We haven’t had enough fossil penguins here, so let me rectify that deficiency. Below the fold you’ll find a reconstruction of Waimanu, a 61-62 million year old penguin that was discovered in New Zealand.
Oh, and Carl Zimmer has posted a photo of the bird with its skin and feathers on.
Check out these compendia of blogginess and comment on them, or anything else that strikes your fancy.
Nah, I thought this has got to be a joke:
The Pentagon’s defence scientists want to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions.
But no…there is actually a DARPA call for proposals.
DARPA seeks innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect-cyborgs, possibly enabled by intimately integrating microsystems within insects, during their early stages of metamorphoses. The healing processes from one metamorphic stage to the next stage are expected to yield more reliable bio-electromechanical interface to insects, as compared to adhesively bonded systems to adult insects. Once these platforms are integrated, various microsystem payloads can be mounted on the platforms with the goal of controlling insect locomotion, sense local environment, and scavenge power. Multidisciplinary teams of engineers, physicists, and biologists are expected to work together to develop new technologies utilizing insect biology, while developing foundations for the new field of insect cyborg engineering. The HI-MEMS may also serve as vehicles to conduct research to answer basic questions in biology.
The final demonstration goal of the HI-MEMS program is the delivery of an insect within five meters of a specific target located at hundred meters away, using electronic remote control, and/or global positioning system (GPS). Although flying insects are of great interest (e.g. moths and dragonflies), hopping and swimming insects could also meet final demonstration goals. In conjunction with delivery, the insect must remain stationary either indefinitely or until otherwise instructed. The insect-cyborg must also be able to transmit data from DOD relevant sensors, yielding information about the local environment. These sensors can include gas sensors, microphones, video, etc.
Although the idea of having a remote controlled dragonfly is very cool, I am very pessimistic, and have to dash a little cold water on the plan.
Juravenator starki is a new small theropod dinosaur from the late Jurassic—the specimen is exceptionally well-preserved, and retains fossilized imprints of its skin. The surprising thing about it is that its anatomy puts it smack in the middle of a large clade of coelurosaurs, members of which are known to have feathers…and its skin is bare and scaly. What it suggests is that feather evolution was complicated (no surprise there, actually), and that some lineages secondarily lost their feathery covering, or that there were seasonal or age-related or regional variations in feather expression.
More pictures are below the fold—this really is a very pretty specimen.
I’ve seen a few births, and they’re messy, bloody, and tiring…but you know, it could be much worse.
The Schoepenhauer awards are a delectable collection of interesting descriptions of parasites, such as the roundworm.
Today we’ll introduce you to the Intestinal Roundworm, a hideous parasite which infects one out of every four people in the world. That’s not a misprint: one out of four. More than one and a half BILLION people. Yup, every fourth person on this planet is nothing but a travelling worm farm.
Sweeeeet, right?
But hey, do you remember that moment in a certain cult movie when Sean Connery, dressed in little more than bandoliers and a speedo, is rummaging through a library and discovers the truth about his god, the incredible gun-spewing penis-hating flying head named Zardoz? He finds the book The WIZARD of OZ, and realizes he’s been tricked, and his whole life has been a lie, and he has to go kill all the Immortals and sleep with Charlotte Rampling.
The Schoepenhauer article is accompanied by this figure.
Notice any remarkable similarities? Anything that makes you go “hmmm”?
Does this help?
NOOOOOOOOOOO!
I’ve been tricked! Now I have to go home and get a pistol and some red underwear. Somebody…warn Charlotte Rampling, before it’s too late.
Last year, a new and unusual species of rodent was discovered in Laos, called Laonastes aenigmamus, or kha-nyou. Here’s the skull:
Remember Snuppy, the cloned puppy? He’s been living under a cloud for a while now, since one of his creators was Woo-Suk Hwang, the Korean scientist who was found to have faked data and exploited his workers, and there was concern that perhaps the dog cloning experiment was also tainted.
Put those fears to rest. Two groups of researchers have independently analyzed Snuppy and its putative clone parent, and both agree that it is most likely a clone. The nuclear markers between the two were identical, while mitochondrial markers were different—exactly what you’d expect in this kind of clone, and not what you’d see from simple twins, for instance, or if someone had faked the samples.
Parker HG, Kruglyak L, Ostrander EA (2006) DNA analysis of a putative dog clone. Nature 440:E1-E2.
Seoul National University Investigation Committee, Lee JB, Park C (2006) Verification that Snuppy is a clone. Nature 440:E2-E3.
