Category: History

Kimbetopsalis Simmonsae (Pre-Beaver)

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beavers, History October 5, 2015

Guess what they just found out took over the planet after all those lizardy dinosaurs were wiped by the comet? OF COURSE YOU KNOW THE ANSWER.

Kimbetopsalis Simmonsae was a plant-eating mammal that exploded into the void created by the now extinct lizards. Weighing at a hefty 50 lbs and taking advantage of all the lush vegetation. Although it has no direct descendents, is success made room for the descent line of every mammal alive today.

Including us.

Recognize this plant-eating tooth structure? Molars in the back and incisors in the front? The fossil was found in New Mexico, the site of the dinosaur-hitting crater. Because these pre-beavers wasted NO time.

It’s literally all over the news this morning, how beaver-like creatures took over after the lizards and made a new race of mammals, but here’s a science-based report from Phys.org sent by BK from Georgia.

How we found the ‘prehistoric beaver’ that helped mammals inherit Earth after dinosaurs were wiped out

Sixty six million years ago the world changed in an instant. A huge asteroid, some ten kilometers in diameter, smashed into what is now Mexico. It arrived with the force of several million nuclear bombs, and unleashed a deadly cocktail of wildfires, tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanoes.

It wasn’t a good time to be alive. Scientists estimate that about 75% of all species became extinct, most famously among them the dinosaurs. But some of our furry ancestors managed to make it through the apocalypse. With T. rex and Triceratops now out of the picture, gutsy little mammals had a new world to colonize.

A new fossil from New Mexico is helping us better understand how mammals took advantage of the dinosaur extinction to become the incredibly successful creatures that we know today. It was discovered and studied by a team of researchers that I am part of, led by Thomas Williamson of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

Despite appearances, Kimbetopsalis was no beaver (which is a type of rodent). It was a member of a completely extinct group of mammals called multituberculates, which originated alongside the dinosaurs, survived the extinction, diversified afterwards, and ultimately went extinct 35 million years ago when they were superseded by the smarter, faster-growing modern rodents.

Kimbetopsalis is testament to how the history of life hinges on moments that can reset the course of evolution. T. rex and kin had ruled the Earth for over 100 million years. Then suddenly the world was thrown into chaos by rapid environmental change. Dinosaurs couldn’t cope and all of a sudden they were gone. Their size and strength couldn’t save them. Mammals fared better, and now one species of brainy ape occupies that dominant place in nature that was once held by the dinosaurs.

Opportunity Seized, Change Created, Evolving Conditions Utilized

. Scientists were stunned this this adaption could have taken place so quickly. But I’m not stunned. Sounds like a beaver to me, don’t you think?

This seems like a great time to repost the obvious.

Papyrus

heidi08 Beavers, Educational, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History September 22, 2015

This weekend someone commented on our logo with the perfect sentence “Oh because beavers are the KEY to the creek, right?” And it got me remembering how it all came together.

Once upon a time, many years ago, Worth A Dam needed a logo. I fiddled with some primitive images and asked around the best I could and got the suggestion to look for a volunteer on Craig’s list. I was told to advertise for a “Free gig” and say what we needed.

The truly amazing thing is that I immediately received more than a dozen offers. I actually had to review applications for an unpaid job drawing a beaver logo. It was 2009 and the time the Martinez Beavers were bigger news than they are now. I reviewed cute graphics, manly graphics and gothum graphics. I got offers from the Southbay, the Northbay and San Francisco.

The woman that finally intrigued me was Kiriko Moth, a graphic artist in the city. She’s has gotten bigger and her website is amazing if you want to catch a peek. She had just finished some lovely illustrations for a book on bees that compelled me. We had a conversation about my ideas and she sketched a host of designs which I liked – including one with children’s faces. I wish I had the sample sheet she sent just to remember. But at the time I asked her to think about incorporating the key idea, and maybe a stream.

She came back with a stream dividing the beaver (in blue and reversed with the wide part at the top). I suggested we do uncolored and offered the idea of flipping it so it looks like you’re looking into the distance. Then we chose fonts to go around it. And Voila the logo was born. When mom died she was kind enough to notch the tail.

