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Dead tree, Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. Photo (c) 2005 Melissa Barton.
Well, we have reached the end of the nine-day National Park Week 2006. Here, for easy reference, is my list of posts on the topic:
April 21 - The introductory post
April 22 - Bear Prints, Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument (CO)
April 23 - Dinosaur National Monument (UT/CO)
April 24 - Ancient Sand Dunes, Zion National Park (UT)
April 25 - Limestone Hoodoos, Bryce Canyon National Park (UT)
April 26 - Proterozoic Cliffs, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park (CO)
April 28 - Spruce Tree House, Mesa Verde National Park (CO)
April 29 - Kilauea Iki Caldera, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (HI)
This barely scratches the surfaces of the many beautiful, fascinating, and historical locations protected by the National Park Service for future generations. I encourage anyone who has enjoyed these posts to make an effort to visit more parks, and perhaps even volunteer.
Our land is one of our greatest treasures as Americans, and we must cherish it as our future and bring our children to parks so they, too, will grow up loving this land.
Victorian scientist Charles Lyell is often credited as the “Father of Geology,” and he certainly established the modern science. But what about one of his lesser-known predecessors?
Shen Kuo or Shen Kua (1031-1095 C.E.) was a Chinese diplomat, scientist, and polymath who was far ahead of his times. For example,
+He realized that compasses pointed to the magnetic north pole, not true north.
+He observed fossil shells in a mountain range far from the ocean and hypothesized that land was formed by erosion of mountains and deposition of silt.
+He found some fossil stems in Shenxi Province which he identified as bamboo shoots, outside of the 11th century range of bamboo in that region, and inferred that past climates must have been different to allow their growth.
+He both observed the planets and tried to explain their retrograde motions. Unlike the Greek astronomers, he did not assume that all planets moved in circular orbits, but rather hypothesized a “willow leaf” shaped motion.
In a paper published in Journal of the Geological Society, London (Chaloner and Creber 1990), the authors preface their paper with this wonderful introduction about Shen Kuo:
The idea of using plant fossils as palaeoclimatic indicators has a long pedigree, considerably pre-dating Charles Lyell. A Chinese scholar, Shen Kuo, of the eleventh century, found some fossil stems in Shansi [Shenxi] Province, which he described as bamboo shoots (Li 1981). He noted the significant point that these were apparently growing outside the present range of bamboos in that part of China, and went on to make the appropriate deduction that conditions must therefore have changed since the time when the plants were living there (Scott & Smith 1977). Unfortunately for our purposes, the fossils that he had found were almost certainly Neocalamites, relatives of modern horsetails, having very little to do with bamboos systematically, but strongly resembling them in the appearance of their jointed stems. So that while his taxonomy may have been at fault, Shen Kuo’s line of reasoning was centuries ahead of his time. Despite the break in the succession, he must surely be credited as the father of palaeoclimatology!
Modern relatives of Shen Kuo’s fossil “bamboo shoots” growing in Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. Photo (c) 2005 Melissa Barton
While it’s easy to look back at the scientists of the past and scoff at their peculiar ideas of taxonomy (as future scientists will no doubt look back at us and scoff), science would not exist today without their founding efforts. I love these stories of obscure historical scientists, and I’m ever-grateful to Stephen Jay Gould for writing about so many of them.
Unfortunately, most of today’s science students learn very little of the history of their disciplines, which provides context to both the progress of science and the scientific method.
Shen Kuo, being an obscure Chinese scientist, probably won’t displace Lyell in Western history books as the founder of geology, but perhaps he’ll keep the mantle of the father of paleoclimatology — and perhaps one day environmental science and geology students will read about him in their textbooks.
FURTHER READING:
The fine people at Project Gutenberg have posted some of Shen Kuo’s works (in Chinese, unfortunately for most of us) here, and there’s a nice biography of him here.
Chaloner, W.G., and Creber, G.T. 1990. Do fossil plants give a climatic signal? in Journal of the Geological Society, London, vol. 147, p. 343-350.
Li, X.X. 1981. A Bibliography of Chinese Palaeobotany. Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Academia Sinica, Nanjing.
The view across Kilauea Iki caldera, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Photo (c) 2002 Melissa Barton.
