) and still do (in colour) exist around La Brea Tar Pits in southern California.

(related: “la brea” translates to “the tar”, so saying “La Brea Tar Pits” is really saying “the tar tar pits”)


Alttext: An illustration of mammal species that would naturally occur near La Brea, California, with color used to show species that still exist there like coyotes and mule deer, and greyscale used to show extinct species like ground sloths and saber-toothed cats. Illustration credit: Oscar Sanisidro.

Illustration credit: Oscar Sanisidro, from Frieke et. Al (2022). Collapse of terrestrial mammal food webs since the Late Pleistocene. Science. Vol 377, Issue 6609, pp. 1008-1011. DOI: 10.1126/science.abn4012

 

Possibly my favourite little element of this illustration is the bobcat. Unlike all of the other animals, which are more or less ”looking at the camera”, it’s distracted by the hare sitting next to it. It’s like “is that … lunch?... for me?”

 

Here’s another illustration from the same paper, this time showing the animals that once, and still, could be found at a study site in New South Wales, Australia. (Note that greyed-out animals are locally extinct, but may still exist elsewhere in Australia and Tasmania)

Look at all of the ‘roos!!

Alttext: An illustration of mammal species that would naturally occur at a site in New South Wales, Australia, California, with color used to show species that still exist there like wombats and quolls, and greyscale used to show extinct species like thylacines and marsupial lions. Illustration credit: Oscar Sanisidro.

Illustration credit: Oscar Sanisidro, ibid.

 

It’s also so great that one of the sources of information that led to this paper was also art – art that humans had left in caves, thousands of years ago! Like this image of now-extinct cave lions, from Lasceau, France.


Alttext: Photo of approx. 30,000 year old cave painting from France showing extinct cave lions.

Image: ibid

 

Or this woolly rhino, again from Lascaux, France (yes, rhinoceros in France!)


Alttext: Photo of approx. 30,000 year old cave painting from France showing extinct Woolly rhino.

Image: ibid

 

Also, it’s worth a read through this thread from one of the lead authors on the paper, as she explains how they did the research.

https://twitter.com/ecfricke/status/1562862646843813889?s=20&t=Wxd66_WXJQVy6sS29Pexnw

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