Nature Notes

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Nature Notes episodes

April 06, 2017 Blood, Sweat, and Archeological Discovery in Eagle Cave
Near Langtry, Texas, in January 2017, the Texas Archeological Society hosted the Lower Pecos Canyonlands Academy. It was an immersion in new research into Texas prehistory.
One focus of that research is Eagle Cave. The cave, deep in a canyon near the Rio Grande, attracted human communities for 13,000 years. Sediments accumulated through human use, and those sediments preserve tools and bones, traces of plant foods, ancient latrines.
What does this site have to tell us? And what does research here entail?
“In 1935, 36, the Witte Museum did the first large-scale excavation at Eagle Cave,” archeologist Charles Koenig said, “and they dug what became this trench...”
The limest...
5 min
March 30, 2017 “At Home on the Llano”: Celebrating a Rich Heritage at the Sibley Nature Festival, April 7-8
“It was illimitable expanse of desert prairie... a region almost as trackless as the ocean,” wrote General Randolph Marcy in 1852, in one of the first English-language accounts of the Llano Estacado. The vast plateau, he said, was a place of “uninhabitable solitude, and must continue uninhabited forever.”
We can appreciate Marcy's awe at the scale and starkness of the West Texas plains. But the record proves him wrong. For the resourceful, the Llano has always offered a home – from Native peoples to pioneering ranchers and farmers, to a fascinating cohort of plants and animals.
The Sibley Nature Center in Midland hosts its annual Nature Festival, Saturday, April 8. The theme...
5 min
March 23, 2017 The “Gypsophilic” Plants of West Texas: Botanical Wonders in the Desert’s Most Austere Landscapes
They're uniquely austere landscapes, in a famously austere region. Across the Chihuahuan Desert, exposures of gypsum create white dune fields, badlands, bleached hills, ridges and flats.
But that austerity conceals a surprise.
A half-century ago, botanists turned their attention to these pockets of harsh terrain – and began to find dozens of new plant species. Far from lifeless moonscapes, the gypsum outcrops are home to their own distinctive flora – unique, highly adapted plant communities.
Research on these “gypsophilic” plants continues. It's providing new insight into the fundamental mechanisms of evolution.
Texas' highest peaks rise dramatically ahead. The desert scr...
5 min
March 16, 2017 Handbooks to Adventure: Louis Aulbach’s West Texas River Guides
The Rio Grande, the Devils River, the Lower Pecos. The rivers of West Texas are exceptions to the desert rule. In this harsh land, they're a life-giving resource.
And they're irresistible to backcountry adventurers. There are challenging rapids, and some of the most spectacular landscapes in Texas.
Louis Aulbach published his first West Texas river guide in 1988. His guides are iconic. For thousands of boaters, they've been essential company.
Boquillas Canyon, in Big Bend National Park, is a classic Western experience. The Rio Grande sweeps for 30 miles through the cliffs and spires of the Carmen Mountains.
A native Houstonian, Aulbach was working in the oil industry when he mad...
5 min
February 16, 2017 Bonfire Shelter: A Window into the Daring Hunts of Texas Prehistory
The canyonlands surrounding the confluence of the Pecos River and the Rio Grande are the boundary of West Texas – and they're famed in Texas archeology. Natural shelters here preserve stunning rock art, and one of the best records of North American hunter-gatherer life.
One of these rock shelters tells a particularly dramatic story.
Bonfire Shelter is the southernmost, and perhaps the earliest, evidence of an ancient hunting technique. Here, hunters successfully steered bison into a fatal fall. Now, Bonfire Shelter is the focus of new research.
Though he never witnessed it, he described its results in the journal of his 1805 journey.
“Today we passed... the remains of a vast ...
5 min
February 09, 2017 In the Lower Pecos, New Research on a 13,000-Year Record of Texas Prehistory
Nineteenth century Americans knew the Pecos River as the boundary of the West. And the westering traveler today can feel that transition. In the canyonlands at the confluence of the Pecos and the Rio Grande, the Hill Country gives way to the Chihuahuan Desert. Mountains appear on the western horizon. Ocotillo and yucca stud a harsh landscape.
These canyonlands of the Lower Pecos are also a world-class archeological site. Caves and shelters here preserve one of the richest records we have of hunter-gatherer life in North America. Now, a group of Texas archeologists is taking a new look at that 13,000-year record.
A half-mile from Langtry, Texas, Eagle Nest Canyon is luminous in midday l...
5 min
February 02, 2017 Dodder: A Parasite of the Plains
Survival is a fierce and relentless business. And the strategies for survival are many.
Parasitism – in which one organism benefits at the expense of another – is one of the most ancient strategies for survival. Across the plains, deserts and mountains of West Texas, organisms take advantage of this tactic.
One example is the parasitic plant known as dodder. Studying this native plant carries us into a world of complex adaptations and invisible chemical cues.
It will invade shrubs, herbaceous plants and trees. And on agricultural and horticultural crops – alfalfa, tomatoes, flax, trumpet vine – it can be devastating. With leaves like tiny scales, it appears as a mass of tang...
5 min
January 19, 2017 Centipedes: A Primal Predator at Home in West Texas
They're aggressive, swift in the attack, and deliver a potent, neurotoxic venom.
Mountain lions, raptors and rattlesnakes – West Texas doesn't lack for iconic predators. But centipedes may be the fiercest of the region's carnivores. They're the original survivors, members of an ancient lineage.
They possess only the rudiments of eyes, using antennae to seek out prey. They retreat beneath rocks and logs, in woodpiles. In centipedes, we seem to glimpse life's dim origins, the first instincts of pursuit and survival.
Our visceral response is well-founded. Centipedes were among the first creatures to colonize dry land, 430 million years ago. On solid ground, centipedes are the origina...
5 min
January 12, 2017 Millipedes: The Crypt-Dwellers of West Texas
Apart from the barbed and thorny vegetation, the plains and deserts of West Texas can at times appear still, devoid of life. But a single rain dispels that illusion, as otherwise elusive desert creatures make an appearance.
Millipedes are one of those creatures. Take to a West Texas highway after a storm, and you'll find you're sharing the road with hundreds, even thousands, of auburn-colored millipedes on the move.
These West Texas millipedes spend most of their lives underground. But in their burrowing, and in their sojourns on the surface, they play a valuable role in the ecosystem.
Millipedes are arthropods, the group of invertebrates that includes insects, arachnids and crustac...
5 min
December 22, 2016 The Clayton’s Overlook Exhibit: A Key to Davis Mountains Geology, History
Lava surged and surged again, in vast flows hundreds of feet thick. Eruptions spewed ash and lava. Magma pooled beneath the Earth.
Weathered over millions of years, the products of that fiery activity are sublime today. That volcanic chapter is visible from Alpine and Fort Davis to Balmorhea, in the landscapes of the Davis Mountains.
At the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center, a unique exhibit offers a key to this geologic history. But the exhibit, on the hill called Clayton's Overlook, named for CDRI donor Clayton Williams, has a broader purpose as well – to show how geology shapes the human experience.
Founded in 1974, the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute, or CDRI, is one of the...
5 min

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