Organisms
pharyngula | September 5, 2008Argonauta hians, hitchhiking
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | August 29, 2008Sepioteuthis lessoniana
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | August 15, 2008Loliolus japonica
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | August 8, 2008Octopus sp. kagoshimensis
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | August 4, 2008Many people were writing me wondering wht this mysterious "Montauk monster" that has been in the news might be. It was clearly just a partially decayed mammal of some sort, but Tetrapod Zoology has the details. It's a rotting raccoon.
pharyngula | August 1, 2008Hey, isn't this the time of year you should be traveling to exotic places, diving and snorkeling in tropical oceans, and of course, sending your underwater photos to me to inspire acute envy? That's what Philip Qua did, and here are some cephalopods spotted in the Caribbean reefs off Cozumel.
pharyngula | July 31, 2008
Ontogenetic allometry in the fang in the front-fanged Causus rhombeatus (Viperidae) displaces the fang along the upper jaw. Scale bars, 1 mm. We note the change in relative size of the upper jaw subregions: i, anterior; ii, fang; iii, posterior. d.a.o., days after oviposition.
I keep saying this to everyone: if you want to understand the origin of novel morphological features in multicellular organisms, you have to look at their development. "Everything is the way it is because of how it got that way," as D'Arcy Thompson said, so comprehending the ontogeny of form is absolutely critical to…
pharyngula | July 30, 2008I was asked to contribute to Forbes Magazine package on commuting — never mind that I live across the street from my job, and "commuting" has become a trivial, alien concept — so I had to talk about animals that commute.
pharyngula | July 30, 2008It seems to be an evolving tradition around here to put descriptions of our medical adventures online. Janet contributes with a an account of her recent mammogram. I was disappointed — there are no pictures.
Hey! I'm scheduled to have a colonoscopy late next month! Shall I…?
pharyngula | July 25, 2008Sepia smithi
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | July 23, 2008
Life has two contradictory properties that any theory explaining its origin must encompass: similarities everywhere, and differences separating species. So far, the only theory that covers both beautifully and explains how one is the consequence of the other is evolution. Common descent unites all life on earth, while evolution itself is about constant change; similarities are rooted in our shared ancestry, while differences arise as lineages diverge.
Now here's a new example of both phenomena: the development of segmentation in snakes. We humans have 33 vertebrae, zebrafish have 30-33,…
pharyngula | July 18, 2008This is a long streaming video, so you might want to save it for something to watch over lunch. Mark Norman takes a giant squid apart at the Melbourne Museum.
pharyngula | July 18, 2008Hapalochlaena maculosa
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | July 11, 2008Sepioteuthis sepioidea
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | June 30, 2008
We've heard the arguments about the relative importance of mutations in cis regulatory regions vs. coding sequences in evolution before — it's the idea that major transitions in evolution were accomplished more by changes in the timing and pattern of gene expression than by significant changes in the genes themselves. We developmental biologists tend to side with the cis-sies, because timing and pattern are what we're most interested in. But I have to admit that there are plenty of accounts of functional adaptation in populations that are well-founded in molecular evidence, and the cis…
pharyngula | June 27, 2008Octopus kaurna
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | June 27, 2008
The paleontologists are going too far. This is getting ridiculous. They keep digging up these collections of bones that illuminate tetrapod origins, and they keep making finer and finer distinctions. On one earlier side we have a bunch of tetrapod-like fish — Tiktaalik and Panderichthys, for instance — and on the later side we have fish-like tetrapods, such as Acanthostega and Ichthyostega. Now they're talking about shades of fishiness or tetrapodiness within those groups! You'd almost think they were documenting a pattern of gradual evolutionary change.
The latest addition is a description…