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is a great park for day hikes. My personal favorite hike is Kilauea Iki, which means “Little Kilauea” in Hawaiian. The hike is nicest on an overcast day, as the trips up and down along the caldera walls are pretty hot and humid. Once you reach the caldera floor, a cooling breeze makes it all worthwhile.
Kilauea Iki is one of the smaller calderas of Kilauea, an active shield volcano which had a lake of molten lava as recently as the late 1800s. The area has hosted notable visitors like Mark Twain, who wrote in 1866, “Here was room for the imagination to work!”
Today Kilauea Iki is quite safe, although steam vents can be quite hot and should be avoided. Tree ferns and red-flowered ‘ohia trees are the first to colonize the lava fields, and grow in cracks throughout the caldera floor. If you are very lucky, you might sight a nene, a rare goose endemic to Hawaii. I haven’t seen any in my several trips to Hawaii Volcanoes NP.
‘Ohia tree growing on the rim of Kilauea Iki caldera, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Photo (c) 2002 Melissa Barton
Hawaii Volcanoes NP is probably most famous for its current Pu’u ‘O’o-Kupa’ianaha eruption, which began in January of 1983. If weather and eruption conditions are safe enough, visitors are permitted to hike out to the flow near where it enters the ocean. I was able to do this in 2002, and it was an awe-inspiring experience (tourists roasting marshmallows aside).
It’s important to be very careful near the lava, even under “safe” conditions, as park visitors do occasionally die or suffer serious injury. Information about lava safety and the current eruption may be found here.
If you want to take pictures, I suggest going after dusk and bringing a tripod. Lava is difficult to photograph well! You can see some amazing photos at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaii Volcanoes Observatory website.
Post #7 for National Park Week 2006.
I don’t intend to post about psychology often, but this was too interesting to pass up.
PZ Myers at Pharyngula has a post about a potential new aphrodisiac here, but as he notes, the most interesting part is that giving female rats the option of getting away from the male rats whenever they wanted produced the same boost in sex drive as the aphrodisiac.
USAToday (I know…) reports here on a survey that shows a correlation between sexual equality and sexual satisfaction in humans. (This study, ironically enough, was funded by Pfizer, the maker of Viagra.)
So human women (and female rats) are more interested in sex when they feel in control of their lives. Sounds like common sense to me, but it’s nice to see science validate it, even in a small way.
Well, I found another picture!
Mesa Verde National Park is probably the best known Ancestral Puebloan (formerly referred to as “Anasazi,” which is a Navajo word) archaeological site. In recent years, there has been a little bit of controversy (which even made it to the pages of Discover) over whether cannibalism was involved in the abandonment of the various settlements throughout the Southwest.
Karl J. Reinhard, one of the original scientists who found possible evidence of cannibalism in Ancestral Puebloan rubbish heaps, published a cautionary article on assuming the evidence implies widespread cannibalism in the May-June 2006 issue of American Scientist (subscribers only).
Spruce Tree House, Mesa Verde National Park. Photo (c) 1999 Melissa Barton
Cannibalism may be up for debate still, but the ruins are impressive regardless. Some of these buildings could have been built yesterday, they’re so well-constructed. In the harsh, low-water desert environment of Colorado from 600-1300 C.E., the Ancestral Puebloans flourished, building impressive villages in difficult-to-access niches of cliffs.
Mesa Verde was the first national park set aside to protect archaeological resources, as well as the first national park set aside to “preserve the works of humankind.” 2006 marks the centennial of its founding, and information and a schedule of centennial events may be found here at the Mesa Verde Museum Association webpage.
Post #6 for National Park Week 2006.
I’m a big fan of snakes. I consider them to be one of the most beautiful and graceful animals in existence, and there are few things that make me happier than holding a nice ball python as it wraps around my hands. One of the high points of last year for me was seeing a snake swimming in a river in Kansas, while simultaneously swallowing a live fish bigger than its head! I have enough trouble just swimming.
So I was pretty excited when a fossil snake with hips and legs (Najash rionegrina) made the news last week, hyped heavily for suggesting that snakes evolved on land, rather than in the oceans. Najash rionegrina dates from the Late Cretaceous (ca. 90 million years ago, coexistant with dinosaurs). Najash is not the first Cretaceous snake with legs paleontologists have found, but it was found in a terrestrial deposit in Argentina and it had not only legs, but a pelvic girdle and sacrum.
