Orosirian & Statherian Periods

 Orosirian Period

The 3rd geologic period in the Paleoproterozoic Era is the Orosirian Period, which loosely means ‘mountain range’. This period lasted from 2,050 to 1,800 million years ago.

The latter half of the period involved intense orogeny on virtually all continents. Orogeny is when 2 continental plates slam into each other and one is shoved down, while the other is shoved up, producing mountain ranges.

Other important events include 2 of the largest known impact events. At about 2,023 million years ago, a large asteroid collision created the Vredefort impact structure, located in what is now South Africa. Although most of the crater has eroded away, the impact dome at the center is still visible.

Towards the end of the period, about 1,850 million years ago, the Sudbury Basin was created by the impact of another asteroid in what is now Ontario Canada. I’m not sure if the article was saying the basin is in the city of Greater Sudbury, or the city is in the basin. It did state that the locals merely refer to it as ‘the valley’.

So, the Orosirian Period saw much happening to Earth’s crust, from holes being punched into it (craters) to mountains climbing towards the sky. I couldn’t find anything on life forms or what the environment was like, which is a bummer. I assume the lifeforms that existed at the beginning of this period mostly managed to survive, and possibly evolved.

 

Statherian Period

The final period in the Paleoproterozoic Era is the Stratherian Period, which roughly means ‘stable, firm’. It started at 1,800 million years ago and lasted to 1,600 million years ago.

This period was characterized by erosion and folding. Folding, as I understood the article was when the forces that created mountain ranges continued to deform the land around the mountains, forming foothills. In other places, erosion took place, sending sediment to a lower level, which formed new platforms of land extending out from what land already existed.

The oldest known eukaryotic fossil organism was found in Statherian beds in India, so life was carrying on. At that time, the oxygen level was 10-20% of our current level.

By the beginning of the Statherian Period, the supercontinent Columbia had assembled.

So there we have all the important highlights of the back half of the Paleoproterozoid Era. It almost sound like a livable place. Well, except the oxygen level would be a problem. And I’m not sure we have any earthworms yet to help fertilize the soil. Well, at least we’re getting closer to a livable planet!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orosirian#:~:text=The%20Orosirian%20Period%20(%20%2F%CB%8C%C9%92r,these%20dates%20are%20defined%20chronometrically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vredefort_crater

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Basin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statherian

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fold_and_thrust_belt

Siderian & Rhyacian Periods

 

Siderian Period

There are 4 periods in the Paleoproterozoic Era, the first being the Siderian Period. This period lasted from 2,500 to 2,300 million years ago.

Early in this period is when banded iron formations peaked. As I explained before, cyanobacteria produced waste oxygen, which initially combined with iron that was in the sea, forming magnetite (Fe3O4), an iron oxide, in a crystal structure rock. This process removed iron from the oceans, presumably turning the greenish water clear.

Then, with no remaining iron in the sea to serve as an oxygen sink, the oxygen escaped the ocean and built up the oxygen level in the atmosphere. This led to the oxygen catastrophe, wherein a great deal of the life then existing on the Earth was wiped out because they could not tolerate such high levels of oxygen.

Some geologists believe the high level of oxygen also triggered the Huronian glaciation. This glaciation started in mid-Siderian (2,400 million years ago) and extended into the next period, lasting until 2,100 million years ago. It was apparently caused when free oxygen combined with the methane in the atmosphere to form carbon dioxide and water, which do not retain heat as well as methane does. With far less of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, a great chilling took place, also known as the Huronian glaciation. I don’t know if the entire planet froze, and the article stated that this glaciation caused a mass extinction. I’m waiting for a geologist I know to clarify whether there were 2 mass extinctions so close together, or just one, with both the presence of oxygen and the cooling temperatures to blame.

 

Rhyacian Period

The Rhyacian Period is the 2nd geologic period in the Paleoproterozoic era. It lasted from 2,300 to 2,050 million years ago. And that is just about all the wikipedia article had to say on the subject. Oh, there were a bunch of rock formations created, and the Huronian glaciation lasted 100 million years, but that still leaves 150 million years at the end of the period during which, apparently, absolutely nothing of note happened.

Oof! What was the tipping point that caused the end of the glaciation? For that matter, did it cover the entire Earth? Was there an explosion of new species afterwards?

Maybe they don’t know. What about theories? Doesn’t anybody have any theories? Well, without sitting my geologist friend down and picking his brain clean, I guess that’s as far as I can go with this period. Maybe the next 2 period of the Paleoproterozoic Era will have more meat to them.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siderian#:~:text=The%20Siderian%20Period%20(%20%2Fsa%C9%AA,these%20dates%20are%20defined%20chronometrically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyacian

The Paleoproterozoic Era

 Next up is the Paleoproterozoic Era, which spans from 2,500 to 1,600 million years ago. It is the first of 3 sub-divisions (era) of the Proterozoic Eon. It is the longest era of the Earth’s geological history, and is divided into 4 periods, which we will look at later. During this era, the continents first stabilized.

Paleontological evidence suggests that the Earth rotated during this era at a speed that produced days that were 20 hours long, which would have meant a year would have about 450 days long.

It was during this era that the atmosphere and shallow seas saw a great increase in free oxygen, thanks to all that cyanobacteria that had been pumping out oxygen as a waste product for so long. Before that, almost all existing lifeforms were anaerobic, meaning they did not require oxygen. In fact, free oxygen in large amounts is toxic to most anaerobic organism. Therefore, the majority of the anaerobic lifeforms died when the atmospheric free-oxygen levels soared. This was the first major and possibly the most significant mass extinction event, and is called the Great Oxidation Event.

But this was not just a time of death. Many eukaryotes lineages have been approximately dated to the Paleoproterozoic era. Eukaryotes consist of cells that have a nucleus enclosed within a nuclear envelope. To the best that I can remember my high school biology, that would mean that most plants and animals are eukaryotes. It is currently accepted that there are 3 domains of life on Earth, and the eukaryotes are one of them. Bacteria and Archaea are the other two. Neither of these types of life have cells with a nucleus within a nuclear envelope, and I think neither one of them gets large enough to be seen with the naked eye.

