I haven't posted anything recently because I have been busy working on a new book (about the bogeyman) and preparing for my visit to North Buncombe. Last Friday was the date of my visit and it was terrific! I spoke with 700 students! They were wonderfully attentive and fun to be with.
I DO have something new to share with you. One of the most interesting extinct animals I have learned about is the Thylacine tiger from New Zealand. It was thought to be extinct. Actually, it still is. But look at what the scientists have done with a bit of its DNA. It's surprising.
Extinct tiger gene 'resurrected'
5:00AM Wednesday May 21, 2008
By Greg Ansley
The world thought it had seen the last of the Tasmanian tiger in 1936 when Benjamin, the sole surviving member of Australia's lost packs of big marsupial carnivores, died in Hobart Zoo.
But a team of Australian and American scientists have brought at least a trace of the extinct animals back to life in a world-beating experiment that activated thylacine genes from museum specimens in the embryo of a mouse.
Tiger DNA introduced into the embryo resumed biological activity - the first time genes from an extinct species have triggered a response in another living organism.
In time, and with a great deal more work, researchers believe the breakthrough could ultimately enable the resurrection of not only the tiger but also of other extinct species.
In the meantime, they said their work could help scientists unlock and understand many of the secrets still surrounding dinosaurs and other animals lost to the world, and further the development of biomedicines.
The publication of the team's work yesterday in the international science journal PLoS ONE followed earlier, disappointing attempts to resurrect the tiger using DNA from museums.
Plans announced in 1999 were dropped three years later after scientists at Sydney's Australian Museum could not find thylacine DNA of sufficient quality, although one of the key researchers, Professor Mike Archer, later said it was still hoped that the project could be renewed using new techniques.
Archer, now Dean of Science at the University of New South Wales, told ABC radio that the reactivation of the thylacine DNA in a mouse embryo was a significant step forward, and that he believed extinct species could be brought back to life.
"I'm personally convinced this is going to happen," he said.
"We are working on a number of projects like this.
"I've got another group working on another extinct Australian animal and we think this is highly probable,"he said.
Researchers who achieved the new tiger DNA breakthrough are far more cautious, and said yesterday that there was no way the technique could be used to bring back an entire thylacine, or any other extinct creature.
Dr Andrew Pask, R.D. Wright Fellow at the University of Melbourne's zoology department, who led the research, said the work in Melbourne and at the University of Texas had established proof of principle that could help discover the unique qualities that defined a species.
Previously researchers could only examine the gene sequences from extinct species - but now they would be able to examine the functioning genes of a vast range of lost creatures, from dinosaurs to mammoths and Neanderthals.
And the future could bring incredible new advances, with rapid advancement in gene sequencing likely to produce the entire thylacine genome within a few years.
To bring an extinct species back to life would require a vastly more complex and difficult programme matching tens of thousands of genes to their correct positions in chromosomal packages.
Professor Marilyn Renfree, Federation Fellow and Laureate Professor at Melbourne University's zoology department, said the pace of scientific discovery was advancing at such a pace that it was conceivable that extinct animals could one day be brought back to life.
She said that the DNA used in the project had been taken from 100-year-old specimens from Melbourne's Museum Victoria, and had been inserted into the mouse embryo with a "reporter" gene, which produced a blue colour indicating the thylacine DNA was functioning biologically.
The tiger gene used in the experiment has a similar function in developing cartilage and bone as its counterpart has in the mouse.
"We were very, very excited when we saw it working," Renfree said.
As well as allowing researchers new access to previously lost genetic biodiversity, Renfree said the team's discovery was critical in a time when extinction rates - especially of mammals - were increasing at an alarming pace.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Jeremy from Prairie School-one of the best schools in Illinois!
Jeremy Ahn to me
that's pretty cool. and no. i don't need any more. Just as long as you visit Prairie School again!!!
that's pretty cool. and no. i don't need any more. Just as long as you visit Prairie School again!!!
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
A good question: Jeremy A asks how long it takes to write a book
Hi Jeremy, it probably ends up to be about a year before I finish a book's first draft. I try to write 3 hours a day. Sometimes that 3 hours includes research, though.