No modern snakes and no other known fossil snakes have a pelvic girdle and sacrum. You can see these beautifully preserved bones over at Pharyngula — snake bones, being delicate, rarely fossilize so well.
Coral snake. Photo (c) 2002 Walter H. Wust/Wikipedia. Used under the GNU Free Documentation License.
What the popular press articles did not, for the most part, point out is that the hypothesis that snakes evolved in the oceans stands on shaky ground. So to speak. The hypothesis was first put forth in the 19th century by Edward Drinker Cope, he of “Bone Wars” fame, who suggested that snakes might have evolved from extinct marine animals called mosasaurs. For more than a century, this hypothesis was largely ignored. In the 1990s, paleontologists found fossils of primitive snakes with vestigial limbs in marine sediments in Lebanon, bringing this old hypothesis back to scientific discussion.
But the hypothesis that snakes evolved in the oceans is by no means acccepted widely by herpetologists or paleontologists. According to a friend of mine who studies herpetology, most scientists prefer the terrestrial hypothesis — and there’s a trend towards viewing snakes as another type of legless lizards, not a separate group of animals.
I visited Black Canyon Of The Gunnison National Park on my way out to college in Colorado a few years ago. The Gunnison River cut through hard Proterozoic (the oldest geologic eon, 2.5 billion to 542 million years ago) rocks at a rate of about one inch per hundred years.
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Photo (c) 2003 Melissa Barton
Now the Gunnison River is held back by three dams, reducing its rate of downcutting further, but the canyon is still an awe-inspiring sight.
Post #5 for National Park Week 2006.
Bryce Canyon National Park is my favorite of the geological parks. A picture is worth a thousand words:
Limestone “hoodoos” at Bryce Canyon National Park. Photo (c) 2004 Melissa Barton
The shapes of these “hoodoos” are determined by layers of softer and harder rocks. The primary weathering factor is frost wedging, which occurs when water in cracks freezes and expands, pushing the rocks apart. Rain is also an weathering and erosional force, as it interacts with the carbonate limestones that form the majority of the Claron Formation to form weak carbonic acid. This is what rounds the edges of the hoodoos.
Bryce is, in my opinion, the most beautiful park (geologically speaking) that I’ve been to. The pinkish-oranges of the hoodoos are especially beautiful around sunset and when you’re looking up from the bottoms of the canyons. Although most visitors simply view the park from scenic overlooks, it doesn’t take long to follow one of the shorter trails down into the canyons. The hoodoos look very different from below, and there are some striking photographic opportunities — although you have to be creative to find ones that haven’t been taken hundreds of times.
And yes, Bryce also has fossils. As I mentioned in my previous post, the bottom layer of rock at Bryce is the same as the top layer at Zion National Park.
Post #4 for National Park Week 2006.
“Zion” means “sanctuary” in Hebrew, and the lush green foliage and rushing rivers of Zion National Park’s redrock canyons were likely a welcome sight for early settlers as well as the Native Americans who had used the land since at least 6,000 B.C.E.
Zion NP is located in Utah, on the edge of the Colorado Plateau, and it is stratigraphically continuous with Bryce Canyon National Park and Grand Canyon National Park. In fact, I probably should have started with Bryce, and would have if I had any digital photos from the Grand Canyon — the bottom layers of rock at Bryce are the top layers at Zion, and the bottom layers at Zion are the top layers at the Grand Canyon. You can buy a nifty poster showing this at any of those three parks.
Most people see the part of Zion around the visitor center — which is a moist area of striking contrast between the green vegetation and the sheer redrock canyon walls. So I’m going to show you something the typical visitor doesn’t see:
Ancient Sand Dunes at Zion National Park. Photo (c) 2004 Melissa Barton
To be honest, I’m not sure exactly which part of the park this is in — I went there on an historical geology field trip my sophomore year and probably didn’t wake up until we stopped. But it’s not accessible by the same entrance as the visitor center.
These tall bluffs are made up of a series of remnants of ancient sand dunes (I believe the upper part of the Navajo Sandstone). The original sand dunes were probably at least 20-30 feet high; only up to 10 feet or so turned into sandstone. So these bluffs represent dozens of sand dune fields.
