The molecules of air surged through the beast’s throat down a slippery tube and into the buoyancy bladder. Inside the membrane, blood vessels seine out the oxygen, maintaining a strategy that started perhaps 150 million years ago when this fish’s ancestors may have reptiled about the banks of a long ago sea. The mighty tail thrusts and propels it across the surface of the Rio Grande to lurk under a thicket of Giant Cane.
The largest Alligator Gar ever caught on a rod and reel came from the Texas side of the Rio Grande in 1951. At over seven feet long and 279 pounds, this marine leviathan ranks with the largest freshwater fish in the world.
The Alligator Gar has two rows of upper teeth and a powerful jaw both very much like the saltwater crocodile. A carnivore with a reptile-like ball and socket vertebrae and the ability not only take oxygen from the water with its gills but also to breathe out of water with a lung, this fish and its history have confounded scientists for years. Is it a fish trying to become a reptile, or a reptile that morphed into fishness?
Unusually well preserved fish fossils of the Green River, take the gar back over 100 million years ago, but new DNA research suggests this creature may have come from the Jurassic period or 150 MA. Either dating, the evidence suggests the fish has changed very little over the eons.
The diamond shaped interlocking scales that were once used by Native Americans for jewelry, breast plates and arrow tips, cover the fish in a tight armor and are part of the hydro-dynamics that make this fish a swift and great hunter.
The life span of an Alligator Gar runs 50-75 years but an increased mortality rate caused by pollution, dwindling habitat, and un-regulated fishing, is threatening the gar’s future. No longer found in the Upper Ohio Valley, many states have imposed bag limits. Texas and Louisiana still allow unlimited gar fishing, but in March, Texas Parks and Wildlife will host a public meeting to consider limiting commercial and sport fishers to one gar per day.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Dust Devils
A whooshing suck roared out of the earth as if some ginny had been released from the metallic fiber of the inner world. The spiral of dust and air danced across the field inhaling rocks, sticks, seeds and centipedes, a commotion unto itself on an otherwise hot and calm day.
Dust Devils, also known as Remolinos, in west Texas, are brief whirl winds that form when hot air from the earth’s surface rise unevenly, like bubbles in a Topo Chico. Cooler air rushes in to the column of hot air to fill the voids and the reciprocating air of unlike densities begins to spin. Slowly at first until, like the arms and legs of an ice skater tucked in tight for the encore, the atmospheric vortex of the dust devil becomes fully formed spinning at speeds of up to 70 mph and demonstrating the science principle of conservation of angular momentum.
As the vortex bops across the surface, more hot air is sucked in along with dust and debris, lowering the air pressure inside and causing the dust devil to rise. These augers of sand and dust can change colors depending on the landscape they run over and can even be transparent if formed over a clean grassy area.
Like tornados, they are weather phenomena, but most dust devils form under sunny conditions during fair weather and are seldom dangerous with few lasting longer than a minute. They generally form in arid and semi-arid regions and a flat barren terrain increases the likelihood of the hot air fuel. Diameters of three feet are common but some grow as large as 300 feet across the base, lasting thirty minutes and can lift more than 15 tons of dust and debris into the air. The whirling particles inside the vortex become electrically charged and create a magnetic field that helps lift more dust off the ground.
The Viking orbiters of the 1970’s, photographed Dust Devils on the planet Mars climbing out of craters, creating columns of Martian dust ten times higher than those found on earth.
Dust Devils, also known as Remolinos, in west Texas, are brief whirl winds that form when hot air from the earth’s surface rise unevenly, like bubbles in a Topo Chico. Cooler air rushes in to the column of hot air to fill the voids and the reciprocating air of unlike densities begins to spin. Slowly at first until, like the arms and legs of an ice skater tucked in tight for the encore, the atmospheric vortex of the dust devil becomes fully formed spinning at speeds of up to 70 mph and demonstrating the science principle of conservation of angular momentum.
As the vortex bops across the surface, more hot air is sucked in along with dust and debris, lowering the air pressure inside and causing the dust devil to rise. These augers of sand and dust can change colors depending on the landscape they run over and can even be transparent if formed over a clean grassy area.
