Stories tagged Diversity of Organisms
Man vs. mammoth: Is a face-off like this in our future...again?
Courtesy redskunkScientists are another step closer to making Jurassic Park a reality. Well, not quite Jurassic Park, but certainly Pleistocene Park.
Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have decoded 80 percent of the DNA for the woolly mammoth, an elephant ancestor that went extinct about 10,000 years ago. The results of their study appear in the journal Nature.
The DNA was extracted from actual mammoth hair found preserved in the permafrost of Siberia. Hair encapsulates DNA, providing a purer source of the genetic material than that found in fossil bones that are vulnerable to contamination by bacteria and other creatures involved in decomposition. We covered this in a previous post.
About six million years of evolution separate the wooly mammoth from its modern descendents the Indian and African elephants. And so far they appear genetically to be very similar, although a complete assessment of differences won’t be available until the complete genomes of mammoths and modern elephants are mapped. The data sets for each is comprised of about 4 billion DNA bases.
But even then you don’t have to worry about rogue mammoths running amok on the interstates (have you ever hit a moose? Multiply that experience by about 15). Science is still decades away from cloning an actual specimen – or even a hybrid with a living elephant - from the genetic material. The technology just isn’t there yet. But that’s not the only thing in the way.
"It could be done,” said co-author Stephan Schuster, a biochemistry professor at Penn State. “The question is, just because we might be able to do it one day, should we do it?"
Sounds familiar doesn’t it? The same question was posed by one of the characters in Michael Crichton's book Jurassic Park just before things got really hairy.
SOURCES and LINKS
Penn State's mammoth research page
Live Science story
Previous Buzz story on mammoth cloning
Tags : This just in: mollusks are still creepy
in Life Science, Diversity of Organisms, Interdependence of Life, and Human Organism
Zoological counterstategists are working around the clock: If they discover what would happen if they wrapped themselves around our faces... The war would be over.
Courtesy ccavinessBreaking news from the field of science: mollusks remain strange, unnerving. Chief among their many unsettling attributes are tentacles, highly developed brains, and an inborn desire to mess up the world of men.
A German octopus, name of Otto, has been conducting small-scale trial runs of what is no doubt a plan to disrupt that county’s entire electric infrastructure.
The staff of the Sea Star Aquarium in Colburg, Germany, had been baffled by the facility’s frequent short circuits and subsequent aquarium-wide power failures, until they began taking turns sleeping on the floor to discover the source of the problem. They found that two-foot seven-inch Otto the octopus, apparently irritated by the bright light over his tank, was climbing to the rim of his aquarium to shoot jets of water at the 2000-watt spotlight above him. The electrical havoc that followed allowed Otto to get his beauty sleep (and shut off the pumps in all the other tanks, slowly suffocating the aquarium’s other animals).
Aquarium officials refuse to acknowledge the threatening situation in front of their faces, instead making excuses for the octopus. When the aquarium closes for the winter, they claim, Otto gets bored and causes mischief for attention and stimulation. In addition to the dangerous act of vandalism above, Otto has been seen juggling the hermit crabs that he lives with, damaging the glass of his tank by throwing stones at it, and obsessively rearranging the items in his tank, to “the distress of his fellow tank inhabitants.”
This is a dangerous situation. What’s to be done here?
Lilydale quarry: Located across the river from downtown St. Paul, Lilydale is probably the most famous fossil collecting site in the Twin Cities. Rock from the fossil-rich site was quarried by the now-defunct Twin Cities Brick Company and used for making bricks.
Courtesy Mark RyanEarlier this week a story appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about fossil hunting in Lilydale Regional Park just across the river from the Science Museum. This has been a long-time favorite site to collect fossils from Minnesota’s ancient past. I’ve collected there often and at other sites around the region.
Fossil cephalopods: Specimen on the left was found at the Lilydale Quarry site. The slab on the right contains two small cephalopod fossils and was found near Shadow Falls in St. Paul, MN. Late Ordovician.
Courtesy Mark Ryan
Ordovician fossils: Typical fossil-filled shale slab found around the Twin Cities’ fossil collecting areas. Late Ordovician.
