Does mountaintop removal also remove rattlesnakes?

Mining operations in Appalachia permanently alter habitat availability for rattlesnakes

Date:  January 3, 2019

Source:  Ecological Society of America

On the Cumberland Plateau in eastern Kentucky, surface coal mining is destroying ridgelines and mountaintops, and along with them, the habitat of a surprisingly gentle reptile species -- the timber rattlesnake.

"Timber rattlesnakes may be the most docile, calm animals of their size in eastern US forests," Thomas Maigret, a researcher from the University of Kentucky, said. "On several occasions, I've witnessed spiders using a rattlesnake as an anchor for a web. Females, especially, move very infrequently, and pose almost no threat to a careful human."

Unfortunately for the timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) and other species in this region -- both plant and animal -- surface coal mining requires complete removal of mature forest cover and the upper soil layers. This means that soil is scraped away, rocks disturbed and dug out, plants and trees removed, or the ridgetop landscape flattened and made more uniform to reach the coal buried in the earth. This alteration eliminates many diverse, unique places for animals to live and hibernate. The central Appalachia region spans eastern Kentucky, northeastern Tennessee, southwest Virginia, and southern West Virginia and is one of the most diverse non-tropical ecosystems in the world with thousands of plant and animal species, many that are only found there.

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Rare dinosaur from Appalachia identified

Date: January 25, 2016

Source: Florida State University

An international team of researchers has identified and named a new species of dinosaur that is the most complete, primitive duck-billed dinosaur to ever be discovered in the eastern United States.

This new discovery also shows that duck-billed dinosaurs originated in the eastern United States, what was then broadly referred to as Appalachia, before dispersing to other parts of the world. The research team outlined its findings in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

"This is a really important animal in telling us how they came to be and how they spread all over the world," said Florida State University Professor of Biological Science Gregory Erickson, one of the researchers on the team.

They named the new dinosaur Eotrachodon orientalis, which means "dawn rough tooth from the east." The name pays homage to "Trachodon," which was the first duck-billed dinosaur named in 1856.

This duck-billed dinosaur -- also known as a Hadrosaurid -- was probably 20 to 30 feet long as an adult, mostly walked on its hind legs though it could come down on all four to graze on plants with its grinding teeth, and had a scaly exterior. But what set it apart is that it had a large crest on its nose.

"This thing had a big ugly nose," Erickson said.

That large crest on the nose, plus indentations found in the skull and its unique teeth alerted Erickson and his colleagues from McWane Science Center in Birmingham, Ala., and the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom that the skeleton they had was something special.

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