Like tornados, they are weather phenomena, but most dust devils form under sunny conditions during fair weather and are seldom dangerous with few lasting longer than a minute. They generally form in arid and semi-arid regions and a flat barren terrain increases the likelihood of the hot air fuel. Diameters of three feet are common but some grow as large as 300 feet across the base, lasting thirty minutes and can lift more than 15 tons of dust and debris into the air. The whirling particles inside the vortex become electrically charged and create a magnetic field that helps lift more dust off the ground.
The Viking orbiters of the 1970’s, photographed Dust Devils on the planet Mars climbing out of craters, creating columns of Martian dust ten times higher than those found on earth.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Vinegarones
“Three bucks on the scorpion,” a bearded hombre waved his cash in the crowd as the greasy flow of the Rio Grande slapped at the pebbled banks of the island on which they stood.
“Got a buck here,” The dealer grabbed the bill from the bettor’s hand and moved to the next.
An iron tub had been dragged into this no man’s land somewhere between Texas and Mexico. As the sun dipped below the mountains the hawker announced the fight was about to begin: Two arachnoids faced each other at the bottom of the white tub, a tarantula and a vinegarone.
The vinegarone often referred to as a whip scorpion, is no scorpion at all, but an arachnoid, part of the spider family. With four pairs of legs, the vinegarone is nocturnal, and scoots across the desert surface at night in search of fresh meat, like crickets or millipedes. Like the scorpion, they have a pair of eyes in front and three on each side of the head, but have poor vision. To pick their way through the desert, they rely on their first set of legs. Modified over the eons, these legs act as antennae-like sensory organs, that feel the ground as they walk with the other six.
Many vinegarones grow as long as six inches, including the thin whip like tail, which is shaped much like the scorpion’s but without the poisonous barb. Vinegarones subdue their prey with a set of powerful pinchers.
The vinegarone when cornered is capable of spraying a mist of acetic and octanoic acid, a foul combination that smells like vinegar or vinagron in Tex-Mex and hence the name vinegarone.
In the scientific community vinegarones are known as Uropygids, meaning tail rump in Greek. Many varieities flourish throughout the world. The black sometimes orange Texas vinegarone is found primarily in the Chihuahuan Desert but has been found as far north as the Texas Panhandle.
Vinegarone was also the name of a railroad camp near the confluence of the Pecos and Rio Grande. At its peak in 1883, 3500 people lived there. Judge Roy Bean, who was also known as a vinegarone, operated a saloon there and occasionally hosted paramutual events on the un-lawed islands of the Rio Grande.
“Got a buck here,” The dealer grabbed the bill from the bettor’s hand and moved to the next.
An iron tub had been dragged into this no man’s land somewhere between Texas and Mexico. As the sun dipped below the mountains the hawker announced the fight was about to begin: Two arachnoids faced each other at the bottom of the white tub, a tarantula and a vinegarone.
The vinegarone often referred to as a whip scorpion, is no scorpion at all, but an arachnoid, part of the spider family. With four pairs of legs, the vinegarone is nocturnal, and scoots across the desert surface at night in search of fresh meat, like crickets or millipedes. Like the scorpion, they have a pair of eyes in front and three on each side of the head, but have poor vision. To pick their way through the desert, they rely on their first set of legs. Modified over the eons, these legs act as antennae-like sensory organs, that feel the ground as they walk with the other six.
Many vinegarones grow as long as six inches, including the thin whip like tail, which is shaped much like the scorpion’s but without the poisonous barb. Vinegarones subdue their prey with a set of powerful pinchers.
The vinegarone when cornered is capable of spraying a mist of acetic and octanoic acid, a foul combination that smells like vinegar or vinagron in Tex-Mex and hence the name vinegarone.
In the scientific community vinegarones are known as Uropygids, meaning tail rump in Greek. Many varieities flourish throughout the world. The black sometimes orange Texas vinegarone is found primarily in the Chihuahuan Desert but has been found as far north as the Texas Panhandle.
