The Wonderful Life of Hallucigenia

Say hello to Hallucigenia.

Hallucigenia was a weird little creature who lived and died in the Cambrian period, about 560 million years ago. The fossil Hallucigenia, first discovered over 100 years ago, did not have a head. Nor did subsequent finds. Now, Dr Martin Smith of Cambridge University has reunited Hallucigenia with its head, enabling a fuller reconstruction of what this amazing little creature might have looked like.

Hallucigenia. from Nature Magazine

On the face of it, this is one of those curious ‘popular science’ stories which may interest less than 1% of the BBC website’s visitors, and be read by less than 1% of those. Which explains (and I hope I’m not tarring the BBC with the same brush here) why publishers who are trying to save money through downsizing seem to take aim at their ‘specialist’ reporters first. I read, anecdotally, that science and religious affairs reporters are commonly first in the firing line. Strange bedfellows, indeed.

In this piece by science writer Rebecca Morelle, it appears a classic case of reporting the facts, and just the facts. But of course, the unearthing of Hallucigenia has been anything but an easy ride through the facts; from a fossil wrongly identified and described, to being placed upside down with spines viewed as leg appendages, and now being given its head.

What should be unmasked in this tale is the story of the fossils from the Burgess Shale. The Canadian Rockies quarry near the town of Burgess revealed a menagerie of weird and wonderful specimens… Opabinia, Marella, Yohoia, Aysheaia…

There is considerable debate as to how to classify these incredible creatures, but in his book ‘Wonderful Life’ the American paleontologist Steven Jay Gould supported the idea that they were so far from the ‘plan’ of modern organisms that many of them deserved to be considered discrete phyla. Gould’s theme, writ large, was of random selection, a mere whim of nature leading – some 550 million years (and at least four other mass extinctions) later – to the evolution of the human race. Gould knew a thing or two; he was so famous he made it on to ‘The Simpsons’.

for fame and fortune… Steven Jay Gould on The Simpsons

In simple terms, humans belong to the phylum chordata (we have a vertebrate). So too are birds, fish, camels, and weasels. Other phyla include the worms (Annelida) and the bivalve shells (Mollusca) and so on. Back in the Cambrian, before the mass extinction which wiped out 90% of the species of the time, Gould postulates, there was an even chance that our ancestors would not make it through the selection process.

Life’s lottery, as he termed it, could been drawn very, very differently indeed. And what sort of a world would we have then? A world without humans, is the simple answer.

I suspect I’ll pick up on a theme or two from this because science writers are important, dammit. Increasingly so.

Earlier this week it was reported we – the world – and every species on it, are on the slippery slopes of the sixth extinction event. Now. There’s more to say on this than the politician’s ‘hrrmph’.

On Bribery & People [Smugglers]

Did anyone else notice that Prime Minister Tony Abbott did eventually admit – by extension – that his government had paid bribes to Indonesian fishermen (that’s people smugglers, actually) to turn around?

Prime Minister Tony Abbott [official study]

When asked about payments he suggested the Labor Party had been caught in their own trap, claiming “they got caught doing it too”. Speaking to the NSW Liberal Party last week, he switched focus to Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s bad week while making the claims. Now that, to me, sounds like an admission, so what needs to be answered is, ‘What sort of an admission is it?’

A qualified ‘they did it before we did it’? An unqualified ‘We’ll do whatever it takes’ or an uneasy ‘All political parties are not to be trusted when it comes to matters of national security’? We may never know because the government refuses to discuss ‘operational matters’, a catch-all description which seems to be used to cover as many acts and issues as the very sensitive question of ‘National security’.

So that’s okay then. We can take the Prime Minister at his word because this government has never sought to mislead the Australian people before. We can take comfort from the fact that bribery is illegal, but because it was committed by an unidentified and unnamed official who acted under the cloak of indemnity, it’s okay. As with the US for its armed forces serving overseas, Australia has adopted an indemnity from prosecution act.

We can accept this, because we’re told by the same government who will not confirm any details (operational security), the same government who might be turning boats around in our name, and the same government who sends people to offshore detention.