During this era, a number of continents collided, creating mountain belts and basins. This happened so often that it led to the assembly of the supercontinent named Columbia (or Nuna, depending on who you talk to).

Now, in doing my research about the Paleoproterozoic Era, I chanced upon a phrase called The Boring Billion. Believe it or not, that sounded interesting, so I did a little more digging (so to speak) and found that it referred to the time period between 1.8 and 0.8 billion years ago, which spans the middle of the Proterozoic eon. It would have just been starting when this era was ending, but I’ll mention it here and hope it comes up again when we get to the next era, so I can study it in more detail.

The Boring Billion section of time was characterized by a fair amount of tectonic stability, climatic stasis, and stalled biological evolution. Supposedly, it was bordered by 2 different oxygenation and glacial events, but the Boring Billion itself had very low oxygen levels and no evidence of glaciation.

Well, no doubt about it, the world is really beginning to shape up into the Earth we know. But I’m not quite ready to move in.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoproterozoic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boring_Billion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote

Proterozoic Eon

 Now to move on to the next eon, the Proterozoic Eon. This eon spans the time from the appearance of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere to just before the proliferation of complex life such as trilobites or corals. It started at 2,500 million years ago to 541 million years ago, so very nearly 2 billion years. It is divided into 3 eras; the Paleoproterozoic, the Mesoproterozoic, and the Neoproterozoic. We may or may not take a look at each of these in more detail.

The geologic record of the Proterozoic Eon is more complete than for the Archean Eon, which preceded it. The Proterozoic features rock strata that were laid down in extensive shallow inland seas. Studies of these rocks show that the eon had massive continental accretion, including the first definitive supercontinent cycle, and modern mountain building activity.

There is also evidence of glaciations taking place during the Proterozoic. The first began shortly after the beginning of the Proterozoic, with at least four others near the end of the eon. These may have climaxed with the hypothesized Snowball Earth, an idea I am thoroughly fascinated by.

One of the most important events of this eon was the accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere. Although oxygen was probably released by photosynthesis during the Archeon Eon, it first combined with sulfur and iron in the oceans. Until roughly 2.3 billion years ago, oxygen was only 1-2% of its current level. It is stated that about 1.9 billion years ago, all the iron in the oceans had all been oxidized.

The Proterozoic Eon was tectonically active. The early part of the eon experienced a period of increasing crustal recycling, which suggests subduction. This is where one piece of crust gets shoved under another piece of crust. The bottom crust is eventually melted, while the upper crust buckles into mountains. The melting crust eventually reformed, making the upper bits of crust thick enough to endure. It is believed that 43% of the modern continental crust was formed in the Proterozoic Eon, 39% during the Archean Eon, and only 18% in the current geological eon.

It is commonly accepted that during the Precambrian SuperEon--of which the Proterozoic Eon is a part--the Earth went through several supercontinent breakup and rebuilding cycles.

The supercontinent Columbia was dominant in the early-mid Proterozoic. The article did not say much about Columbia, so we shall skip ahead to Rodinia (1,000-750 Million years ago) of the late Proterozoic. It was created when a series of continents attached to a central craton called Laurentia, which today forms the core of the North American Continent. During its construction, the mountain building processes created the Grenville orogeny located in Eastern North America, from Labrador down through Mexico. From the map, it looks like the Appalachian Mountains could be part of the mountain range that was formed.

The first advanced single celled (eukaryotes) and multi-cellular life roughly coincides with the start of the accumulation of free oxygen. This may have been due to an increase in the oxidized nitrates, which is what eukaryotes use. But the rise of eukaryotes did not preclude the expansion of cyanobacteria. In fact, stromatolites (microbial mats) reached their greatest abundance and diversity, peaking roughly 1,200 million years ago.

The earliest fossils of something like fungi date to 2,400 million years ago. These organisms lived in the deepest areas of water, and had filamentous structures capable of forming branches.

Wow, sounds like Earth was getting busy, doesn’t it? But I still don’t think we could colonize, not with the crops we grow now. There’s too many forms of other life that our crops count on to help them get the nutrients they need from the soil. Plus, I’m not sure what the climate was like, with such a low amount of free oxygen in the atmosphere. Put me back in my pod and let me sleep another million years or so, and then we’ll see.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proterozoic

Mesoarchean & Neoarchean Eras

 Mesoarchean Era

We will continue studying the Archean Eon with a brief look at its 3rd part, the Mesoarchean Era. How brief a look? That will depend on how much I find.

The Mesoarchean Era lasted from 3,200 to 2,800 million years ago. There is no specific level in the rocks that designates this era, it is simply defined by the time period.

Fossils from Australia prove that stromatolites have been growing on Earth since the Mesoarchean Era. These sedimentary formations are created by photosynthetic cyanobacteria that produce adhesive compounds and cement sand and other rocky materials into mineral “microbial mats”. These multi-layered sheets of microorganisms, mainly bacteria, grow at interfaces between different types of material, mostly on submerged or moist surfaces. They have been known to colonize environments ranging in temperature from -40C to 120C (about -48F to 272F). The mats grow layer by layer and can grow to a meter or more. Although uncommon today, fossilized stromotalites record ancient life on Earth. The earliest reefs, probably formed by stromatolites, date from this era.

The article had a tantalizing statement about the Pongola glaciation occurring around 2,900 million years ago but a brief search couldn’t find any more information about it. Was it only at the poles, or was it world-wide?

At the end of this era, the first supercontinent broke up, right about 2,800 million years ago.

 

Neoarchean Era

That brings us to the 4th part of the Archean Eon, the Neoarchean Era,  from 2,800 to 2,500 million years ago. Again, this era is defined only by time, not to a specific rock level.

During this era, oxygenic photosynthesis released an abundance of oxygen, which first reacted with minerals and afterward was free to react with greenhouse gases of the atmosphere. By reacting with these greenhouse gases, the oxygen changed them into gases that trapped less heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, and the Earth began to cool off. Eventually.