Right now I have finished all my research for the bogeyman book, and I am letting it "marinate" in my brain until the structure of the book comes to me. I don't want to say too much about it because then I will use up the creative juice I want to save for composing the book.
That was a good question. Do you want to know more?
Right now I have finished all my research for the bogeyman book, and I am letting it "marinate" in my brain until the structure of the book comes to me. I don't want to say too much about it because then I will use up the creative juice I want to save for composing the book.
That was a good question. Do you want to know more?
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Another case of extinction? NOT!
It's usually the tiny creatures that get discovered or are found not to be extinct after all. But, six hours ago, look what I found on the National Geographic website.
Read and wonder!
National Geographic News: NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM/NEWS
"Extinct" Pygmy Elephants Found Living on Borneo
John Roach
for National Geographic News
April 23, 2008
A gift exchange between Asian rulers several centuries ago may have inadvertently saved a population of elephants from extinction, according to a new study.
Today a small population of unusually placid and genetically distinct elephants lives in the northeast corner of Borneo, a Southeast Asian island shared by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei (see map).
Scientists have long wondered why the elephants' range is so restricted and why they are less aggressive than other wild elephants in Asia.
The new research suggests the elephants may have descended from a population of elephants that originally lived on the island of Java in what is now Indonesia (see Indonesia map).
The finding is based on an analysis of archaeological and historical records. It supports a long-held local belief that the elephants arrived there from the island of Sulu, which is now part of the Philippines.
The sultan of Java is thought to have sent the Javan elephants as a gift to the sultan of Sulu. For unknown reasons, descendants of the elephants were subsequently shipped to Borneo and abandoned.
Back on Java, the original population went extinct by the end of the 18th century, after the arrival of Europeans in Southeast Asia.
The gift to the sultan of Sulu may therefore have inadvertently kept the lineage alive.
"There's a lot of literature on these exchanges between the different courts," said Michael Stuewe, an elephant biologist for WWF, an international conservation organization.
"These elephants may be the oldest example of a wild [mammal] population that is saved without intention to do so by royalty and through a captive detour," Stuewe said.
DNA and Archaeology
Stuewe was not an author of the new study, but he was part of the research team that showed the Bornean elephants to be a genetically distinct population of Asian elephants.
He began studying them in 1999 as part of a project to determine how to protect wildlife from the rapid conversion of Southeast Asian forest habitat into palm oil plantations.
He noticed then that the elephants were unusual—shorter and rounder than other Asian elephants and with longer tails.
"They were like little cartoon figures of an elephant," he said.
(See photos of pygmy elephants and the threats facing them.)
His colleagues at Columbia University in New York conducted DNA analysis in 2003 and found the Bornean population to be genetically distinct.
The team concluded the elephants were likely isolated on the island when the last land bridges connecting Borneo to the mainland disappeared some 18,000 years ago.
WWF's Junaidi Payne was a co-author of the genetics study and the new paper.
He and co-authors Earl of Cranbrook and Charles M.U. Leh were unable to find archaeological or historical evidence confirming the existence of so-called pygmy elephants on Borneo beyond a few centuries.
They concluded that the most plausible explanation is the Bornean elephant population "consists of remnant survivors of the extinct Javan population."
The study, the authors add, raises the importance of the Bornean population and suggests other large mammals could be saved from extinction by removal from threatened habitat to safer locations.
(Related: Borneo Elephants: From Pest to Priority [September 4, 2003])
The research was published last week in the Sarawak Museum Journal.
Palm Oil Threat
Simon Hedges is the Asian elephant coordinator for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society.
He said the new study makes a "plausible case" that the Bornean population is descended from the Javan elephants but that more research is needed before firm conclusions can be drawn.
If the authors of the new study are correct, he added, the remnant Javan population on Borneo will be important for genetic reasons, since it would contain material thought lost from the gene pool.
However, the population will likely be given less of a conservation priority, since it is outside its original wild range.
"[Such] factors are generally seen as downgrading the importance of such populations versus the truly wild animals," he said.
WWF's Stuewe noted that if the finding is confirmed, it will mark another instance in which royalty had inadvertently saved a mammal from extinction.
A similar fate met the alpine ibex, a mountain goat whose remaining population was protected by an Italian king in the 1850s, captive-bred by the Swiss, and reintroduced throughout the Alps in the 1900s.