In which case, it seems to me, the allegation is serious enough that it should be tested in the courts to see if the claim to indemnity stands up. Or aren’t lies and bribes considered important enough to this same government to whom sovereignty seems to mean so much?

An update is required; it seems the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ noticed… so have a look at this wonderful parody by Denis Carnahan.

Our Furry Friends

So there I was one evening in mid-May, taking the breeze out back. For quite a few weeks I’d been spotting the Boobook owl – silent wings silhouetted against the clouds – as she headed for her favourite perch. This night I was aware of a bit of noise going on out the back, and as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness I saw one – no, two, no, three – shapes taking off from the stringybark tree and doing circuits over the house roof. I went back inside, thinking the owl[s] were teaching a fledgling to hunt, but came to realise this was something different. These silhouettes were of a different shape entirely, and there was a constant chattering and squeaking going on.

There was action afoot in the stringybark, and it was a troop of Grey Headed Flying Fox (Pteropus poliocephalus), who have established a colony in Adelaide, perhaps 1000 kilometres outside of their customary east coast range. They’ve been here nearly a decade, I think, and are something of a pest when they descend on one point to roost. I like to think half a dozen or so constitutes a friendly invasion, and when I did some research discovered they’ve been spotted in 20 or more locations across the eastern suburbs here, feeding on the gumnuts as they flowered and opened.

Grey Headed Flying Fox. photo from ozanimals.com

You could call it the Season of the White Carpet, since the discarded gumnut calyx’ form a crunchy and uneven carpet under the tree, so many did they strip in their feeding. The bats returned each evening for nearly a month, and I never did manage to get a photo of them. They’re shy, easily disturbed, and careful about avoiding contact. On the other hand, they’re fairly large, with a wingspan of up to a metre, quite loud, and unlike any other active night-time creatures.

Here’s all the information on them you could possibly need.

Our native visitors

As is pretty much the norm for our garden, we have a family group of Magpie-larks (Grallina cyanoleuca) who very often hang out on the grass courtyard on the north side of the house, flitting up and down from the house eaves as they spot an insect in the grass, strutting around with their vaguely martial air. They’re patterned black and white, quite like the magpie, but they’re smaller and a distinctly different species. That’s why, I suppose, we locals most commonly refer to them as Murray Magpies. Oh well.

Another black and white liveried bird is the Willie Wagtail (Rhipidura Leucophrys), an even smaller shrike like bird which flits around, has an undulating or looping flight, and can be easily recognised by its tendency to flip or wag its tail when on the ground. It’s quite an obvious tell-tale.

Also a common visitor is the Galah or Rose Breasted Cockatoo (Eolophus roseicapilla), one of the most distinctive Australian birds. They’re raucous, usually travel in groups of 10 to 20, and descend on the acacia to feed on the flowers when they’re in season. In winter, I suspect, they head off inland (to the north) to warmer climes.

A galah feeding. photo by rustyalex

You want excitement? Oh boy, do we have excitement! There was the time I went outdoors because it was silent – too silent. The lack of noise made me prick up my ears.

I discovered this fearsome chap, a Collared Sparrowhawk (Accipiter cirrocephalus) who really did not like being disturbed at his meal and made sure I knew of his displeasure. After I had got the camera I peered around the corner of the house and managed to snap a couple of shots from about 20 metres.

Collared Sparrowhawk and kill. photo by rustyalex

The other major predatory bird around these parts is the Southern Boobook Owl (Ninox boobook), a medium sized nocturnal bird who likes to hang out near the top of the Ironbark tree and survey the realm. I’ve seen her a few times, mostly at dusk when she swoops through the garden before getting down to the serious hunting business. When hunting they’re incredibly quiet, you might occasionally hear a quick flutter on the wing, but it’s uncommon. I’ve never managed a photo which could do justice to the fierceness of her gaze, either. I’m guessing that’s not uncommon with nocturnal creatures.

When the Boobook is not hunting they can sit in the same tree for hours, calling for a mate or calling over their territory. Their call is a slightly mournful two noted ‘whaoo-who’. Through our late summer and autumn months (March to May) she seemed very noisy.