Remember the microbial mats from the Mesoarchean Era? Did I mention these mats were created by cyanobacteria? Cyanobacteria give off oxygen as a waste product. We should celebrate the ancient existence of cyanobacteria as the provider of the oxygen that we need in order to live.

However, back then, what life existed could not use oxygen. In fact, it was poisonous to most forms of life of the time. So when O2 levels got too high, a lot of the existing life died off. But that happened later. The process that led to that problem was only beginning during the Neoarchean Era.

Also during the Neoarchean Era, at about 2,720 million years ago, the supercontinent Kenorland formed.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoarchean

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_mat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoarchean

Eoarchean & Paleoarchaen Eras

 Eoarchean Era

The Archean Eon is divided into 4 eras, the first of which is the Eoarchean Era. This era began immediately after the Hadean Eon 4 billion years ago, when the Earth had cooled enough to have a solid crust. However, this crust may have been incomplete, with lava flowing at many sites at the surface.

In addition, the beginning of the Eoarchean Era saw heavy bombardment of the inner solar system by asteroids. The oldest rock formations yet discovered occur in Greenland and Canada. The former has been dated to 3.8 billion years old, and the latter 4.031 billion years old.

The Eoarchean Era ended 3.6 billion years ago. The earliest forms of life began within this era. The atmosphere had no oxygen and the atmospheric pressure was from 10 to 100 times what we feel now.

Man, that is a lot of atmosphere. And not a bit to breathe. I mean, you could breathe it, but without any oxygen, breathing wouldn’t do you any good. And the article said life got started at this point, but they didn’t even give that life a name for me to do further research. Well, it was a long time ago, when things on Earth were still pretty... unsettled.

 

Paleoarchaen Era

The next era of the Archean Eon is the Paleoarchaen Era. Not a lot to report on here, either, as this article was even shorter than the one on the Eoarchean Era.

The Paleoarchaen Era started 3.6 billion years ago and ended at 3.2 billion years ago. There are no big happenings at either end to mark the changing of eras, it is simply a convenient way for scientists to refer to this section of the Earth’s history.

The oldest confirmed form of life is fossilized bacteria in microbial mats, approximately 3.480 billion years old and found in Australia.

This is when the first supercontinent formed, and if you remember from my earlier blogs, that would either be Ur or Vaalbara, depending on which one your college professor prefers. There is firm belief that there was one at this time, but there is some debate over the name, and exactly what pieces of crust fit where in it.

Also during this era, a large asteroid, about 23-36 miles wide, collided with the Earth in the area of South Africa. This was approximately 3.26 billion years ago, and created the Barberton greenstone belt.

I can’t help but wonder how that managed to happen. Ur/Vaalbara may have been the supercontinent of the time, but it only held about 12-15% of the continents we currently have. Math says that that ‘supercontinent’ would have covered less than 5% of Earth’s surface. How did a random asteroid just happen to hit that?

I didn’t see anything different regarding the atmosphere, so I’m assuming it was much the same as during the Eoarchean Era. Keep holding your breath. Sooner or later, oxygen starts.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eoarchean

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoarchean

Modern Dinosaurs

 This is not about alligators or sharks or any other animal that may still exist in something like the form they had back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. It is not about some lizard or other creature that looks like it belongs in the age of the dinosaurs.

This is about people. More specifically, people of a certain age in their life. If you have reached retirement, you might recognize yourself in some of the scenes I describe. This is your notice that you are not alone.

Perhaps you are younger than retirement age. If you have parents or grandparents who are retired, you might want to consider what I say and reflect how these situations might affect your older relatives.

This is not exactly a rant, although it started out as one a few days ago. More of a dirge for possibilities and opportunities that seem to have slipped us by.

And this is about technology, among other things.

First, the physical problems. They are likely to sneak up on an aging person, who probably is busy living their life and not thinking about muscles, bones and joints that need a little more attention than they used to. The wake-up call may come when they stumble and fall, or have difficulty lifting a pan to drain the water, or they can’t open a jar of their favorite condiment because they can’t get a firm grip on the cap. I don’t know what causes the uncertainty with one’s balance, but I suffer from it, and now my hubby is beginning to recognize it, too.

I have heard that it is possible to get something like ‘occupational therapy’ to help counter these effects of aging. Is it possible to get some of this without spending time in the hospital, recovering from a fall or a scalding first? I don’t know. Happily, I have a wellness check with my doctor in a few days, and I will definitely be asking questions about that. I have learned that half an hour of walking, 5 days a week, help with my balance uncertainty, and help strengthen my leg muscles so that getting around is easier. And there appear to be exercises one can do to help regain some flexibility in your body, which is so important when trying to check traffic when driving. Alas, all of those I have found start out with ‘Sit on the floor’, and getting up and down from the floor is a major, time-consuming effort.

Second, the mental effects. Even without dementia, the brain starts to fail the person involved. It usually starts with embarrassing events like forgetting the word you need to finish the sentence you’re saying. It’s not just in conversation, either. As a writer, I have that happen to me while I am writing. I have become adept at using my dictionary and thesaurus to try and track down the work I was looking for. There are other lapses of memory, too. These days, I have a daily ‘to do’ list, which I consult several times during the day. If something like a doctor’s appointment doesn’t get added to my to do list, it gets forgotten! I now rely on shopping lists, too.

I’ve been told that doing puzzles and playing games helps the brain stay active, that certain herbal supplements will help the brain. Unfortunately, the latest article from AARP that I read on that subject is that puzzles and games help the brain be good at puzzles and games, and that there is no proof that any of the usual supplements are of any help at all. Bummer.

Third, the senses problems. As one gets older, the senses get tired. I have specifically noticed it with eyesight, hearing, and taste. If the world is a bit dim, for instance if the sky is heavily overcast or the sun is somewhere below the horizon, I need more light than our house is set up to provide. I have lamps all over the place. I may also need my crafter’s magnifying glasses. My husband is constantly complaining that I mumble too much. And I’ve noticed I’ve been dumping more salt and pepper onto food, trying to make it taste like it used to.

