Photo Credits: All photographs in this ePostcard are courtesy of Audrey DeLella Benedict. Illustrations and diagrams are credited where included.Having spent several weeks in the Southern Hemisphere at the end of 2022, and specifically exploring New Zealand and...

Photo Illustration Credit: Courtesy of NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring. This extraordinary image of the Earth—the 'Blue Marble’ that is our home planet—was captured in 2012. Scanning down the left side of the photo you see the west coast of the United...

Artist Credit: Courtesy of the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre and paleoartist George Teichmann (Yukon and Czechoslovakia iceagebeasts.com). Born in Czechoslovakia and trained at the People's School of Art in Bohemia, George Teichmann began drawing ice age beasts...

Photo Credits: All color photographs in this ePostcard are by Audrey DeLella Benedict (unless otherwise noted) and are from a 2009 Cloud Ridge Naturalists trip to the Russian Arctic and Wrangel Island with Heritage Expeditions. The archival black and white photographs...

Illustration Credit: Woolly Mammoth painting courtesy of artist Mauricio Anton and Ecology Letters. DOI: 10.1111/ele.13911. UNDERSTANDING EXTINCTIONAsk any child to name an extinct animal, and most will tell you the name of their favorite dinosaur. But if you ask them...

Photo Credit: Courtesy of José Iriarte.ROCK ART EVIDENCEDateline: December 3, 2020. A major discovery at the archeological site of Cerro Azul in the Serranía La Lindosa, Colombia, provides proof that the Amazon rainforest’s earliest inhabitants lived alongside...

Photo Credit (above): Courtesy of Fernando Trujillo for IUCN. The Giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus) is one of the largest species of armadillos, and ranges in length from 2 to 3 feet. It is easily recognizable due to its powerful, enlarged central claw and the...

'It is impossible to reflect without the deepest astonishment, on the changed state of this continent. Formerly it must have swarmed with great monsters, like the southern parts of Africa, but now we find only the tapir, guanaco, armadillo, and capybara; mere pigmies...

When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. CHARLES DARWIN, On the Origin of the SpeciesPhoto Credits:...

Image Credit: Courtesy of Sci-News (http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/megatherium-fossil-argentina-09315.html) This life reconstruction of Megatherium by Sebastián Rozadilla honors the latest discovery in Argentina of what is thought to be one of the oldest-known...

Rock carries its own epithets,Its own refrains. — John McPheePhoto Credits: This 2009 photograph is courtesy of NASA's Earth Observatory archives. You are looking down from space on the Upsala Glacier and its three glacier tributaries (Bertacchi, Cono and Murallón)....

It is an old story, but not the less wonderful, to hear of shells, which formerly were crawling about at the bottom of the sea, being now elevated nearly fourteen hundred feet above its level. — Charles DarwinPhoto Credits: All courtesy of Audrey DeLella Benedict....

A NATURALIST’S BOOKSHELFI subscribe to the stewardship vision best expressed by the great Senegalese environmentalist Baba Dioum—we are moved to conserve what we understand and love. Every so often, in researching the topics for our ePostcard series, I discover a book...

Photo credits: All Volcán Osorno photos are courtesy of Audrey DeLella Benedict. This 8,724 foot high (2659 m) stratovolcano and its lava-bench waterfall are located in the stunningly beautiful "volcano country” of the Chilean Lake District.FIRE AND ICEWhen viewed...

Photo Credits: All photos courtesy of Audrey Delella BenedictPATAGONIAN GLACIATIONThe extraordinary ice-sculpted scenery that captures the heart and imagination of everyone who visits Patagonia is the legacy of millions of years of glaciation and erosion. The...

Photo Credits (above and below): Courtesy of Audrey DeLella Benedict. There are only a few places on Earth where you can imagine the ground shifting beneath your feet, where the dynamic natural forces shaping our planet are never at rest. Patagonia is one of those...

Photo Credits: All photos courtesy of Audrey DeLella BenedictIN DARWIN'S FOOTSTEPSFor the naturalist, the dramatic coastlines, windswept steppes and spectacular cordilleras of Patagonia need little introduction. From Ferdinand Magellan to Charles Darwin and beyond,...

