Biodiversity

Biodiversity stands as the result of 3.5 billion years of evolution. 

While records of life in the sea show a logistic pattern of growth, life on land (insects, plants and tetrapods) show an exponential rise in diversity. New species are regularly discovered and many, thought discovered, are not yet classified.

Nevertheless according to a report from "Environment New Service",  dated back from 1999, scientists  predicted that the extinction rate caused by human influence was approaching 1,000 times the average rate and could climb to an alarming number of 10,000 times in a near future.

Are we near to those numbers? 

Is it wise to talk about giving life to extinct species when we are not being able to stop those which are nowadays classified as endangered?

BHL - Biodiversity Heritage Library

This is a SnapShot of BHL in my iTunes

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)

If you enjoy topics related to Biodiversity and the Origin of Species, the Biodiversity Heritage Library has over 64,000 volumes digitalised from known authors, such as Charles Darwin and Russel Wallace.

Authors that with their knowledge contributed to the development of Natural Sciences therefore deserving a special mention here. Using the iTunes application Darwin's personal notes left on his private library estate, at the University of Cambridge, have been digitally reconstructed and placed among the best volumes of the collection. 

For free, you can download almost all of these books and enjoy their original pictures and their authors private comments.

BHL also sponsors a blog full of interesting articles and every week a different perspective of a scientist' work is eligible for his contribution on the scientific outlook community. 

This week the scientific work chosen was the historical framework of the british naturalist Afred Russel Wallace, known as Darwin's man behind the scenes. 

Known in history as second after Darwin, in a position as unfair as Buzz is over Armstrong, BHL brings us some light over Wallace roll in all the process of the natural selection and the transmutation of species theory.

Hope you enjoy as much as I did!

Map from Wallace's book - "ISLAND LIFE"

DINOSAURS EXTINCTION - HYBRID THEORY

Illustration of Asteroid Impact

Several theories have been debated for many years trying to find a scientific explanation for the dinosaurs extinction.

Although none of them is acquired having scientists defending the volcanic theory, while others refer to an asteroid impact as the main reason, the truth  is that lately there has been an hybrid theory that has gained some sustainability.

According to scientists the metheorit impact was just the culminate of a long volcanic activity which was already promoting drastic climate variations, including long cold snaps,  that may have already been culling the dinosaurs before the asteroid struck.

more here

Ancien Swedish Farmer Came from Mediterranean

Remains of a 5.000 woman were discovered in Sweden. From the DNA analysis a surprising discovery. The human bears an enormous genetic similarly with the people who lived on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea.

The discovery is important in order to understand the Neolithic population movements and the spread of agriculture habits across Europe.

“The farmer is most genetically similar to people living in Cyprus and Sardinia today,” says Pontus Skoglund, an evolutionary geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden and the lead author of the study, which is published today in Science.

Named "Gök4" the 5,000-year-old remains were found in Gökhem parish, southern Sweden. The discovery of her ancestry feeds into a long-running debate over the transition from foraging to farming in prehistoric Europe, a process that archaeologists refer to as Neolithization.  from here

A New Dinosaur and The Microraptor Feathers

Paleontologists have published an article, on Science magazine, regarding a new dinosaur with long and bright feathers. A dinosaur bird, well preserved, which could give scientist good clues regarding feathers evolution and its iridescent plumage.

Wild Flower Blooms After 30,000 Years On Ice

At first site, it looks just like any other plant.

But, it really isn't.

Actually, the news was brought to light last week. This solitary wild flower, with its small green leaves and just five white petals has reportedly been resurrected by a team of scientists who tapped a treasure trove of fruits and seeds, buried some 30,000 years ago by ground squirrels and preserved in the permafrost.

The squirrels’ burrows, 70 in all, were found on the banks of the lower Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia, 20–40 metres below the current surface of the tundra and surrounded by the bones of mammoths and other creatures. Some burrows contained hundreds of thousands of fruits and seeds, wonderfully preserved by the cold, dry environment.

No doubt, a major step to mankind on discovering flora back on the time of permafrost. from here

Big Apes - Gorilla Genome Decoded

 Male silverback Gorilla in SF zoo. Image: Wikipedia

Researchers announce today that they have completed the genome sequence for the gorilla – the last genus of the living great apes to have its genome decoded. While confirming that our closest relative is the chimpanzee, the team show that much of the human genome more closely resembles the gorilla than it does the chimpanzee genome.