You can recognize petrified sand dunes by what geologists call “cross-bedding.” These are the diagonal lines that made up the back side of the travelling dune.
Cross-bedding at Zion National Park. Photo (c) 2004-2006 Melissa Barton
If the layers of rock have not been tilted and you are looking at the dune from the side, the cross-beds will be at the “angle of repose” (about 30º), which is the steepest angle sand dunes can hold. The cross-beds don’t have to be in the same direction — their direction is dependent on the prevailing wind when the dunes were active.
You can read about the geology of Zion in more detail at Wikipedia. I know Wikipedia has a mixed reputation, but since they’ve started requiring source citations, I’ve found them to be generally more accurate about many scientific topics than the popular press (the Jurassic beaver-like mammaliaform Castorocauda lutrasimilis is a good example of this phenomenon).
A final note: if anyone’s reading this, I’d love to hear from you. Comments, criticisms, suggestions, etc. Just click the “comments” link at the bottom of the post; you don’t have to have a blog or provide an email address to comment.
Post #3 for National Park Week 2006.
Dinosaur National Monument is the best known of the “fossil parks.” Although many national park units have fossil resources, only a few were made parks primarily because of those resources. These “fossil parks” feature protecting and studying their fossil resources prominently in their mission statements.
Hills of the late Jurassic Morrison Formation, Dinosaur National Monument, Utah. Photo (c) 2003 Melissa Barton
Dinosaur National Monument overlaps the Colorado/Utah border. The colorful shales of the Morrison Formation date to the late Jurassic (145-154 million years ago), and are packed with dinosaurs. Many of the world’s most exciting dinosaur specimens have come from the Morrison in the U.S. and Canada.
Paleontologists have barely scratched the surface of the monument’s excavation potential. I was pretty shocked to learn three years ago that the monument only has one paleontologist and one geologist/paleontologist on staff! Now I know that this is pretty typical for the National Park Service, which only has a handful of positions for paleontologists. It still makes me sad.
Dinosaur skeleton exposed in the rockface at the Dinosaur Quarry Visitor Center. Photo (c) 2003 Melissa Barton
Unfortunately, I didn’t write down what this dinosaur was when I took the picture three years ago, and dinosaurs are not my area. But he’s a nice specimen. The visitor center is very well-done in terms of giving the visitor a look at a “dig” — the semi-excavated quarry wall and the fossil preparation lab (Dinosaur NM has a world-class preparator) are both viewable by the public.
Dinosaur has a nice virtual museum where you can learn about the fossils and history of the monument. Most of the fossils found there are sauropods, the long-necked, long-tailed plant eaters like Apatosaurus (formerly Brontosaurus). They’ve also found Stegosaurus, some ornithopods (small, bipedal plant eaters), and therapods (large carnivores like Allosaurus).
Post #2 for National Park Week 2006.
The Garden of the Gods is a public park in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Its dramatic scenery is formed by hogbacks of sedimentary rock formations tilted 90º or more from their original horizontal position.
Snow-covered Pikes Peak forms the backdrop for the redrock hogbacks of Garden of the Gods. Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
The formations of Garden of the Gods cover millions of years of Earth’s history. Several of the formations were desposited when Colorado was part of the Western Interior Seaway, and dinosaurs roamed the seashores. Later, massive faulting along the Front Range tilted the rocks to their present near-vertical positions.
The first things we saw when we arrived for the Earth Day celebrations were the llamas. Now, as a small girl, I never wanted a pony — I wanted a llama. Llamas are gregarious herd animals by nature, though, and for some reason my parents weren’t too keen on me getting a herd of llamas for our small suburban backyard (imagine!). But I remain very fond of them.
Lefty the llama gets a drink of water. Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
These llamas were from Touch the Earth Ranch, which provides llamapacking tours in Colorado’s backcountry. Each llama can carry about a 100 pounds, and it’s easy to take more than one llama per person, according to the ranch representative I talked to. Backpacking without the pain and suffering — I definitely have to look into this!
Next we headed upstairs in the visitor center to see the birds of prey from the Raptor Center of Pueblo.
American kestrel (”sparrowhawk”). Although tiny, they do eat mice and occasionally songbirds as well as large insects. This one had a broken pelvis, and might not be able to hunt in the wild. Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
Finally, we watched the Sweetwater Native American Dancers perform.