"Among the many thousands of things I have never been able to understand, onein particular stands out. That is the question of who was the first person who stood by a pile of sand and said ‘You know, I bet if we took some of this and mixed it with a little potash and...

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Hans Hillewaert and Wikimedia Commons. This amazing photograph of a tube-building marine worm (Lagis koreni) from the Oostendebank (Belgium) in the southern North Sea. The photo shows the sand grain-built tube and 24 mm-long trumpet worm that...

Scientific Illustration Credit: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain. Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur (1904), plate 71: Drawings by artist and zoologist Ernst Haeckel of the silica exoskeletons of Stephoidea (radiolarians). The individual radiolarian...

Photo Credit: Courtesy of NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program, Gulf of Mexico 2012 Expedition (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License). Golden crab (Chaceon fenneri) and a colony of Venus flower basket glass sponges (Euplectella...

LIGHTNING STRIKES & FULGURITES “Fulgur” is the Latin word for lightning. Cicero, a philosopher of the Roman Empire era, used the expression “condere fulmina,” meaning “to dig up thunderbolts” —indicating early Romans had knowledge of fulgurite formation in sandy areas...

Photo Credit: Popigai diamonds courtesy of The Siberian Times (siberiantimes.com).DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGHThroughout its history, Earth has been repeatedly hit by large meteorites. Of the more than 60,000 meteorites that have been discovered on Earth, most come from the...

Illustration Credit: Courtesy of the Deccan Herald and Detlev van Ravenswaay/science source.  https://www.deccanherald.com/content/549533/learning-impact-changed-life-earth.html This illustration is an artist’s rendering of the 100-mile-wide asteroid strike...

Photo Credits: Artist’s conception of meteorite courtesy of researchers from Tohoku University, Hokkaido University, JAMSTEC, and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. A research team from Japan and the USA investigated carbon-rich meteorites and found ribose and other...

Photo Credit: Courtesy of NASA's Antarctic Search for Meteorites program and Daniel Glavin. NASA Goddard astrobiologist Daniel Glavin poses in 2002 next to a meteorite he had just found during an expedition in Antarctica.ANTARCTICA’S ASUKA (A)-12236 METEORITEDuring a...

Photo Credit:  Courtesy of Kelly Carroll and White Sands National Park (NPS).This stunning photo of the Milky Way over the dunes of White Sands National Park was part of an invitation to join park rangers in August 2021 to observe this year’s spectacular Perseid...

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Icelandic Meteorological Office (via phys.org). Dateline: Reykyavik, Iceland March 20, 2021.This dramatic image captures volcanic glass in the making in Iceland! A long-dormant volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland...

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Brandon Markin, James Zigras and Avant Mining (Blue Springs, Arkansas). The "Bouquet" quartz cluster photographed here is displayed at Avant Mining, which has become the largest quartz crystal mining company in the world, with over 11,400...

Photo Credit: NASA/SOFIA/Lynette Cook. Artist’s impression of the collision of two protoplanets.BORN OF EARTH & FIREGlass is born of earth and fire, and our modern world would be unrecognizable without this remarkable material in our lives. Most people think of...

Photo Credit: Sea glass photograph courtesy of the North American Sea Glass Association (NASGA) and Jane Claire McHenry (sea glass from Islamorada in the Florida Keys).When I was growing up, collecting sea glass was a favorite beach pastime in New England, the...

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Florida Sea Grant. THE PLASTIC TSUNAMI Sea turtles have spent the past 100 million years roaming seas free of plastics. Today, the global impacts of plastic pollution on marine biodiversity are among the greatest environmental challenges of...

ON THIN ICE!  When I need to recover my bearings as a science writer, I often circle back to my fascination with polar regions. Sea ice has been very much on my mind lately, and especially the prospect of an ice-free Arctic in the not so distant future. The extent and...