One thing she said as we were discussing fonts was to avoid papyrus. She said TOO many non profits used it already. I thought at the time that was an odd thing to say, because I happened to love papyrus. Maybe you do too. But now years later I have seen over and over that she was right. Here’s a little sample, but keep your eye out and you’ll find millions.

I have to ask myself what quality we all possess that draws us to this font? Even many of the logos that were professionally designed and avoided the danger of using the font actually chose fonts that look LIKE papyrus.

Apparently the advice NOT to use papyrus has to be sternly administered from lots of sources. It is all over google.

There’s a psychological paper there just waiting to be written.

Beaver Class Reunion

heidi08 Beavers, Beavers and salmon, Beavers and trout, Beavers and water, Creative Solutions, Educational, Environmental, History, Who's saving beavers now? September 17, 2015

First things first. Mike is sending this letter in response to the editorial I posted yesterday.

To the Editor,

The 9-15-15 Gazette editorial regarding the Lake Fitzgerald beaver issue failed the public miserably. In addition to incorrect information about the chain-link fence, the editor chose to mock the efforts of a committed group of Broad Brook Coalition and UMass volunteers, city officials and myself, with comments such as “Callahan cooked up the idea “, “beavers pretty much made sawdust of Plans A through C” and “start working on Plan E”.

In 18 years of solving over 1,200 human-beaver conflicts with water control devices I have never seen more ingenious beavers than those at Lake Fitzgerald, nor such an amazing coalition of dedicated volunteers and city officials. It is sad that the editor did not celebrate the efforts of these local citizens, but rather chose to mock them.

Also, it’s been over a month since the rocks were installed and our creative solution is working fine. The lake level remains normal and the beavers have been unable to block the drain. So editor, please avoid negative, uninformed, mocking opinions. The public gets enough of that from Donald Trump.

Michael Callahan, Owner

Beaver Solutions LLC

Take that snappy beaver critique editor! I hope it gets printed because it deserves to be read. People shouldn’t go around insulting valiant effort. Especially when it keeps getting better and better and folks are just trying to do the right thing.

Personally, I kind of love when the big players get called into the game. Like remember that time that paper dissed our historic research as a misinterpretation of the evidence in a footnote and I got happy that he was getting Rick’s dander up.

Speaking of Rick and our historial research this was released yesterday, and is the hard work of Greg Kerekes for the Guadelupe RCD. There’s someone in it you’ll recognize but I had just gotten back from another speaking job and think I sound like a lunatic with a cold. If you don’t have time to watch it now watch it later, it’s really informative and well done.

How much do you love that footage? And those under/over shots. Rick is such a great teacher, I want to read our paper again right now! Greg is doing an awesome job in the South Bay spreading the beaver gospel through his non profit (Urban Wildlife Research Project). If you don’t remember him from the festival you probably remember his wife dancing in the beaver costume a couple years ago. She was awesome.

Goodness we’ve been in this business a long time. In fact we’re about two weeks away from our 3000th post. Which is a lot of things for one woman to say about beavers. Our website has been around so long and has SO much info it’s starting to stretch at the seams so I was thrilled to hear from our webpage designer Scott Artis yesterday that he will help us get back to sailing velocity. He has his hands full with a paid environmental job now but I think he noticed the long nonprofit list for Sunday’s event and saw that his group (Audubon Canyon) was the Alpha and WE (Worth A Dam) were the Omega, and was prompted suddenly to write back. So HOORAY for updating websites!

Yesterday I immersed myself in this project, which I should share at a later date because we already have one film on this post, but I have no delayed gratification. Or very little. And I’m feeling proud.

I guess our real Forefathers were Furbearers…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, History, Who's blaming beavers now? July 4, 2015

Let’s face it, America was founded on the backs of beavers. Fur Trappers drove the exploration down our rivers starting from Plymoth Rock, Charleston, Newfoundland, and everywhere in between. If there hadn’t been money to be made from their important fur we would have quickly lost our shiny “New World” smell and everyone would have gone somewhere else where the beavers might be.

This holiday is as much about their value as it is about our independence. Because there would never have been ONE without the OTHER. If we had ended up looking for beavers somewhere else our independence day might have grown out of Canada or Peru or whatever landscape provided enough beaver for us to feel we deserved to be treated as equals.