Sunshine Sweetwater performing a fancy shawl dance at Garden of the Gods Earth Day 2006. Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
Sunshine Sweetwater is one of the country’s best young fancy shawl dancers. Over the past two years, she has won competitions in eight states. The fancy shawl dance is a graceful, beautiful dance that requires perfect timing from the dancer, and knowledge of the timing of many different songs.
Elvira Spencer Sweetwater performing a hoop dance at Garden of the Gods Earth Day 2006. Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
The hoop dance is one of the most agile and difficult Native American dances — Elvira Spencer Sweetwater trains hard and sometimes performs the dance six or seven times a day. First she uses half of the hoops to make a sphere representing the Moon and Earth, and then goes through several different figures like this one with the other half. The dance ends with her forming this set of hoops into another sphere representing the Sun.
If you have the chance to see the Sweetwater Dancers, I highly recommend the experience.
Last summer I interned at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, a small park located high in the Front Range of Colorado. The region is fairly dry, hot during the summer and cold in winter, dominated by pine and aspen forests. Black bears are a fairly common sites for residents — our chief ranger had a pawprint on his living room window as a souvenir! One volunteer has chased bears off his porch.
One day we found some paw prints in the mud just outside the administration building.
Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
One of my fellow interns, being a good paleontologist, whipped out his centimeter scale so we could take some pictures with context.
Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
These are pretty small prints for a bear, so it was probably a juvenile. I’ve never seen a wild bear, but it was pretty exciting to find the prints right next to our offices.
Rangers occasionally encounter mountain lions as well, and elk, deer, and porcupine are fairly common sightings. Bighorn sheep frequent nearby Mueller State Park.
Post #1 for National Park Week 2006.
Not only is tomorrow, April 22, Earth Day, but it kicks off this year’s mysteriously nine-day-long National Park Week (April 22-30, 2006).
In this year’s proclamation, President George W. Bush wrote,
In America’s national parks, the magnificent beauty of our country and important examples of our Nation’s cultural heritage are preserved and made available to Americans and visitors from all over the world. Each year, as we observe National Park Week, we underscore our commitment to conserve our natural and historical treasures and encourage more Americans to enjoy, learn from, and protect these important parts of our heritage.”
Words I can get behind — although it would be nice if the Bush administration would allocate Federal money to back them up. Parks are increasingly budget-crunched throughout the country, and more and more reliant on volunteers — who are great and invaluable, but not a substitute for paid staff, much less for much-needed building upgrades.
Still, I hope the public will recognize the value of national parks this week and in the future. National Parks (Monuments, Seashores, Historic Sites, etc.) are one of the U.S.’s great national treasures. I’m biased, obviously, but I think they’re the most important treasure we have — our irreplaceable scenic beauty, endangered wildlife, historic sites, and recreation areas. Here are some ideas for observing National Park Week (should you live in the U.S. or a U.S. Territory) and continuing to support your parks:
- Visit a national park near you. Check the schedule at the National Park Week website to see if there’s a nearby park with a special NPW event. If you have children or would like to take a friend’s children, that’s even better — this year’s theme is Connecting our Children to America’s National Parks. Instilling a love of our country’s natural resources in our children is vital.
- Write a check to your local Friends of the Park group. Most large parks and many small parks have an affiliated non-governmental nonprofit. These groups provide valuable resources for parks — funding for interns, special projects, research, exhibit development; advertisement; guest seminars; and more. Most of these services are beyond the park’s budget or scope. Know your Friends group. Love them. Donate to them.
- Apply to volunteer at your park or for the Friends group. As NPS budgets are cut across the country, volunteers become increasingly important. Whether you’re guiding visitor tours or working behind the scenes, we need your help.
In recognition of National Park Week, I will do my best a picture a day from April 22-30, taken at a park I’ve visited.
Virgin Islands National Park. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.
A few weeks ago there was a poll about U.S. National Park Service blogs on the InsideNPS site (viewed by NPS employees). The Park Service seems to be a bit behind the times in blogging, but there is at least one, and it’s a good one:
Virgin Islands Archaeology with the NPS and Friends
This is a nicely laid out, well-written blog sponsored by the Friends of the Park group and updated by interns at Virgin Islands National Park.* It’s a great peek into ongoing archaeological research at the park, and the photos are great.