Photo Credit: Courtesy of NOAA. A juvenile loggerhead sea turtle escapes a trawler net that has been quipped with a Turtle Excluder Device (TED). These sea turtle  "escape hatches” were originally developed to benefit both the commercial shrimp fishery and the marine...

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Miguel Roberts/The Brownsville Herald (MIGUEL ROBERTS AP) Thousands of Atlantic green sea turtles and Kemp's ridley sea turtles suffering from cold stun are laid out to recover Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021 at the South Padre Island Convention...

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Tim Briggs, Northeastern University (Marine Biology), and the online journal Massive Science. (Green sea turtle, San Diego Bay) If there is danger in the human trajectory, it is not so muchIn the survival of our own species as in the...

#1. Photo Credit: Satellite-tagged loggerhead photo courtesy of Argos System (argos-system.org). Loggerhead sea turtles begin their lives by migrating alone across the Atlantic Ocean and back. Eventually, after  more than two decades, the females return to nest on the...

Cover Photo (above) Credit and Caption: Having finally reached the wet, surf-hardened sand, this hatchling is in fast-forward mode on its final sprint to the sea. (Photo courtesy of Courtesy of Boca de Tomates Turtle Camp and Red Tortuguera A.C.)ePostcard #118:...

Cover Photo (above) Credit and Caption: Courtesy of Florida Fish & Wildlife. A “boil" of green sea turtle hatchlings emerges en masse from their deep nest hole in the sand. At hatching time, usually as the sun sets and the warm sand begins to cool, turtle...

ePostcard #116: Nightwatch: Sea Turtles Are Ecosystem Sentinels (Part 2)   Sea turtles are ecosystem sentinels—critical threads in the complex tapestry of global biodiversity. For sea turtle recovery efforts to succeed globally, we must ensure that the far-flung...

ePostcard #115: Nightwatch--Sea Turtles at Risk (Part 1)   Nearly all sea turtle biologists, sooner or later, become turtle conservationists …Peter Pritchard, “The Conservation of Sea Turtles,” 1980  The future of some of the Earth’s most incredible, resilient...

ePostcard #102: In Darwin's Footsteps: Pan del Indio   Darwin's famous fungus, ‘Pan del Indio’ (Indian Bread) in Spanish, belongs to a highly evolved group of parasitic fungi that grow exclusively on species of southern beech (Nothofagus spp.). As my photographs...

click images to enlargeePostcard #84: Mystery of the Curious Wolf  Charles Darwin regarded the Falkland Island wolf as a compelling biological mystery to be solved, and his observations would set the stage for what would become one of the most amazing natural history...

ePostcard # 38: Megaherb Discoveries You know how much I enjoy questions! Yesterday’s ePostcard #37, Megaherb Mysteries, prompted lots of questions and encouraged me to dig into the most recent literature to find out what botanists are discovering about these...

ePostcard #37: Megaherb Mysteries Botanists continue to be puzzled by the prevalence of outsized leaves and flowers—the so-called megaherb flora—of the subantarctic islands. It is not known whether the megaherbs are relics of an ancient, more widespread flora that...

ePostcard #34: Fascinating Tubenoses Seabirds live at the mercy of wind and wave, superbly adapted to thrive in one of the most demanding but productive environments on Earth—the ocean. For millions of years, the global ocean has served as “home away from home” for...

E-Postcard #8: Life in the Sand (Namibia)   Rows 1, 2 and 3: Travel with me to the dune country of Namibia. The dunes of the Namib Sand Sea cover most of the southwestern portion of Namibia, an area roughly 93 miles (150 km) wide and 248 miles (400 km) long. The...

E-Postcard #7: Camouflage Perfected! The current standing order for “sheltering in place” takes on a very different meaning in the natural world. Survival for some animals in the wild depends on camouflage (or cryptic) coloration or patterning, an adaptation that...

Greetings, I launched our Cloud Ridge ePostcard Blog in late March of 2020, as the unfolding tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic encircled the globe in a shroud of sadness. With the help of our skilled webmaster, Clyde Lovett, I wanted to provide a respite from the daily...