Of course there are eye exams and hearing exams to help deal with fading eyesight and hearing. I wear glasses all the time now, and still need more help when the lighting is dim or I’m trying to do my crafts. I haven’t heard of anything to help with a fading sense of taste.

Fourth, the technology. We are surrounded with technology these days. It seems to have a planned obsolescence to it, so that 18 months (or less) after you get a new phone, laptop, computer, whatever, you are expected to replace it. And yet, these items are so complex, I am still learning to use it after 18 months, so I am not inclined to replace it and have to start the learning process all over again. Especially not with phones.

There doesn’t seem to be much support to help people learn how to use their technology. I once heard of a class held by the local library and community college to help people solve any problems they were having with their gadgets. I took my e-reader, because I couldn’t figure out how to download any new books to it. It was old at the time, on its way out, but it still worked, so why should I replace it with something even more complicated? No one there could help me figure it out.

And in a related note, the techno-expectations. We recently visited Disney World’s Hollywood Studios for a long and rather frustrating day. We wanted to ride the newest ride, which had a ‘virtual line’, which you are expected to join using an app on your cell phone. My husband has the app on his cell phone, but it kept wanting to update, and update, and... we had to ask a staff member to help us, which they were reluctant to do, because it’s ‘just a matter of using the app.’ Yes, our phones are smart phones, because they are smarter than us. But they aren’t THAT smart. Having gotten our time slot to ride, we then enjoyed the park until about noon or a little after, when we started wearing down (remember the physical effects?). So we started looking for a place to grab a bite to eat. We tried 3 different places, and each one expected us to have ordered our food before we got there by using an(other) app on our phone. The third place could finally accommodate us without using the app, but they let us know this was a special arrangement.

I’m not ready to kick the bucket yet. I’m hoping for another 40 or 50 years. So I have to take care of myself. I know that. I’ll probably have to start relying even more on technology. I just hope I can find a mentor to help me figure out how to get my cyborg parts to work.

Archaen Eon

 

The Archean Eon is the second of the four geologic eons of Earth’s history. (The first was Hadean Eon.) During the Archaen Eon, which lasted roughly 4,000 to 2,500 million years ago, the Earth’s crust cooled enough to allow the formation of continents and the beginning of life on Earth. Sounds like a busy time, doesn’t it?

The oldest rock formations on Earth’s surface are Archean. They are found in Greenland, Siberia, Canada, Montana, Wyoming, Scotland, India, Brazil, western Australia and southern Africa, as well as other regions. Volcanic activity was much higher than it is today, producing many different kind of volcanic rocks.

The continents started to form during the Archean, although details are still being debated.  Although this is when the first continents formed, rock of this ages makes up only 7% of the present world’s land mass. Allowing for erosion and destruction of past formations suggests that only 5-40% of the present area of continents formed during the Archean Eon.

By the end of the Archean, plate tectonic activity may have been similar to that of the modern Earth. For those who know how to read it, evidence demonstrates that liquid water was prevalent and deep oceanic basins already existed.

The Archean atmosphere had very little free oxygen, yet temperatures appear to have been near modern levels. The moderate temperatures may be because of greater amounts of greenhouse gases. Or, the Earth may have reflected less sunlight and heat due to having less land area.

There is substantial evidence that life began either near the end of the Hadean Eon or early in the Archean Eon.

The earliest identifiable fossils consist of stromatolites, which are microbial mats formed in shallow water by cyanobacteria. The earliest were found to be 3.48 billion years old. They were found throughout the Archean and became common late in the Eon. Cyanobacteria were instrumental in creating free oxygen in the atmosphere, and created so much of it that later, there was a crisis of sorts, when the life that existed at the time could not cope with the high level of oxygen. (I read that somewhere and have included it in one of my other blogs, but at this time, I can’t remember where I got that from.)

It is generally agreed that before the Archean Eon, life as we know it would have been severely challenged by the hostile environmental conditions then found on Earth.

Life during the Archean consisted of simple single-celled organisms such as Bacteria.

However, fossilized microbes from terrestrial microbial mats show that life was already established on land as long ago as 3.22 billion years.

So, it was a busy time. Lots of water sloshing around, lots of volcanoes creating land masses, and life beginning to get a first grasp on the place. If we wound up crash-landing on a planet like that, could we survive? Could we cultivate cyanobacteria to create more oxygen for us? Doing that to any large extent might strip out some of the greenhouse gases, which could lower the temperature of the planet. Which only goes to show that you have to be careful what you do to make a place your home.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archean#:~:text=The%20Archean%20Eon%20(%20%2F%C9%91%CB%90r%CB%88,beginning%20of%20life%20on%20Earth.

Ichthyosaurs

 

Ichthyosaur is Greek for ‘fish lizard’, and is the name for a group of large extinct marine reptiles. They lived during the time of the dinosaurs, but formed a separate group from them and may not have been closely related.

Ichthyosaurs thrived during much of the Mesozoic era. Based on fossil evidence, they appeared about 250 million years ago, and at least one species survived until about 90 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous. During the early Triassic period, ichthyosaurs evolved from some unidentified land reptile that returned to the sea. In a case of convergent evolution, they gradually came to resemble modern dolphins and whales, which evolved from land-dwelling mammals millions of years after the ichthyosaurs returned to the ocean. These ‘fish lizards’ were abundant until the later Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, when they were replaced as the top aquatic predators by the Plesiosauria, another marine reptilian group.

Ichthyosaurs averaged 2-4 meters (6.6 to 13.1 ft) in length. Some specimens were as short as 1 ft, while other species were much larger. During the Triassic, the Shonisaurus popularis was about 15 meters (49 ft) long. The Shastasaurus sikanniensis was estimated in 2004 to have been 21 meters (69 ft) long. Some lower jaw fragments found in England indicated a length between 20 and 25 meters (66 to 82 ft).

