Why is this web site named "walrus.wr.usgs.gov"?
Why can't I find any information on Walrus (the sea mammal) here?
A little history:
In the early 1990's, Pacific Marine Geology (an old name for the current Western Coastal and Marine Geology team), experimented with several new Internet services, including FTP, Gopher, Z39.50, and the Web.
The US Geological Survey at that time had almost no responsibility for biological research. Pacific Marine Geology worked on ocean-related earth science issues only.
We started naming our servers after sea creatures, like dolphin, octopus, squid, ... and walrus.
Walrus.wr.usgs.gov became our Web server. We didn't know then how important Web server names might become.
The Web became more important, many other sites linked to information on walrus.wr.usgs.gov, and we chose to keep this unusual name instead of breaking lots of links.
In the mid 1990's, to confuse matters even more, the National Biological Survey became the Biology Division of the USGS. Some of those biologists do research on Walrus (the sea mammal).
So now we have a bunch of mostly geology information on a web site named after a sea mammal, in an organization that does research on sea mammals elsewhere.
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