Courtesy Mark RyanAbout 450 million years ago, the North American continent was situated along the equator, and a warm shallow sea covered much of Minnesota. Sea life was abundant as confirmed by the tremendous amounts of marine fossils that be found around here. Rock formations of sandstone, limestone, and shale line the Mississippi River. The layers are flat and fairly undisturbed from when they were laid down during the Ordovician Period. Most of the fossils come out of the Decorah shale and Platteville limestone.
Shadow Falls: Marcus Kenney and sons Elijah and Benny hunting for fossils at Shadow Falls. The easily accessed site is located near the Mississippi at the west end of Summit Avenue in St. Paul, MN.
Courtesy Mark RyanI’ve been collecting fossils in this area for over three decades, and autumn has always been my favorite time to get outdoors, soak up some sun, and hunt for the elusive trilobite, or monstrous cephalopod (one of the largest found can be seen in the Science Museum’s Dinosaurs & Fossils gallery). You don’t really need much equipment, just a good eye, and maybe something to carry what you collect. Sometimes I like to have a mat or something to kneel on, but that’s me. I’ve been out quite a few times in the last six months and have found some very nice specimens.
Elusive trilobite: Molted trilobite tail. Trilobites are highly coveted by collectors. Late Ordovician
Courtesy Mark RyanThe Minnesota Geological Survey has plenty of information about Minnesota’s geology and prehistoric past. Click on the link to download their publication titled Fossil Collecting in the Twin Cities Area. It includes various collecting sites around southeastern Minnesota and illustrations of the fossils you’re likely to find there, such as bryozoans, brachiopods, gastropods, trilobites, horn coral, pelecypods, and cephalopods.
LINKS
Fossil collecting Lilydale Regional Park (pdf file)
Minnesota Fossils
More trilobite info
List of fossil sites and equipment
More about horn coral
Roadside attraction: Pat Ryan hunts for fossils in the Decorah shale outcropping in a highway ditch near Cannon Falls, MN. The highly fossiliferous site is located about 2 miles southeast of the town center.
Courtesy Mark Ryan
More than enough fossils: Close-up of fossils littering the ditch near Cannon Falls, MN. Fossils at this site are found mostly weathered out of the matrix allowing for the collection of some great individual specimens.
Courtesy Mark Ryan
Trapped in time: Fossil of a cephalopod (possibly baculites?) in situ, near Cannon Falls, MN. Late Ordovician.
Courtesy Mark Ryan
Fossil of Ordovician predator: Fossil cephalopod (possibly baculites?) collected near Cannon Falls, MN. Late Ordovician. Baculites were ammonites with a straight tusk-like shell. The cephalopods occupied the top of the food chain during the Ordovician.
Courtesy Mark Ryan
Fossil coral: Fossil coral (Favosites?) found near Cannon Falls, MN. Late Ordovician. Other than cephalopods, this is the largest single fossil I’ve ever found in the Decorah shale. I believe it’s some sort of striated coral.
Courtesy Mark Ryan
Lots of fossils: Bryozoa litter the ground at an exposure near Cannon Falls, MN. Bryozoa were microscopic animals that often formed coral-like colonies or fan structures and are the most common fossils found in the Decorah shale around southeast Minnesota.
Courtesy Mark Ryan
Down and dirty: Pat Ryan digs out a cephalopod fossils found on the flats of a Decorah shale exposure near Cannon Falls, MN.
Courtesy Mark Ryan
Close-up of cephalopod: Large cephalopod segment found by my brother Pat at Decorah shale exposure near Cannon Falls, MN. Another piece of the same specimen was found about 2 feet away.
Courtesy Mark Ryan
Rare find: Trilobite head in matrix, found near Cannon Falls, MN. Late Ordovician. Heads of the ancient arthropods are extremely rare. This is only the second trilobite head I’ve found in three decades collecting fossils around the Twin Cities
Courtesy Mark Ryan
Yeah, sort of scary: I mean, look what it's doing to the concept of public art! Oh, wait, this is the Mothman.
Courtesy billy liarHey, y’all, it’s time for a brand new Science Buzz feature: Is that, like… scary? On Is that, like… scary? we’ll be posing the question “Is that, like… scary?” with regards to one of the many, like, scary things out there. Out there in the world.
