Life Sciences
gregladen | February 3, 2009An article released moments ago in PLoS ONE, by Gingerich et al., describes one of the more interesting fossil discoveries ever.
To cut right to the conclusion: We now have reason to believe that the proto-whale Maiacetus inuus, a true transitional form, gave birth on land, not in the water.
Artist's conception of male Maiacetus inuus with opaque skeleton overlay. Credit: John Klausmeyer and Bonnie Miljour, University of Michigan Museums of Natural History
Maiacetus inuus is a newly described member of a larger group of proto-cetids (proto-whales) that are believed to be largely aquatic…
laelaps | February 3, 2009
The extinct whale Dorudon, from the new PLoS One paper.
When the English anatomist William H. Flower proposed that whales had evolved from terrestrial ungulates in 1883 he cast doubt upon the notion that the direct ancestors of early whales chiefly used their limbs for swimming. If they did, Flower reasoned, whales would not have evolved their distinctive method of aquatic locomotion, typified by vertical oscillations of their fluked tails. Instead Flower suggested that the stock that gave rise to whales would have had broad, flat tails that paved the way for cetacean locomotion as we know…
edyong | February 3, 2009Nine years ago, a team of fossil-hunters led by Philip Gingerich from the University of Michigan uncovered something amazing - the petrified remains of an ancient whale, but one unlike any that had been found before. Within the creature's abdomen lay a collection of similar but much smaller bones. They were the fossilised remains of a foetal whale, perfectly preserved within the belly of its mother. Gingerich says, "This is the 'Lucy' of whale evolution."
The creatures are new to science and Gingerich have called them Maiacetus inuus. The genus name is an amalgamation of the Greek words "…
tqa | February 3, 2009
An article published tonight in the journal PLoS ONE is forcing scientists to rethink everything they thought they knew about whale evolution.
OK. That's not actually true. But I've got a bet going that "someone" is going to use the phrase "rethink everything" in their story about this find, so better safe than sorry. Plus, it's a way cooler lede than "new whale fossil discovery matches predictions beautifully", even if the mundane description is the one that's just the tiniest bit more accurate.
Seriously, though, a multinational team of authors led by University of Michigan rock star…
laelaps | February 3, 2009From his instance that human evolution has halted to his rather crummy review of Stephen Jay Gould: Reflections on His View of Life (see my thoughts on the book here), Steve Jones has been raising the hackles of his colleagues more than usual lately. Given that I am not a scientist I cannot count myself among his frustrated peers, but I was aggravated by Jones' latest op-ed "Can we please forget about Charles Darwin?"
Jones is worried that this year's celebration of Darwin's work will overshadow modern evolutionary science. Jones writes;
I hope that, by its end, its subject's beard, his…
clock | February 3, 2009
Mammals That Hibernate Or Burrow Less Likely To Go Extinct:
The best way to survive the ill-effects of climate change and pollution may be to simply sleep through it. According to a new study published in The American Naturalist, mammals that hibernate or that hide in burrows are less likely to turn up on an endangered species list. The study's authors believe that the ability of such "sleep-or-hide" animals to buffer themselves from changing environments may help them avoid extinction.
Ten New Amphibian Species Discovered In Colombia; Secluded Safe Haven For Frogs As Global Extinctions Rise…
tetrapodzoology | February 2, 2009
Welcome to the third, and last, of the rhynchosaur articles. The other two are mandatory reading: part I is a general intro, part II is on jaws and teeth. This time round, we look at the form and function of the postcranial anatomy (well, predominantly at the limbs actually), and also at rhynchosaur phylogeny and at their place in the grand scheme of things [life restoration of Hyperodapedon shown above, from Benton (1983)].
We begin with the forelimb. The rhynchosaur humerus is stout, with large crests for muscle attachment and a wide, flaring distal end. The rest of the forelimb appears…
edyong | February 2, 2009In the movie Finding Nemo, the eponymous clownfish grows up in the security of his home reef and must find his way back after being fry-napped by an overenthusiastic diver. In reality, the larvae of clownfish spend their early lives adrift in the open ocean and only after weeks, or possibly months, do they return to the reefs where they were born.
Their journey is guided by several cues that help them navigate home. The sound of a reef may be one of these but it's clear that the most important sense for a returning fish is smell. Young fish have very well developed smell organs and respond…
jwhitfield | February 2, 2009We left Darwin in a troubled frame of mind. The fossil record seemed to offer little support to his theory (then again, it offered little support to any other theory). By the time we reach the end of chapter 10, 'On the geological succession of organic beings', he's feeling far more chipper:
"[A]ll the chief laws of palaeontology plainly proclaim, as it seems to me, that species have been produced by ordinary generation: old forms having been supplanted by new and improved forms of life, produced by the laws of variation still acting round us, and preserved by Natural Selection."
What…
clock | February 2, 2009
How A Brain Chemical Changes Locusts From Harmless Grasshoppers To Swarming Pests:
Scientists have uncovered the underlying biological reason why locusts form migrating swarms. Their findings, reported in today's edition of Science, could be used in the future to prevent the plagues which devastate crops (notably in developing countries), affecting the livelihood of one in ten people across the globe.
