Rocky Mountain Golds: © Gifs By Riverwindphotography, September 2020

Interested in recognizing some signs of Florida wildlife? Here are some pictures of animal tracks! 

NASA Science to Host Public Town Hall Meeting

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate will hold a community town hall meeting with Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen and his leadership team at 12 p.m. EDT Thursday, Sept. 10, to discuss updates to NASA’s science program and the current status of NASA activities. from NASA Breaking News http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-science-to-host-public-town-hall-meeting

Raccoons are a familiar sight for many environments because they eat just about anything. The raccoon’s scientific name, Procyon lotor translates to “before-dog washer.” 

Raccoons are one of the many wild animals the SNC takes in regularly. If you find abandoned baby raccoons in the wild, please contact your local nature center or wildlife rehabber. We do not encourage keeping them as there is a lot that can go wrong in early development and they do NOT make good pets.

Importance of Volunteering

If you are a high school student, volunteering is probably a requirement for graduation. Finding an organization to volunteer with can be challenging, especially during a global pandemic. There are a couple of resources that can help you find opportunities. Before we get to those, I want to encourage you to think about your interests and what you hope to get out of your volunteer experience. I also want to encourage you to look beyond fulfilling a graduation requirement. Volunteering provides you with experience that you can list on your resume and if you stay with an organization for a while, it can lead to references and letters of recommendation. I always remind my volunteers to treat their volunteer position like a job. Just because you are not getting paid does not mean you’re not acquiring work experience.

Where to look

Hands on Broward is a database of volunteer opportunities in Broward County and it allows users to search for opportunities based on their interests and location. Volunteer Connect is Volunteer Florida’s opportunity portal. It runs on the same software as Hands on Broward and is another resource I recommend to anyone interested in volunteering.

Different organizations use these platforms in different ways. At the Sawgrass Nature Center and Wildlife Hospital we use Hands on Broward to recruit episodic volunteers. This means that volunteers that sign up for these opportunities are not making a long-term commitment to us. You can volunteer once or multiple times, but you are limited to the dates and times posted.

If there is a specific organization, you are interested in start by visiting their website. Often, organizations will have volunteering information online. Be sure to read the requirements carefully and follow the instructions provided. If you have questions give them a call or send an e-mail if one is provided. Depending on the organization some volunteer opportunities will have age requirements. For example, our volunteer program has two different tracks based on age: Junior Volunteers are aged 13-17 and Adult Volunteers are 18 and older.

How to be a great volunteer

I am fortunate to work with amazing volunteers daily. They show up and do great work every single day. Our most successful volunteers understand our mission and how it relates to their assigned position. It is for this reason that I encourage volunteers to find something that aligns with their interests and goals. Please start your search early so that you are not scrambling to complete your hours with only months left to spare. Due to Covid-19 a lot of volunteer programs are operating at a limited capacity if they are operating at all.

Lastly, use volunteering as an opportunity to practice important skills such as speaking on the phone and writing professional e-mails. If you need to excuse yourself from a shift or need to ask a question it is a good idea to do it yourself rather than rely on an adult to do it for you. I love hearing from my volunteers and I especially like to see students taking an active role in the management of their volunteer role.

Learn more here: https://sawgrassnaturecenter.org/2020/11/17/finding-volunteer-opportunities-for-high-schoolers/

This cute craft is something we do every Summer with our campers. Getting them outside to find their perfect rock is only part of the fun. We let them have creative freedom over their designs, so they can paint their favorite little critter at the SNC. The results are cute paper weights like this!

Mesozoic Monthly: Champsosaurus

Good news everyone: it’s September! We’ve made it to month nine of 12! Sometimes it feels like this year will never end. I take comfort in the idea that if life can survive the traumatic Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction that killed the non-avian dinosaurs, I can make it through 2020. One of the survival champs of the K-Pg extinction was Champsosaurus, a superficially crocodile-like reptile belonging to the extinct group Choristodera.

The skeleton of Champsosaurus laramiensis looks superficially like that of a crocodilian, but this is the result of convergent evolution. Choristoderes (like Champsosaurus) and crocodilians lived contemporaneously for at least 150 million years, until the choristoderes said “after a while, crocodile!” and went extinct. Photo by Triebold Paleontology, Inc., used with permission.

The class Reptilia encompasses an incredible variety of animals: lizards, snakes, turtles, crocodilians, pterosaurs, dinosaurs, and even birds are just a few of its members. In addition to the familiar reptiles that live today, many other reptile groups thrived for millions of years before eventually going extinct. It’s easy to think of dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus or Triceratops when we talk about extinct reptile groups, but in reality, many extinct groups of animals with no living relatives escape the public eye. Choristodera, an order within the class Reptilia, is one of these groups. Choristoderes were semi-aquatic or aquatic carnivorous reptiles that evolved during the Mesozoic Era (the Age of Dinosaurs) and died out in the Cenozoic Era (the Age of Mammals). Just because they went extinct does not mean they were unsuccessful; the group survived for at least 150 million years! Like many animals, a rapidly shifting environment was probably the source of their demise. Until that point, choristodere evolution was able to ‘keep up’ with the changing times, including the monumental global changes that came with the K-Pg extinction. The combination of a massive asteroid impact in what’s now Mexico, extensive volcanic activity in India, and worldwide climatic shifts resulted in the extinction of over 75% of all species. Research on choristodere teeth suggests that they beat the odds by adapting to new prey.

