“Most other reptiles lived on the ground,” (Jörg Schneider, professor of palaeontology at Freiberg University) told The Local. “For the first time we really know this animal was specialized for living in trees … They have unusually long and slim fingers and very long tails … It is a completely new form that is unknown.”

The Permian period was marked by the diversification of land vertebrates and appearance of modern trees such as conifers. All of the modern continents were clumped together in the single supercontinent, Pangea.

Mammal ancestors such as the famous fan-backed Dimetrodon flourished but the period ended with a massive extinction 250 million years ago that wiped out about 70 percent of land vertebrates, probably through a combination of climate change, volcanic activity and asteroid strikes.

The petrified forest on the outskirts Chemnitz is remarkably intact because it was buried in fine ash from a nearby volcano eruption. Normally such fossil remains of animals have been washed some distance from where they lived and died and then preserved in lakes and sediments, Schneider said.

The Chemnitz forest, by contrast, has been preserved virtually as it stood 290 million years ago, complete with trees, insects, spiders and snails as well as larger vertebrate animals. The reptiles were found at the foot of the trees from which they fell.

“You could call it the Pompeii of Saxony,” Schneider said. “They are exceptionally well-preserved skeletons because of this very fine ash. We could see every bone, we could see the outline of the skin and beautifully preserved scales. It looks like they just died days ago.”

(T)hey do have complete inner ear systems, including functional cochlea, which are carefully connected to and stimulated by their lower jaw. Resting on the ground, a snake's jaw can detect vibrations as small as an angstrom in amplitude (a motion roughly as large the diameter of a single atom), which act like sound waves to the inner ear.

The physicists performed a geometric study of the anatomy of horned desert vipers as well as the ground waves created by the footfalls of their prey. They showed mathematically that the jaw-to-cochlea system is sensitive to the frequencies of the prey's ground vibrations.

From their analysis, the physicists also found that the snake's notorious ability to unhinge their jaws and swallow their prey whole means that the right and left side of their jaws can receive vibrations independently, and the snakes hear in stereo.

Those of us who worked with the tortoises on a daily basis learned each one’s personality, their habits, preferences, and behaviors. Methuselah, honestly, always had the most personality. He was smart and knew how to get what he wanted. He could be cunning even. Sometimes you could tell he was thinking, as though he was formulating some plan.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday that a petition seeking to protect the Utah population of the Gila monster under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) does not contain substantial scientific information to indicate that the petitioned action may be warranted, because the population does not constitute a distinct population segment (DPS) as defined by the ESA. The finding will be published in the Federal Register Tuesday.

Despite the announcement by the USFWS that the species will not receive further consideration for listing under the ESA at this time, the agency will continue to work with its partners to conserve and protect the Gila monster throughout the species’ range, according to the announcement.

[....]

In Utah, it is found only in the southern portion of Washington County, which comprises less than one (.01) percent of the species’ total range.

Over four years ago, more than 20 gharials were found dead on the Chambal. They seemed to have been poisoned – dying from kidney failure and gout from eating contaminated fish from polluted rivers. "What a horrible death! Poor gharials," sympathises David, as we imagine the sick reptiles suffering.

But a few weeks later we hear some welcome news. The new breeding centre further up river, in the Sheopur district, is proving a success. More than 1,000 baby gharials from more than 40 mothers have hatched in the last month. On the drive back on the bus we talk to a few locals who are very excited about the gharial babies. One young boy tells me thousands have been born; a young woman tells me that there are tens of thousands.

"You have to see the babies diving in the water," urged one boy. The small crocodilians have become local celebrities. Families are now taking picnics on the river at weekends to see the gharials play and feed.

The endangered leatherback sea turtle enjoyed a huge conservation victory this week. The hulking, jellyfish-eating reptile will be protected in ocean waters off the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington due to a settlement filed by the National Marine Fisheries Service and conservation groups. The current settlement proposes protecting 70,600 square miles of critical habitat, but the government has until November 15, 2011 to make a final rule.

The settlement marks a major turning point in a many-year effort by conservation groups to protect the embattled turtle, which travels some 6,000 miles from the western Pacific to the cool waters along the Western United States each summer and fall to feed on scores of jellyfish. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, “as few as 2,300 adult female western Pacific leatherbacks remain.”

