Got a case of the Humans

I laughed. Hysterically. Probably enjoyed this too much, but I had to share.

Nicolas Steno: You old dinosaur

Today is Nicolas Steno's 374th birthday. For those of you who are unsure of who Steno is/was... I shall enlighten:

Steno was a scientist, but more importantly he was a geologist (and palaeontologist). He identified the relationship between glossopetrae (tongue stones) and the teeth of sharks to be one and the same, adding to an argument established by the late Fabio Colonna; the difference being, Steno noted differences between living shark teeth and those known to be glossopetrae (Owen, 2009). He is the father of the law of superposition, the principle of original horizontality, and the principle of lateral continuity; a basis for stratigraphy.

So, happy birthday, Nic! You old dinosaur.

Owen, D. 2009. Shark: In peril in the Sea, Allen & Unwin, Australia


In Dinosaur News:

PLoS ONE shared "New Ophthalmosaurid Ichthyosaurs from the European Lower Cretaceous Demonstrate Extensive Ichthyosaur Survival across the Jurassic–Cretaceous Boundary".

In brief, a 130 MY old ichthyosaur (Acamptonectes densus) was discovered in Braunschweig, Germany. The sparkling, diamond-in-the-rough snippet of information you should dust off and take home should be that ichthyosaurs are "traditionally" from the Jurassic period; this specimen dates to the Cretaceous. How the ichthyosaur survived the JK event (mass(?) extinction) is beyond me... Oh, but wait! A.densus didn't survive the JK event... essentially, it, among other ophthalmosaurines and platypterygiines continued to thrive: "...diversity and disparity was reasonably high".

Anyway, to clarify what's so important about the "re-writing of pre-history" and what part this ichthyosaur played, I'd recommend reading the excellent ramblings of Darren Naish's blog post (co-author of the PLoS ONE article). There are some wonderful diagrams and anecdotal tidbits within.

A page from a Cycad's diary

Dear diary...

I think I grew a little this last century.
That is all.

Love,
C.

You know those old, awesome-looking, hardy plants that Triceratops liked chewing on in children's dinosaur picture books... cycads?? Well, as it turns out, cycads lied about their age like a 16 year old in a liquor store. They are younger than they appear... sort of... if you count 10 million years young as oppose to 280 mya.

The species around today are not the same species that were around with the early amphibians during the Permian nor are they the same species feeding the plumpy herbivorous dinosaurs. These modern cycads are fairly new in the grand scheme of plant diversification - having only really decided to extend the *snicker* branches of the family *snicker* tree out around 10 mya.

The full article can be found on Science : "Recent synchronous radiation of a living fossil" --- but subscription to the journal is necessary to view it. Or you can GOOGLE it and read the News feed.

Dr. Scott... I heart you.

Joyful tidings!

I've scratched up another dinosaur! And it's a little relation to Velociraptor too. Talos sampsoni. Now why is this little raptor so amazing and exciting to me?!?!

Well, the palaeontologist who pushed for the Kaiparowits Basin Project, is not only the curator of the Utah Museum of Natural History... but he's also DR. SCOTT the Palaeontologist from DINOSAUR TRAIN!!! Yes, Scott Sampson!

I haven't been more excited about a children's TV series since.... I can't even remember! This show got me hooked the very first time I saw it because of one thing that stood out amongst all other children's shows: the correct scientific names for dinosaur species was used to introduce "new" dinosaurs to the imaginations of children. The meaning behind the species names are also woven into the show.

Dr. Scott teaching kids about Deinonychus
(related to Velociraptor and Talos)

Zanno LE, Varricchio DJ, O'Connor PM, Titus AL, Knell MJ, 2011 A New Troodontid Theropod, Talos sampsoni gen. et sp. nov., from the Upper Cretaceous Western Interior Basin of North America. PLoS ONE 6(9): e24487. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0024487

Laboratory story

I had a Cell Biology unit about 2 years ago with a few first year students mixed in my lab bench group at University. I was 3rd year at that time since I was allowed the entire 1st year of my Biological Science course to be exempted but was still required to undertake the Cell Bio unit to progress into Microbiology. I was use to 2nd and 3rd year laboratory work and associating with students who not only dressed appropriately for a lab but also acted mature enough to conduct the experiments.

I recall, and it still makes me cringe to this day, this one particular practical. The basis for the prac was simple - culture two different strains of E. coli in various nutrient mediums to figure out which medium produced a more concentrated culture of each strain and which essentially retarded growth. Straight-forward enough. But this was not the cringy part.

The prac went on for 5 hours, one hour longer than expected due to a little misunderstanding in the required materials by the lab technicians. Not a problem, but it was a tiny bit annoying hunting down LIVE cultures of gram-positive and gram-negative E. coli. Everything completed in the end, I gathered my things before signing off with my prac demonstrator. Walking past the lab bench before mine, I saw and overheard the most face-palming dramatisation (the cringe).