Because this is a brand new, first of its kind sort of thing, all y’all Buzzketeers should feel lucky: this could be a valuable experience. Not now, certainly, but I think it’s pretty likely that the cash value of this moment in history will be skyrocketing before too long. Heck, if you play your cards right, time the market, etc, you could pay your way through college just by telling people about this. So get on the boat, and ask yourself, “Is that, like… scary?”
I don’t want to throw you guys into the deep end just yet, though—you have to crawl before you can walk, and you have to have the right clothing on before you can crawl, so let’s ease ourselves into this.
So… flesh-eating bacteria—Is that, like… scary? Duh, yes, it’s very like scary.
Feral dog packs—Is that, like… scary? Well, it’s sort of like scary.
Seasonal allergies—Is that, like… scary? No, dude, that’s not like scary.
This thing—Is that, like… scary? Uh, yeah, that’s a lot like scary.
Are you starting to get a feel for things here? Good. We can get to the meat now: vampire moths.
Are vampire moths, like… scary? Maybe, maybe. We’d better take a closer look, courtesy of National Geographic.
What we’ve got is a Siberian moth that, like the common vampire, does indeed suck blood. It uses its “hook-and-barb-lined tongue” to drill through skin and start slurping. And while vampire moths aren’t new, blood-drinking in this Siberian population actually does seem to be a recent adaptation—aside from the vampire thing, only slight differences in wing patterns distinguish the blood sucker from its vegetarian cousins, who use their pokey little tongues for jabbing fruit. But these moths, when offered a hand by the scientists, dug right in. So, at some not-so-long-ago point, the little apple-biters got the idea (in an evolutionary way) to just start drinking blood. Cuz it’s so good.
I think that makes them a little more, like, scary. If a little lamb passed up a handful of nutritious, green lamb food in favor of taking a chunk out of your wrist, it would be kind of creepy, wouldn’t it? That’s sort of how I feel about vampire moths.
It turns out that that only the male moths drink blood. Scientists aren’t totally sure why, but they think the blood allows the males to give female moths a gift of salt during copulation. Apparently lady moths are into salt. This specific salt-gathering strategy could have evolved from behaviors like drinking tears (that’s, like… creepy), feeding on dung (that’s, like… funny), and dipping into pus-filled wounds (that’s, like… getting closer to scary).
The next step for the researchers will be to compare the DNA of the vampires to their vegetarian cousins, to see how different they are, and how long it could have been since the species split apart.
So what do you think? Is that, like… scary?
Honeycrisp apples
in Diversity of Organisms and Biological Populations Change Over Time
Malus domestica 'Honeycrisp'
Courtesy Art Oglesby
Honeycrisp, my favorite apple
Around the end of September I eagerly visit an apple orchard to stock up on Honeycrisp apples. I first experienced Honeycrisp apples back when they were first released in 1991 because I lived next door to Jack Kelly and what is now part of Apple Jack Orchards. I was impressed by the "explosively crisp" snap as you bite into the apple and its sweet, juicy flavor that also has a hint of tartness. Here is a quote about the Honeycrisp apple from the University of Minnesota Extension:
Honeycrisp fruit is characterized by an exceptionally crisp and juicy texture. Its flesh is cream colored and coarse. The flavor is sub-acid and ranges from mild and well-balanced to strongly aromatic, depending on the degree of maturity. It has consistently ranked as one of the highest quality apples in the University of Minnesota sensory evaluations.
The Honeycrisp story is remarkable
I first read the amazing story about how the Honeycrisp was developed in the City Pages. James J. Luby and David S. Bedford, working within the Department of Horticultural Science University of Minnesota, have given a big boost to Minnesota's apple growers and the horticulture department.
Bedford calls it a "lifesaver." According to the university's office of technology commercialization, Honeycrisp has generated $6.3 million for the institution, placing it among the school's top five most lucrative inventions. (The U receives $1.35 a tree and splits royalty income in thirds, with one portion going to the inventors, another to the college and department where the faculty work, and the third into a general research fund.)
