Sloth tracks in the Carson prison

In much the same manner that a print of man's hand or foot leads to individual identification, so fossil footprints reveal the kinds of creatures who unwittingly have left their mark on the sands of time. Some four-footed animals, whose tracks have been uncovered in ancient rock formations, furnish for posterity only this evidence of a former existence. On the other hand, tracks like those of a dinosaur convey something more tangible. Scientific fact and popular fancy have done much these days to make the layman dinosaur-conscious. But realization that particular tracks were left by reptiles now long extinct comes largely from demonstration that the skeletal parts and bodily form of these animals correspond exactly to those surmised from the imprints

Ice Age Elephants of the Channel Islands

Of the small company of land mammals native to the Channel Islands of Southern California none reaches large size, and, if we exclude aboriginal man and his dog, the largest is the fox. This interesting creature, once more numerous than it now is, exists under a variety of conditions on the several islands and may be seen occasionally searching for food along the seashore or living in cactus patches, brushy ravines, and on the open slopes of hills to an elevation of more than 2,000 feet. It seems to lead at present a solitary life. The island species was long ago recognized by biologists as a distinctive type, related to the mainland gray fox rather than to the kit fox and red fox. Six races have now been identified, one for each of the principal islands comprising the Channel Island group

Eocene Amynodonts from Southern California

Introduction.-Since the description [1] of a skull of Amynodontopsis bodei and of a lower jaw referred to this species from the uppermost Eocene, further dental parts have become available for study from localities in the Sespe. These furnish additional characters of value in recognizing the species represented in western Eocene deposits. Now also available is a fragment of skull with cheek-teeth from the Poway Eocene of San Diego County, California. This specimen possesses special significance because it permits a comparison with related forms in America and China. It is likewise of interest because it differs from the amynodonts of the Sespe and is clearly an earlier type

The Shelleys and the Idea of Europe

This article explores how the Shelleys and their circle configure ideas of “Europe” between January 1817 and March 1818. I begin with Frankenstein, discussing how Mary Shelley associates Frankenstein's experiment with the particularly “European” problem of over-reaching - a drive for success leading to conflict or failure. I then turn to Laon and Cythna, a poem which labels itself as “revolution writing” and contemplates how the French revolution changed “Europe.” Here, Percy Shelley constructs an idea of “Europe” upon his interests in radical politics and the possibility of utopian social progress. Laon's setting, Constantinople, is a border-zone between Europe and Asia; it is simultaneously a European city in the throes of revolution and an Oriental tyranny. The Shelleys evoke “America” in a similar manner, treating it as a non-European “other” and as a more ideal version of “Europe” uncorrupted by post-revolutionary disappointments. Lastly, based on a remark in a letter to Percy Shelley about “European marriage,” I examine the connection between “Europeanness” and sexual mores. If, for Shelley, debates about “Europe” occur within specific parameters relating to revolution and radical change, “European” also has very different connotations connected to orthodox moral and sexual conventions

The parton to hadron phase transition observed in Pb+Pb collisions at 158 GeV per nucleon

Hadronic yields and yield ratios observed in Pb+Pb collisions at the SPS energy of 158 GeV per nucleon are known to resemble a thermal equilibrium population at T=180 +/- 10 MeV, also observed in elementary e+ + e- to hadron data at LEP. We argue that this is the universal consequence of the QCD parton to hadron phase transition populating the maximum entropy state. This state is shown to survive the hadronic rescattering and expansion phase, freezing in right after hadronization due to the very rapid longitudinal and transverse expansion that is inferred from Bose-Einstein pion correlation analysis of central Pb+Pb collisions.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure