Fossilized Creature named after Johnny Depp!

I have to hand it once again to the intrepid geeks and nerdlings over at ScienceDaily.com!

Actor Johnny Depp Immortalized in Name of Fossilized Creature With ‘Scissor Hand’ Claws

The article begins, “A scientist has discovered an ancient extinct creature with ‘scissor hand-like’ claws in fossil records and has named it in honour of his favourite movie star.”

The 505-million-year-old fossil called Kooteninchela deppi (pronounced Koo-ten-ee-che-la depp-eye), which is a distant ancestor of lobsters and scorpions, was named after the actor Johnny Depp for his starring role as Edward Scissorhands — a movie about an artificial man named Edward, an unfinished creation, who has scissors for hands.

(What a cutie. Just like its namesake!)

Kooteninchela deppi is helping researchers to piece together more information about life on Earth during the Cambrian period when nearly all modern animal types emerged.

David Legg, who carried out the research as part of his PhD in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, says:

“When I first saw the pair of isolated claws in the fossil records of this species I could not help but think of Edward Scissorhands. Even the genus name, Kootenichela, includes the reference to this film as ‘chela’ is Latin for claws or scissors. In truth, I am also a bit of a Depp fan and so what better way to honour the man than to immortalise him as an ancient creature that once roamed the sea?”

It lived in shallow seas off the coast of what is now British Columbia, Canada, although in those days, the area was closer to the equator.

It was approximately four centimetres long with a trunk for a body and millipede-like legs and large eyes which it used to search for food along the sea floor, according to research published in the Journal of Palaeontology.

The researcher believes that Kooteninchela deppi would have been a hunter or scavenger. Its large Edward Scissorhands-like claws with their elongated spines may have been used to capture prey, or they could have helped it to probe the sea floor looking for sea creatures hiding in sediment.

(Kooteninchela deppi – a distant relative of lobsters & scorpions)

It also had large eyes composed of many lenses like the compound eyes of a fly. They were positioned on top of movable stalks called peduncles to help it more easily search for food and look out for predators.

The researchers discovered that Kooteninchela deppi belongs to a group known as the ‘great-appendage’ arthropods, which includes spiders, scorpions, centipedes, millipedes, insects and crabs.

Mr Legg said: ‘Just imagine it – the prawns covered in mayonnaise in your sandwich, the spider climbing up your wall and even the fly that has been banging into your window and annoyingly flying into your face are all descendants of Kooteninchela deppi.’

‘Current estimates indicate that there are more than one million known insects and potentially 10 million more yet to be categorised, which potentially means that Kooteninchela deppi has a huge family tree.’

Legg now wants to study the fossils from the Ordovician period, when species diversity increased.

The research was published in the Journal of Palaeontology 2 May 2013.

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Journal Reference:

1. David Legg. Multi-Segmented Arthropods from the Middle Cambrian of British Columbia (Canada). Journal of Paleontology, 2013; 87 (3): 493 DOI: 10.1666/12-112.1

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State of Israel born – May 14, 1948

On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly recommended the adoption and implementation of the partition plan of  Mandatory Palestine.

On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared ”the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel,” a state independent upon the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine, 15 May 1948.

May the Almighty continue to bless and protect Israel.

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Fencing Chart

I’m a bit of a sword nut.

So is my son, really.

My apartment has been described as ‘bristling with weaponry!’

Judge my delight, then, when I ran across this little chart.

Love it. Had to share it!

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The Western Stone

I visited Israel this year for the first time from February 11th to the 25th. It was a mind-blowing experience.

One of the top, if not THE top, “must see” sights is the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

This is the view most people have in mind when they think of the Western Wall.

What most people fail to realize is that section of the Western Wall is only about the top 55 feet or so. It continues down underground for another 100 feet! This is because the section of the Western Wall Plaza you see above was built on a series of arches extending up from true ground level.

In order to more fully appreciate all of the Western Wall, you really need to take what is known as the Tunnel Tour.