Vinegarone was also the name of a railroad camp near the confluence of the Pecos and Rio Grande. At its peak in 1883, 3500 people lived there. Judge Roy Bean, who was also known as a vinegarone, operated a saloon there and occasionally hosted paramutual events on the un-lawed islands of the Rio Grande.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Creosote Bush
With leathery hands, the shaman laid the creosote twigs across the corpse then positioned the male cadaver in the prone position, facing north in the shallow grave. Pottery jars of seeds and dried venison for the afterlife were sealed by creosote lac and tucked up next to the dark dead skin of the La Junta warrior.
The creosote plant covers over 120 million acres of land in Mexico and the southwestern USA. Native people of this region have used the plant medicinally from birth to death for centuries in the form of tea, smoked leaves or chewed raw. Perhaps as common as penicillin today, the creosote bush or greasewood, remedied pain at childbirth, rheumatism, menstrual cramps, coughing, poisonous bites and sore throats. Today the plant is used to combat fatigue in patients undergoing chemo-therapy. And, although the Food and Drug Administration considers it unfit for human consumption, it is used to stabilize Vitamin A and has also been administered for the treatment of lyme disease and the melting of kidney stones. Studies have shown its properties to be anti-septic, anti-viral and anti-inflammatory.
Scientists believe that a creosote plant seed was deposited in North America from South America by birds during the last ice age some 10,000 years ago. It crept into the Chihuahua Desert 4500 years ago and because of its unique concentric stem growth, some plants live to be a thousand years old. A descendant of one of these early bird droppings lives in Johnson Valley, California. At 9400 years old it is thought to be the oldest living organism in the world.
Like pine, greasewood is a bodega of resin, an amber syrup rich in flavinoids, oils and waxes which can make up to 20 percent of the weight of the bush. These resins shield the leaf from the strong UV light and heat of the desert allowing photosynthesis to go uninterrupted inside the leaf. Three hundred and sixty chemicals have been isolated in the oils of the creosote bush including forty-nine types of volatile oils.
Defense mechanisms include foul tasting oils that repel herbivores like deer, javalina and cattle. Some creosote leaf proteins are indigestible. But one grasshopper, the Astroma, has found a way to undo the creosote’s chemical defense and not only eats the leaves but lives within the plant’s canopy. The female resembles old stems and hide in the shade of the creosote while the male looks like the young leaf sprays. Another insect, the Tachardiella Larreae, lives on the creosote plant and secretes a gum-like substance called lac that was also used medicinally by Native Americans.
The chemicals in creosote roots also inhibit the growth of other plants, keeping them at distance and creating the image of a symmetrical mono-culture in many areas of the plant’s range.
After many days of drought, a fresh rain in the Trans-Pecos brings out the smells of vinyl, camphor, methyl ketones from the clean washed leaves of the creosote plant that many still call hediondilla or “little stinker.”
The creosote plant covers over 120 million acres of land in Mexico and the southwestern USA. Native people of this region have used the plant medicinally from birth to death for centuries in the form of tea, smoked leaves or chewed raw. Perhaps as common as penicillin today, the creosote bush or greasewood, remedied pain at childbirth, rheumatism, menstrual cramps, coughing, poisonous bites and sore throats. Today the plant is used to combat fatigue in patients undergoing chemo-therapy. And, although the Food and Drug Administration considers it unfit for human consumption, it is used to stabilize Vitamin A and has also been administered for the treatment of lyme disease and the melting of kidney stones. Studies have shown its properties to be anti-septic, anti-viral and anti-inflammatory.
Scientists believe that a creosote plant seed was deposited in North America from South America by birds during the last ice age some 10,000 years ago. It crept into the Chihuahua Desert 4500 years ago and because of its unique concentric stem growth, some plants live to be a thousand years old. A descendant of one of these early bird droppings lives in Johnson Valley, California. At 9400 years old it is thought to be the oldest living organism in the world.
Like pine, greasewood is a bodega of resin, an amber syrup rich in flavinoids, oils and waxes which can make up to 20 percent of the weight of the bush. These resins shield the leaf from the strong UV light and heat of the desert allowing photosynthesis to go uninterrupted inside the leaf. Three hundred and sixty chemicals have been isolated in the oils of the creosote bush including forty-nine types of volatile oils.
