PBS Eons on Toxodon, 'The Creature That Stumped Darwin,' for Darwin Day 2022

Happy Darwin Day! To celebrate, I'm continuing the tradition of sharing videos about evolution from PBS I started in 2016. Like the past four years, this one is from PBS Eons, The Creature That Stumped Darwin.

Toxodon was one of the last members of a lineage that vanished 11,000 years ago after thriving in isolation for millions of years. And its fossils would inspire a revolutionary thinker to tackle a bigger mystery than Toxodon itself: evolution.

Over at my Dreamwidth journal, I embedded this video and wrote "I show enough videos to my classes...so I won't show this. It's still good."

I'm not the only blogger I follow who has written about Toxodon and its co-star in this video, Macrauchenia. Follow over the jump for what J.K. Revell wrote about both in his blog Synapsida.

Vox on the collapse of Venezuela

I mentioned another collapsing country in Vox explains how Saudi Arabia became the largest buyer of U.S. arms and is using them in Yemen.

Another country whose collapse I should write about is Venezuela.  I have not written enough about its situation, either.  I also plan on correcting that.  Stay tuned.

On that note, I present The collapse of Venezuela, explained.

The country is in chaos, but its leaders aren't going anywhere.

Correction at 1:58: It's been brought to our notice that the Supreme Court tried to strip the country's National Assembly of its powers in March 2017 and not 2016. We regret the error.

The collapse of Venezuela and President Maduro's rise to dictatorship.

Venezuela was once the richest country in Latin America. It has the largest known oil reserves in the world. And its democratic government was once praised world wide.
But today, Venezuela's democratic institutions and its economy are in shambles. The country has the highest inflation in the world, making food and medicine inaccessible to most Venezuelans. Over the last four years, its GDP has fallen 35%, which is a sharper drop than the one seen during the Great Depression in the US. The country's murder rate has surpassed that of the most dangerous cities in the world. These conditions have sparked months of protests against the president, Nicolas Maduro. And it's easy to see why: the country has become measurably worse since his election in 2013.

Two Emmy winners examine the condition of the Amazon Rain Forest

As I promised yesterday, I'm skipping to the last paragraph in 'Body Team 12' and 'Extremis' both nominated for Outstanding Short Documentary plus other science, health, and environment nominees that mentions a winner for the subject of today's entry.

Two nominees cover the Amazon Rain Forest and its environmental issues.  "La Amazonía: Un Paraíso A La Venta" from Univision earned a nomination for Outstanding Feature Story in Spanish.  "Deforestation in the Amazon InfoGuide" from The Council on Foreign Relations has a nomination for Outstanding New Approaches: Current News, where it is competing with "Carbon's Casualties" from The New York Times.  That story details the first crop of climate refugees, including Americans living in Alaska and Louisiana who have to move away from rising sea levels.  I might blog about that even if it doesn't win.

Looking at the list in the image above, it looks like I missed listing a feature story on Monarch Butterflies in my examination of sustainability themed nominees.  The listing of nominees by Tom Llamas as he presented Outstanding Feature Story in Spanish shows I missed another about living in the shadow of oil.


She's absolutely right; without a healthy Amazon, we can't have a healthy planet.  Also, I was lucky that I had already listed the winner while I missed two other nominees that I should have mentioned.

Here is the briefer of two versions of the award-winning report (En Espanol: sorry, no English subtitles).

El río Amazonas, la gran reserva natural del planeta, está en riesgo. Más de 20 mil animales silvestres traficados sólo en Colombia en 2016 y alrededor de 120 mil hectáreas deforestadas  han puesto la alerta. Un recorrido por la zona deja al descubierto lo que los promotores turísticos no quieren que nadie vea.

Translation: The Amazon River, the great nature reserve of the planet, is at risk. More than 20 thousand wild animals were trafficked in Colombia alone in 2016 and approximately 120 thousand hectares deforested have raised an alarm. A tour of the area left uncovered what tourism promoters do not want anybody to see.

Follow over the jump for the other winner.