aggienaut | Entries tagged with natural history

   Once upon a time, the only fashion choices were whether to use flagella or cilia to move your one cell about. Then some enterprising microbe, probably a slime mould in primordial Paris, decided to up the ante by consisting of multiple cells. The next 610 million years would be haunted with difficult fashion choices and concern about getting fat.

   Only 80 million years later the first avant-garde darwin-fish decided to really raise the bar and crawl out of the ocean onto land. It did not continue to rapidly evolve into a person holding a stick and then a briefcase as it climbed the rise, but did go on to become a staple of bumperstickers 530 million years later, which is quite the ~~feet~~ feat.

   363 million years ago the first beginnings of what would be the most civilizated race on earth appear. I'm talking of course about the emergence of flying insects, leading to bees.

   Then suddenly life in the oceans became very decidedly unfashionable. As a result, 90-95% of the former residents of the ocean would not be caught dead remaining there. Land was clearly where all the A-listers were to be found.

   Several fashion trends developed during the Mesozoic Era Of High Fashion, illustrating the inceasingly difficult decisions facing those on the cutting edge of evolution -- on the one hand a group calling themselves the dinosaurs were part of a "being immensely huge and scary looking" movement, while another group diverged into another direction with small sizes and fur coats. The "mammalian" movement of these opossum-like movers and shakers would continue for the next 215 million years.

Personally I think the Quatzalcoatlus pictured on right above was a high point in evolution

   Though one might think the alpha-predator look of the dinosaurs would be a more enduring fashion, eventually it went out of style and the dinosaurs were relegated to documentaries on educational channels until they had a very brief reappearance on the red carpet for the movie Jurassic Park 65 million years later, in which they clearly out acted their human co-stars... but for example this author never got around to seeing the sequels.

   Mammals quickly expanded into areas of style formerly reserved for dinosaurs. During this renaissance of mammalian experimentation, our furry friends even retook the sea from the "scary lizard" sector, with a daring entrance by pakiceta. 55 million years later one would never guess that the seaborne mammals are a late entrant to the marine category, though fish and sharks and especially the ancient coelacanth have proven to be very enduring designs themselves.

   And this, of course, brings us to the very highest point of evolution. Hundreds of millions of years of progress brings us to this amazing pinnacle of achievment.

The numbat is an Australian marsupial. It clearly could not be any more adorable, and the stripes upon its back are extremely fashionable.

Oh there's also humans, who, despite inventing soap operas, can sometimes hope to possibly achieve things as great as perhaps looking like a numbat:

Pictured above, my dear friend Maureen does a numbat impression for me.

Also, humans have also made it possible to view the follownig NUMBAT SLIDESHOW!!, but I apologize that human failings have caused some non numbat material such as some kind of large frog to creep in there.

ALSO! I've decided instead of responding to simple complimentary comments to this entry with "thanks!" I will respond with a new numbat picture to each one! So comment below for your very own numbat picture response! :D

Current Music: Yolanda Be Cool - We No Speak Americano

   February, 13,000 BC, somewhere in the northwest of North America -- Wrapped in warm furs, Oxtusk surveyed the wintery landscape and leaned on his spear. In several places in the valley he could see smoke rising from villages, but what he didn't see was any large wildlife, or even tracks of such. It had been weeks since a caribou had been seen. He felt his stomach growl.
   Predators such as dire wolves and saber toothed tigers had gotten particularly daring for awhile, attacking even small groups of hunters, probably out of their own desperation, but now even they seemed to have gone. But where? Oxtusk looked around at the high mountains surrounding the valley -- even in summer it would be a very tough crossing for people to make ... but he wasn't sure his people could survive another winter here. Either some people would have to make the trek, or the villages would come to war over the very limited resources, or else they would all starve together. He looked at the gaunt faces of his hunting companions and wondered if they were thinking it too.

   As they returned to the village --about half a dozen huts made of furs stretched over bones or sticks, housing about 40 people altogether-- with the few rabbits they were able to come up with Oxtusk made up his mind, as soon as the passes were clear he would take as many people as were willing and could make it and attempt to cross the mountain passes.

June 13,000 BC -- Oxtusk gazed out on the green expanse before the party. It had been a long journey filled with doubt about what they'd find on the other side but at last they came through a pass and beheld this vast green valley. As they descended, hunting parties could usually find mountain goats or other decent sized game to bring back and feed the group of 15 or so pioneers.
   Enormous beasts were occasionally thought to be seen afar, the size of which they'd only heard of in legends.

   However, shortly after establishing a new village below the tree line, a hunting party came upon one of the giant beasts. It was massive and woolly, with giant tusks and a long tentacle-like nose. There had been legends of such things in the old country but none had been seen in generations and many believed them just to be tall tales the old folks told.
   The hunting party crept up carefully with their spears at the ready, filled with excitement but also trepidation. This beast looked truly fearsome!
   With a martial yell Oxtusk lept up with his spear to lead a charge at the beast. Much to their surprise, as they ran towards it, it neither made to run away nor did it charge at them angrily, but looked at them with great confusion until it was too late and a half dozen spears were inbound for its woolly hide.