Weight estimates indicate a 2.4 meter (8 ft) Stenopterygius weighed around 163-168 kg (359-370 lb), while a 4 meter (13 ft) Ophthalmosaurus icenicus weighed 930-950 kg (2,050-2,090 lb). That would be a lot of tuna! Or salmon.

The earliest members of the ichthyosaur lineage were eel-like, but later members resembled more typical fishes or dolphins. Their limbs had been fully transformed into flippers, and some species had a fin on their backs and a more vertical fin at the rear of a rather short tail.

Their heads were pointed, and the jaws often came equipped with conical teeth to catch smaller prey. Some species had larger, bladed teeth to attack large animals. Their eyes were very large and the neck was short. Later species had a stiff trunk with a more vertical tail fin, which made for a powerful propulsive stroke. Ichthyosaurs were air-breathing, warm-blooded and bore live young. It’s possible they had a layer of blubber for insulation.

They may have looked like fish, but they were not. They were reptiles. They adapted so well to their environment that some of them developed dorsal fins and vertical tail fins without their ancestors having had anything there to be adapted.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthyosaur

Quarks

 I actually did study quarks in high-school chemistry, but that was so long ago, I thought I’d take another look at them. And, no, I’m not talking about the bar owner on Deep Space 9; my high school days were long before that particular TV show came along.

I’m very glad to report that what I learned in high school chemistry is still true, that a quark is a fundamental piece of matter, making up protons and neutrons, the things that make up atomic nuclei in all matter.

Quarks have various properties; electric charge, mass, color charge, and spin. They also are the only elementary particles that experience all 4 fundamental interactions; electromagnetism, gravitation, strong interaction and weak interaction.

There are 6 types of quarks, known as flavors. These are up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top. (My personal favorite flavor is lime green with orange polka dots, but that flavor hasn’t been discovered yet.)

The up and down quarks have the lowest mass. The heavier quarks rapidly change into up and down quarks through a process of particle decay, the transformation from a higher mass state to a lower mass state. This generally makes the up and down quarks the most stable and the most common in the universe.

For every quark flavor, there is an equal but opposite antiquark. Yes, the antiquark differs from its corresponding quark in that some of its properties have equal magnitude but opposite sign.

As my high school teacher said, quarks are strange little things. They have a fractional electric charge value of either -1/3 or +2/3 of the elementary charge, depending on their flavor. Those with +2/3 e include the up, charm and top quarks, while the rest have -1/3 e. Antiquarks, of course, have an opposite charge to their corresponding quarks; the up, charm and top antiquarks have charges of -2/3 e, and the other antiquarks have a charge of +1/3 e.

In the atomic nuclei, Neutrons have no electrical charge, because they are made of 2 down quarks (-1/3 e each) and 1 up quark (+2/3 e). Similarly, the proton has a positive charge of 1e, because they are made up of 2 up quarks (+2/3 e each) and 1 down quark (-1/3 e).

So, I learned some new stuff about quarks, couldn’t make sense of other stuff in the article. May have to consider getting a new chemistry textbook, or maybe a textbook on particle physics. And then find the time to actually study it.

Oh, I did see that quarks have a color (red, green and blue), as well as a flavor, but alas, still no lime green with orange polka dots. I’m sure they’ll show up eventually.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark

Columbia SuperContinent

 Columbia was a supercontinent thought to have existed about 2,500 to 1,500 million years ago in the Paleoproterozoic Era. It is also known as Nuna and Hudsonland. It consisted of proto-cratons known as the Amazonian Shield, Australia, Baltica, Laurentia, and the Ukrainian Shield. It may have possibly included Kalaharia, North China and Siberia as well.

Following its creation by combining most or all of the known bits and pieces of land, Columbia continued to grow by various areas of volcanic activity that created magma flows.

Columbia began to fragment about 1.5 to 1.35 billion years ago.

This is pretty much the sum total of what I learned from this article. I find it irritating when an article that is supposedly written for the average person presumes that the average person has taken a course or three in the specific subject covered by the article, and so it is filled with language and terms that actually mean very little to the average person. More and better pictures might have helped.

There was one graph that seemed to say that when Columbia began collecting its various pieces, single-cell life was strong, as was photosynthesis. Then a type of life known as eukaryotes began. This is a very broad type of life, where the cell nucleus containing the cell’s DNA is enclosed within a nuclear envelope. This is so broad a definition that these days, it includes all life except some or all types of bacteria.

At the very end of Columbia’s life, as it was beginning to break up, multi-cellular life was just beginning.

I don’t think I’d want to try to colonize a planet during this period of its life. I don’t think you could get crops to grow unless you brought along various soil denizens that would help make the soil and its potential nutrients usable by your plants. But then, I don’t have a degree in biology or agriculture, either, so maybe I’m way off base there.

I’d like to take a course in paleogeology, I just don’t know where I’d have to go to find one.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_(supercontinent)

An Update on MoonPhaze Authors

 Okay, I don’t do this very often, so I hope you’ll bear with me. Things have been busy here, and I thought I would let you sneak a peek into the lives of a pair of authors.

In August, I saw a call for submissions to a themed anthology, with a 30-day deadline. I told my husband, who writes science fiction. I knew he was busy with some of  his hobbies, but I wanted to give him the chance to participate. The first thing I sold was a story to a themed anthology, so I have a bit of a soft spot in my heart for them.

Meanwhile, I tried to think up a plot for a suitable story. It only took me a couple days to realize I had 2 plots! So I wrote both of them. When I asked if they would accept multiple submissions, they said yes, so a few days before the deadline, I sent both of them in.

We are not sitting around, chewing our fingernails and climbing the walls waiting for word on whether or not we were accepted. The contributors do not, generally, make a lot of money from anthologies, but it’s nice to be able to put them on our ‘resume’, so to speak. And yes, we are competing with each other, but I am also competing with myself!