When you think of an aquatic carnivorous reptile, you probably think of a crocodilian – and that’d be right! The crocodilian body plan is a very successful build for hunting prey in the water. As another aquatic carnivorous reptile, Champsosaurus evolved similar traits. This is an example of convergent evolution, in which unrelated species develop similar characteristics to deal with comparable circumstances. (You can read about more examples of convergent evolution in the January edition of Mesozoic Monthly about the sauropodomorph dinosaur Ledumahadi.) Some of the shared features between Champsosaurus and crocodilians include long, muscular jaws for catching fish, eyes at the top of the head for peering out of the water, and a flattened tail that was paddled side-to-side for propulsion. Of course, Champsosaurus and the rest of the choristoderes had many features that set them apart as well. Unlike crocodilians, which have bony armor called osteoderms embedded in their skin, choristoderes just had skin covered with tiny scales. In addition, crocodilians have nostrils on top of their snouts so that they can breathe while lurking beneath the surface of the water; choristodere nostrils were at the end of their snouts, so that they could stick the tip of their nose out of the water like a snorkel and breathe from down below.

A right dentary (tooth-bearing lower jaw bone) of Champsosaurus sp. from the Upper Cretaceous of Wyoming in Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Vertebrate Paleontology collection (specimen number CM 96509). The bone is facing upwards, so you’re looking down on the teeth. Check out the dark ‘stripes’ on the enamel of each tooth. These unusual enamel striations are a hallmark of neochoristoderes, the particular choristodere subgroup to which Champsosaurus belongs. Photo by Joe Sawchak.

The traits we see in the skeleton of Champsosaurus help paleontologists paint a picture of its behavior. Instead of lurking at the surface of the water, Champsosaurus would wait on the bottom of a shallow lake or stream for prey to come close, lifting the tip of its snout out of the water to breathe. When a tasty fish approached, it would spring off the bottom with its powerful legs and snatch it with its toothy jaws. Despite having strong legs, Champsosaurus was not adapted to a terrestrial lifestyle. In fact, adult males may not have been able to leave the water at all! Fossils attributed to females have more robust hips and hind limbs, allowing them to crawl onto land to lay eggs. According to this hypothesis, the less-robust males would have been restricted to an aquatic-only lifestyle.

Some of the freshwater environments that Champsosaurus inhabited were relatively cold, but that wasn’t a big deal; choristoderes may have been able to regulate their body temperature (a talent known as endothermy or ‘warm-bloodedness’). Crocodilians, by contrast, live in warm, tropical habitats because they are not capable of regulating their body temperature and rely on the sun to warm their bodies (aka ectothermy or ‘cold-bloodedness’). This would explain why choristoderes were able to live further north than crocodilians. However, it seems that crocodilians had the right idea; temperatures around the tropics change less during cooling and warming periods than those at higher latitudes. So, when the current Antarctic ice sheets began to form and the planet started cooling, the temperate choristoderes had to deal with more environmental change than the tropical crocodilians, and finally went extinct. I think the moral of the story is, we would all be handling 2020 better if we lived in the tropics!

Lindsay Kastroll is a volunteer and paleontology student working in the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

This beautiful Limpkin was seen in our front wetland the other day. You may have heard their calls and thought something terrible was happening! Don't worry, it's just normal territorial behavior. Listen here: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Limpkin/sounds 

The Sawgrass Nature Center has the chance to win up to $20k in grants if we can raise just $3,000 in donations. The goal for this grant is to provide under served communities with career-building mentorship programs and educational resources for free. Please help us reach our goal by sharing or donating. Learn more about the mission here: https://acommunitythrives.mightycause.com/story/Elzntf

natgeotravel

Video by @bertiegregory | A harp seal pup takes a swimming lesson with its mother in the Gulf of St Lawrence, Quebec, Canada. This species has an extraordinary breeding cycle. Females give birth to pups on moving ice floes. They suckle the pup for just 10 to 14 days. During the last few days of this short period, they encourage the pup into the water to help them learn to swim. After the swimming lessons, they abandon the pup. The females then mate with the males who have been waiting nearby before heading north to their feeding grounds. The pups at two weeks old are left alone with nothing to eat.

Ocean Conservation Organizations: Help Save The Oceans & And Its Babies

Oceana:

A non-profit ocean conservation organization that focuses on influencing policy decisions on the national level to preserve and restore our oceans.

Shark Angels:

An organization focused on the conservation of sharks and using technology, education, media and local campaigns to conserve the oceans shark population.

Shark Savers:

Focuses on ending the slaughter of sharks and manta rays. They aim to motivate the end of shark fin soup and the consumption of sharks. They also work to create shark sanctuaries in different locations.

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society:

Sea Shepherd is well known for many things. One being their on going campaign against the dolphin hunts in Taiji and chasing Japanese whalers out of whale sanctuaries. They also have campaigns to vault poaching in Guatemala and advocating a ban on the West Australian shark cull.

Ocean Preservation Society:

They use cinematography to expose crimes against the environment and its creatures.

American Cetacean Society:

Their mission is to protect the habitats of whales, dolphins, and porpoises through public education and outreach programs.

Whale & Dolphin Conservation:

An organization devoted to the well being of both wild and captive cetaceans. They campaign for the end to the trade of captive cetaceans.

Project AWARE Foundation:

A non profit organization that works with scuba divers in 182 countries to implement lasting change in two core areas of shark conservation and marine litter.

Ocean Conservancy:

A non profit environmental advocacy group that helps formulate ocean policy at the federal and state levels based on peer review science.

Coral Reef Alliance:

A non profit organization aiming to save the world coral reefs.

Our oceans and its creatures are in danger and it is up to us to save them both. Let’s work together to save our oceans and it’s precious babies.