fossils
pharyngula | November 6, 2009Ammonite
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | November 2, 2009Here's a nice video about pachycephalosaurs describing a little exercise in taxonomic consolidation.
pharyngula | October 31, 2009Shubin had a tough act to follow, coming after Kingsley's great talk. I'm sure it will be good, though — last night I got a tour of his lab, saw the original Tiktaalik specimens and some new ones, and some of his work in progress (which I won't tell you about until it's published), so I'm confident I'm going to have a happy hour.
Darwin pulled together diverse lines of evidence to document his ideas. The different lines all reinforce each other making the argument even stronger, and what we're seeing now is new syntheses, which is the theme of this talk: how do we use different lines of…
pharyngula | October 30, 2009Oops, missed the first part of this talk due to the distractions of Lunch. Walked in as he was talking about tree vs. ladder thinking (people have a hard time conceptualizing trees) and history as a chronicle — barebones description of events — or a narrative — events linked by causal explanations.
It took a century for biologists to use systematics to make testable hypotheses about evolution. Darwin himself talked at length about all kinds of evidence for evolution, but strangely neglected fossils and dinosaurs altogether. Sereno blames this on rivalry with Richard Owen, who was the big…
pharyngula | October 15, 2009
It's yet another transitional fossil! Are you tired of them yet?
Darwinopterus modularis is a very pretty fossil of a Jurassic pterosaur, which also reveals some interesting modes of evolution; modes that I daresay are indicative of significant processes in development, although this work is not a developmental study (I wish…having some pterosaur embryos would be exciting). Here it is, one gorgeous animal.
(Click for larger image)Figure 2. Holotype ZMNH M8782 (a,b,e) and referred specimen YH-2000 ( f ) of D. modularis gen. et sp. nov.: (a) cranium and mandibles in the right lateral view,…
pharyngula | October 2, 2009What a day to be stuck in airplanes for hours on end; I had to slurp in a bunch of files on my iPhone and then look at them on that itty-bitty screen, just to catch up on the story of Ardipithecus. Fortunately, you can just read Carl Zimmer's excellent summary to find out what's cool about it.
For a summary of a summary: it's another transitional fossil in our lineage. Ardipithecus ramidus is old, 4.4 million years or so — so it's well before Lucy and the australopithecines. The latest result is a thorough analysis of a large number of collected specimens that shows it is an interesting…
grrlscientist | October 1, 2009tags: science, Science is Real, They might be Giants, music video, streaming video
Here's a fun music video; "Science is Real" by the creative group, They Might be Giants. This is one of many wonderful songs on their new album "Here Comes Science."
You can order They Might be Giants' new album [CD/DVD], "Here Comes Science" from Amazon.
pharyngula | September 18, 2009This is a very cool fossil, a tiny T. rex cousin called Raptorex. Well, tiny is relative — it was still as big as a human being — but it has the same proportions, the oversized fanged head, the tiny forelimbs, etc., as it's later relative, T. rex. It's simply adorable, in a viciously evil predatory sort of way. Apparently the tyrannosaur body plan was successful at different scales.
grrlscientist | September 10, 2009tags: paleontology, fossils, dinosaurs, evolution, I am a Paleontologist, they might be giants, music video, streaming video
I have been remiss lately regarding music videos because I was in Finland for awhile, and then was otherwise preoccupied. But I just had to share this song with you; "I am a Paleontologist" is by the group, They Might be Giants and is one of many wonderful songs on their new album "Here Comes Science." If I was teaching biology or evolution this semester, I would use it in class.
You can order They Might be Giants' new album [CD/DVD], "Here Comes Science" from Amazon.
razib | August 25, 2009Kambiz Kamrani of Anthropology, normally a rather staid blogger, has posted something titled Science Suffers From The Idiots At Scientific American. It's in reference to this widely circulated editorial, Fossils for All: Science Suffers by Hoarding. I can't really summarize it, and I think the title certainly does invite you to read the whole post at Anthropology.net
pharyngula | August 19, 2009It's the 100th anniversary (we can't say "birthday" for a deposit laid down half a billion years ago, I don't think) of Walcott's discovery of the Burgess Shale formation in British Columbia. I'm not quite sure what one does to celebrate on such a momentous occasion…maybe someone has a suggestion.
pharyngula | August 18, 2009
This is the skull of an arthrodire, an armored placoderm from the Devonian.
