Virtual Fossil Museum

This is the 16th year that the Virtual Fossil Museum has been online.This blog has been added to enable more freedom to carry on our educational goals than provided by the website. Visit: www.fossilmuseum.net

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A brief history of slime

Christopher Howe delights in a new book on the planet’s most powerful organisms — algae.

Science writer Ruth Kassinger, who specializes in botany, covers the entire range of algae. They include blue-green algae (the oxygen-producing, photosynthetic cyanobacteria), red and green algae (close relatives of land plants), and distantly related groups such as diatoms, coccolithophores (responsible for chalk deposits such as the White Cliffs of Dover), dinoflagellates and kelp. Kassinger rightly describes algae as “the most powerful organisms on the planet” — not least for the amount of carbon dioxide they ‘fix’, or turn into organic matter. She sets out to educate us on their importance and compelling interest.

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This is creationist’s most ubiquitous lie of omission, and constitutes proof of their ignorance. Theory is what science does. The formal scientific method does not set out to “prove”. Science accumulates a huge body evidence (truths) that  aggregate to form a theory of an overarching truth. In contrast, religion offers zero evidence that any of their strictures contain a shred of truth.

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Richard Dawkins

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Three Days That Changed Modern Life

Events on this date in 1945, 1974 and 1995 shaped the world we live in today.

The Technology Cambrian Explosion

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Everything you ever wanted to know about the dog Tree of Life, but were afraid to ask

See: Genomic Analyses Reveal the Influence of Geographic Origin, Migration, and Hybridization on Modern Dog Breed Development - Cell 19(4), p697-708, 25 April, 2017

HiRes image

Fossil Museum on Evolution

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Controversial study claims humans reached Americas 100,000 years earlier than thought - Nature

Broken mastodon bones hint that Homo sapiens wasn’t the first hominin to get to the New World. The latest study raises the possibility that another hominin species, such as Neanderthals or a group known as Denisovans, somehow made it from Asia to North America before that and flourished.

Also see: The first Americans: Clues to an ancient migration - YouTube

About the fossil record

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March for Science

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March for Science

Even T-Rex showed up in the rain

Tens of thousands of people gathered on Saturday in Washington DC, and at least 600 other cities around the world, in what may have been one of the largest-ever demonstrations in support of scientific research and evidence-based policy making.

The March for Science was organized shortly after US President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, largely in response to widespread alarm about his administration's attitude toward science. Trump has repeatedly called global warming a “hoax” and promised to roll back numerous environmental protection laws. And in March, the White House released a budget proposal that included double-digit cuts to agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health.

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Early-animal fossil site under threat in China - Nature

Protests result in temporary halt to phosphate mining.

The Doushantuo Formation is a recently discovered lagerstätte in Guizhou Province, China that is most notable for its scientific contributions in the hunt for Precambrian life. Doushantuo is of particular interest because its fossils, dating from about 565 to 590 million years ago, predate the Cambrian Explosion by at least 20 million years. The most fossiliferous zones are estimated to be 570 million years old.

Also see: Virtual Fossil Museum Fossil Sites

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

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Flutterby (Lepidoptera, Papilionoidea)

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Butterflies and moths comprise insect Order Lepidoptera. Interestingly, the fossil records date moths way back into the Jurassic, almost 200 million years ago. Butterflies evolved from moths much more recently, some 56 million years ago during the Paleocene when dinosaurs had been extinct for about 9 million years.

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Why we don’t kill mockingbirds.

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Flowering plants (angiosperms) appear fairly late in geologic time, during the time of dinosaurs some 120 million years ago in the Cretaceous. They are now the dominant plant type with some 0.3 million species known. Symbiosis (mutualism) and co-evolution is common across the tree of life, and bees and angiosperm have a real cozy co-dependence - the bees get food, and the plants get sex. 

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Cooksonia Primitive Silurian Plant Growing on Eurypterus Sea Scorpion Exoskeleton

Cooksonia sp Primitive vascular plant or (Tracheophyte) and, Eurypterus remipes, or Sea Scorpion, Arthropod Subphylum Chelicerata Geologic Time: Silurian Fossil Site: Bertie Group, Buffalo, New York Comments: This association of plant and animal from the Silurian is extremely rare in the fossil record. The early (vascular?) plant, Cooksonia, is associated with an Eurpterus exoskeleton. This species is one of the earliest forms of terrestrial flora, from a time that plants were first evolving features for land-based living. The plant was growing on the discarded molt of a sea scorpion.

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A letter and a sketch by Mary Anning, which describes a discovery of a plesiosaur. Plesiosaurs are the inspiration of the myth of Loch Ness monster.

From Wellcome Library Collections. 

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PALEO BARBIE FOR CHRISTMAS!!

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Thank you extinction. We still don’t quite forgive you for the giant ground sloth, but thank you.

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How Does Racism Make Us Sick? Part One: The Medical Repercussions of Segregation

In the recent White Coat Die-In demonstrations orchestrated by medical students across the nation, aspiring physicians displayed solidarity with the message that racial injustice is a public health concern that merits the attention and efforts of health care professionals. It is clear from the mobilization and investment of our medical community that there is a desire to engage in clearer articulation and understanding of the health disparities landscape.

How does racism make us sick? This piece, written by Jennifer Tsai, explores how instances of racism and segregation have effected the livelihood of minorities. Although segregation in the United States ended several decades ago, the repercussions have effects on healthcare that continue in modern medicine. 

A worthwhile read for all of us medblrs. 

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We pay for racism in many ways. How is denying health to some, not infringing on their life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.