European royalty imported Przewalski horses from Mongolia in the early 20th century for their stables. The wild horses went extinct in the 1960s. European captives were reintroduced to Mongolia in 1992.
"The ability of these large charismatic mammals to recover from what seem to be extreme [population] bottlenecks apparently is there," Stuewe said.
"There is a chance for these guys if you take care of them."
Palm Oil Threat
Today, Stuewe added, the elephants face new challenges from the rapidly developing palm oil industry in northeastern Borneo, where the remnant population is located.
Driven by surging demand from the biofuels industry, Stuewe said the forest is being converted to palm oil plantations at increasing rates.
"And unfortunately," he said, "oil palm plantations are to elephants what a candy store is to little kids—they just love them."
The love, however, is not shared by plantation managers who view the elephants as a nuisance and kill them. Biologists estimate about a thousand elephants remain on Borneo.
The only hope for these elephants now is protection of the lowland forest as nature reserves or sustainably managed logging concessions, Stuewe said.
Hedges, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, noted the palm oil expansion threatens a host of species on Borneo.
"One ultimately hopes that some of the expansions of the oil palm industry are going to be controlled and done in an appropriate way so that the whole suite of species at risk isn't wiped out," he said.
© National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.
Read and wonder!
National Geographic News: NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM/NEWS
"Extinct" Pygmy Elephants Found Living on Borneo
John Roach
for National Geographic News
April 23, 2008
A gift exchange between Asian rulers several centuries ago may have inadvertently saved a population of elephants from extinction, according to a new study.
Today a small population of unusually placid and genetically distinct elephants lives in the northeast corner of Borneo, a Southeast Asian island shared by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei (see map).
Scientists have long wondered why the elephants' range is so restricted and why they are less aggressive than other wild elephants in Asia.
The new research suggests the elephants may have descended from a population of elephants that originally lived on the island of Java in what is now Indonesia (see Indonesia map).
The finding is based on an analysis of archaeological and historical records. It supports a long-held local belief that the elephants arrived there from the island of Sulu, which is now part of the Philippines.
The sultan of Java is thought to have sent the Javan elephants as a gift to the sultan of Sulu. For unknown reasons, descendants of the elephants were subsequently shipped to Borneo and abandoned.
Back on Java, the original population went extinct by the end of the 18th century, after the arrival of Europeans in Southeast Asia.
The gift to the sultan of Sulu may therefore have inadvertently kept the lineage alive.
"There's a lot of literature on these exchanges between the different courts," said Michael Stuewe, an elephant biologist for WWF, an international conservation organization.
"These elephants may be the oldest example of a wild [mammal] population that is saved without intention to do so by royalty and through a captive detour," Stuewe said.
DNA and Archaeology
Stuewe was not an author of the new study, but he was part of the research team that showed the Bornean elephants to be a genetically distinct population of Asian elephants.
He began studying them in 1999 as part of a project to determine how to protect wildlife from the rapid conversion of Southeast Asian forest habitat into palm oil plantations.
He noticed then that the elephants were unusual—shorter and rounder than other Asian elephants and with longer tails.
"They were like little cartoon figures of an elephant," he said.
(See photos of pygmy elephants and the threats facing them.)
His colleagues at Columbia University in New York conducted DNA analysis in 2003 and found the Bornean population to be genetically distinct.
The team concluded the elephants were likely isolated on the island when the last land bridges connecting Borneo to the mainland disappeared some 18,000 years ago.
WWF's Junaidi Payne was a co-author of the genetics study and the new paper.
He and co-authors Earl of Cranbrook and Charles M.U. Leh were unable to find archaeological or historical evidence confirming the existence of so-called pygmy elephants on Borneo beyond a few centuries.
They concluded that the most plausible explanation is the Bornean elephant population "consists of remnant survivors of the extinct Javan population."
The study, the authors add, raises the importance of the Bornean population and suggests other large mammals could be saved from extinction by removal from threatened habitat to safer locations.
(Related: Borneo Elephants: From Pest to Priority [September 4, 2003])
The research was published last week in the Sarawak Museum Journal.
Palm Oil Threat
Simon Hedges is the Asian elephant coordinator for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society.