Mostly introduced birds

So who else is around? Perhaps the second most common species is the Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto), sometimes known as a Turtledove. They’re dumb and docile, slightly plump and generally inoffensive. I suppose I think of them as the cows in the picture. Generally they group together, and on a warm day they are happy sunning themselves in little dust-holes they’ve scratched in the flowerbeds, or stretching out one wing at a time on warm stones.

Collared Doves and a New Holland Honeyeater. photo by rustyalex

I’m happy with this picture because it’s in silhouette with the two doves and a New Holland Honeyeater, and the spindly almond tree etched against the skyline.

Somewhere in the garden there’s always a pair or more of the other ubiquitous introduced species, the Blackbird (Turdus merula), generally fussing away under bushes, scratching the leaf litter over paths, scuttering from one hiding location to another, and they always seem to be either raising a chick or chasing a yearling away from their patch.

Blackbirds are members of the thrush family, so their song is both liquid and warbly, a fruity call for dawn or at last light. During the day they seem to spend the most time alarm calling a trill ‘cluck-cluck-clucking’ to warn each other of an interloper, usually the neighbour’s cat, or me. I like the blackbirds because they’re such busybodies.

I see the occasional House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) but only in passing. They do not, for some reason, frequent our garden. When I was a kid growing up around Adelaide they seemed to be everywhere, and it’s my impression that they’re a good deal less common than they once were. More than that I dunno.

Here’s a good blog I spent some time looking at, http://trevorsbirding.com/. Trevor is located in Murray Bridge, about 80km away on the other side of the hills, so he sees a few different species. Good observational eye, too.

More, on Magpies and such

They call South Australia the driest state of the driest continent and it’s true; we are visited by prolonged and frequent periods of drought. Generally in this coastal fringe, and getting close to the face of the Mount Lofty Ranges, we’re almost in the extensive eucalypt woodlands which once covered much of this area, and we get rainfall enough to sustain some pretty fair plant life. Mostly, it’s just not what you would call lush….

I know virtually nothing about vegetation, so you’re reading the wrong part of the internet for that, but our garden has been extensively planted with both native and exotic species by my partner, so there’s usually something colourful going on to attract the attention of the birds. And fair enough; they seem quite versatile, so if the nectar from one tree’s flowers runs out they seem happy enough to move on to the next ‘in season’ offering.

A note about shrubbery: smaller species of birds inhabit the back yard for two main reasons. Firstly, the native trees and shrubs provide foods (nectar etc) for the native species, and equally importantly, closely grown shrubbery and small to medium sized plants provide excellent cover for these birds from introduced species such as sparrows and blackbirds, to the wattlebirds and honeyeaters.

Out the front of the house is an entirely different ecosystem: there are no shrubs to provide cover and the mature street trees are too big and open, so this area is the preserve of the Common Myna, the Common Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) and the White Backed Magpie (Cracticus tibicen tyrranica), all of whom we rarely see in the backyard, even though it’s only 20 metres away (as the crow flies!).

this is not my clip

Like many of the other medium sized birds, the magpies, when they visit, hang out in the taller gums, playing in groups of four or five, swooping through the canopies and calling to each other. To my mind the magpie song is perhaps the most beautiful warbling of all the open space birds; and they’re also incredibly intelligent. A few years ago we had a young ‘un who came visiting, most days coming down near the back door for a feed of mince meat or whatever else was on offer. He only stayed for a month or so before being chased off in a most vicious manner by a family group who resented his presence.

What birds get up to

[In my first post I was writing about the New Holland Honeyeater’s being the most common of all the birds in our Adelaide backyard]…

Even more aggressive are the Little Wattlebirds (Anthochaera chrysoptera), who are generally seen in pairs, and through most of the year (or so it seems) have a chick or two following them from tree to tree, desperately trying to master the skills of flight before the parents drive them from the territory.

Little Wattlebird in repose. photo rustyalex

With their loud hoarse “chuck chuck chuck”, the Little Wattlebirds are pretty common all through the suburbs. They will pester and attack and chase off any other species of bird they deem a danger, including what we commonly refer to as the crow, the Little Raven (Corvus mellori).

