Marine Biology – Page 44

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A Tale of Two Sites: Moby Dog and The Claw

February 6, 2009

Discoveries portrayed as major evolutionary missing links were announced this week. One is a putative transitional form from land animal to whale, and one is a Cambrian trilobite-like creature said to be evolving the first claw. Moby dog: The current evolutionary scenario for the origin of whales is that they evolved from dog-like hoofed animals […]

Birds

Is Natural Selection Losing its Appeal?

January 28, 2009

Some recent science reports sound like they are ready to cast Darwin’s key phrase natural selection overboard, or at least demote it from its leading role in evolution. These articles each hint that long-held beliefs are being challenged. Make room: Science Daily asked, “Natural Selection Not The Only Process That Drives Evolution?” Scientists at Uppsala […]

Amazing Facts

Biology Now Includes Fluid Dynamic Construction

January 13, 2009

There’s an old legend that Tibetan monks built a wall by levitating heavy stones with sound by beating their drums and gongs. Something not quite so fantastic but still amazing is done by cells in the embryo. Scientists have filmed zebrafish embryos using beating cilia to build little stone structures that they use for balance. […]

Dumb Ideas

Blame Hiccups on Your Inner Fish

December 16, 2008

Why do humans get hernias and hiccups? Neil Shubin says it’s because of your inner fish. In the Scientific American series on Darwin, the discoverer of Tiktaalik was trying to show how evolutionary theory sheds light on human anatomy. He looked back to fish and amphibians and found insight. “A glimpse inside the […]

Marine Biology

Fish and Reptiles Converge on Magnetic Navigation

December 11, 2008

Two very different kinds of animal both have outstanding ability to navigate by earth’s magnetic field: salmon and sea turtles. A new hypothesis by scientists at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published in PNAS,1 suggests that the young are “imprinted” with their local magnetic field signature at birth. From a navigational perspective, some […]

Amazing Facts

Thanks to Clam Design, Stronger Materials Are Coming

December 6, 2008

Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs have produced a lightweight composite material 300 times stronger than its constituents. How? By taking inspiration from clams. The team, writing in Science,1 described nacre, the shiny mother-of-pearl found inside clam shells. Because of the way it sandwiches crystalline aragonite with layers of protein (07/26/2004), nacre resists […]

Fossils

An Evolutionary Fly in the Turtle Soup

November 29, 2008

A new fossil turtle was found. Is it a missing link? That depends on whether you believe the popular press or the scientists. National Geographic News and Science Daily both led off with the missing link angle, complete with an artist reconstruction of the fossil turtle found in China named Odontochelys. “Since the […]

Birds

Lizard Hair and Other Fables

November 12, 2008

In some science reports, it’s hard to tell where the data stops and the speculation begins. In any case, evolutionary theory usually arrives in time to take credit for whatever happened in the unobservable past (cf. 08/24/2007). Bad hair joke: Live Science wants you to blame your bad hair days on lizards. Why? Because according […]

Mammals

Tooth Evolution Theory Lacks Bite

October 14, 2008

The hardest substance in your body is your teeth. The varieties of teeth among vertebrates is astounding, from the tiny incisors in a mole to the bone-crushing scimitars on a T. rex. Many fossils are known only from their teeth. One would think teeth are the best-studied objects in evolutionary theory, but a recent paper […]

Amazing Facts

Deep Life Is Right at Home in Total Darkness

October 10, 2008

It seems every year scientists find organisms thriving in environments thought too inhospitable for life. A new word was coined for these organisms: extremophiles – lovers of the extreme. Two recent discoveries push the envelope of extreme environments almost to the deep limit. Pressurized fish: The bottoms of the deep ocean trenches of the Pacific […]

Biomimetics

Living Better Bioelectrically

October 4, 2008

Electric eels are inspiring a new generation of fuel cells. Science Daily reported that a remarkable fusion of engineering and biology may lead to tiny electronic devices that run on biology’s own energy currency, ATP. “Engineers long have known that great ideas can be lifted from Mother Nature, but a new paper by researchers at […]

Dumb Ideas

How the Evolution Story Became Like Jellyfish

September 30, 2008

“How the [blank] got its [blank]” is the template for story titles imitating Rudyard Kipling’s Just-So Stories: i.e., How the Camel Got His Hump and How the Leopard Got His Spots. Kipling wrote these as silly stories to entertain children, not to be taken seriously by scientists. Knowing that creationists often criticize Darwinian explanations as […]

Amazing Facts

How Chromosomes Pack Without Exploding

August 24, 2008

When preparing to divide, a cell has to copy all its DNA accurately and pack it into chromosomes. A professor at U Chicago told Science Daily this is “like compacting your entire wardrobe into a shoebox.” The cell has another difficulty in this compaction process, though: DNA, being negatively charged, resists packing. Eukaryotes […]

Amazing Facts

Can Worms Outsmart Humans?

July 27, 2008

Worms may seem creepy to some people, but they possess some amazing abilities. How many of you had to struggle through calculus class, for instance? Worms know it by heart, reported Greg Soltis at Live Science. Their brains instinctively apply the logic of calculus to input signals from sensory inputs. A University of Oregon biologist […]

Fossils

Another Evolutionary Statistic Is Wrong

July 15, 2008

Marine invertebrate diversity has not increased dramatically over time, contrary to conventional wisdom. That’s the conclusion of a team of 35 researchers who spent a decade analyzing seashell fossils from around the world. Science Daily reported the story July 7. A week later, on July 14, Science Daily reported a follow-up story, entitled, […]

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