In other news, I recently took an on-line class on how to effectively use Goodreads to let people know about our books. So I have spent some time getting my husband’s books listed on Goodreads, including 2 that have not been published yet, but have been edited and are waiting for the cover to be done. I never imagined how much marketing in involved before the book is published! I had to make an entire new ‘To Do’ list for the Goodreads site, to keep me on track.

I also spent some time this week trying to upload the files for his next book, “De-Evolution” to our printer. They changed the way files are uploaded, so I had to re-learn the entire procedure again. And I’m not done, because somehow I managed to come up with 2 chapter titles for each chapter, so I’m exchanging emails with their support crew, trying to figure out how to eliminate one set of chapter titles, preferably the ones they added.

I should also upload the file for the e-book, but I figure, one problem at a time.

Upcoming books by John Lars Shoberg include “De-Evolution”, with a tentative release date of November 15, 2020 and “The Stone Ship”, with a tentative release date of May 15, 2021, and which is a sequel to his first book (The Stone Builders). Both of these books are currently having the covers done. I have a book, “Hank’s Widow”, tentatively scheduled for release on July 15, 2021. Actually, the author name will be Linda (NMI) Joy, which is my pen name for romances.

And there you have it. In among all the other things in our lives, I have accomplished this in the last couple of weeks, with other on-line seminars on Sunday and next Tuesday. In the meantime, it’s time to start editing yet another of John’s books, “And the Meek Shall Inherit”.

I need clocks that run slower.

Author Blogs

The worst part of being an indie author is that you are required to do all of your own marketing and promotion. You always wonder if you are missing something, some way of connecting to your audience. There’s lots of advice out there about having your own blog, so this week, I did some research of what other authors talk about in their blogs.

I was lucky enough to find a list of ‘well-crafted’ author blogs compiled by a well-known site for authors. So I checked out the first dozen or so.

The first thing I noticed was that all of the blogs I was connected to were over a decade old, even though these blogs got points for being ‘frequently updated’. In one or two cases, newer posts were easy to find; but in most of them, I was stuck with the post I landed on, looking for similarities, differences, anything that might tell me what made a successful author’s blog.

Two or three of them were down-right political in nature. I have my political views, of course, but I don’t like cramming my views down other people’s throats, nor do I like having other people’s views crammed down mine. I didn’t spend much time on those sites.

One blog page consisted of boxes with a headline in each box. The headlines did not make much sense to me, perhaps because I wasn’t familiar with that author’s work, and that’s what they pertained to.

One blog page was a guest blog by a friend of the author, who waxed poetic about how much better his life was, now that he had adopted just one of the attitudes suggested is the author’s non-fiction self-help book. Well, that was an interesting possibility... if I wrote non-fiction self-help books.

Several of them talked about their current Work In Progress, which was pretty much what I expected. But even now, I’m not sure how that can be done effectively, given a blog that gets a new post every week, which is the absolute minimum suggested by all the advice given to authors that I’ve seen.

Now, I don’t write 8 hours a day. I am an editor and publisher (and person) as well as an author, and so I spend 8 hours (and more) at my computer, I do not spend 8 hours a days working on my own stories. Not even 8 hours writing, re-writing and editing my own stories. But let’s look at some math:

Suppose an author writes 8,000 words a day ( that’s 1,000 words per hour, and boy, is that fast!) 5 days a week produces 40,000 words. To the best of my knowledge, a typical romance is about 80,000 words, so that’s 2 weeks of work, just for a rough draft. One romance writer complained that she had finished her rough draft, only to have her editor tell her it had problems, problems so bad that she (the author) was going to have to step back and rethink the entire story. And yet, that author still managed to include in her blog post an excerpt from that story.

I’m left wondering, does she include an excerpt with every blog post? Even if all she did was tell her audience about whatever she had written that week, she is basically telling them the story before it ever gets published.

And that’s during the rough draft stage. What does she do during the rewrites? More excerpts? Explanations of what she’s changed?

I don’t really understand, so I guess I’ll have to continue studying blogs by other authors, preferably more than one post by the same author. Do any of you know of an author whose blog you feel would be a good example for me to study?

In the meantime, I’ll return to writing about the science I’ve self-studied.

Whale Ancestors

Where did whales come from? How did a fish evolve to become as large as a modern whale?

Actually, whales took a round-about route to evolve into today’s huge ocean creatures. They are actually descended from a land animal.

There are plenty of clues in a whale’s body and biology that their ancestors lived on land:

* They breathe air.

* They nurse their young with their own milk.

* Their paddle-shaped flippers encase hand bones with five ‘fingers’.

* As embryos, whales have tiny back limbs which disappear before birth.

It turns out that hippos are the closest living relatives of whales, but not their ancestors. Both hippos and whales evolved from four-legged, even-toed, hoofed ancestors that lived on land about 50 million years ago. The hippo’s ancestor stayed on land, but the whale ancestor—which was about the size of a goat—moved to the sea and evolved into swimming creatures over a period of about 8 million years, which is quite fast for evolutionary processes.

When fossils of gigantic ancient whales were first discovered, they were mistaken for dinosaur fossils and given the name Basilosaurus. But later, they were recognized as mammals. These prehistoric whales were more elongated than modern whales and had small back legs and front flippers. Their nostrils were situated halfway between the tip of the snout and the forehead. They had earbones just like those of modern whales. Therefore, Basilosaurus showed the link between whales and their terrestrial ancestor.

The current theory is this: That some land-living hoofed animals favoured the flavor of plants at the water’s edge. Eating them had the added advantage of allowing them to easily hide from danger in shallow water. Over time, their descendants spent more and more time in the water, possibly in an ancient estuary, and their bodies became adapted for swimming. The front legs became flippers. A thick layer of fat called blubber replaced their fur coats to keep them warm and streamlined. Their tails became bigger and stronger for powerful swimming, and their back legs shrunk. Their nostrils gradually moved to the top of their heads so that they could breathe easily without having to tilt their heads while swimming. As these creatures began to feed on a different diet, they lost their teeth in favor of a baleen filter method of feeding.

