spotted eagle ray | Southern Fried Science

5 things to know about spotted eagle ray tooth plates, August’s 3D printed reward!

Posted on August 17, 2018 by David Shiffman

I recently unveiled a new tier of Patreon rewards: 3D printed shark and ray models!For $17 per month, you will get a monthly 3D printed educational model of different shark or ray parts in the mail, and you’ll be supporting my efforts to provide these models to schools for free.

August’s reward is a row from the tooth plate of a spotted eagle ray, Aetobatus narinari! The original specimen is housed at the University of Tennessee fossil collection, and the 3D scan was shared online as part of the FOSSIL project.

I asked University of Florida/Florida Museum Ph.D. student Jeanette Pirlo about the FOSSIL project:

” The FOSSIL Project is an NSF funded project, based out of the University of Florida and the Florida Museum, devoted to cultivating a networked community of practice in which fossil club members and professional paleontologists collaborate in learning the practice of science and outreach. The myFOSSIL.org website is the platform from which our members can collaborate by sharing their fossil finds, curate their personal collections, and participate in ongoing paleontological research” – Jeanette Pirlo

A full set of Spotted Eagle Ray Jaws showing multiple tooth rows fused into a plate, photo by Cathleen Bester courtesy Jeanette Pirlo at the Florida Museum. The specific individual tooth row that was scanned here, photo by Maggie Limbeck, University of Tennessee Masters Candidate. And the 3D printed version

Learn more about the spotted eagle ray and it’s teeth below!

Thursday Afternoon Dredging: December 1, 2016

Posted on December 1, 2016 by David Shiffman

Cuttings (short and sweet):

How a sawfish uses its saw, from this paper by Wueringer and friends.

How a sawfish uses its saw, from Wueringer and friends (2012), the function of the sawfish saw, Current Biology

Follow Kim Bassos-Hull @MsHullRay , a spotted eagle ray researcher at Mote Marine Laboratory, on twitter! Follow her for news (and awesome pictures) of her spotted study subjects.
A call for more scientists and engineers to run for public office (by Sheril Kirshenbaum). Would you consider running for public office?

Tweets from the American Elasmobranch Society: Biology and Conservation of Rays Symposium

Posted on July 16, 2013 by David Shiffman

The American Elasmobranch SocietyAmerican Elasmobranch Society is a non-profit professional organization of shark, ray, skate, and chimaera scientists. Each year, AES holds an annual conference in a different North American city where members meet and present their research. The 2013 meeting took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico from July 10-15th. The full schedule of talks (including other societies participating in the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists) can be found here.

Presented here are selected tweets from the Biology, Ecology, and Management of Durophagous Stingrays Symposium at the 2013 American Elasmobranch Society meeting.

Tweets from the American Elasmobranch Society: Elasmobranch Genetics

Posted on August 19, 2012 by David Shiffman

The American Elasmobranch Society is a non-profit professional society focusing on the scientific study and conservation of sharks, skates, and rays. AES members meet each year in a different North American city, and this meeting is the world’s largest annual gathering of shark scientists. AES recently met in Vancouver, British Columbia for the 2012 meeting, and for the first time the event was live-tweeted by meeting attendees, including myself. I’ve organized the best conference tweets by session using Storify. If anyone has any questions or comments about the research presented below, please feel free to share it in the comments section of this blog post.

Here are selected tweets from the Elasmobranch Genetics session.