Once you get underground, you can see how the Plaza above rests on top of huge arches leading up to the Wall.

The first thing you encounter when you reach the Wall is what is known as the Western Stone.

It’s big. REALLY big. The stone is 13.6 meters (44.6 feet) long and 3 metres (9.8 feet) high and has an estimated width of 3.3 meters (10.8 feet).

This single stone is about the size of a modern day bus. It is one of the largest building stones in the world. It weighs 570 tons!!

(Right section of the Stone)

It starts here at the right…

(Centre section of the stone)

… continues on… and on… for almost 45 feet..

(Left section of the Stone)

And ends at the left of this frame.

(Me obstructing the view of the Western Stone)

No one knows how the Jews were able to place a block this big in this spot!

There is not a crane in modern day Israel today that is capable of lifting this stone.

(Me at the Western Wall)

So if you are ever looking at The Wall from the Plaza, think of the depth (in all senses of the word) of that structure.

May the Temple be rebuilt, speedily and in our time.

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All photos taken by Daniel Ventresca using a Canon PowerShot A2400 IS digital camera. Last image taken by Tomer Aharon.

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Survival of the… Prettiest?

You’ve got to hand it to the geeks and nerdlings over at ScienceDaily.com!

Yesterday’s headline really caught my eye.

Survival of the Prettiest: Sexual Selection Can Be Inferred from the Fossil Record

The article begins, “Detecting sexual selection in the fossil record is not impossible, according to scientists writing in Trends in Ecology and Evolutionthis month, co-authored by Dr Darren Naish of the University of Southampton.”

The term “sexual selection” refers to the evolutionary pressures that relate to a species’ ability to repel rivals, meet mates and pass on genes. We can observe these processes happening in living animals but how do paleontologists know that sexual selection operated in fossil ones?

(Sexual dimorphism in the pterosaur Darwinopterus [Image by Mark Witton])

Historically, palaeontologists have thought it challenging, even impossible, to recognise sexual selection in extinct animals. Many fossil animals have elaborate crests, horns, frills and other structures that look like they were used in sexual display but it can be difficult to distinguish these structures from those that might play a role in feeding behaviour, escaping predators, controlling body temperature and so on.

However in their review, the scientists argue that clues in the fossil record can indeed be used to infer sexual selection.

“We see much evidence from the fossil record suggesting that sexual selection played a major role in the evolution of many extinct groups,” says Dr Naish, of the University’s Vertebrate Palaeontology Research Group.

“Using observations of modern animal behaviour we can draw analogies with extinct animals and infer how certain features improve success during courtship and breeding.”

(Above image of sexual selection in dinosaurs may not be 100% accurate)

Modern examples of sexual selection, where species have evolved certain behaviours or ornamentation that repel rivals and attract members of the opposite sex, include the male peacock’s display of feathers, and the male moose’s antlers for use in clashes during mating season.

Whilst these features might have had multiple uses, the authors conclude that sexual selection should not be ruled out.

“Some scientists argue that many of the elaborate features on dinosaurs were not sexually selected at all,” adds Dr Naish, who is based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.

“But as observations show that sexual selection is the most common process shaping evolutionary traits in modern animals, there is every reason to assume that things were exactly the same in the distant geological past.”

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Journal Reference:

• Robert J. Knell, Darren Naish, Joseph L. Tomkins, David W.E. Hone. Sexual selection in prehistoric animals: detection and implications. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2013; 28 (1): 38 DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2012.07.015

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Earth History in One Minute!

This video, entitled “Our Story in 1 Minute”…

… created by MelodySheep.

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Video Credit & Copyright: MelodySheep, Symphony of Science, John Boswell; Music Credit: Our Story

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Ancient Humans Get a Genetic Census

With about 7 billion people on earth, it’s hard to imagine that human populations were once incredibly small.

Recently, scientists ‘counted’ people who lived 1.2 million years ago by analyzing the human genome.

Some of the information in our DNA has been passed down from those times: over 48,000 generations.