Defense mechanisms include foul tasting oils that repel herbivores like deer, javalina and cattle. Some creosote leaf proteins are indigestible. But one grasshopper, the Astroma, has found a way to undo the creosote’s chemical defense and not only eats the leaves but lives within the plant’s canopy. The female resembles old stems and hide in the shade of the creosote while the male looks like the young leaf sprays. Another insect, the Tachardiella Larreae, lives on the creosote plant and secretes a gum-like substance called lac that was also used medicinally by Native Americans.
The chemicals in creosote roots also inhibit the growth of other plants, keeping them at distance and creating the image of a symmetrical mono-culture in many areas of the plant’s range.
After many days of drought, a fresh rain in the Trans-Pecos brings out the smells of vinyl, camphor, methyl ketones from the clean washed leaves of the creosote plant that many still call hediondilla or “little stinker.”
Friday, January 30, 2009
Rio Grande Blue Catfish
Gliding through the greasy waters of the Rio Grande above the mud bottom on the deep outside reach of a bend, where the current ripples the surface on a moonless night, a giant blue catfish moves in on its prey.
Native to much of North America and existing as far south as Guatemala, the Blue Cat prefers large river systems like the Rio Grande. And unlike most of the other 40 fish species found in the Texas reach of this river, the blue cat is far from minnow size. The state record for a blue cat is 121 lbs caught on a rod and reel in 2004.
Like its predatory colleague, the gar fish, the blue cat along with its cousins the channel and the flathead have survived drought, pollution and artificial impoundments in the river that divert flow. The American Eel and the Atlantic Sturgeon that once roamed the nation’s fourth largest river system are no longer here.
The Rio Grande version of the blue cat is unique in that its slate blue body with the forked tail and multi-rayed anal fin is covered with dark spots found nowhere else. Some scientists speculate the spots are a camouflage mechanism that evolved for better survival.
For the most part, the blue cats eat other fish, like the Rio Grande Perch, or minnows, as well as frogs, mussels and insects and they will not hesitate to suck down the melting flesh of anything dead. Barbels, the cat-like whiskers near the mouth are chemo-sensory organs that allow the catfish to taste its environment.
Because Catfish have no scales, they are sun sensitive and can easily sun burn, preferring dark and deep water. Their smooth skin makes them efficient swimmers but they lack the body armor of a scaled fish.
Over 100 species of catfish swim the inland and coastal waters of every continent in the world except Antarctica and half of those species are found in America.
Native to much of North America and existing as far south as Guatemala, the Blue Cat prefers large river systems like the Rio Grande. And unlike most of the other 40 fish species found in the Texas reach of this river, the blue cat is far from minnow size. The state record for a blue cat is 121 lbs caught on a rod and reel in 2004.
Like its predatory colleague, the gar fish, the blue cat along with its cousins the channel and the flathead have survived drought, pollution and artificial impoundments in the river that divert flow. The American Eel and the Atlantic Sturgeon that once roamed the nation’s fourth largest river system are no longer here.
The Rio Grande version of the blue cat is unique in that its slate blue body with the forked tail and multi-rayed anal fin is covered with dark spots found nowhere else. Some scientists speculate the spots are a camouflage mechanism that evolved for better survival.
For the most part, the blue cats eat other fish, like the Rio Grande Perch, or minnows, as well as frogs, mussels and insects and they will not hesitate to suck down the melting flesh of anything dead. Barbels, the cat-like whiskers near the mouth are chemo-sensory organs that allow the catfish to taste its environment.
Because Catfish have no scales, they are sun sensitive and can easily sun burn, preferring dark and deep water. Their smooth skin makes them efficient swimmers but they lack the body armor of a scaled fish.
Over 100 species of catfish swim the inland and coastal waters of every continent in the world except Antarctica and half of those species are found in America.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Pena Blanca Springs Meteorite
On an August day in 1946, at the Gage Ranch, a few miles southeast of Marathon, ranch hands and children shook themselves off as they splashed out of the swimming hole brimming from the waters of the Pena Blanca Spring. The cook at the nearby Catto House sat in a chair on the porch. Sweat trickled down her forehead as she washed beans in a pot. A cabrito smoked in a pit and in the distance an old Ford truck with cowboys dusted up a caliche road.