"It took a little time but they actually all healed up very nicely," said aquarium veterinarian Cara Field.

A federal contractor released the turtles Friday off of Venice, Audubon Nature Institute spokeswoman Sarah Burnette said Wednesday.

Burnette said most were healthy enough for release last year, but the remaining 30 wintered at the institute. Earlier this spring, it was either too cold or seas were too choppy for the release, she said.

The worst injured and sickest was the Kemp's ridley sea turtle with one line of puncture wounds in his shell and another in the flat plastron over his abdomen, indicating that he probably escaped being eaten by a shark, Field said.
....
Field said some were anemic because of the exposure to oil. Others had low calcium, broken flippers and a couple had infected toe-bones.

U.S.-based Conservation International said it opened the Mekong Turtle Conservation Center on Wednesday in Kratie province, 100 miles (160 kilometers) northeast of Phnom Penh.
A 40-pound (18-kilogram) female turtle and six babies were released into the conservation pond at a Buddhist pagoda on the Mekong River at the center's launch. The ceremony was attended by six Buddhist monks — who blessed the female turtle by painting scared markings on her body — and more than 100 villagers.
"Our goal is to conserve Cantor's turtle populations in their natural habitat, the Mekong River, through the Mekong Turtle Conservation Center and the community-led nest protection scheme," Conservation International said in a statement.

"People do say that I am mad but I say it's better than people saying you're bad. I think everything I am doing is good," he said.

My life is about the conservation of the king cobra. Our breeding colony here is a safety net in case the king cobra becomes extinct.

[....]

Writing on his sanctuary's website previously, Mr Yeomans said: 'The King Cobra Sanctuary was born from my lifelong love for this amazing snake species and my concerns that it could eventually disappear from the wild.

'Until mankind changes the way he treats the natural world, a living 'Ark' is required for the survival of many animal species.

Typically, the turtles — in Crawford County, most are the common snapping turtle, red-eared slider, map turtle and box turtle — winter in the mud near the bottom of a pond, according to Fort Hays State University's Kansas Herpetofaunal Atlas. Their low oxygen requirement allows their skin to absorb enough oxygen through the water. But their habitat may have changed, so it's off to greener pastures, and mates.

It's also egg-laying season, and the turtles are looking for safe habitats in which to construct their nests. With the exception of snapping turtles, they also could be on the prowl for the juicy droppings of a mulberry tree, Glick said.

"They love those," he said

But roads are a problem, and while a large snapping turtle could throw off a vehicle's alignment, the consequences are, of course, much more dire for the hapless turtles.

Glick said it's OK to move turtles off the road as long as it's safe to stop, but he recommends determining their direction of travel first.

"They may just turn around and go back to the other side," he said.

"It's also possible to move snapping turtles. Glick doesn't recommend moving them, but said that if someone were so inclined as to try, he or she should pick the turtle up by its tale, leaving its underside facing toward the person's body and at a safe distance.

The award-winning research, led by Professor Chris Shaw at Queen's School of Pharmacy, has identified two proteins, or 'peptides', which can be used in a controlled and targeted way to regulate 'angiogenesis' -- the process by which blood vessels grow in the body. The discovery holds the potential to develop new treatments for more than seventy major diseases and conditions that affect more than one billion people worldwide.

The proteins are found in secretions on the skins of the Waxy Monkey Frog and the Giant Firebellied Toad. Scientists capture the frogs and gently extract the secretions, before releasing them back in to the wild. The frogs are not harmed in any way during this process.
Professor Shaw said: "The proteins that we have discovered have the ability to either stimulate or inhibit the growth of blood vessels. By 'switching off' angiogenesis and inhibiting blood vessel growth, a protein from the Waxy Monkey Frog has the potential to kill cancer tumours. Most cancer tumours can only grow to a certain size before they need blood vessels to grow into the tumour to supply it with vital oxygen and nutrients. Stopping the blood vessels from growing will make the tumour less likely to spread and may eventually kill it. This has the potential to transform cancer from a terminal illness into a chronic condition.

[....]