The large scale extinction of megafauna following the arrival of early humans throughout the world is known as the "Quaternary Extinction Event." It had the least impact on African megafauna, where the animals had co-evolved with early man and properly knew to distrust his devilish ways, but megafauna in the Americas and Australia (giant kangaroos!?) had no warning that these silly looking bipeds without the benefit of claws or saber teeth were liable to poke them to death quite rudely with sharpened sticks.
Woolly mammoths are believed to have persisted much longer, despite changing climates, in places where humans were late to arrive, the last ones believed to be killed when humans arrived at Wrangel Island off Siberia as recently as 1700 BC, by which point the Minoans in Crete had flush toilets and the Sphinx and pyramids had already stood in the sands of Egypt for nearly a millennium.

Related:
Emo-snal on the holocene extinction event (and the coming zombiecene extinction event).
Emo-snal on 53,000,000 BC

Current Music: Trickside - Into Thin Air

   53,000,000 years ago - A dog-like creature slinks stealthily among the thick tropical foliage. It balances itself with its thick rodent-like tail while it sniffs the air for signs of prey. It deftly steps between tangled roots with its hoofed feet.

   The pakicetus catches a whiff of something tantalizing in the air and raises its nose, inhaling deeply several times. It knows this smell, it is one of those furry creatures with opposable digits -- fingers and toes -- that swing from trees. A tasty snack if one can be found on the ground and snapped up. The pakicetus sniffs in a few directions to triangulate the origin of the scent and silently thinks a moment. From the angle the scent is wafting in from, he reckons there's a good chance the creature may indeed be on the ground.

   Stealthily, very carefully moving among the plants so as not to make any noise, the animal moves towards the scent. Salivating with anticipation the pakicetus slows to an agonizingly slow and careful approach as he approaches the prey. It is indeed gathering fallen fruit on the forest floor, but these primates can be devilishly clever. One wrong move and it'll disappear up into the canopy.
   Slowly, slowly the pakicetus moves into position, all its concentration on the primate and the planned approach. A bee buzzes loudly by nearby, causing the primate to look up and the pakicetus freezes, terrified that he'd be noticed. The Pakicetus notes that the primate is a young adult female, indexing the complex scents in the air with what he knows about the biology of this particular species. Probably in heat, there's probably at least one male around with intentions to breed. Pakicetus looks around but sees no other primates. Males are edible too but what would have made him really pleased would have been if it had already produced some tasty little primate babies to gobble up. Oh well, this one won't be doing that, thought the pakicetus, who had no intention of just waiting around to let the strange creature propagate. He turns his attention once again fully to making the final approach, crouching low to the ground and licking his lips.

   The primate reaches for an early predecessor of what would become an apple just as the pakicetus crouches for the pounce. Suddenly there's a crashing noise from behind. Pakicetus looks quickly backwards with great annoyance, which turns immediately to terror. A mesonyx, a large ugly wolf-like creature with huge fangs is bounding in, flying across the ground with powerful leaps.
   The primate screeches and leaps into a tree and is gone in a flash. Pakicetus bounds quickly off to the side but not soon enough to completely avoid being sideswiped by mesonyx's own hoofed paws. Pakicetus scrambles desperately away with mesonyx hot on its heels, attempting to use its smaller size to maximum advantage by darting behind and around low trunks and branches as much as possible. The large muscular mesonyx barrels through most barriers though, proving very hard to shake.

   Pakicetus' muscles burn from exertion and its back has been lacerated with the nips and snaps of the pursuing monster. Suddenly it bursts from the forest and finds itself on the edge of a cliff. A hundred feet below, waves lap at the rocks. Glancing up quickly a landscape of shallow sea and islands only briefly register before the pakicetus turns its attention back to its pursuer. The mesonyx has also come skidding to a halt. It realizes a full charge would likely send them both tumbling into the sea and that the pakicetus can't outrun it, so it lets out a growl and slowly approaches to finish the job.
   Pakicetus takes another quick wild eyed glance around to contemplate its options. It then turns and hops off the cliff, followed only by an angry roar and fruitless swipe by the mesonyx.

   Pakicetus bobs to the surface of the warm sea and realizes he has escaped. He is exhausted but floats well and there is forested island only a short way off, so he uses his thick tail to propel himself through the water. He rests awhile on the warm beach and then realizes he's still hungry. He wades into the water and easily snaps up one of the large fish the sea is teeming with.

   He returns to the beach with it in his jaws and is about to send it slithering down his gullet when he sees a shadow among the trees. He freezes. It has that canine gait and tauntingly slithery tail. A mesonyx? Not again??

   A female pakicetus emerges from the foliage and approaches curiously. Our protagonist drops the fish in front of her, after all, he can easily go back into the sea and get another one.

...

And they lived in and around the sea, and their children lived in the sea, and their children's children, and from these early dog-like mammals that returned to the sea, all whales and other cetaceans later evolved. Everything from blue whales to narwhals.