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Do you like bivalves? Do you like Britain? Then Marine Bivalve Shells of the British Isles is the site for you! [more inside]
posted by Dim Siawns on Nov 14, 2011 - 11 comments

TimeTree is a public knowledge-base for information on the evolutionary timescale of life. A search utility allows exploration of the thousands of divergence times among organisms in the published literature. A tree-based (hierarchical) system is used to identify all published molecular time estimates bearing on the divergence of two chosen taxa, such as species, compute summary statistics, and present the results . . . For those interested in published summaries of relationships and divergence times of major groups of organisms (family level and above), see the authoritative synthesis The Timetree of Life.

Here are some examples to get you started: Humans and Chimpanzees diverged 6.3 MYA; Giraffes and Dolphins diverged 58.3 MYA; Cats and Mice diverged 95.2 MYA; and Dogs and Fleas diverged 777.8 MYA. [more inside]
posted by troll on Oct 27, 2011 - 18 comments

Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group: Taxonomic Data of the Breadties of the World [via]
posted by brundlefly on Jun 6, 2011 - 15 comments

The Galaxy Garden is a 100-foot diameter outdoor scale model of the Milky Way, mapped in living plants and flowers and based on current astrophysical data. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation on Nov 28, 2010 - 11 comments

The Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names. Via.
posted by cashman on Sep 21, 2010 - 32 comments

Circus of the Spineless #50 - the 50th in a series of collections of scientists' favorite disgusting, glorious, and gloriously disgusting invertebrates. Previously
posted by Burhanistan on May 7, 2010 - 7 comments

The Encyclopedia of Life [previously] is E.O. Wilson's dream become reality. It has been online since February of 2008, aiming to catalog the currently known 1.9 million species on our planet. You can also add text, images, video, comments, and tags. [ FAQ • Video Introduction • Tutorials ]
posted by not_on_display on Jan 30, 2010 - 10 comments

In 2005, the first comprehensive characterisation of decapod fauna of the continental margin of southwestern Australia was performed. 524 provisional species were identified, including 175 species (33%) that were new to science, each needing to be named. Earlier this year the naming rights for one particular unnamed spotted shrimp went up for auction to support the Australian Marine Conservation Society. Bob Rosenberry, journalist and publisher of Shrimp News International was an enthusiastic bidder, with plans to name the species Lebbeus shrimpnewsii, until he learned he couldn't name it after a commercial entity. The winner was a surprise to all involved: Lucien James "Luc" Longley, retired NBA player. (via) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Dec 7, 2009 - 13 comments

Internet Mapping Project l slide-showl more about it here. Please draw a map of the internet, as you see it. Indicate your "home". You can download a blank PDF here and email it to [Kevin Kelly] when done. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Jul 30, 2009 - 7 comments

The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, casually referred to as Sōkendai (a contraction of Sōgō kenkyū daigakuin daigaku), was founded in 1988 as the 96th national university in Japan. Amongst other things, it is home to the Soken Taxa Web Server which in turn hosts the first online Japanese Ant Color Image Database that currently lists 273 species of ant, the Illustrated Guide of Marine Mammals and the Marine Mammals Stranding DataBase, the Mammalian Crania Photographic Archive that currently includes 704 specimens, the Morning Glories Database that covers the many mutants of Ipomoea nil, closely related species and interspecific hybrids, the Makino Herbarium Database, which is named after the pioneering Japanese botanist, Tomitaro Makino, and the Japanese Bees Image Database.
posted by filthy light thief on Apr 20, 2009 - 5 comments

The Visual Telling of Stories
A lyrical encyclopedia of visual propositions;
a visually orientated taxonomy of the ways in which pictures are used to tell stories. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Feb 18, 2009 - 5 comments

What Is A Species? "To this day, scientists struggle with that question. A better definition can influence which animals make the endangered list."
posted by homunculus on Jun 8, 2008 - 11 comments

This mind-boggling index won an award from the American Society of Indexers. Last year's winner was slightly less hard-core. As indexing blogger Seth Maislin says: "Scholarly indexing is WAY hard." And, as author Mary Beard (who indexed her own book) says, it's "Not remotely fun."
posted by tombola on Nov 20, 2007 - 19 comments

Are you annoyed that there is no species of blind cave spider named Sinopoda metafilteris or worm salamander named Oedipina bluepepsi? You can fix that for 3,000 Euros at the controversal BIOPAT. For inspiration, the Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature site collects the puns, insults, and other weirdnesses that can be found in the scientific names of various plants and animals [prev.]. Genes are not immune to weird names, especially in the case of the fruitfly, where clever naming is normal; but even better are the world's strangest dinosaur names, which allow you to tremble in fear in front of the bambiraptor and meet the Dragon King of Hogwarts.
posted by blahblahblah on Apr 9, 2007 - 13 comments

Some preserved animals. The Museum Adolphi Friderici has a catalogue in progress of the King Adolf Fredrik and Queen Lovisa collections. The collections apparently formed the basis for Carl Linnaeus's knowledge of animals.
posted by tellurian on Aug 1, 2005 - 2 comments

Exploring enron -- A breathtaking web of conspiratorial email messages. How often did Jeff Skilling email Ken Lay? How often were those emails about company business? Internal alliances? The company's allegiance? The California energy crisis? Who else was talking about it? Who wasn't? Temptingly complete with software download and MySQL tables for your own tinfoil hat explorations.
posted by boo_radley on Jun 13, 2005 - 10 comments

The Collier Classification System for Very Small Objects. By the Collier taxonomy, this bugger, which I just pulled from my heel, would be an onlipart shosolattach tanpointisharpanilik. [via]
posted by Tufa on May 27, 2005 - 15 comments

The Barcode of life is a short DNA sequence, from a uniform locality on the genome, used for identifying species. This can revolutionize taxonomy, if more people join the consortium and more species are added to the database. This device would be a biologist's Uber-pony. (via World Changing)
posted by dhruva on Feb 12, 2005 - 3 comments

When you create living, self-replicating cells from scratch in your lab, please include a barcode!
posted by mcgraw on Feb 10, 2005 - 15 comments

Arsole? Putrescine? Dickite? Moronic Acid? This list of Molecules with Silly or Unusual Names (one NSFW image) proves that scientists can be funny, as does this Stuffy Scientists page, and Mark Isaak's terribly thorough Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature (see, especially, Puns). If you are tempted to wonder what the Father of Taxonomy might have thought of the irreverence of those last two collections, keep in mind that Linnaeus himself named this plant "Clitoria Mariana" in honor of an 'acquaintance', according to this page.
posted by taz on May 18, 2004 - 10 comments

The Tree of Life.
posted by Gyan on Apr 26, 2004 - 8 comments

Randall Trigg's taxonomy of hyperlinks. Detailed thesis here.
posted by monju_bosatsu on Jul 13, 2003 - 2 comments

Homophobia is not a phobia, researchers conclude. Well, DUH! However, it's really going to be difficult to march down the street chanting "Hey hey, ho ho, high negative affect scorers on the Index of Attitudes Toward Homosexuality have got to go!"
posted by WolfDaddy on Jun 13, 2002 - 35 comments

Mantophasmatodea! No, it's not some new sex position, it's a new order of insect life, the first one thus defined since 1914.
posted by WolfDaddy on Apr 19, 2002 - 10 comments

Are taxonomai copyrightable? This topic isn't new; West Publishing stole their legal referencing system from the government, then copyrighted it and successfully sued a couple people out of business. But should it be possible? [Hint: Hell, no!]
posted by baylink on Oct 26, 2000 - 7 comments