"It would be a great shame to have something in nature that is potentially the wonder drug to treat cancer and not aim to do everything in our power to make it work."

But Saturday's VIPs were eight ploughshare tortoises flown in from Hong Kong in padded crates. Among them is a female of breeding age, which Eric Goode and his associates at the nonprofit Turtle Conservancy's Behler Chelonian Center hope to mate with the only male ploughshare tortoise of breeding age in North America.

"That male, which is en route from a zoo in Texas, hasn't seen a female ploughshare tortoise of breeding age in more than 25 years," Goode said as he marveled at the new arrivals in a quarantined pen. "We're hoping for the best. These creatures have seen nothing but bad luck, corruption and greed in captivity."

Some would call that an understatement. With fewer than 300 left in the wilds of Madagascar, the ploughshare tortoise holds the dubious distinction of being the rarest tortoise on Earth. They are heavily targeted by global animal traffickers, and the high-domed creatures fetch tens of thousands of dollars on the Asian black market, conservationists say.

Until recently, attempts to breed the ploughshare tortoise outside of Madagascar failed miserably. In the early 1980s, a male died shortly after zoo workers in Honolulu used an electric device to procure semen from the animal. A female that it was supposed to have mated with had her ovaries removed during a botched operation.

After the tour, the kids enjoyed a “Show and Tell” session with the education officers. A baby Caymen croc, a baby Indian Rock Python and a baby Black Pond Turtle were displayed and the children were able to observe at close quarters what they would have missed if they saw them from afar. Their characteristics and parts of their body were explained — they got to see the webbed feet of the turtles and examine it closely and learnt the importance of having it. The sinewy muscles of the baby python was exclaimed over — for they now understood how it could coil and twine around things with such strength and move. They noticed the third eye of the baby croc, which closes under water.

[....]

Getting back to the Croc Bank, after a little rest the kids got down to setting up a fresh water aquarium for the turtles. They checked the water levels and kept little pots and vegetation for the turtles to nibble and hide under. They also put in tiny fish. It was now time for some painting, which actually was to create an artificial butterfly garden. The concept was to paint the flower have a vial of honey inserted in the centre so that butterflies would get attracted to it. Play time in the beach was followed by the finale — where certificates and prizes wee distributed with a special Croc Bank Kit.

It was an unique experience for these kids, an experience which made them understand and appreciate the natural world and also the importance of conserving it with everything they've got.

While scientists in several states are studying the effects of the oil spill on loggerhead and other sea turtles, the Kemps ridley have been of particular concern. The Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20, 2010 happened when they typically would have been in the area. Most of the 456 visibly oiled turtles rescued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year were Kemps ridleys.

At the peak of nesting season, their numbers looked good. As of May 24, 155 Kemps ridley nests had been spotted on Texas shores — more than in all of last year and more than had been counted by that day in 2009 and 2008. The same is true for some other sea turtle species, although they have just started to nest so it might be too early to have confidence in those numbers.

And because sea turtles don't reach reproductive age for at least a decade, the full effects of the oil spill might not be known for years.

"There is fear that some of the turtles that took the year off from nesting or after the turtles were done nesting during the 2010 year, that they entered the waters where the oil had been present," said Shaver, explaining that the reptiles often forage off the hard-hit Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi coasts before or after nesting along the Texas Gulf Coast.

"There is concern that perhaps those turtles have been impacted from the oil and could then have problems with their reproduction," she added.

The museum's tuatara surplus is the result of Mr Hazley overcoming many captive-breeding problems and he is getting 20-30 fertile eggs each year.

"With the new acrylic roof I got from Germany that let's all the UV (ultra-violet light) through, I'm getting a 90% survival rate rather than a 90% failure.

"I'm sending eggs to Victoria University from now on because I'm saturated."

Mr Hazley would like to liberate some of his animals on a tiny pest-free island in Foveaux Strait.

"It would be just [big] enough to put a few animals on to see how they are going to do."

Mr Hazley said he had been talking to interested parties about the possibility for 20 years but there had been little progress.

He believed it was not the museum's job to make the project happen.

"It's more of a Doc or iwi thing. Somebody else needs to drive it. I can breed the animals for it but no-one's out there wanting to drive it."