How the Honeycrisp apple is produced
Apple breeder David Bedford tastes between 500 and 600 apples every day. Bedford is trying to find the genetic gems from among the nearly 20,000 trees in the horticulture department's orchards. Only 15 or so have the "wow" that allows their genetics to advance to the next round. Hand pollinating select blossoms and using wax bags to prevent any stray pollination, produces the next generation of seeds. The ancestors of the Honeycrisp were in the crop of 1960. A bad freeze almost eliminated the genetic line in 1980. When the parent trees were killed by a 1 in 50 yr. freeze, the offspring were classified as unacceptable. Bedford decided to let them have a chance, and
A few years later, when the clones began bearing fruit, Bedford was shocked by the apples' crispness and juiciness, which reminded him of an Asian pear. "The thing I remember was that the texture was so unusual, I wasn't sure if it was good or bad," he says.
Read more about the Honeycrisp saga
The complete story is fascinating. You can read more by clicking the City Pages link. Probably the best description of the Honeycrisp apple sage is told at MinnesotaHarvest.net. An addendum within this webpage added this surprising quote:
Records and public releases from the University of Minnesota from 1991 to the present have identified the parentage of Honeycrisp as the cross 'Macoun' x 'Honeygold'. But recently completed DNA testing has determined that neither Macoun nor Honeygold are parents of Honeycrisp.
The testing determined for certain that Keepsake, another apple from the University of Minnesota's apple breeding program that was released in 1978, is one of the parents. But, despite extensive searching, the other parent has not been identified. There is no DNA match among any of the varieties that are thought to be possible parents.
The University's Research Center routinely crosses and plants thousands of seeds annually, moving them and the resulting seedling trees from place to place over a period of years, so there are multiple points where a mix-up could take place.
Lemur leaf frog: Frogs are threatened by a fungus that can kill up to 90 percent of amphibians in a stream and lead to decimation of the rest of an ecosystem.
Courtesy Scott Connelly/UGAResearchers studying an amphibian-killing chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) spreading through the streams of Central America, are using the opportunity to investigate the effects that the loss of frogs have on a stream’s overall ecology.
Chyrtid fungus has been spreading southeast through Central America destroying amphibian populations along the way. Scientists from the University of Georgia in Athens set up two separate study areas – one in a stream that had been invaded by the fungus, and another unaffected stream that was in the path of the spreading outbreak.
What they discovered is how important tadpoles are in keeping a stream’s ecology in balance. The tadpoles, it seems, stir up quiet pockets of the stream as they hunt for food, an activity that keeps sediment suspended in the water from settling to the bottom. This allows more sunlight to reach the algae growing there which, in turn, processes it into an energy source that is the base of the stream’s food chain.
“Many things that live in the stream depend on algae as a base food resource,” said lead author Scott Connelly, a doctoral student from the UGA Odum School of Ecology. “And we found that the system was more productive when the tadpoles were there.”
Although the algae increased by as much as 250 percent in some cases, the lack of agitation from the decimated tadpole population allowed more sediment to cover the bottom and stifle the algae’s processing of sunlight and nutrients into a food source for the rest of the stream’s fauna.
The scientists have been able to save infected frogs in captivity by applying a fungicide, but so far they have been unable to restore ecosystems damaged by the fungus because a widespread application of the fungicide would also kill any beneficial fungi.
The results of the study appeared last week in the online version of the journal Ecosystems.
UGA press release
Story on ScienceDaily
More on the amphibian extinction crisis
All about tadpoles
It's thinking about what it's going to do to you: It'll probably just hug you.
Courtesy Datuk Chan Chew LunLight your sparklers Buzzketeers! It’s celebration time! And if you don’t have sparklers, go ahead and light any old thing! Because the world officially has a new largest insect!
Bang a gong!
This new bug is actually dead, and has been dead for about thirty years, but the international insect size record committee has had a lot of back work to do, and I guess they only just got around to it.
Anyway, we just have to accept that now everybody can measure insects as quickly as we might hope, and move on to this massive bug—Chan’s Megastick. (Or Phobaeticus chain if you’re going to be a jerk about it.) It looks… like a stick, really. A stick that’s nearly two feet long.