Between these articles, there was some disagreement about what whale ancestors ate. One stated that they favored plants found at the water’s edge. Another felt they ate small land animals and fish found close to shore. Neither article had any information on the teeth whale ancestors had, so their eating preferences seem pretty much up in the air.

So, what can we learn from this tale of whales? Be careful what and where you eat? Evolution is your friend? I find myself wondering if whales would ever come back out of the water, what would they evolve to then? Some version of a goat-sized, hoofed animal again? One of the articles did mention that occasionally, a whale comes along that does have vestigial back legs that are completely encased within their body. Therefore, it seems possible that back legs could make a comeback.

Come on, work with me here. If octopuses can come out of the ocean and become a terrestial bad guy, as some scientists seem to think, then surely whales can also emerge from the oceans. Given enough time to evolve.

 

https://us.whales.org/whales-dolphins/how-did-whales-evolve/

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evograms_03

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/when-whales-walked-on-four-legs.html

Velociraptors

Velociraptors lived about 75 to 71 million years ago. There are 2 known species, both from Mongolia. The second species was only discovered in 2008.

They were depicted in the Jurassic Park movie as swift bipedal reptiles with a long tail and an enlarged sickle-shaped claw on each hindfoot, 6 1/2 feet tall and weighing about 180 pounds. Not so, say the scientists. They were bipedal reptiles, they were fast, and they had the fearsome claw. But they also had feathers, and were actually the size of a turkey. The raptors depicted in the movie series were based on a related genus, because the script said they had to look suitably fierce.

Instead of being 6.5 feet tall, velociraptors were as much as 6.75 feet long, snout to tail tip. Scientific artistic renditions show a very long, feathered tail. They were about 1 ft 7 inches high at the hip and weighs about 33 lbs. Although bipedal, their body and tail were roughly parallel to the ground. Their forefeet were also feathered, but were too short to serve as wings.

Their skulls grew up to 10 in long. The jaws were lined with 26-28 widely-spaced, serrated teeth on each side, more strongly serrated on the back edge than the front.

Their hands were large, with 3 curved claws. However, the structure of the wrist bones forced the hands to be held with palms facing inwards and not downwards.

On their feet, the first toe was a small dewclaw, and the 2nd held the ferocious claw spoken about earlier, which could get 2.5 inches long along its outer edge. Only their 3rd and 4th toes were used in walking or running. Although some beliere their 2nd toe claw was used for disemboweling prey, tests have proven it was most likely used for stabbing and holding, to keep their prey from escaping.

If we’re going to compare fiction to fact, then we must consider the depiction in the Jurassic Park movies of velociraptors hunting in packs. Although there are some indications of other species in the family hunting in packs, there is little to no indication in the fossils of velociraptors doing it.

Most of the known velociraptor fossils have been found in current desserts, under conditions that indicate the locale at the time of their death was also arid and covered in sand dunes, or possibly a little less arid.

Now, my first thought about incorporating velociraptors in a story involves a comedy-ish story where a town in the desert is suddenly overrun by predatory turkeys, which turn out to be—according to the local Wise Guy—descendants from velociraptors, long thought extinct these millions of years. Of course, once the raptors ate up all the local cats, dogs, and chickens, they would necessarily start picking on larger prey... large dogs, wolves, goats... children? Alas, I don’t do horror, which is where this thought is quickly leading me. Anybody out there have any other ideas?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velociraptor

https://www.livescience.com/23922-velociraptor-facts.html

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/velociraptor-facts.html

Ur...

Okay, not a lot of information on this subject. Only to be expected, I suppose, since Ur is the name given to the very first super continent, which came into being about 3.1 billion years ago. At that time, the only life on Earth was single-celled, and some of it knew how to photosynthesize. And it’s called a super continent, though it was probably smaller than modern Australia.

It qualifies as a super continent because it incorporated all or nearly all pieces of land then in existence. More recently, scientists have started calling Ur and other small ‘super’ continents by the term super-cratons. The best I can figure is that a craton is a piece of land considered too small to be a continent.

Other scientists have postulated the existence of another super-craton at about the same time, which they have called Vaalbara, but apparently, the ideas of these two early cratonic assemblages are incompatible.

About 1,300–1,071 million years ago, Ur joined the continents Nena and Atlantica to form the supercontinent Rodinia. In one proposal, Ur remained the nucleus of East Gondwana until that supercontinent broke up. But in other proposals, India and East Antarctica did not collide until Rodinia formed 1,071 Million years ago. However, during that time period, the Earth’s mantle was 200 degrees C hotter than today, making many characteristics of modern tectonics rare or non-existent. This would preclude Roger’s 3 billion years ago supercontinent of Ur.

The proposal for the super-craton Vaalbara places two cratons, Kaapvall of southern Africa and Pilbara of western Australia, next to each other based on stratigraphic similarities. In Roger’s configuration of Ur, these two cratons were placed far apart during Gondwana, which is contradicted by widespread collisional events between Australia and Africa.

Yet another possible supercraton, Zimgarn, was proposed by Smirnov in 2013. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand the paragraph dealing with it, so I’m mostly ignoring it. After all, I’m supposed to be studying Ur.

Geological similarities in parts of India (Singhbhum and Dharwar), western Australia (Kilbaran and Pilbara), and southern Africa (Kaapvall and Zimbabwe) indicate these area were close together in the Mid-Archaean Era. Ur was named for the german prefix meaning “original” by Rogers because in his proposal, it was the first continent. Other Archaean continental assemblages are considerably younger. In some reconstructions, the various pieces of Ur stayed near each other until the break-up of Gondwana.

So, was there really an Ur, as proposed by Rogers? Should it really be called Vaalbara or Zimgarn? Or something else entirely? I didn’t find any indication of where it was located, and given how long it supposedly existed, it could have drifted quite a ways from its original location, but still, I would have liked to see some of that type of information.