We are visited by a murder of these ravens infrequently, but almost always on a deeply cloudy and disturbed day, when they will perch in the tall and spectral Lemon Scented Gums which fringe the back fence line, cawing and ‘rarrrking’ to each other. From about 60 feet up they keep a watching brief, ready to swoop on an unsuspecting chick or anything else that takes their fancy. If they choose to come lower, they’re nearly always mobbed, but occasionally the lure is too great, and they love to hunt and turn over the straggling bark of the Stringybark Gum, revealing the pale chocolate coloured geckos (Hemidactylus frenatus) who live there.

As with all interlopers, the Little Wattlebirds hate the ravens, hiding in the denser trees then soaring aloft to closely trail and harass them if they threaten to come down from on high. From what I have observed their fear is justified; I’ve seen the ravens snatch what can only be young chicks in lightning raids. It is the Wattlebirds, too, who police a number of other species. They aggressively pursue both the New Holland Honeyeaters and the Rainbow Lorikeet (Trichoglossus haematodus) through the undergrowth, tumbling and maneuvering around the corner of the house, and scissoring into the loquat tree at high speed. It is they too who keep the Common Myna (Acridotheres tristis) confined to the front of the house and road area, chasing them from the back yard every time they trespass.

The Unintentional Twitcher

No, I have no idea why the English term for a bird watcher is ‘twitcher’. It sounds vaguely unseemly, a little wrong, and maybe even a bit ‘pervy’; for that reason alone I don’t buy into it. We have a wonderful garden in the eastern suburbs of our city, and it has a couple of major advantages for bird spotting, not least of which is the number of species which pay us a visit.

A major issue around Adelaide is that given the level of development (ie building) going on in the suburbs, good stands of trees and shrubbery are at a premium; the old ‘quarter acre block’ is much diminished, and bird species either have to adapt to an urban existence, or move on, or perish.

There’s a couple of possibilities given our location; some species can survive and thrive, while others use our yard with its large trees as a stopoff point, midway between the city and its parklands, and the Adelaide Hills face. There are ‘islands’ or ‘oases’ for the birds as they travel. If you stand at our upstairs window and look out across the sea of rooftops, you can see it clearly. Every here and there a few good sized trees have been allowed to rise above the dwellings, little islands in the sameness of the suburbs.

And where there is foliage there are birds, remnants themselves as it happens, descended from the extinction of all their dinosaurian cousins 67 million years ago. Birds are quixotic, curious, and not at all easily understood.

By far the most common species of bird in our garden is the small and nimble New Holland Honeyeater (Phylidonyris novaehollandiae). Gregarious and noisy, they tend to congregate in groups of up to 25 or 30, often in the early morning or at last light. It seems as though an extended family group gathers to discuss the day’s events, each bird shouting its news at the same time. I’ve seen entire shrubs literally pulsating with the energy these guys bring to a conversation, flitting in and out of the foliage and setting up a deafening chatter.

New Holland Honeyeater. photo by rustyalex

The yellow flashes of the New Holland Honeyeater give it a distinctive identity, but it seems to me each bird has a quite distinctive personality, if only one were able to discern them as individuals or get them to sit still for long enough. When I mention them being gregarious, it’s true they live together, feed together and keep together for protection, but they also fight amongst themselves, sometimes viciously, to maintain a social standing. After all, there’s a reason we call it a ‘pecking order’.

On Bloggers

It seems pretty clear to me that I like some order in my life; I like to characterise and organise things to a certain degree. At the same time, I am aware many men take this to absurd lengths, becoming slaves to OCD in their attention to detail and to collecting.

Men, probably more than women, seek order; when it comes to their role as collectors, even more so. Often I see men whose collection (of guns, of chess sets, of car manufacturer badges, anything…) is described as ‘the largest’ or ‘the best’ or ‘the biggest’. Truly, we men seem to be hoarders. And hoarders, the evidence seems to suggest, need to acquire.

