All posts by Grace Costantino

Sharks, Passenger Pigeons, Scientific Illustrations, Crowdsourcing, National Agricultural Library, GBIF, and Semantic Metadata. What do all these things have in common? They’re all BHL news stories from the past few months! Get the latest BHL project news in our latest quarterly report and newsletter! Don’t get our newsletter?

Here’s a word of the day for you: Phytogeography. Phytogeography is a branch of biogeography that investigates the geographic distribution of plants and the effect that the earth’s surface has on that distribution. To go further down the rabbit hole, biogeography studies the distribution of species and organisms now and throughout time.

Recent crowdsourcing initiatives are revolutionizing scientific research, allowing the public to help scientists and researchers document, identify, and better understand biodiversity. For example, the Atlas of Living Australia’s FieldData program allows anyone to contribute sightings, photos and observational data to help researchers and natural resource management groups collect and manage biodiversity data.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed out from Spain with a mission to find a western trade route to Asia. Instead, he found a whole “New World”…and something altogether more mysterious. On January 9, 1493, near the Dominican Republic, Columbus spotted three “mermaids.” How did he describe them? “They are not as beautiful as they are painted, since in some ways they have a face like a man” (History.com). The myth of a marine human extends as far back as 5,000 BCE, when the Babylonians worshipped a fish-tailed god named Oannes.

Such a description conjures up images of a great behemoth, perhaps with sharp fangs, great talons, and fiery red eyes. It was given by George Shaw in a lecture to the Royal Institute and published in 1809. It is a description of the Curled Octopus (Eledone cirrhosa), reaching a total size of 5-15 inches. Not quite the beast the description implies… The octopus, like the squid (aka kraken), has long held an unwarranted reputation as a monster.

Science knows it by the name Architeuthis dux. For centuries, however, it was known by an altogether more infamous one – The Kraken. Aristotle first introduced us to the giant squid (which he called teuthos) in 350 BCE, and then, in AD 77-79, Pliny the Elder related a tale of a “polyp” that was killed during its attempt to steal salted fish from the fish ponds in Carteia (Ellis, pg. 123). Described as having 30-foot long arms, the beast has been identified as a squid. Giant squids have been seen throughout the world’s oceans, but they are quite common in the seas around Norway and Greenland.