Journal

Say You Want An Evolution

By daryl ⋅ October 16, 2009 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Dinosaurs!

A newly discovered species of pterosaur/pterodactyl has been named Darwinopterus, and appears to be evidence of rapid, modular evolution. [via ScienceDaily] It has the head features of more advanced pterodactyls, and yet a body resembling the more primitive ones. And Dr. Unwin explains all of this much better than I ever could in the article:

‘The geological age of Darwinopterus and bizarre combination of advanced and primitive features reveal a great deal about the evolution of advanced pterosaurs from their primitive ancestors. First, it was quick, with lots of big changes concentrated into a short period of time. Second, whole groups of features (termed modules by the researchers) that form important structures such as the skull, the neck, or the tail, seem to have evolved together. But, as Darwinopterus shows, not all these modules changed at the same time. The head and neck evolved first, followed later by the body, tail, wings and legs. It seems that natural selection was acting on and changing entire modules and not, as would normally be expected, just on single features such as the shape of the snout, or the form of a tooth. This supports the controversial idea of a relatively rapid “modular” form of evolution.’

On a side note, when I was young, I always thought I would do paleontology one day. Or natural history. That was not to be. |:

Vegetarian

On the other hand, a vegetarian spider has been found. First of its kind. [via National Geographic News] It has been named Bagheera kiplingi after the panther in The Jungle Book. Newly discovered species always make me happy. Unless they are subterranean arachnids that have been waiting since the dawn of time to eat our brains and wipe out the earth, of course.

Cards

Yesterday, I took a bunch of photos, five of them, and gave them to five friends. I wrote some stuff on the back, in the way that I always do, and just gave it to them out of the blue. I imagine it must have surprised them, but it was surprising to me too, that I did something so randomly and so whimsically. Maybe it’s the season. There are months of the year where I appear to be more serious and times of the year when I happen to be more quirky, maybe, and this is one of those quirky times.

d

Tags: dinosaurs, evolution, friends, spiders, to the science mobile!