Craig is temporarily a post-doctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who is looking for a permanent position. He spends most of his time balancing his overwhelming geekdom with normalcy so he can function in the real world. Luckily his wife likes his geekiness.
Peter Etnoyer is a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He studies deep corals and ocean fronts, and he loves to be on the water.
Kevin Zelnio is a Graduate Student Researcher at Penn State studying the ecology of hydrothermal vent and methane seep communities. He raises awareness of the plight of the spineless through folk music.
A placoderm fossil called "mother fish" has been recovered from Gogo, an ancient coral reef site off the Kimberley coast of Northwest Australia. The fossil was recovered with embryo and umbilical cord still attached, providing evidence of live birth and sex with penetration in the Middle Paleozoic Era, 200 million years before it was ever thought possible. This remarkable finding shows that egg-laying and live-birth evolved together, rather than sequentially.
The tail-first birthing process was probably similar to that of some species of sharks and rays living today, says the study, published Thursday in the British journal Nature.
Read more here at Discovery News and here at Reuters
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Comments
I love it that this amazing find happened on a whim:
"John and I were just going to write up the fish, describe it anatomically," she recalled in a phone interview. "But we decided to give it one last acid bath to see if we could expose more of the shoulder from the rock."
Makes me wonder how many things are discovered because people decide "what the heck, let's do it."
And many things are not discovered because people decide "forget it, it's my lunch break."
Posted by: Jives | June 2, 2008 9:31 AM
A good scientist lets curiousity do the driving! I've made discoveries that way as well. Just taking the time to look at stuff, for long periods of time.
Posted by: kevin z | June 2, 2008 11:26 AM
and here we thought the kiddie-harness was a new thing...
Posted by: Peter | June 2, 2008 2:17 PM
First ROV discovered...
Posted by: Peter Mc | June 3, 2008 7:49 AM