Jackson JBC. (2008) Ecological extinction and evolution in the brave new ocean. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105 (Suppl):11458-11465.
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This post is more of a personal note...here are three papers that are really cool must reads:
Williamson SH, Hubisz MJ, Clark AG, Payseur BA, Bustamante CD, et al. (2007) Localizing Recent Adaptive Evolution in the Human Genome. PLoS Genet 3(6): e90 doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0030090
Voight BF, …
It means "devil toad," and it was a 10 pound monster that lived 70 million years ago, in what is now Madagascar. It's huge, and judging by its living cousins, was a voracious predator. If it were alive today, it would probably be eating your cats and puppies.
In other words, this was an awesome…
The title gets the principal objection of any creationist out of the way: yes, this population of Podarcis sicula is still made up of lizards, but they're a different kind of lizard now. Evolution works.
Here's the story: in 1971, scientists started an experiment. They took 5 male lizards and 5…
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” -Marcus Aurelius
How old is life on Earth? If all you had to go on was the fossil record, you'd run into severe trouble once you went back more than one or two billion…
"Pristine" is not a date, and I think it undermines this chart a bit. But the dated items are shocking.
Unbeliev... actually, all too believable.
Damn scary if you ask me! What kind of a future will my six grandchildren have?
That's incredibly depressing.
No, not scary or depressing, just very sad. Oh, I suspect I'll be scared when the zombies start coming for what's left of my food. On the bright side, it just seems like nature doing its thing. What with global warming, peak oil, and all of their consequences, seems like we're in for a big change-a-roo. That's just the ways things are going and nothing, apparently, will really make any difference. That point is way, way in the past. However, Nebularry, I am sorry for your grandchildren. That's a tragedy. Like I said, it's very sad, but very inevitable. I feel equally sorry for the young people I teach. They're in for a "crude awakening." I worry about my dog.
But I am reassured by the fact that humans must abide by the same laws as any other organism. When we overshoot the carrying capacity of our environment, of which all of these things (including global warming) are just symptoms, the result is population die-off, often to levels far below carrying capacity.
I wonder what life will be like on the other side of this great discontinuity. This discontinuity will be the greatest event in human history since the origins of plant and animal domestication. That event was so recent, that I largely think that we have yet to successfully adapt to the changes it wrought. Shades of Ishmael.
"Men go and come, but earth abides."