I really wish my wee little park could do something like this, but we don’t have enough active research at the moment, and it would probably take more intern- and volunteerpower than we have. In the meantime, I’ll just have to start saving up for a trip to Virgin Islands National Park.
I hope we’ll see more NPS-related blogs cropping up as time goes on.
*This blog is NOT officially sponsored or endorsed by the park.
On Tuesday my journalism class went up to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, a small, privately-funded zoo on the side of a mountain (said mountain also harbors top-secret military installations, but this doesn’t seem to bother the animals). Although it’s not the most financially solvent zoo ever, due to lack of public funding, they do a good job with what they have. Their breeding programs are especially successful, perhaps due to lack of stress from city noise.
Anyway, they’re currently in the news for the as-yet-unnamed baby gorilla, the first born at the zoo in 13 years. He’s cute, but he’s also a baby who sleeps 18 hours a day.
The siamangs, on the other hand, were pretty exciting.
Female siamang and baby. Awwww! Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
Siamangs are native to Malaysia and Sumatra. They’re the largest of the lesser apes, and one of the few primate species that forms monogamous pairs.
That’s not why they’re awesome.
THIS is why they’re awesome:
A male siamang inflating his gular sac during a territorial display. Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
Both male and female siamangs have these “gular sacs” on their necks, which they can inflate to the size of their heads to produce resonating calls. Even through the fairly soundproof glass of the enclosure, these calls are loud. The pair started off in unison, alternating between a resonating bark and a sort of mournful wail (a little like elk bugling). As they called, they swung about wildly and stomping on the glass — while staying in perfect vocal unison!
The keepers told us that this is a territorial display, and secondarily, a bonding ritual for the pair. Sometimes a keeper hosing down the enclosure too loudly will set them off, but most of the time the displays seem to be prompted by instinct (there are no other siamangs at the zoo). Captive lions also make territorial calls, although theirs are prompted by sunrise and sunset.
I’m impressed that the tiny baby isn’t deaf yet.
After reading my last post about crocheted coral reefs, my mom started poking around the Institute For Figuring website and found curved origami. She emailed me all excited because David Huffman was one of her undergraduate professors, and he wrote her a glowing recommendation for graduate school (my mom is a smart woman).
Well, that and my mom likes origami a lot.
In retrospect, starting my post-a-day goal the week my thesis was due was perhaps not the wisest thing, but I am through the worst part now. On Saturday, I plan to go check out some of the Earth Day celebrations in Colorado Springs. Garden of the Gods is currently at the top of my list, largely because there will be raptors.
There are few things I like more than unusual and artistic ways of playing with science and mathematics — so knitters and crocheters have long amazed me with their inventiveness.
Now the fine folks over at The Institute For Figuring (IFF), an educational and unconventional mathematics organization, are crocheting a coral reef. No, really. This is pretty much the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time.
Crocheted “mega coral” by Christine Wertheim. Image used courtesy of The Institute For Figuring (www.theiff.org).
Global warming and agricultural pollution threaten corals all over the world, and IFF co-directors Christine and Margaret Wertheim, who grew up in Australia, are particularly concerned about the Great Barrier Reef. They’ve started a project to crochet a woolen reef as an homage to the endangered reef.
The basic technique behind the crocheted corals makes use the method called “hyperbolic crochet,” created by mathematician Diana Taimina. Although the model is algorithmic, differences in wool weight, stitch tightness, and other factors make each woolen coral as unique as a real coral.
The reef is made up of four sub-reefs, each crocheted in distinctive colors and styles to indicate the different marine subecosystems: kelp, coral, anemone, and “ugly.”
The IFF invites crocheters everywhere to contribute to this project, which they describe as “a woolly celebration of the intersection of higher geometry and feminine handicraft, and a testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world.”
I found a Lego ™ rendition of an Escher painting a while back; my mother, being the geek she is, managed to hunt down an archive of the site, which has several other Lego ™ Escher models. Some have photomanipulation, for obvious reasons, but they’re all pretty nifty. They’re near the bottom of the Lego ™ page, so scroll down.
Edit 31 May 2006: The cached version of the site seems to have vanished, but you can see images of one of the models here, here, and here.