Three (and I'm not lying) blonde 1st year students in short shorts, T-shirts and ridiculous shoes; one in heels and the other two in ballet flats, were discussing the prac in high, giggling voices and dramatic hand gestures. I rolled my eyes thinking "Bloody 1st years; can pick them from a mile away. Who wears that during a lab?!" Everyone I was use to seeing in labs sported comfy sneakers, jeans and various amusing, mostly nerdy, T-shirts.

They didn't look particularly bright, but they didn't appear to be particularly stupid. I mean, they had made it this far into their first year of University. They started talking about amoebas. Totally off-topic from the practical. And this is where things got weird. I was about to leave after signing off, but instead headed back to the bench to grab one more sheet of graph paper to aid in my lab report. I looked up to the other bench to see the tall, leggy blonde doing all the talking stopped in mid-sentence to emphasis her point on how amoebas communicate with one another.

It went a little something like this:

With her arms outstretched on either side of her she proceeded to make slow mesmirising waves that rippled from her finger tips to her shoulders and made the rest of her body sway slightly. She then uttered in a soft, cartoony voice as she swayed,

"I'm an Amoeba"

This whole story was brought about because directly after that lab, I told my boyfriend, Ben, about it and he has never let me forget it. If I'm having a ridiculously blonde day he imitates Amoeba girl to annoy me. I happened to see if I could find something on YouTube with the title "I'm an Amoeba"... there are a few but nothing fantastic. I did find this little gem of a website though. Enjoy.

The future looks tastefully goopy

Look at this fridge! LOOK AT IT! I'm so impressed by this that I looked at my relatively new double-door stainless steel fancy fridge/freezer and sighed with pity. It was great fridge until I discovered the joy of preserving my groceries in lime green biopolymer goop. If only... I'd met goop fridge first, this wouldn't hurt so much.

The designer, Yuriy Dmitriev, is one clever cookie with a brilliant imagination even if I do have to wait until 2050 to purchase one. Oh yes... I will be elbowing my way to the front of the line that day, little 70+ year old me.

Oh my goodness... this is my 100th post!!!

Microscope humour

I'm sharing some cellular level giggles.

Why?

Because I felt sciencey! and we're all part of ...

Learn to NAP - like you mean it

This could change your work requirements quite dramatically; in particular, your productive working hours. I'd recommend full-view for this post.

Hope you nap better now that you know!

Nature abhors a vacuum... and pompous, uneducated folk

They are Apologetics Press. And they offer no apology in slaughtering science with the aim of disproving it (or as they've put it "rationalising") with common sense... and science. Their section, Sensible Science, is full of these common sense scientific articles on why science is wrong and religion is right - a little -hypocritical- guys.

Step up to the plate, my new nemesis, Brad Harrub Ph.D(?) (in what?)

He's one of the leading causes for sleep deprivation in evolutionists; his theories leave your mind gasping for correctly used scientific evidence and begging for a lack of religeous influence. Let me highlight one article in particular: Evolutionists just can't admit to getting something wrong!

This is of great interest to me, as I was researching literature on extant coelacanth by Peter Forey to add to my current research and description of a new fossil coelacanth specimen... and I instead found the link to Harrub's garbage bin, having referenced Forey's Nature article. Harrub goes on to belittle the scientific community for not admitting that they were incorrect in appointing the coelacanth as "transitional species to terrestrial tetrapods", when at the time the living species had not been discovered.

In 1938, a South African museum director (East London), Marjorie Courtney-Latimer, identified a fish as "unique" and ancient in appearance. She took it back to the museum and tried to contact a fellow scientist (with a hobby in ichthyology) and friend, J.L.B. Smith. He finally saw the specimen and declared it to be exactly what Miss Courtney-Latimer had suspected: the only extant species of an ancient fish lineage believed to have been extint since the dinosaurs. Due to this finding, Harrub believes that it couldn't be the direct ancestor to tetrapods because it exists now. The problem with this idea has been seen in the ape-human theory... "if man evolved from primitive apes and ape-like creatures then why are there still apes?"

Well, once upon a time... there were multiple species of coelacanth, big ones, medium ones, and tiny ones; all living happily at different times during the Earth's LLLLOOOONNNNGGGGG series of time periods and epochs. Some couldn't keep up with the changes in the world and died out, other lasted longer... sadly Latimeria chalumnae and L.menadoensis are (for now) the last of the entire Order, being the only living species left from this lineage.