Many New Species Discovered In Hidden Mozambique Oasis With Help Of Google Earth:
Space may be the final frontier, but scientists who recently discovered a hidden forest in Mozambique show the…
sb admin | January 31, 2009Thomas Kuhn -- the one philosopher of science that even ignorami like me have heard of -- said that during periods of 'normal science', researchers only take on problems that they know they can solve. 'Paradigm' is an overused word, but it's a measure of the paradigm-shifting nature of the Origin that in much of it, such as in chapter 9 'On the imperfection of the geological record', Darwin flies blind.
This creates almost as much trouble for the reader as it does for Darwin, as we saw in the previous chapter. The less you can explain, the more you need to describe; where Darwin has cracked a…
jwhitfield | January 31, 2009Thomas Kuhn -- the one philosopher of science that even ignorami like me have heard of -- said that during periods of 'normal science', researchers only take on problems that they know they can solve. 'Paradigm' is an overused word, but it's a measure of the paradigm-shifting nature of the Origin that in much of it, such as in chapter 9 'On the imperfection of the geological record', Darwin flies blind.
This creates almost as much trouble for the reader as it does for Darwin, as we saw in the previous chapter. The less you can explain, the more you need to describe; where Darwin has cracked a…
sb admin | January 29, 2009George Bernard Shaw, according to a comment left on a previous post, thought that many people gave up on reading the Origin because, convinced of Darwin's argument, they wearied of him making his points over and over again.
But I disagree. It's not seeing Darwin restate his case that's tiring. It's seeing him return, like a dog to its vomit, to questions that he admitted in chapters one and two couldn't be answered.
When I read these earlier chapters, I was struck by how skilfully Darwin skirted uncertainties, and even how he used them in his arguments. I thought of giving this a fancy name…
jwhitfield | January 29, 2009George Bernard Shaw, according to a comment left on a previous post, thought that many people gave up on reading the Origin because, convinced of Darwin's argument, they wearied of him making his points over and over again.
But I disagree. It's not seeing Darwin restate his case that's tiring. It's seeing him return, like a dog to its vomit, to questions that he admitted in chapters one and two couldn't be answered.
When I read these earlier chapters, I was struck by how skilfully Darwin skirted uncertainties, and even how he used them in his arguments. I thought of giving this a fancy name…
tetrapodzoology | January 28, 2009Last year Dave Hone (of Archosaurs Musings) and Mike Benton published their analysis of the English rhynchosaur Fodonyx spenceri. Ever one to make promises that I'm unable to fulfil (in the short term, at least), I vowed to cover the group at some stage. Neil Kelley recently reminded us that 2008 was the year in which the blogosphere began to reflect the global Scientific Triassicism movement. Here was the biblical sign I needed to dust off my files and, goddammit, publish on those rhynchosaurs.
Also spurring me into action was the fact that I had to put my much-loved 'The Age of the…
jrosenhouse | January 28, 2009If you saw my post the other day about Jerry Coyne's review of the recent books by Ken Miller and Karl Giberson, then you might also be interested to know that Miller and Giberson have now replied. Click here for Miller's reply, and click here for Giberson's.
Let's look at Giberson, first:
Empirical science does indeed trump revealed truth about the world as Galileo and Darwin showed only too clearly. But empirical science also trumps other empirical science. Einstein's dethronement of Newton was not the wholesale undermining of the scientific enterprise, even though it showed that science…
clock | January 28, 2009Ancient Wounds Reveal Triceratops Battles:
How did the dinosaur Triceratops use its three horns? A new study led by Andrew Farke, curator at the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology, located on the campus of The Webb Schools, shows that the headgear was not just for looks. Battle scars on the skulls of Triceratops preserve rare evidence of Cretaceous-era combat.
Birds Survived Mass Extinction That Wiped Out Dinosaurs Because Of Their Larger Brains:
The Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction 65 million years ago may have wiped out the dinosaurs, but those that survived - the ancestors of today's…
clock | January 27, 2009There are 13 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week (wow! two circadian papers, plus dinosaurs and honeybees and heterochrony! - what a week!) - you go and look for your own favourites:
Evidence of Combat in Triceratops:
The horns and frill of Triceratops and other ceratopsids (horned dinosaurs) are…
jrosenhouse | January 26, 2009Jerry Coyne returns to the pages of The New Republic with this review of Ken Miller's recent book Only a Theory and Karl Giberson's book Saving Darwin. I previously reviewed Giberson's book here and Miller's book here.
Miller and Giberson, recall, were both rying to carve out space for a reconciliation of evolution with Christianity. Coyne's verdict:
This disharmony is a dirty little secret in scientific circles. It is in our personal and professional interest to proclaim that science and religion are perfectly harmonious. After all, we want our grants funded by the government, and our…
tetrapodzoology | January 26, 2009
The mystery skull from the other day is indeed that of a charadriiform: more specifically that of an auk and, most specifically of all, that of a Razorbill Alca torda. Well done Dartian and Kryptos18, and well done everyone else for trying. I admit that I deliberately showed the skull in 'front view' (rostral or anterior view) because this made things more difficult. Furthermore, I was hoping that at least some people might make the fairly obvious mistake of identifying the skull as that of a dodo or raptor. Had you not recognised the skull immediately, here's how you might have identified…