He said the new study makes a "plausible case" that the Bornean population is descended from the Javan elephants but that more research is needed before firm conclusions can be drawn.
If the authors of the new study are correct, he added, the remnant Javan population on Borneo will be important for genetic reasons, since it would contain material thought lost from the gene pool.
However, the population will likely be given less of a conservation priority, since it is outside its original wild range.
"[Such] factors are generally seen as downgrading the importance of such populations versus the truly wild animals," he said.
WWF's Stuewe noted that if the finding is confirmed, it will mark another instance in which royalty had inadvertently saved a mammal from extinction.
A similar fate met the alpine ibex, a mountain goat whose remaining population was protected by an Italian king in the 1850s, captive-bred by the Swiss, and reintroduced throughout the Alps in the 1900s.
European royalty imported Przewalski horses from Mongolia in the early 20th century for their stables. The wild horses went extinct in the 1960s. European captives were reintroduced to Mongolia in 1992.
"The ability of these large charismatic mammals to recover from what seem to be extreme [population] bottlenecks apparently is there," Stuewe said.
"There is a chance for these guys if you take care of them."
Palm Oil Threat
Today, Stuewe added, the elephants face new challenges from the rapidly developing palm oil industry in northeastern Borneo, where the remnant population is located.
Driven by surging demand from the biofuels industry, Stuewe said the forest is being converted to palm oil plantations at increasing rates.
"And unfortunately," he said, "oil palm plantations are to elephants what a candy store is to little kids—they just love them."
The love, however, is not shared by plantation managers who view the elephants as a nuisance and kill them. Biologists estimate about a thousand elephants remain on Borneo.
The only hope for these elephants now is protection of the lowland forest as nature reserves or sustainably managed logging concessions, Stuewe said.
Hedges, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, noted the palm oil expansion threatens a host of species on Borneo.
"One ultimately hopes that some of the expansions of the oil palm industry are going to be controlled and done in an appropriate way so that the whole suite of species at risk isn't wiped out," he said.
© National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.
Friday, April 18, 2008
It isn't extinct after all! It's in Vietnam!
Researchers find rare giant turtle in Vietnam
Discovery carries great scientific and cultural significance
AP
Swinhoe's soft-shell turtle was previously thought to be extinct in the wild before this one was discovered in northern Vietnam.
View related photos
Related stories
CLEVELAND - Researchers from the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo have discovered a rare giant turtle in northern Vietnam — a find that carries great scientific and cultural significance. Swinhoe's soft-shell turtle was previously thought to be extinct in the wild. Three other turtles of the species are in captivity, said experts from the Zoo's Asian turtle program.
The discovery represents hope for the species, said Doug Hendrie, the Vietnam-based coordinator of the zoo program.
Turtle expert Peter Pritchard, president of the Chelonian Research Institute, confirmed the find based on a photo Hendrie showed him.
Story continues below ↓advertisement
Click Here!
"It looked like pretty solid evidence. The animal has a pretty distinctive head," Pritchard said.
There have been rumors for years of a mythical creature living deep in the waters of a northern Vietnam lake. Some in a village west of Hanoi claimed to be blessed by catching a glimpse of its concave shell as it crested above the surface of their lake.
A national legend tells of a giant golden turtle that bestowed upon the Vietnamese people a magic sword and victory over Chinese invaders in the 16th century. Whether that sacred turtle has materialized in the 21st century will be a matter of cultural debate among the Vietnamese.
"This is one of those mythical species that people always talked about but no one ever saw," said Geoff Hall, zoo general curator.
Pritchard said an amateur photographed a Swinhoe's soft-shell turtle in southern China about six months ago that he believes was legitimate.
"It's on the very brink of extinction, so every one counts," Pritchard said.
The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo began its effort to preserve and protect Asian turtles in 2003 amid reports of increased killings for food or to make traditional medicine from their bones. Development and pollution also led to loss of nesting habitats along rivers, zoo officials said.
The zoo has put more than $275,000 into Asian turtle conservation efforts since 2000 and has supported Hendrie since 2003, officials said.
His team and scientists from Education for Nature-Vietnam had searched lakes and wetlands along the Red River for three years before hearing about the creature living outside Hanoi.
The turtle remains in the lake and researchers have notified the Vietnamese government of its existence, Hendrie said.