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Dogs may have helped Humans beat the Neanderthals

Dogs may have helped Humans beat the Neanderthals

One of the most compelling – and enduring – mysteries in archaeology concerns the rise of early humans and the decline of Neanderthals. For about 250,000 years, Neanderthals lived and evolved, quite successfully, in the area that is now Europe. Somewhere between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago, early humans came along.

They proliferated in their new environment, their population increasing tenfold in the 10,000 years after they arrived; Neanderthals declined and finally died away.(The skull of what may be the earliest known dog, which dates to 31,700 years ago. The prehistoric skull was excavated at Goyet Cave in Belgium.)

What happened? What went so wrong for the Neanderthals — and what went so right for us humans?

The cause, some theories go, may have been environmental, with Neanderthals’ decline a byproduct of – yikes – climate change. It may have been social as humans developed the ability to cooperate and avail themselves of the evolutionary benefits of social cohesion. It may have been technological, with humans simply developing more advanced tools and hunting weapons that allowed them to snare food while their less-skilled counterparts starved away.

The Cambridge researchers Paul Mellars and Jennifer French have another theory, though. In a paper in the journal Science, they concluded that “numerical supremacy alone may have been a critical factor” in human dominance – with humans simply crowding out the Neanderthals. Now, with an analysis in American Scientist, the anthropologist Pat Shipman is building on their work. After analyzing the Mellars and French paper and comparing it with the extant literature, Shipman has come to an intriguing conclusion: that humans’ comparative evolutionary fitness owes itself to the domestication of… dogs.

Yep. Man’s best friend, Shipman suggests, might also be humanity’s best friend. Dogs might have been the technology that allowed early humans to flourish.

Shipman analyzed the results of excavations of fossilized canid bones – from Europe, during the time when humans and Neanderthals overlapped. Put together, they furnish some compelling evidence that early humans, first of all, engaged in ritualistic dog worship. Canid skeletons found at a 27,000-year-old site in Předmostí, of the Czech Republic, displayed the poses of early ritual burial. Drill marks in canid teeth found at the same site suggest that early humans used those teeth as jewelry — and Paleolithic people, Shipman notes, rarely made adornments out of animals they simply used for food.

There’s also the more outlying fact that, like humans, dogs are rarely depicted in cave art – a suggestion that cave painters might have regarded dogs not as the game animals they tended to depict, but as fellow-travelers.

(Neanderthal man)

Shipman speculates that the affinity between humans and dogs manifested itself mainly in the way that it would go on to do for many more thousands of years: in the hunt. Dogs would help humans to identify their prey; but they would also work, the theory goes, as beasts of burden – playing the same role for early humans as they played for the Blackfeet and Hidatsa of the American West, who bred large, strong dogs specifically for hauling strapped-on packs. (Paleolithic dogs were big to begin with: They had, their skeletons suggest, a body mass of at least 70 pounds and a shoulder height of at least 2 feet – which would make them, at minimum, the size of a modern-day German Shepherd.) Since transporting animal carcasses is an energy-intensive task, getting dogs to do that work would mean that humans could concentrate their energy on more productive endeavors: hunting, gathering, reproducing.

The possible result, Shipman argues, was a virtuous circle of cooperation — one in which humans and their canine friends got stronger, together, over time.

There’s another intriguing — if conjecture-filled — theory here, too. It could be, Shipman suggests, that dogs represented even more than companionate technologies to Paleolithic man. It could be that their cooperative proximity brought about its own effects on human evolution — in the same way that the domestication of cattle led to humans developing the ability to digest milk. Shipman points to the “cooperative eye hypothesis,” which builds on the observation that, compared to other primates, humans have highly visible sclerae (whites of the eyes). For purposes of lone hunting, sclerae represent a clear disadvantage: not only will your pesky eye-whites tend to stand out against a dark backdrop of a forest or rock, giving away your location, but they also reveal the direction of your gaze. It’s hard to be a stealthy hunter when your eyes are constantly taking away your stealth.