That’s right, y’all, the megastick is over 22 inches long from front legs to back legs, with a 14-inch-long body. It lives by disguising itself among the treetops, until a human walks beneath it, at which point it dives down, and inserts itself into the person’s body. It lives the remainder of its life there, laying eggs in all major organs, and scurrying around just beneath the skin.
That, or they spend their lives moving slowly and eating plants. Which ever you choose to believe.
The record-breaking specimen was collected decades ago in Borneo by a local giant bug enthusiast. Ten years later, the Malaysian naturalist Datuk Chan Chew Lun found the remarkable insect in the collection, and it was only announced to be a new species (among more than 3000 species of stick insects) last week. It edged out the previous record holder by less than an inch.
A huge, huge bug. How do you feel about that?
Which is the real gnome?: I'm not sure, but I'll tell you how to find out: hit each one with an aluminum baseball bat. Or drop them in an above ground pool. Or both.
Courtesy B TalDo you guys remember the South American crab-walking gnome? Of course you do. I posted about it this spring, after all. But a refresher may be in order—the Argentinean city of General Guemes was in some sort of panic earlier this year, because a shadowy, knee-high creature had been seen sidling around the town late at night. It may or may not have worn a pointy hat. Some local teens even caught the little creeper on video one night (much screaming was heard, but very few fine details could be made out on the crab-walker). While General Gueme’s citizens weren’t certain exactly what was stalking their streets, they knew one thing: they didn’t like it.
And now it’s back (on video, again). See for yourself.
This footage leaves me with two questions, neither of which are directly related to gnomes. Question 1: Is this even appropriate for a science blog? Isn’t this kind of pushing it?
The answer, to both parts of question one, is “yes.” Of course it’s appropriate, because I said so. And it is indeed pushing things. But, if we didn’t push the boundaries of what we think is ridiculous now and again, think of all the stuff we’d miss. Crab walking gnomes would be out of the question altogether.
And question 2: Why are Argentinean, trouble-making, teenage boys spending their nights waltzing with each other in the middle of the streets? Shouldn’t they be stealing things somewhere? Or practicing their vandalism? If they had to do some street waltzing, you wouldn’t think they’d want it on tape. This is the most questionable part of the video, as far as I’m concerned.
So what do y’all think? Hijinks and shenanigans? Scary little gnome-sidler? And, if none of the above, what manner of person or creature is this? Must we turn the conversation to dwarfism? Or does anybody have a more creative suggestion?
Now, in my last gnome-related post, I received some flak for my suggestion to use net-guns on the gnome. With that in mind, I am now revising my gnome-defense suggestions: cover General Guemes in glue traps. Then, when the craw-walker is captured, it will be easy to verify whether we’re dealing with a true gnome, or a run of the mill little person in a pointy hat. In the latter case, the person should be congratulated on their craftiness, and sent on their way. If it does turn out to be a gnome, however, or possibly a large crab in a pointy hat, then I say that citizens should have free reign with their, net guns, tazers, non-lethal deterrent sprays, etc. Whatever you can find around the house, really. The gnome, of course, won’t be going anywhere.
The Yeti is in town again. Not our town, though.
in Life Science, Diversity of Organisms, Scientific Inquiry, and Interdependence of Life
These are what snowy footprints look like: Just a visual reference for you.
Courtesy EJP PhotoThere’s snow on the cryptocouch, y’all. How did it get there? I thought the cryptocouch was in a basement somewhere. (That’s what you say.) And that’s what I thought too.
We were wrong. The cryptocouch, it seems, is very much a mobile entity. Sure, it lives in a basement, and that’s where we all (w’all) most often sit on it, but the cryptocouch also travels. It’s like that bed from the Nintendo Entertainment System’s Little Nemo: The Dream Master (Nemo! Help your cat, little man!)—the sucker flies. It flies.
It has to fly, because how else could we explain the snow? See, the cryptocouch has just recently returned from the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, where it was following a group of Japanese researchers on a mountaintop nearly five miles high.
This particular peak, Dhaulagiri IV, happens to be where the Japanese team claims to have found traces of the legendary yeti. That’s right, y’all, yeti is in the house again already. He’s just not in your house. The primary goal of this expedition was to catch a yeti on film.
