Enrichment is fun! And, as 10-month-old twins Harriot and Helene demonstrate here, it can be super cute, too! Did you know that one of the most important aspects of lemur care at the DLC is enrichment? Daily enrichment is an essential part of animal welfare to promote curiosity, exploration, and mental stimulation. Whether it’s weaving […]
By Matt Borths, Curator of the Duke Lemur Center’s Division of Fossil Primates. Happy #FossilFriday! (Or #TGIFF as we say at the Division of Fossil Primates!) Today we’re seeing double as Vicki, our fossil preparator,* finishes a cast of Babakotia, an extinct lemur that was built like a sloth! The name Babakotia comes from the Malagasy word for […]
By Matt Borths, Curator of the Duke Lemur Center’s Division of Fossil Primates. This jaw is from the extinct giant lemur Archaeolemur, which means “ancient lemur” even though it probably only went extinct a few centuries ago in Madagascar. Like all lemurs, Archaeolemur has a tooth comb, a forward-facing fusion of its incisors and canines. That […]
By Matt Simon. Published on Wired.com on March 5, 2019: https://www.wired.com/story/save-the-lemurs-eat-the-crickets. “One group of researchers and conservationists thinks it can also use edible insects to save endangered mammals. They’ve spent the past few years developing a program to encourage the people of Madagascar—who have historically consumed insects—to re-embrace bugs as a source of protein. That […]
By Matt Borths, Curator of the Duke Lemur Center’s Division of Fossil Primates. Happy #FossilFriday! Check out the jaw of Coryphodon (meaning “peaked tooth”)! This buffalo-sized behemoth walked beneath the trees that lemur and monkey relatives called home in ancient, jungle-y Wyoming 55 million years ago. Coryphodon was one of the largest mammals ever up to its […]
By Matt Borths, Curator of the Duke Lemur Center’s Division of Fossil Primates. This week we joined Dr. Doug Boyer from Duke’s Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine, where we CT-scanned a block that contains a 50-million-year-old lemur-like primate from Wyoming, USA. Part of the skull is visible and even […]
Attention serious lemur lovers and science enthusiasts: we have an amazing new educational series for you! Starting in 2019, we will be offering Wild Workshops throughout the year! Each Wild Workshop will focus on a different subject connected to the work the DLC does here and in Madagascar. We’ll do a deep-dive into subjects like […]
By Matt Borths, Curator of the Duke Lemur Center’s Division of Fossil Primates. Happy first #FossilFriday of 2019! Meet Paradracaena, a large lizard with snail-crushing teeth that lived alongside the earliest South American monkeys. The specimen was collected by Dr. Rich Kay (Duke University) and his excavation teams in Colombia. It was recently scanned so it is cataloged […]