For your benefit and understanding, Mr. Harrub:

There are many reasons as to why these species were not direct ancestors to the tetrapods. Simply, they could be a young species, maybe evolved some tens of thousands of years ago. It could have been another genera from the Coelacanthiformes which gave rise to the tetrapods. But, since science is bound to make a few mistakes now and then as it learns about new species and techniques in understanding currently known species, it is more likely that corrections are made to the phylogenic tree after discovering that lungfish are possibly more advanced than coelacanth (i.e. precursors to terrestrial lungs instead of swimbladder). While Forey says that the extant coelacanth live at depths of 100+ metres (and Harrub suggests that because of the depth, coelacanth couldn't be the transitional species), fossil coelacanths have been uncovered in areas where there was once a shallow sea with reefal fringes and coral atolls. One species does not dictate the behaviour and environmental influences for the rest within its Order.

So, put quite frankly, Mr. Harrub...

Nature abhors YOU!

Vintageosaurus mistakeii

Reconstruction of Laelaps (now known as Dryptosaurus) - by Edward Drinker Cope - possessing a typical (at the time) vertical posture, slouching head and useless arms. Image from Love in the time of Chasmosaurus

We occasionally make mistakes. Everyone can think of at least one major mistake they've made during their career (undoubtedly we make a couple in our personal lives which we may or may not wish to recall). But I want to look into some memorable vintage palaeo mistakes. . . the ones generally made when there is nothing in the known world (19th century known world) that can be comparable to the discovery of massive "lizard bones":

Iguanodon
Most people will recognise this dinosaur more than the first palaeo reconstruction mistake, Megalosaurus. The first reconstruction of iguanodon was the huge iguana-like statue which still stands at Crystal Palace, south London, by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. The "thumb spike" was placed on the tip of the snout, creating a more lizard-like appearance. In some aspects, Hawkins' iguanodon resembles a horned, very toothy chameleon.

The initial reconstruction of Iguanodon by Hawkins, and the current corrected version by Raul Martin.

Apatosaurus (formerly Brontosaurus)
The Apatosaurus went through many changes, but one of the more notable was the correction of its skull. For many years until 1975, the poor sauropod borrowed the skull of a distantly related cousin, Camarasaurus - more closely related to Brachiosaurus. The contrast in the two skull types are quite astounding.

Left is the Camarasaurus skull, which for years was placed upon the body of "Brontosaurus", the skull on the right is that of a Diplodocus, a close relative of Apatosaurus (NE: Brotosaurus) and displays what the skull of Apatosaurus should have been like. Image from Taylor, M.P., Wedel, M.J., Naish, D. 2009. Head and neck posture in sauropod dinosaurs inferred from extant animals. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 54(2): 213-220

Posture, poise and grace
For most dinosaurs, the position of the legs and the weight-bearing stance was often incorrect. Tyrannosaurus, Iguanodon, Triceratops, Stegosaurus and even large sauropods have all fallen at the unbalanced positioning of their limbs and tails. Tyrannosaurus, for example, for many years had been depicted as near vertically erect like an alert meerkat and balanced precariously on its tail (which dragged along the floor similarly to sauropods depicted around the early 20th century). In the case of the sauropods, (such as Diplodocus) they were occasionally illustrated with bow-legs; dragging their enormous bulk through the dirt, long tail limp behind them. Due to this hefty burden, most sauropods were placed in an aquatic setting to allow them more buoyancy. Providing evidence in the fact that poor teaching and a long-standing reliance in religion and Creationism doesn't achieve results in reality.

The reason for bringing up some of the errors in palaeontology (and particularly reconstructions) is in showing that when first uncovered, after the initial analysis and subsequent recording of characteristics and features, not everything about a specimen will be correct. More often than not, since science is forever updating its knowledge and techniques, things which may not have been considered important may, in fact, turn out to be the exact source of information which could completely alter the definition of that specimen... as an example, I turn your attention to BMRP 2002.4.1 "Jane"... (in my heart, always a Nanotyrannus), or maybe the example of the absorption of Stygimoloch and Dracorex as individual species into different growth stages of Pachycephalosaurus would be for better understanding.

"Bird brain"... not such an insult

So, I was going through the TED library of film clips for something interesting to watch and I stumbled upon this piece of gold: Einstein the Parrot.

This was as equally impressive as the documentary I saw of Alex the African Grey who passed away in 2007 at age 31. The vocal range of these guys is amazing and the understanding and recognition of commands and simple words and phrases is really impressive. But the brains don't end at the African Grey Parrot. . .

The kea, (possibly my favourite parrot of mischief) a large New Zealand parrot, have also been know for their intelligence. They've been observed to become destructive (damaging cars, bins, and home roofing), disruptive and bored whilst in captivity; requiring mental stimulation in the form of rather complex puzzles.

CELLS: for the microbiologist in you

The new time waster for me also happens to be a necessary source of scientific revision :) This is a very "cool" (yet nerdy) free online game for the microbiologist in us all... or the science student who requires unique ways in learning cellular function...

Cell Craft