And that didn’t happen. But they did find something almost as good: yeti footprints in the snow. (Oh, that’s where all that snow came from, cryptocouch.)
Photographs of the prints can be found at the link above, or at the team’s own site here. Don’t get all sassy if that link doesn’t work, though—you aren’t the only one who wants to see yeti footprints.
If you can’t see the photos, or refuse to do anything that you’re told to do (I’m with you there, brother), here’s the deal: the footprints (or footprint, I’m not totally certain) were found in crusty snow on the mountain, and measure about 8 inches long. The leader of the team insists that they don’t belong to any of the other local animals, saying that his team has been coming to the region for years, and knows what bear, deer, wolf, and snow leopard prints look like; these prints look different.
On a previous expedition, a team member thinks he caught a glimpse of the silhouette of a possible yeti. It was about 200 meters away, but he estimated its height at about 1.5 meters (slightly less than 5 feet). So this particular yeti doesn’t have all that imposing of a figure.
Short yeti or no, we aren’t here to judge, are we? Well, we sort of are, but we aren’t handing out value judgments. We’re here to evaluate the evidence, and to decide if it’s likely that there’s a diminutive hairy man roaming the slopes of the Himalayas. The footprint isn’t quite doing it for me, but the couch saw fit to make the trip, so we’ll be sticking with the yeti for now.
Out.
Trampled tracksite surface: Geologist Winston Seiler with some of the many dinosaur tracks found along the Arizona-Utah border.
Courtesy Nicole MillerA dinosaur tracksite discovered recently in the southwestern United States contains so many footprints it’s being heralded as a “dinosaur dance floor”.
Winston Seiler, a geologist at the University of Utah published a paper in the October 2008 issue of the journal Palaios that details the new site. Professor Marjorie Chan, the chair of the university’s geology and geophysics department co-wrote the paper.
Along the dinosaur trail: Geologist Winston Seiler walks where dinosaurs once trampled the ground. The site is in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness along the Arizona-Utah border.
Courtesy Roger SeilerDuring the early Jurassic period - 190 million years ago - the region was a desert larger than today’s Sahara desert, and it’s thought the tracksite was located at an oasis where a variety of dinosaurs gathered for water. Today the ancient desert is a layer of sandstone located in the Coyote Buttes North area of the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness along the Arizona and Utah border. Thousands of footprints litter the three-quarter-acre area – in some cases dozens of tracks per square yard. Walking across the tracksite reminded Seiler and Chan of a popular arcade game.
“Get out there and try stepping in their footsteps, and you feel like you are playing the game ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ that teenagers dance on,” said Chan. “This kind of reminded me of that – a dinosaur dance floor – because there are so many tracks and a variety of different tracks.”
Four separate types of tracks have been identified at the trample site along with some very rare dinosaur tail-drag marks. The study of trace fossils such as these is called ichnolology. The science has earned a growing respect in recent years after being long regarded as a secondary field of study. Major strides have been made in dinosaur behavior from studying the footprints they left behind. Since it’s difficult to ascertain the exact identity of the track maker (unless you find its skeleton at the end of its footsteps), dinosaur footprints are given their own classification such as Grallator, Eubrontes, and Sauropodomorph. You can read more about dinosaur track names here.
For a long time the footprints at Coyote Buttes North were thought to be nothing more than naturally occurring potholes eroded by water out of the Navajo Sandstone Formation. That opinion is still held in some circles but Seiler and Chan are convinced they were made by dinosaurs and display many footprint traits.
Map showing location of the tracksite
Courtesy Winston SeilerIf you’re interested in viewing the trackway yourself - get in line. Access to the area requires a permit (and a $7 fee) and advanced permit sales are already backlogged four months out. Call 435) 688-3246 or go online at http://www.blm.gov/az/st/en/arolrsmain.html (and click Coyote Buttes) for information. You can also take a chance to acquire one of the 10 additional daily permits issued a day prior to your visit to the site at the Paria Contact Station between March 15 and November 14 or at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Field Office in Kanab, Utah between November 15 – March 14.
University of Utah story
Discovery News blog story
Glen Kuban's great dinosaur tracks website
Myles J. McLeod's dinosaur track info site
More on Navajo Sandstone dinosaur ichnofossils
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