Discovery carries great scientific and cultural significance
AP
Swinhoe's soft-shell turtle was previously thought to be extinct in the wild before this one was discovered in northern Vietnam.
View related photos
Related stories
CLEVELAND - Researchers from the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo have discovered a rare giant turtle in northern Vietnam — a find that carries great scientific and cultural significance. Swinhoe's soft-shell turtle was previously thought to be extinct in the wild. Three other turtles of the species are in captivity, said experts from the Zoo's Asian turtle program.
The discovery represents hope for the species, said Doug Hendrie, the Vietnam-based coordinator of the zoo program.
Turtle expert Peter Pritchard, president of the Chelonian Research Institute, confirmed the find based on a photo Hendrie showed him.
Story continues below ↓advertisement
Click Here!
"It looked like pretty solid evidence. The animal has a pretty distinctive head," Pritchard said.
There have been rumors for years of a mythical creature living deep in the waters of a northern Vietnam lake. Some in a village west of Hanoi claimed to be blessed by catching a glimpse of its concave shell as it crested above the surface of their lake.
A national legend tells of a giant golden turtle that bestowed upon the Vietnamese people a magic sword and victory over Chinese invaders in the 16th century. Whether that sacred turtle has materialized in the 21st century will be a matter of cultural debate among the Vietnamese.
"This is one of those mythical species that people always talked about but no one ever saw," said Geoff Hall, zoo general curator.
Pritchard said an amateur photographed a Swinhoe's soft-shell turtle in southern China about six months ago that he believes was legitimate.
"It's on the very brink of extinction, so every one counts," Pritchard said.
The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo began its effort to preserve and protect Asian turtles in 2003 amid reports of increased killings for food or to make traditional medicine from their bones. Development and pollution also led to loss of nesting habitats along rivers, zoo officials said.
The zoo has put more than $275,000 into Asian turtle conservation efforts since 2000 and has supported Hendrie since 2003, officials said.
His team and scientists from Education for Nature-Vietnam had searched lakes and wetlands along the Red River for three years before hearing about the creature living outside Hanoi.
The turtle remains in the lake and researchers have notified the Vietnamese government of its existence, Hendrie said.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Thank you for signing monsters and water beast for me I really like the hoop snakes story .I cant wait to read all of the wonderful stories you wrote .Thanks
Teresa
Dear Teresa,
You are helping to motivate me! I cannot wait to finish the bogyman book and send it off to the editor. I have been working slowly in my research, but will speed it up so you all have something NEW to read!
Keep reminding me to get to work on the book!
Sincerely,
Karen Miller
Teresa
Dear Teresa,
You are helping to motivate me! I cannot wait to finish the bogyman book and send it off to the editor. I have been working slowly in my research, but will speed it up so you all have something NEW to read!
Keep reminding me to get to work on the book!
Sincerely,
Karen Miller
ow!I can`t believe you taped up my picture.My teacher thought it also looked good.All my friends just laughed at it.The teeth I do wish I left white.They do look weird.
Again thak you for coming to talk to us.The thing I love the most about every year of school is the authors that come,especially you!
Before I forget,Erin White,a great friend,and I wrote a story called Lullaby Land last year.We have made a recorded play of it!This year I wrote the 2nd book Lullaby Land:They`re Back.We also recorded tahat one!Reply me back if you would like a copy of these stories.
I cheak my mail 5 times at lest every week so if you do reply, you will most likely get a reply as well!
Liz
Dear Liz, I would like to scan the picture and post it to the blog. It is one of my favorite monsters!
And please, send the story. I will be happy to listen or read it!
Karen
Again thak you for coming to talk to us.The thing I love the most about every year of school is the authors that come,especially you!
Before I forget,Erin White,a great friend,and I wrote a story called Lullaby Land last year.We have made a recorded play of it!This year I wrote the 2nd book Lullaby Land:They`re Back.We also recorded tahat one!Reply me back if you would like a copy of these stories.
I cheak my mail 5 times at lest every week so if you do reply, you will most likely get a reply as well!
Liz
Dear Liz, I would like to scan the picture and post it to the blog. It is one of my favorite monsters!
And please, send the story. I will be happy to listen or read it!
Karen
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