She was sweet 17, profoundly pregnant; and yet floated effortlessly, adrift in the warm waters off the east coast of India. The Olive Ridley sea turtle was waiting for darkness to envelope her. She was pregnant for the first time and would breed many more times in her life span of 100 years. Stealth was not her intention as she waited 700 yards from the sandy beach at the mouth of the Rushikulya in Orissa. A few yards away, another female turtle joined her, then a third, followed by a dozen, then hundreds and thousands. They gathered as if for a colossal hen party, instinctively following an uncanny ritual that happens in the dead of the night.

All the expectant mother turtles slowly crawl towards the virgin beach. “Look, there comes the first fat lady,” said turtle researcher Sajan John, holding a tiny torch, as I peered into the darkness. I was witness to an Arribada, which means “Arrival” in Spanish. Arribada is the astounding nesting inclination of the Olive Ridley turtle. Large groups of turtles gather off the seashore and, in a short span of a few nights, they invade the beaches in regular intervals to lay eggs in collective clutches. The nesting density is so high that previously laid eggs are unwittingly dug up by other turtles to lay their own eggs! Each clutch has at least 70-100 ping-pong sized white eggs stacked in a tubular pit excavated in the soft sand.

Thin permeable skin is both the cornerstone and the millstone of amphibian evolution. On the one hand skin provides a useful site for gas exchange; on the other, free water movement across skin confines amphibians to freshwater. Indeed, of the 6,500 recognised amphibians, only the crab-eating frog can enter the sea.

Unlike other amphibians, which rapidly dehydrate in seawater, crab-eating frogs absorb urea across their urinary bladder in order to eliminate the osmotic gap between body fluids and seawater. Seawater acclimation requires several days, leaving the frogs with two equally disagreeable options — they can take up salt and lose water to the sea, or face desiccation on land.

The vulnerable species is one of two members of the only genus on Earth that rears its young inside of its vocal sac, a job taken on by the males.

"They have a small opening below their tongue. … After [the eggs] hatch, he takes the tadpoles into his mouth and manipulates them through that opening and into his vocal sac," Danté Fenolio, a conservation scientist with the Atlanta Botanical Garden, explained to me today.

"For about 60 days, they go all the way through to development inside his vocal sac. At that point when they are ready, fully developed, he coughs up fully formed miniatures of the adult."
Fenolio is working on a captive breeding project with the National Zoo and Universidad Catolica in Santiago to build a so-called assurance population of the frogs that can be released into the wild once, or if, environmental threats to their natural habitat are thwarted.

Examining tropical frog populations in Costa Rica, Australia, and Brazil's Atlantic Forest, the researchers found "that paradoxically, habitat loss is negatively associated with occurrence, prevalence, and infection intensity of [chytridiomycosis] in amphibian populations in the tropics." The finding goes against research of other animal diseases, which usually find that risk of disease increases in disturbed habitats.

In this case the researchers suspect that either the lethal disease depends on the ecosystem having an undisturbed microclimate, or that a decline in amphibian diversity and abundance—due to habitat loss—slows the spread of the disease.

The finding also explains why the presence of chytridiomycosis is often seen in higher altitudes where forest is less disturbed.

The interaction of the fangs and flesh of the bitten animal form a channel along which the venom flows. The flesh acts like blotter paper to wick the venom in. The suction created by the blotting effect helps the venom keep flowing. The wicking of venom into flesh also means that the snake doesn't need to expend energy to pump the venom in.

J. Leo von Hemmen, a biophysicist at the Technical University of Munich, Germany and Bruce Young, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, started their research after noticing that only a seventh of venomous snakes, such as rattlesnakes, have hypodermic needle-like fangs.

Many venomous snakes and lizards have much simpler set-ups, often only grooves in the fangs, and yet are effective hunters. The fangs of the mangrove snake and banded snake were both examined by the researchers to understand how venom flows.

The physical properties of the venom itself allow venom to get past even bird feathers, which usually deflect liquid. Snakes that regularly eat birds were found to have deeper channels in their fangs, which increased the ability of the venom to evade feathers.

Rod Williams, an associate professor of wildlife science, helped Hamilton share his love for reptiles through one of Williams' classes called nature of service learning. Hamilton was able to go to a local elementary school and present to children a lesson on wildlife and the environment.

