Matt's Sci/Tech Blog

Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us David Neiwert Overlook Press, NY, 2015 305pp This is a very good book on the history...

Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises:A Natural History and Species Guide Annalisa Berta, ed. U. of Chicago, 2015 288pp, large-format hardcov...

www.mattwriter.com is functioning again. Also, you may be cool, but you will never be as cool as this magnificent orca, painted for my nex...

Not all new species are harmless little invertebrates or cute mammals.  The Kimberly death adder, about 60cm long, is undeniably a handsome ...

My website has vanished and I'm traveling and haven't figure it out yet. Will get it bcck soon. Meanwhile, here's a NEW HUMAN ...

I've talked before about the ICM and Loren Coleman's efforts to provide a repository for artifacts, print materials, and everything...

The eurypterids or sea scorpions were the invertebrate kings of the  seas 400 million years ago. For a while, before the armored fish known ...

I watched the liftoff live in person (Thanks, Dad), fell asleep for the first step, watched the return live on TV. There could have been no ...

How do we know whether to evaluate a cryptozoological report, especially an old one, in the light of the witness's or recorder's cu...

It would be really cool (and useful) to track whales via satellite imagery. Of course, the whales have to cooperate by being at or near the ...

If I call myself a writer on science and nature, I need to say something about Cecil. It's a tragedy this lion was killed, and a crime ...

Most discoveries of large animals these days (though not all!) are made in the lab, where similar-looking, or "cryptic" species ar...

One of my favorite topics in cryptozoology is "sea monsters" or "sea serpents."  Now, no one believes in giant marine sn...

The Nature of the Beast: The First Genetic Evidence on the Survival of Apemen, Yeti, Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures into Modern Ti...

We're here. And Pluto, with its huge basic, few craters, and odd color, looks nothing like we might have expected.  So much to learn.......

Well, yes, we do.  They're fish apparently designed specifically to look as scary as hell.  A government research vessel with new instru...

We expected Pluto to be a ball of frozen rock.  It is, but it's an interesting-looking ball of frozen rock.  The New Horizons spacecraft...

We don't know all the species on this planet.  But how fast are we discovering them? It's still true, as the Times of India quotes ...

At the Water's Edge Sarah Gruen Spiegel & Grau 368pp. This is a magical novel, weaving fact and fiction together to set the sce...

OK,   I went to Jurassic World.  I understand why some paleontologists despise it - it wouldn't have hurt the movie to make the dinosa...