Selfless Hymenopterans

[silentspring2-blog1]

Brazil wins legal fight over 100-million-year-old fossil bounty

A French court has ordered the return of 45 dinosaur and animal fossils to Brazil, and will soon rule on the fate of a spectacular pterosaur skeleto

[silentspring2-blog1]

Well-being outcomes of marine protected areas

While marine protected areas are key for supporting biodiversity and coastal communities, the outcomes can be, and can be perceived, as a mixed bag. Synthesizing research from 118 articles, this Analysis draws broad insights about both the effects of marine protected areas as well as which aspects remain understudied.

[virtualfossilmuseum]

Richard Dawkins

[selfless-hymenopterans]

They ditched America to retire by a lake in Chile on about $3,000 a month — and rarely come back

Jim and Lori Dorchak left the U.S. about six years ago. Here’s how they did it, and what it’s really like to live abroad.

[silentspring2-blog1]

Spotted for the first time: a fish holding its breath underwater

Coffinfish hold water over their gills for up to 4 minutes

[virtualfossilmuseum]

March for Science - April 2017. The lower left is particularly terrifying.

[virtualfossilmuseum]

Why we don’t kill mockingbirds.

[silentspring2-blog1]

Twice as many plants have gone extinct than birds, mammals, and amphibians combined

In the past 250 years, nearly 600 species of plant have vanished from the wild

They also had twice as many genes, and still could not adapt.

[virtualfossilmuseum]

In there monumental 1953 Nature paper, Watson and Crick did not report the discover of DNA. Rather, they reported the chemical binding among the nucleic acids that render the beautiful double helix. This is the “specific pairings” they refer to in the above quote. When they said “suggests a possible copying mechanism”,  it was a premeditated and masterful understatement, which had the effect of amplifying the importance of the work. 

Visit the Virtual Fossil Museum to learn more about evolutionary mechanisms and the history of life on earth.

[selfless-hymenopterans]

Education: How to win at evolution

Stuart West and helpers compare the cut and thrust of three games that explore life's greatest competition.

[dinodorks]

Scientists Discover Something Remarkable Trapped in Amber: Ancient Sea Creatures

“Amber from Myanmar in Southeast Asia is turning out to be an incredibly rich resource for examining the natural world of 100 million years ago. In the last year, it’s turned up frogs, snails, a snake, weird feathers, and some pretty wacky bugs. What do all of those have in common? They’re land-dwellers.

But now palaeontologists have discovered something really weird in a small chunk of Cretaceous Myanmar amber: sea creatures, side-by-side with land-dwelling creatures.

That’s four sea snails, and a juvenile marine ammonite from the ocean. Four intertidal isopods (and three more possible isopods), which dwell in the zone between high and low tide, were also trapped, along with beach sand.

From the land, the amber contains 22 mites, what seems to be a goblin spider, 12 adult insects (eight flies, two beetles, a parasitic wasp and a cockroach) and a millipede. And it’s all in a chunk just 33 millimetres by 9.5 millimetres by 29 millimetres.

It’s a remarkable assemblage of creatures.”

[selfless-hymenopterans]

First strict test shows why a junk-food diet packs on weight

A steady repast of pancakes, packaged snacks and processed meats prompted people to consume more calories.

[gacougnol]

Nobuyoshi Araki Björk

[hardwarning]

[selfless-hymenopterans]

Always ash your food. A clean carnivora. 

[saywhat-politics]

Trump, the "lying press" and the Nazis: Attacking the media has a history

Donald Trump's attacks on "the enemy of the people" aren't random outbursts. They have a long and troubling history

[feelingbluepolitics]

Highly recommended.

[s-c-i-guy]

Timeline of Hominid Evolution

A general timeline of hominid evolution based on paleoanthropological fossil evidence.

source

[paleoteacher-blog]

Great chart

[paleoteacher-blog]

The Amazing Anglerfish - Terror of the Deep

Sea Devils are members of Chordata Class Actinopterygii (the bony fishes), Order Lophiiformes (Anglerfish).  As you might guess correctly, they are predators that mainly ply the deep sea. Phylogenetic analysis based on mitochondrial DNA portent their emergence in the bony fish as early as 130 million years ago in the Cretaceous age of dinosaurs. Anglerfish are of particular evolutionary interest because their phenotype exhibits extreme sexual dimorphism as well as sexual parasitism of male anglerfish. Females are several orders of magnitude (100 – 100 x) larger than females in some species. In some species the male lives a parasitic life attached to the female, in order to become sperm donor to her at some point.

Such animals can inspire children’s interest in science and evolution in the classroom.