A boom in the sky followed by a noise that sounded like a car running on a flat tire interrupted the otherwise clear day. A herd of horses nearby began to snort and hoove in the dirt. The old Ford had already parked at the tank and the cowboys were looking up. A second later they were dripping wet.
“It looked,” the cook said. “like a black bag falling out of the sky, with white dust coming out of it.”
When asked about the incident four days later by meteorite collector O.E. Monnig of Ft. Worth, Mrs. Catto, slammed her fist against her palm to illustrate the impact of the meteorite hitting the water. “I feel mighty lucky,” she said.
Meteorites fall everyday onto the earth, but few are found, fewer seen in descent and only a handful have ever been heard. They flash in the sky as they enter and burn in the earth’s atmosphere and are termed meteorites when they make it to the earth’s surface. Meteors, however, vaporize in the atmosphere and never land. The cosmic velocity of a 1000 pound meteorite can reach 24 miles a second in space but once in our atmosphere, gravity and friction can slow it down to as little as 250 miles per hour. The sound the swimmers heard was a sonic boom and the flat tire effect came from the scalloped profile of the rock sizzling through the air.
Scientists dated the Pena Blanca Springs Meteorite at 4.5 billion years old or about the same age as the earth, coinciding with the formative epoch of our solar system. Meteorites generally consist of fragments from asteroids that hover mostly in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter though sometimes meteorites contain parts of other planets or moons. Imprisoned by the gravity of our solar system, these rocks wander in space, some beyond Pluto until they collide with planetary atmospheres such as ours.
The estimated weight of the Pena Blanca Springs Meteorite was about 200 lbs before it shattered against a bed of novaculite rock running under the tank. It contained organic compounds including carbon, oxygen and hydrogen and gave off a slight sulphur dioxide odor. It also contained amino acids, the proteins necessary for constructing life.
The chances of being hit by a meteorite are rare. Some scientists calculate that if you lived on 400 acres of land, you’d have to wait a hundred thousand years to chance see a meteorite hit your domain. That’s the odds. And the formation of life, proteins compounding to kick start life out of stardust are astronomically improbably – but still possible.
A boom in the sky followed by a noise that sounded like a car running on a flat tire interrupted the otherwise clear day. A herd of horses nearby began to snort and hoove in the dirt. The old Ford had already parked at the tank and the cowboys were looking up. A second later they were dripping wet.
“It looked,” the cook said. “like a black bag falling out of the sky, with white dust coming out of it.”
When asked about the incident four days later by meteorite collector O.E. Monnig of Ft. Worth, Mrs. Catto, slammed her fist against her palm to illustrate the impact of the meteorite hitting the water. “I feel mighty lucky,” she said.
Meteorites fall everyday onto the earth, but few are found, fewer seen in descent and only a handful have ever been heard. They flash in the sky as they enter and burn in the earth’s atmosphere and are termed meteorites when they make it to the earth’s surface. Meteors, however, vaporize in the atmosphere and never land. The cosmic velocity of a 1000 pound meteorite can reach 24 miles a second in space but once in our atmosphere, gravity and friction can slow it down to as little as 250 miles per hour. The sound the swimmers heard was a sonic boom and the flat tire effect came from the scalloped profile of the rock sizzling through the air.
Scientists dated the Pena Blanca Springs Meteorite at 4.5 billion years old or about the same age as the earth, coinciding with the formative epoch of our solar system. Meteorites generally consist of fragments from asteroids that hover mostly in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter though sometimes meteorites contain parts of other planets or moons. Imprisoned by the gravity of our solar system, these rocks wander in space, some beyond Pluto until they collide with planetary atmospheres such as ours.
The estimated weight of the Pena Blanca Springs Meteorite was about 200 lbs before it shattered against a bed of novaculite rock running under the tank. It contained organic compounds including carbon, oxygen and hydrogen and gave off a slight sulphur dioxide odor. It also contained amino acids, the proteins necessary for constructing life.
The chances of being hit by a meteorite are rare. Some scientists calculate that if you lived on 400 acres of land, you’d have to wait a hundred thousand years to chance see a meteorite hit your domain. That’s the odds. And the formation of life, proteins compounding to kick start life out of stardust are astronomically improbably – but still possible.
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