Monthly Archives: June 2015

Jurassic Maine: Digging for the state’s lost dinosaur past

The movie “Jurassic World” — the latest in a series of thrillers about genetically re-engineered dinosaurs populating ill-advised amusement parks — smashed Hollywood records by opening with a gross of more than $520 million worldwide over the weekend. The movie’s success is the latest sign that people remain fascinated by the long-extinct beasts 200 years after their […]

Use wild opossums to rid your Maine property of ticks

Opossums are North America’s only native marsupials. An opossum vaguely resembles a cross between a housecat and a giant rat, and while they’re tolerated as a relative newcomer to Maine’s wilderness — migrating into the state within the last half century or so — they’re not especially cherished. But perceptions of the creatures as being dirty […]

Did this Maine war hero really deserve a Medal of Honor?

An insightful new piece posted on the website Task & Purpose, a news and culture site geared toward American military veterans, considers the circumstances of the 7th Maine Infantry’s role in the Civil War’s bloody Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862. That was the deadliest day of fighting in American military history — with nearly 23,000 dead […]

6 species that could disappear from Maine within the next generation

In 2011, the journal Science published a groundbreaking study that tracked the recent habitat shifts of nearly 1,400 animals, plants and insects, and the results were striking. Researchers found that the species were moving away from the equator and into higher elevations two to three times as fast as they were just eight years earlier. Essentially, as the Earth’s […]