(Ancient dog – expressive eyes and the cooperative eye hypothesis)

Expressive eyes, however, for all their competitive disadvantage, have one big thing going for them: They’re great at communicating. With early humans hunting in groups, “cooperative eyes” may have allowed them to “talk” with each other, silently and therefore effectively: windows to the soul that are also evolutionarily advantageous. And that, in turn, might have led to a more ingrained impulse toward cooperation. Human babies, studies have shown, will automatically follow a gaze once a connection is made. Eye contact is second nature to us; but it’s a trait that makes us unique among our fellow primates.

Dogs, however, also recognize the power of the gaze. In a study conducted at Central European University, Shipman notes, “dogs performed as well as human infants at following the gaze of a speaker in tests in which the speaker’s head is held still.” Humans and their best friends share an affinity for eye contact — and we are fairly unique in that affinity. There’s a chance, Shipman says — though there’s much more work to be done before that chance can be converted even into a hypothesis — that we evolved that affinity together.

“No genetic study has yet confirmed the prevalence or absence of white sclerae in Paleolithic modern humans or in Neanderthals,” Shipman notes. “But if the white sclera mutation occurred more often among the former — perhaps by chance — this feature could have enhanced human-dog communication and promoted domestication.”

Which is another way of saying that, to the extent dogs were an evolutionary technology, they may have been a technology that changed us for the better. The old truism — we shape our tools, and afterward our tools shape us — may be as old, and as true, as humanity itself.

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Author: Megan Garber | Source: The Atlantic [May 14, 2012]

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Sullivan Ballou Letter – Ashoken Farewell

I’ve not yet had the opportunity to see Ken Burns’ masterful work, The Civil War.

But I did see this one clip. [1]

A week before the Battle of Bull Run, Sullivan Ballou, a Major in the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers, wrote home to his wife, Sarah, in Smithfield. The letter was written from Washington, D.C. July 14, 1861, on the eve of his unit moving out to war.

He wrote the letter in anticipation of his death.

It is, to me, the most moving love letter I’ve ever read. By the end, I was reduced to tears.

(Bull Run, Virginia – View of the battlefield)

Sullivan Ballou was killed a week later at the First Battle of Bull Run.

In this 150th anniversary of those horrible, bloody years of the American Civil War, please take a few minutes and listen to Sullivan Ballou’s heart-felt sentiments.

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[1] The music in the background is entitled Ashoken Farewell.

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When Blood-Sucking Mega-Fleas Stalked the Earth!

The giant dinosaurs that roamed the world some 150 million years ago shared the planet with equally daunting parasites: blood-gobbling fleas that were up two centimetres long.

This according to a recent article in Nature, the international weekly journal of science.

(Long, serrated piercing tubes and grasping claws suggest adaptation to feed on hairy animals or feathered dinosaurs)

The article reports on the work of Chinese and French palaeontologists, who have pored over nine extraordinary fossils unearthed from Inner Mongolia and Liaoning province.

The ancient fleas measured just over 20 millimetres long (just over 3/4 inches) for females, and nearly 15 millimetres (over 1/2 an inch) in males, compared to a maximum of 5 millimetres for today’s fleas.

(a, 154244a, female, imprint. b, 154244b, counter-imprint of a. c, 154245, male. Scale bars, 2 mm.)

The dino-era fleas were wingless and, unlike their counterparts today, could not jump and had comparatively small mouths, says the study.

But for all that, they were supremely adapted to their environmental niche.

They had claws which enabled them to grip onto hairy or feathered reptilians, whose hide was then pierced with a long, serrated “siphon” to suck out a blood meal.

(The amazing colossal prehistoric vampyre dino-fleas!)

The fleas were so successful that when the dinosaurs were wiped out some 65 million years ago – an extinction linked to a collision with Earth by a space rock – they smoothly moved onto mammals and birds, sizing down in the process.

The study was conducted by Andre Nel of France’s National Museum of Natural History in Paris, along with paleontologists Diying Huang, Michael S. Engel and Chenyang Cai.

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