Magnificent momma

This is one beautiful plesiosaur, Polycotylus latippinus.


(Click for larger image)
(A) Photograph and (B) interpretive drawing of LACM 129639, as mounted. Adult elements are light brown, embryonic material is dark brown, and reconstructed bones are white. lc indicates left coracoid; lf, left femur; lh, left humerus; li, left ischium; lp, left pubis; rc, right coracoid; rf, right femur; rh, right humerus; ri, right ischium; and rp, right pubis.

The unique aspect of this specimen is that it’s the only pregnant plesiosaur found; the fore and hind limbs bracket a jumble of bones from a juvenile or embryonic Polycotylus. It’s thought to actually be a fetal plesiosaur, rather than an overstuffed cannibal plesiosaur, because 1) the smaller skeleton is still partially articulated, and it’s large enough that it is unlikely it could have been swallowed whole, 2) the two sets are of the same distinctive species, 3) the juvenile is incompletely ossified and doesn’t resemble a post-partum animal, 4) the bones aren’t chewed, etched by acids, or accompanied by gastroliths. I think we can now confidently say that plesiosaurs were viviparous, which is what everyone expected.

There are other surprising details. The fetus is huge relative to the parent, and there’s only one — so plesiosaurs had small brood sizes and invested heavily in their offspring.


(Click for larger image)
Reconstructions of female P. latippinus and newborn young. Gastralia were present in both animals but have been omitted for clarity.

The authors speculate beyond this a bit, but it’s all reasonable speculation. That degree of parental investment in fetal development makes it likely that there would have been extended maternal care after birth, and rather more tenuously, that they may also have lived in larger social groups. The authors suggest that their lifestyle may have resembled that of modern social marine mammals — picture a pod of dolphins, only long-necked and lizardy.

O’Keefe FR, Chiappe LM (2011) Viviparity and K-Selected Life History in a Mesozoic Marine Plesiosaur (Reptilia, Sauropterygia) Science 333 (6044): 870-873.

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Planet of the Apes

Isn’t it obvious that the story of Planet of the Apes is about apes from one planet dominated by apes finding themselves on a planet dominated by apes of a slightly different species?

Also, this comic bugs me a little bit: I’m flying off to give a talk in which I argue that the hallmark of human evolution isn’t brutality and conquest, but cooperation.

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So, so true

I’ve had all of these perspectives in my career, so I can tell you that they’re mostly right…except for the one about how professors see themselves. You should just substitute the postdoc:postdoc image for the professor:professor one.

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Also, I worked my way through college as an undergraduate technician. Even with my lowly status, I really did see all the undergrads/grads/postdocs as spoiled children who were there only to screw up my lab and my precious experimental animals. Especially when they’d leave a pile of gore and blood and dead animal parts scattered all over the surgery, and expected me to clean it all up.

(Also on FtB)

So, so true

I’ve had all of these perspectives in my career, so I can tell you that they’re mostly right…except for the one about how professors see themselves. You should just substitute the postdoc:postdoc image for the professor:professor one.

Also, I worked my way through college as an undergraduate technician. Even with my lowly status, I really did see all the undergrads/grads/postdocs as spoiled children who were there only to screw up my lab and my precious experimental animals. Especially when they’d leave a pile of gore and blood and dead animal parts scattered all over the surgery, and expected me to clean it all up.

(Also on Sb)

This photography stuff is amazing

This is a small piece of a larger — much larger — photo of a Vancouver street crowd. Go to the original image, though, which allows you zoom in and in and in — you’ll be able to see the faces in surprising detail of each of the little dots.

The Vancouver Canucks Fan Zone along Georgia St. for Game 7 of the 2011 Stanley Cup Final was captured at 5:46 pm on June 15, 2011. It is made up of 216 photos (12 across by 18 down) stitched together, taken over a 15-minute span, and is not supposed to represent a single moment in time. The final hi-res file is 69,394 X 30,420 pixels or 2,110 megapixels.

I’ve stared at it for hours, though, and still haven’t managed to find Waldo.

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Mary’s Monday Metazoan: The pressure to perform

My wife sent me this photo, and was intrigued. The water boatman sings through its penis, and sings very loudly — 105 decibels from an animal that’s only a few millimeters long (no word on the length of its penis). I have received subtle signals that I am…inadequate. Does anyone have any suggestions? Should I get an implant of one of those mini-iPods? Or perhaps even an iPod Touch?

(via National Geographic)

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How good is American health care?

A study in the Journal of the Royal Society of medicine has assessed the effectiveness of health care in 19 western countries and come up with a simple ranking system: a measure of the the number of lives saved relative to expenditures proportional to the GDP. One parameter, called the GDPHE, or GDP Health Expenditure was a measure of how much money the country was sinking into health care per citizen; by dividing this by the mortality rates, they got a measure of the effectiveness of the health care system.

This is a ranking system, and I have mostly a hyper-competitive American audience, so you all want to know whether you win or not, right? You want the data that shows that the US is #1! And here it is, the one result that shows us at the top of the ladder, our average health care as a function of GDP.

Look at that: we don’t just win, we win big, leaving our closest competitor, Germany, in the dust. We spend 125% of the money Germany does per person. Does it feel good, America? We are tossing bigger buckets of money into health care than anyone else.

But now for the number that really matters, the GDPHE ratio. How many lives are we saving with all that money? Here’s the answer. Look at the last column, which is the ratio of money spent to lives saved.

Oops. We’re…#17. We’re almost the worst — thanks, Portugal and Switzerland, for neglecting the medical needs of your citizenry more than we do.

Our health care is miserably inefficient, and we pour extravagant sums of cash into it, but you might ask whether it works at all. And the answer is a bit of good news, yes, it does. This study also compared death rates over time and came to the conclusion that, in the US, more than half a million people are alive today who would not have been with the medical care we offered 25 years ago. Medicine in the US is good, it’s just far more economically wasteful than it ought to be.

I’m still thinking I ought to retire to Ireland.

(Also on Sb)