"The gorilla genome is important because it sheds light on the time when our ancestors diverged from our closest evolutionary cousins. It also lets us explore the similarities and differences between our genes and those of gorilla, the largest living primate," says Aylwyn Scally, first author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.  from here

Domenican Republic - A Fly with 20 million Years Old

This is the only known fossil of a bat fly, a specimen at least 20 million years old that carried malaria and fed on the blood of bats. (Photo by George Poinar, Jr., courtesy of Oregon State University)

It was found on an amber piece, dated 20-30 million years.

It's a bat fly. An aggressive blood parasite which consumes blood from their victims. They inhabit from sheeps to humans where they suck their bodies living like parasites from their daily blood collecting.

Researchers, from Oregon State University, discovered this well preserved specimen on the Dominican Republic, on an amber stone, in what was then an oozing tree sap.

This is the only fossil ever found of a bat fly, and scientists say it’s an extraordinary discovery. It was also carrying malaria, further evidence of the long time that malaria has been prevalent in the New World. The genus of bat fly discovered in this research is now extinct. from here

Cricket Sounds from the Jurassic with 165 Million Years

 

Behaviors are always challenging to get reconstructed, specially if we are talking about a Jurassic sound with about 165 million years. But that was exactly the challenged that scientists faced when they decided to inraveal the song that the Archaboilus musicus stridulating katydid, on a dinnassours era.

It was upon discovery of a bushcricket fossil, from the Jurassic period, with well preserved wings and well visible stridulating organ, that researchers could compare the exctinct cricket to 59 living species.

Based on physiology and the comparisons, they estimated the pitch and length of each note that the ancient species sang. Here’s the call: [Cricket sound] coming from a Jurassic era.

After all, it's not so different from any nowadays little country cricket.

 from here

Missing Links - Dinosaur Fethers Color Determined

Archaeopteryx

Archaeopteryx lived in the Late Jurassic Period around 150 million years ago, in what is now southern Germany during a time when Europe was an archipelago of islands in a shallow warm tropical sea, much closer to the equator than it is now.

Similar in shape to a European Magpie, with the largest individuals possibly attaining the size of a raven, Archaeopteryx could grow to about 0.5 metres (1.6 ft) in length. Despite its small size, broad wings, and inferred ability to fly or glide, Archaeopteryx has more in common with other small Mesozoic dinosaurs than it does with modern birds. In particular, it shares the following features with the deinonychosaurs (dromaeosaurs and troodontids): jaws with sharp teeth, three fingers with claws, a long bony tail, hyperextensible second toes ("killing claw"), feathers (which also suggest homeothermy), and various skeletal features.

For the very first time, scientists have determined the color of fossilized feather Archaeopteryx, a birdlike dinosaur that represents an evolutionary transition between dinosaurs and today's birds.

In a research taken partially by the National Geographic Society, headed by Ryan Carney of Brown University, investigators used a specialized type of electron microscope to determine the pigmentation of the feather, which they say was black. -  from here

South Africa - Dinosaur nest found with 190 million years

Dinosaur embryo date back 190 million years
Photograph courtesy Diane Scott, University of Toronto

Paleontologists have found the oldest known dinosaur nests, containing several tighly clustered eggs —in a nearly vertical cliff in Golden Gate Highlands National Park. Both the nests and the previously discovered embryo date back 190 million years.

Photograph courtesy D. Scott

Found in the same park, in South Africa, where scientists unearthed the oldest known dinosaur embryo the new find confirms the idea that the region was a Jurassic nesting place used by a dinosaur species called Massospondylus carinatus.

The site predates other known dino nesting grounds around the world by more than a hundred million years, scientists reported this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

After the ancient fossil embryo was described in 2005, study co-author Robert Reisz, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Toronto, in Mississauga, said:

"we decided to go back to the original site and see if we [could] find embryos and nests in place in the rock wall,"
"After a lot of searching and walking on hands and knees and crawling ... we found a total of ten nests altogether in locality, which is amazing."

Fossils Discovered by Darwin Found on a Closet

No one would of guessed that on an old safe, located on the British Geological Survey, near Keyworth, an immense treasure remained forgotten for the last 165 years.

The "discovery" was made by  paleontologist Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang who couldn't believe his eyes when he read the signature on some of the trustee fossils, the ONE himself Mr.“C. Darwin Esq.”on his famous expedition on board the HMS Beatle, in 1834

The collection of ‘unregistered fossil plants’ was found in one of the Survey’s windowless vaults in Keyworth, in central England.

These comprise hundreds of beautiful thin sections of fossil wood dating from the early nineteenth century.

The collection was assembled by botanist Joseph Hooker (Darwin’s best friend) while he was briefly employed by the Survey in 1846.

The collection is particularly interesting in the way it sheds light on the vibrant and sometimes murky world of early nineteenth century science and we can have a lot at it here