Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL
  • Home
  • News
  • Featured Books
    • All Featured Books
    • Book of the Month Series
  • User Stories
  • Campaigns
    • Fossil Stories
    • Garden Stories
    • Monsters Are Real
    • Page Frights
    • Her Natural History
    • Earth Optimism 2020
  • Tech Blog
  • Visit BHL
Home
News
Featured Books
    All Featured Books
    Book of the Month Series
User Stories
Campaigns
    Fossil Stories
    Garden Stories
    Monsters Are Real
    Page Frights
    Her Natural History
    Earth Optimism 2020
Tech Blog
Visit BHL
  • Home
  • News
  • Featured Books
    • All Featured Books
    • Book of the Month Series
  • User Stories
  • Campaigns
    • Fossil Stories
    • Garden Stories
    • Monsters Are Real
    • Page Frights
    • Her Natural History
    • Earth Optimism 2020
  • Tech Blog
  • Visit BHL
Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts tagged with reptiles

Blog Reel, User Stories

Vanity and BHL: Examining Extinction and Rediscovery through Art

Read the full blog post

Vanity, an art installation by Joseph Gregory Rossano created for and with the support of the Museum of Glass (MOG) in Tacoma, Washington, tells the story of eleven species and subspecies, presumed extinct, presented through the lens of humanity’s role in their demise. The exhibition features historical accounts detailing each species’ “discovery” (collection date, type locality, collector, scientific illustrations, etc.), humanity’s role in its extinction, and the year it was declared “Extinct”. To produce these species tales, Rossano collaborated with Sandra I. Berríos-Torres, MD. Berríos-Torres served as author of the 11 historical accounts and as Editorial Director of the exhibition catalogue, on behalf of Joseph Gregory Rossano.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library was a crucial resource for Berríos-Torres. Consulting dozens of publications in BHL while conducting research for Vanity, she ultimately cited 16 of them in the historical accounts that were incorporated into the exhibition and catalogue.

Continue reading
February 7, 2019byGrace Costantino and Sandra I. Berríos Torres, MD
Blog Reel, Featured Books

The Art of Herpetology: Schlegel’s Reptiles and Amphibians

Read the full blog post

German ornithologist and herpetologist Hermann Schlegel hoped that the publication of good illustrations would stimulate public interest in reptiles and amphibians. Thus, he produced Abbildungen neuer oder unvollständig bekannter Amphibian (1837-44).

Continue reading
November 30, 2017byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, User Stories

Resolving a 180 Year Old Taxonomic Mystery

Read the full blog post
Hardwicke’s bloodsucker is an agamid lizard found in western and central India. It is a small, stocky, and pot-bellied lizard with a short tail that is currently recognized under the scientific name Brachysaura minor. This species, however, has a rather convoluted taxonomic history. The first scientific description of the species comes from Hardwicke and Gray in 1827 and is based on a color sketch by Hardwicke which now resides in the Archives of the Natural History Museum, London.  They named the species Agama minor.
Continue reading
February 11, 2016byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Fossil Stories

Identifying the First Flying Reptile: Pterosaurs

Read the full blog post
Pterosaurs, flying reptiles that lived 228-66 million years ago, are the earliest vertebrates known to have evolved the capacity for powered flight. The first known pterosaur specimen was described by Cosimo Alessandro Collini in 1784. Twenty years earlier, in 1764, Collini had been appointed to supervise the Naturalienkabinett at Mannheim, established as part of the Kurpfälzische Academy of Sciences, in present-day Germany. The first-known pterosaur specimen arrived at Mannheim sometime between 1767 and 1784, probably originating from Bovaria. Collini was baffled by the specimen, but deduced that it was not a bird or a bat.
Continue reading
October 15, 2015byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Fossil Stories

Uncovering the “Fish Lizard”: Ichthyosaurs and Home

Read the full blog post
When the fossils of extinct species were first discovered, they were often misidentified. Case in point: Ichthyosaurs. The first probable illustrations of ichthyosaur fossils were published by Edward Lhuyd in his Lithophylacii Brittannici Ichnographia, 1699. He attributed the fossils to fish. In 1708, Swiss naturalist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer attributed two ichthyosaur vertebrae to a man who drowned during the Biblical flood. In 1783, an ichthyosaur jaw with teeth was exhibited by the Society for Promoting Natural History as those of a crocodilian.
Continue reading
October 15, 2015byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Fossil Stories

Fact or Fiction? Discovering the Mosasaur

Read the full blog post
If you’ve seen Jurassic World (or even just the trailers), then you’re familiar with Mosasaurus.
Continue reading
October 14, 2015byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Fossil Stories

A Sinner Killed During the Great Flood or a Fossil Reptile? Discovering the Plesiosaur

Read the full blog post
Most people today are at least somewhat familiar with the order of extinct marine reptiles known as Plesiosauria, thanks to the legend of the Loch Ness monster, which is often described as resembling a plesiosaur. Indeed, some argue that Nessie may in fact be a surviving member of this order. Scientists, however, reject this suggestion, if for no other reason that the Loch Ness lake formed a mere 10,000 years ago, while the fossil record indicates that plesiosaurs went extinct over 66 million years ago. And yet, even if plesiosaurs can’t account for the Loch Ness legend, the story of their discovery is still captivating. Plesiosaurs are among the first extinct fossil reptiles to be recognized as such.
Continue reading
October 14, 2015byGrace Costantino
Page 1 of 212»

Help Support BHL

BHL’s existence depends on the financial support of its patrons. Help us keep this free resource alive!

Donate Now

search

About BHL

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. Headquartered at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives in Washington, D.C., BHL operates as a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to digitize the natural history literature held in their collections and make it freely available for open access as part of a global “biodiversity community.”

Follow BHL

Join Our Mailing List

Sign up to receive the latest news, content highlights, and promotions.

Subscribe Now

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Subscribe to Blog Via RSS

Subscribe to the blog RSS feed to stay up-to-date on all the latest BHL posts.

Access RSS Feed

BHL on Twitter

Tweets by @BioDivLibrary

Inspiring Discovery through Free Access to Biodiversity Knowledge.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library makes it easier than ever for you to access the information you need to study and explore life on Earth…for free, anytime, anywhere.

60+ Million Pages of
Biodiversity Literature Online.

EXPLORE

Tools and Services
to Transform Research.

EXPLORE

300,000+
Illustrations on Flickr.

EXPLORE

 

ABOUT | BLOG AUTHORS | HARMFUL CONTENT | PRIVACY | SITE MAP | TERMS OF USE

Download Adobe Acrobat Reader