M.J. Rose

This may sound like science fiction, but scientists really are resurrecting lost species.

The Mammoth Cometh

Bringing extinct animals back to life is really happening — and it’s going to be very, very cool. Unless it ends up being very, very bad.

By NATHANIEL RICH (New York Times)

“The first time Ben Novak saw a passenger pigeon, he fell to his knees and remained in that position, speechless, for 20 minutes. He was 16. At 13, Novak vowed to devote his life to resurrecting extinct animals. At 14, he saw a photograph of a passenger pigeon in an Audubon Society book and “fell in love.” But he didn’t know that the Science Museum of Minnesota, which he was then visiting with a summer program for North Dakotan high-school students, had them in their collection. He was shocked when he came across a cabinet containing two stuffed pigeons, a male and a female, mounted in lifelike poses. He was overcome by awe, sadness and the birds’ physical beauty: their bright auburn breasts, slate-gray backs and the dusting of iridescence around their napes that, depending on the light and angle, appeared purple, fuchsia or green. Before his chaperones dragged him out of the room, Novak snapped a photograph with his disposable camera. The flash was too strong, however, and when the film was processed several weeks later, he was haunted to discover that the photograph hadn’t developed. It was blank, just a flash of white light.

In the decade since, Novak has visited 339 passenger pigeons — at the Burke Museum in Seattle, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, the American Museum of Natural History in New York and Harvard’s Ornithology Department, which has 145 specimens, including eight pigeon corpses preserved in jars of ethanol, 31 eggs and a partly albino pigeon. There are 1,532 passenger-pigeon specimens left on Earth. On Sept. 1, 1914, Martha, the last captive passenger pigeon, died at the Cincinnati Zoo…”

For the complete article (it’s really quite wonderful) click here to go to the New York Times Magazine.

According to the news in Portugal, a huge pyramid has been discovered off the coast –

“The pyramid is perfectly shaped and apparently oriented by the cardinal points,” Silva told Diário Insular, the local newspaper.

Furthermore, “the Portuguese Association of Archaeological Research (APIA) have identified archaeological evidence on Pico island that supports their belief that human occupation of the Azores predates the arrival of the Portuguese by many thousands of years.”

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Click here for the complete article from the Portuguese American Journal.

Remember those glittery sugar coated Easter Eggs with a tiny, frosted hole in the front through which one could peer into a miniature world of Easter Bunny mystery?

This lovely art installation is the grown up version –

Tiny Worlds Buried into Gallery Walls by Patrick Jacobs

by Danny Olda

“The Brooklyn based artist Patrick Jacobs explores the gallery space in a unique way. He installs his work inside galleries – literally within the gallery. Jacobs carefully constructs meticulously detailed diorama-like models. These models are then installed within the white walls of the gallery and fitted with porthole type windows. The installations give the appearance of miniature and often vividly colored worlds hidden within the gallery structure. However, the small round windows only allow viewers to act as onlookers, as if scientific researchers or even giant voyeurs. A world that would be pleasant to get lost in is perpetually inaccessible…”

For the rest, and many beautiful pictures, click here.