Somehow, 20 foot long predatory fish with a mouth lined with razor-edged bony shears has never made me think of sexy time…until I ran across this comparison image.
Oh, schwiiing. It really doesn't take much to get a mammal to associate just about anything with sex. And then, what do you know, the latest Nature has a short article on an interesting fossil: it's the pelvic region of an arthrodire, Incisoscutum ritchiei, and look what it's got: an ossified clasper, comparable to the erectile organ of modern sharks.…
grrlscientist | July 23, 2009tags: Richard Dawkins, evolution, University of Nebraska State Museum, Diatoms, Yellowstone Lake, Stephanodiscus yellowstonensis, religion, fundamentalism, streaming video
Richard Dawkins explains how microscopic algae called Diatoms uniquely evolved in Yellowstone Lake in response to climate change [2:09]
What will the creationists and other fundamentalists say in response to these data?
pharyngula | July 15, 2009Here's an interesting use of tweening: take 5 fossil skulls, use the computer to interpolate between them, and animate the results. 3.5 million years just fly by in 5 minutes.
(The sound track is a bit superfluous though—turn the sound down if you're at work)
pharyngula | June 19, 2009
How can anyone resist an article titled "Sexual Intercourse Involving Giant Sperm in Cretaceous Ostracode"? You can't, I tell you. It's like a giant brain magnet, you open the journal to the index, and there's that title, and you must read it before you can even consider continuing on to anything else.
Some organisms have evolved immensely long sperm tails — Drosophila bifurca, for instance, has sperm cells that are about 60mm long, or 20 times longer than the length of the entire adult body. The excessively long sperm tail is obviously not a structure that has evolved for better swimming;…
pharyngula | June 18, 2009
My previous repost was made to give the background on a recent discovery of Jurassic ceratosaur, Limusaurus inextricabilis, and what it tells us about digit evolution. Here's Limusaurus—beautiful little beastie, isn't it?
(Click for larger image)Photograph (a) and line drawing (b) of IVPP V 15923. Arrows in a point to a nearly complete and fully articulated basal crocodyliform skeleton preserved next to IVPP V 15923 (scale bar, 5 cm). c, Histological section from the fibular shaft of Limusaurus inextricabilis (IVPP V 15924) under polarized light. Arrows denote growth lines used to age the…
pharyngula | May 19, 2009This is an important new fossil, a 47 million year old primate nicknamed Ida. She's a female juvenile who was probably caught in a toxic gas cloud from a volcanic lake, and her body settled into the soft sediments of the lake, where she was buried undisturbed.
What's so cool about it?
Age. It's 47 million years old. That's interestingly old…it puts us deep into the primate family tree.
Preservation. This is an awesome fossil: it's almost perfectly complete, with all the bones in place, preserved in its death posture. There is a halo of darkly stained material around it; this is a remnant of…
pharyngula | May 11, 2009Here's a great opportunity for Minnesota fossil freaks: Minnesota Atheists is organizing a fossil hunting trip to Lilydale park on Saturday, 20 June. Sign up and go collect 440-480 million year old marine fossils. Maybe I'll have to rummage around and find my old rock hammer.
bioephemera | April 29, 2009
Check out Brian's new review of A History of Paleontology Illustration (Life of the Past) by Jane Davidson, in Palaeontologia Electronica:
It is rare for fossils to be featured in fine art, but in the 15th century painting A Goldsmith in His Shop, Possibly Saint Eligius by the Flemish master Petrus Christus there is, if you look carefully, a fossil shark tooth among the objects scattered on the shop's table. The fossil plays a nearly insignificant role in the painting, but it reflects the general interpretation of such natural curiosities at the time. From this modest starting point,…
pharyngula | April 23, 2009
It's yet another transitional fossil, everyone! Oooh and aaah over it, and laugh when the creationists scramble to pave it over with excuses.
What we have is a 23 million year old mammal from the Canadian arctic that would have looked rather like a seal in life…with a prominent exception. No flippers, instead having very large feet that were probably webbed. This is a walking seal.
(Click for larger image)a, Palatal view of skull; b, lateral view of skull and mandible, left side; c, occlusal view of left mandible. Stippling represents matrix, hatching represents broken bone surface. The…