"In my interactions with Daniel, he had two passions. He had a passion for herpetology (study of reptiles and amphibians) and a passion for teaching people about natural resources and the environment, especially if it involved amphibians and reptiles," Williams said.

Hamilton's brother and a Purdue alumnus, John Hamilton, said his brother, even from a young age, would indulge in his love for animals, especially reptiles.

"I don't remember a time when he didn’t like dinosaurs or reptiles," John said. "He always had a way with them, it was nice to see someone so in tune with those creatures."

[...]

"He was a very fair and genuine person,” John said. “He lived life honestly."

His exuberance for life made an impression on a family friend and roommate, Christina Morse, a recent graduate from the College of Liberal Arts. She said Hamilton was always positive and he made sure a situation never got boring by cracking jokes.

"He was very much about making jokes and making people laugh,” Morse said. “He always wanted the best for people."

Hamilton died around the creatures he loved the most. Morse said he was doing what he truly loved and believed in.

"He was one of the few students that went to Purdue to do something he absolutely loved instead of doing something to get a job one day," Morse said.

As reported by authorities recently in local media, a young international volunteer with the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme passed away suddenly last Friday, 3rd June.

Daniel Hamilton was 21 years old. He was pursuing a Bachelor of Science Degree in Wildlife at Purdue University, Indiana. He spoke of a lifelong fascination with reptiles, and how when first saw Blue Iguanas at an exhibit in the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, he knew he wanted to play some part in their rescue.

Daniel’s volunteer application was outstanding – he had done fieldwork with salamanders in state forests in Indiana, had learned techniques like radio tracking, tagging and navigation, and his enthusiasm sparkled in his communications as he prepared to come to Grand Cayman.

In his short time with us, Daniel launched himself wholeheartedly into the work of the Programme, first at the captive breeding facility in the QE II Botanic Park, then in the Salina Reserve inland from the Queen’s Highway, and finally in the new Reserve in Colliers, East End. There, he and two other international volunteers were preparing for this year’s release of Blue Iguanas, scheduled to take place in July.

The staff and current volunteers with the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme, and the Council and staff of the National Trust for the Cayman Islands are deeply shocked and saddened by Daniel’s unexpected passing, and extend their heart-felt sympathy and condolences to his family and friends. Thanks and recognition are also extended to the emergency services who did everything possible to save Daniel.

The community’s expressions of sympathy are sincerely appreciated. We invite anyone who wishes to send condolences to email birpvols@gmail.com or post on the Blue Iguana Recovery Program’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blue-Iguana-Recovery-Programme/183865225017 , and the BIRP will arrange for these thoughts to reach Daniel’s family

Scientists have known for years that some species exist due to interspecies mating, the whiptail lizards have provided proof of that; they’ve been creating new species themselves for at least several hundred thousand years. What’s new is the process being manipulated by another species, us, Homo sapiens. Geneticists have been trying for years to create a new breed of pretty much anything by urging lab “volunteers” of differing species to mate with one another, not exactly earth shaking science when you consider a dog that tries to mate with a human leg. Efforts such as these are, not surprisingly, more often successful than not; the problem is, the offspring are usually infertile, such as mules, or too weak to survive. The trick has been to create a new species that is able to both survive and reproduce, because otherwise, it can’t really be called a new species if it only exists for the duration of one generation.

In a paper published in PNAS, lead researcher Peter Baumann of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, describes how he and his team paired an A.inornata male with an A.exsanguis female resulting in six eggs; all of which hatched, resulting in young lizards that were more similar to the female than the male, save a bit of blue tint on the tails. Each also had four copies of their parental genes (normally there’s just two), three from their mother, the other from their father. They were also all female and all able to reproduce by cloning themselves.

Not only have the initial lizards survived and reproduced, so too have their offspring; the lizards are currently in their fourth generation, leading to the inevitable question of whether they should be given a name. Baumann is hesitant to do so as it’s likely to court controversy from the biology/genetics community as the new species hasn’t yet been given the opportunity to show that it can exist outside of a lab, though the team members certainly believe it’s capable of doing so.