Traces of a Triassic Kraken?

At first I thought this discovery was really cool, because I love the idea of ancient giant cephalopods creating art and us finding the works now. But then, reality sinks in: that’s a genuinely, flamboyantly extravagant claim, and the evidence better be really, really solid. And it’s not. It’s actually rather pathetic.

It consists of the discovery of ichthyosaur vertebrae lying in a flattened array. They look like this.


Photo shows shonisaur vertebral disks arranged in curious linear patters with almost geometric regularity. The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a coleoid sucker.

Wait, what? That’s it?

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Steve Jobs is dead

I’m typing this on a Mac laptop. I heard about it while browsing the news on my iPad. I have an iPhone in my pocket. There’s an iPod in my bedroom that we use for alarm and music. I bought my first Mac in 1984; I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on an Apple II. Maybe you use a Windows machine, but face it: Microsoft has been chasing Apple’s interface design since the 1980s.

And now Steve Jobs has died.

We owe a lot to him. He’s the guy who shaped our virtual world.

(Also on Sb)

One bit of levity: Westboro Baptist plans to picket his funeral, simply because they’re assholes. Look at the bottom of their tweet, though.

I wish I could go

It’s a conference, in Oregon, and it’s about The Future of Evo-Devo, all wonderful things, and it’s on 10-12 February — right in the thick of the traditional Darwin Day hoopla, the days when I’m like a big egg-laying bunny at Easter. I’m already booked for Pullman, Washington, then Florida, then Las Vegas in that week.

You’ll just have to go in my place and report back. Yes, you — the one looking around quizzically and wondering “why me?” Because I said so. Book it now. Portland, 10 February, the Nines Hotel.

Coincidentally, I’m giving a talk at UNLV that is kind of about the future of evo-devo: I’m going to be both pessimistic and optimistic, and talk about the mainstreaming of evo-devo into the discourse of evolution and development, and propose that it isn’t so much a revolution in evolution as it is developmental biologists finally adopting views much more copacetic with standard model evolutionary thinking. There may be a lynching afterwards.

(Also on Sb)