You think I exaggerate? Here’s how the beaver population was doing in Ohio just three years after the declaration of independence was signed.

Beaver were so important to the new land we were trapping them as fast as we could. When one digs even a little deeper to understand our origins, beavers are at the roots of our government, laws, economics, geographic boundaries, and even our colorful history of race relations. Take a look at this quote from Captain Simeon Ecuyaer at the Siege of Fort Pitt in 1783,

So I guess it’s fitting that Minnesota decided to decorate the fourth with a Beaver-trapping article this year. It turns out that in every meaningful way, our real forefathers were the furfathers who paid for our independence literally with the skin off their backs.

Animal trapping programs keeps drainage ditches clear.

Tim Worthington pulls a beaver from a trap on Wednesday in Grygla, Minn.

Worthington is one of dozens of trappers across northwest Minnesota who participate in nuisance animal trapping programs, which pay trappers to remove critters that cause damage to infrastructure.

Trapping beavers in particular keeps drainage ditch systems functioning properly as dams built by the animals block water flow and can cause it to backup onto nearby land–sometimes resulting in damage to farmland, officials in multiple counties said.

County and township government boards can offer bounties for the animals, which range from $20 to $50 for beavers and 50 cents to $3.50 for gophers.

The real irony is that counties are paying trappers like Worthington to make the creek more silted, fishless, and barren. Likewise, the newly established America was so excited to see how many resources it had that it quickly used them all up and created instead a dystopian of land of dry rivers, little game and withering fish stocks.

Of course, when that tap ran dry there was gold to keep us going, and then industry, and then oil. I’m sure learned by now not to use up all our resources, right?

New beaver – New beaver management

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History, In the News, kits, Who's saving beavers now? May 29, 2015

So much news today, I am fairly bursting at the seams. First the and most relevant is that Jakob Shockey of the Applegate Partnership and Watershed Council from Oregon is currently training with Mike Callahan learning flow device installation in MA. This all came about at the State of the Beaver Conference when folks really felt like they needed their own expert in the state. Well now they’re going to have one. They repaired a culvert fence and installed protections on a spill way.

By Mike Callahan

Jakob Building a Flexible Pond Leveler to install on a manmade dam spillway in western MA.. We also fixed a failed Trapezoidal Culvert Protective Fence that had worked perfectly for 5 years, looked great a month ago, and then suddenly the beavers dammed all around it. Very strange. I don’t know why it happened. Maybe related to our current drought. Nevertheless that same day we also built a Flexible Pond Leveler and installed the pipe through the failed fence to control the water level and keep a highway from flooding. Jakob is very bright, a good worker and a pleasure to spend time with.

I just love when smart people working together make beavers safer! Oregon is going to be so proud! They have a lot to brag about at the moment because they just discovered a previously unknown beaver fossil in John Day. A missing beaver-link if you will.

Prehistoric beaver fossils unearthed — where else? — in Oregon

A fossilized skull and teeth from a newly described species of beaver that lived 28 million years ago have been discovered in Eastern Oregon.

The fossils worked their way out of the soil within a mile of the visitor center at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, said the monument’s paleontologist, Joshua Samuels.

The find is significant, he said, because unlike the other species of ancient beavers found at the monument, this one appears related to the modern beaver, a symbol of Oregon found on the state flag. The others all went extinct.

The species is named Microtheriomys brevirhinus.

It was less than half the size of a modern beaver and related to beavers from Asia that crossed the Bering land bridge to North America about 7 million years ago, Samuels said.

This diminutive beaver roamed the earth during the Oligocene period after the dinosaurs but with neighbors like the three toed horse and sabertooths. While there are really only two types of beaver left today, fossils tell us there used to be hundreds, which is awfully fun to think about. I love the idea of a tiny beaver. Just imagine how small THOSE kits were!

Speaking of kits, Rusty snapped this last night of his famous new Napa family member. Doesn’t it look like a new species of lesser-known beaver-snake?

Our own beavers have been hard at work and it looks like dad is getting ready for the new kit debut by making a training tree available they can munch on. Do you think he saved it for just this purpose?