Bearing in mind the propensity to order these aspects of our lives (while happily dumping dirty clothes in any corner of the house), I offer the following unscientific ordering of bloggers as I see it. Roughly, I argue, they fall into three main categories:

The Spotter (includes the Collector) – who sees and shares with an online community his interest in a specific topic or collection. Whatever your interest, there will be a Spotter out there who has an example of that which you seek, and will have posted it.

The Helper – whose trove of knowledge on a specific topic is there to be queried and used, providing homage is paid. Homage is usually acknowledgement that The Helpers’ knowledge is greater than one’s own. The Spotter and The Helper are closely related, and a Spotter may also be a Helper but it is rarely the other way around.

The Ranter – a much more generalized concept in the blogosphere, and ever so much more common, such individuals seek a platform to espouse their views on anything which strikes them as odd, as worthy of comment, as an affront to their own value system. It’s such a simple and broad definition that almost anyone can play this online equivalent of forests and trees. If a man rants in the forest and there is no-one there to hear him, does he really make any noise? It may come as no surprise to learn this blog is a fine example of ‘The Ranter’.

all the attributes, where’s the absinthe?

 

When dinosaurs ruled the world

Is the title of this post merely an extension of the truth? The more things change the more they stay the same. In this particular case, the latest Steven Spielberg blockbuster ‘Jurassic World’ was released for the adoration of the movie-going public this last weekend, and it quickly assumed the mantle of the greatest of them all.

In its opening weekend, ‘Jurassic World’ took over half a billion dollars – or its equivalent in pesos – at the box office, thus establishing itself as the most popular (and biggest selling upon release) movie of all time. The claim implied by the title is instructive… ‘Jurassic Park’ has become ‘Jurassic World’, less you missed the obvious claim to world domination.

Of course, dinosaurs became extinct at the close of the Mesozoic epoch, about 67 million years ago, instantly setting into train a sequence of events that culminated in all the young boys of the world having something to worship… a collection of deities, really, which fulfill all the key requirements.

Dinosaurs are awesome.

Dinosaurs are big.

Dinosaurs are scary.

Dinosaurs are dead: therefore they’re no danger to anyone.

Except now, of course, as they’ve been brought back to life through the miracles of CGI and cinematography. And in ‘Jurassic World’ the dinosaurs have been brought back to life bigger, better and meaner than ever before. It’s been 20 years since the original in this franchise, and I confess to having mixed thoughts about director Colin Trevorrow and the team bringing us genetically engineered dinosaurs which never actually existed. Except that the entire movie is a genetic sleight of hand, of course, and we have some kind of augmented idea about the dinosaurs which are so far removed from our world and our experience that we can only guess at what they might have been like.

Thus, Mosasaurus, seen leaping for her dinner at the aquarium, seems, to me, to be a tad larger than is accurate. Not to mention that Mosasaurus existed in the late Cretaceous rather than the Jurassic, but who’s quibbling over 40 million years? Anyway, the Mosasaur is being fed a fish – which is to say a fully adult Great White Shark (Carcharodon carcharias) – of some fifteen feet in length. Visually speaking, I applaud the concept here; the biggest and baddest that we know being eaten in one gulp by an even bigger and badder predator. Vale Spielberg and the ‘Jaws’ franchise, I guess.

So it’s all big, as you’d expect, though the Velociraptors are the same size, thus allowing latest Hollywood guy Chris Pratt to enlist them as some kind of ‘raptor army when things get out of hand. As they always were going to do. And there’s an even bigger dinosaur kid on the block: the genetically modified/constructed Indominus rex, bigger than ole T-rex. But why? The truth about dinosaurs seems terrifying enough; they were warm blooded, large, and many were lethal, so we should be able to quake in our boots knowing we’ll never meet them.

The problem noted by ‘The Onion’ was that the dinosaurs had no dialogue, and that was a shortcoming since they were the stars of the show. Quipped Mark Kermode for his review in ‘The Guardian‘, “We’re gonna need a better script”! Ouch.

I love dinosaurs. Always have. I’m target audience.

I loved the original ‘Jurassic Park’; but this one might be one jump for the shark too far.

See for yourself if you are one of the few left on the planet who’ve not yet seen the movie – the official video trailer