How many planets do you suppose are out there with only single-celled life and 1 large island? With such a small land mass, would it be worth it to colonize it?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur_(continent)

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur_(supercontinent)

Rhynchosaurs

Imagine a reptilian pig with a hammerhead, no visible ears, and a parrot-like beak, and you'll have a pretty good mental picture of a rhynchosaur.

Rhynchosaurs were herbivores that in some fossil localities account for 40 to 60% of the specimens found, making them the most abundant plant eaters on land. They were reptiles with stocky bodies and a powerful beak.

Early forms were small, less than a meter long, and typically lizard-like in build. They had narrow, wedge-shaped skulls with a few small, blunt teeth for eating plants.

Later versions grew up to two meters in length. The skull in these later forms were short, broad and triangular, becoming much wider than long, giving them a somewhat hammer-head appearance, although the eyes were set close together, near the top of the beak. The broad skull accommodated powerful jaw muscles that enabled the rhynchosaurs to cut up tough plant material. The teeth were modified into broad tooth plates, and the lower jaw fit into a groove on the upper jaw, enabling the ‘cutting’ of plant fibers.

The hind feet were equipped with massive claws, presumably for digging up roots and tubers, although digging claws are usually found on the front feet. Like many animals of their time, they spread all across Pangea, and thus across the world.

And that seems to about all there is to say about the rhynchosaurs. They lived during the Triassic era (251 to 199 million years ago), dying out just before herbivore dinosaurs appeared.

I think I would have found rhynchosaurs terrifying, particularly the larger ones, even though they were basically reptilian cows or deer. Let’s face it, the larger ones were as long as a man is tall, and who’s to say they wouldn’t try munching on this new plant called human that invaded their space, even if it didn’t sit still like other plants?

What do you think? If you had a time machine, would you venture back to visit them up close and personal?

 

https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/taxa/verts/archosaurs/rhynchosauria.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhynchosaur

Palm Trees by Another Name

The Arecaceae are perennial flowering plants. Their form can be as climbers, shrubs, tree-like and stemless plants. They are all commonly known as palms. Those having a tree-like form are called palm trees. There are 2,600 species of Arecaceae known, most of them restricted to tropical and subtropical climates. Most palms have large, compound, evergreen leaves (known as fronds) arranged at the top of an unbranched stem. Palms exhibit enormous diversity and inhabit nearly every type of habitat within their range, from rainforests to deserts.

Modern monocots appear in the fossil record around 80 million years ago, although specific species of Arecaceae appeared 94 million years ago, according to fossilized pollen. By 60 million years ago, many of the modern specialized palms became widespread and common, much more widespread than they are today.

The use of palms is as old or older than human civilization, starting with cultivating the date palm in the Middle East some 5,000 or more years ago. Date wood, pits for storing dates, and other remains of the date palm have been found in Mesopotamian sites. If not for the date palm, human expansion into the hot and barren parts of the “old” world would have been much more difficult. The date palm provided food which was easily stored and carried on long journeys. It provided shade and protection from the desert winds. It yielded such a variety of products that practically all parts of the palm had a useful purpose.

The economic importance of Arecaceae includes coconut products, oils, dates, palm syrup, ivory nuts, carnauba wax, rattan cane, raffia, and palm wood. There are a number of palms that can be used to make wine, at least one of which turns to vinegar within a day.

It kind of makes me want to go out and hug a palm tree, for without palms, who knows how long it might have taken humans to reach this point in their civilization? Which makes me wonder, would we have grown up any wiser if we had taken a slower path to get here? Or would that early difficulty of exploring the deserts have burned us into tighter powder kegs of anger that made our history even more bloody than what we experienced?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecaceae

Octopuses

The octopus is a soft-bodied mollusc with 8 limbs (also known as tentacles). About 300 species are recognized, and the order of Octopoda is grouped within the class Cephalopoda, along with squids, cuttlefish, and nautiloids. The octopus is bilaterally symmetric, with one side the mirror image of the other.

The 8 appendages of an octopus trail behind them as they swim, which they do by expelling a jet of water. With 8 arms to control, they have a complex nervous system. They also have excellent sight and are among the most intelligent and behaviorally diverse of all invertebrates.

With so many types of octopuses, they are found throughout the sea, from seashores to the abyssal depths. Most species grow quickly and don’t live very long. In most species, the male dies after mating, while the female watches over the fertilized eggs until they hatch, then she dies.

The octopus has many strategies to defend themselves, including the expulsion of ink, the use of camouflage and threat displays, the ability to jet quickly through the water and hide, and even deceit. Only one specie is known to be deadly to humans, although all octopuses are venomous.

The largest known octopus specie is the giant Pacific octopus. Adults usually have an arm span up to 14 ft (4.3 m) and weigh around 33 lb (15 kg). The largest specimen scientifically documented weighed 156.5 lb (71 kg), but much larger sizes have been claimed for the giant Pacific octopus, including one that weighed 600 lb (272 kg) with an arm span of 30 ft (9 m). A carcass of the seven-arm octopus was estimated to have a live mass of 165 lb (75 kg).

The smallest specie is octopus wolfi, which is about 1 in (2.5 cm) and weighs less than 0.035 oz (1 g).

The bulbous head of the octopus contains most of the vital organs. Lacking any bones at all, even large specimens of octopus can squeeze through a 1 inch gap, which can make them quite the escape artist!

I think we all know that the tentacles can bend in any direction at any location, and that the interior surface of the tentacles are covered in circular suckers. But I didn’t know that the octopus typically uses 2 tentacles to ‘walk’ along the sea floor, while the other 6 are used for foraging.

Octopuses have 3 hearts; a systemic heart that circulates blood around the body, and two branchial hearts that pump blood through each of the two gills. The systemic heart is inactive during swimming, so the animal tires easily and prefers to crawl. Their blood contains a copper-rich protein to transport oxygen. This makes the blood very viscous and bluish in color, but it transports oxygen more efficiently in cold water with limited oxygen availability than hemoglobin.

In several sets of mythology, octopuses appear as sea monsters, from the Kraken of Norway to the Gorgon of ancient Greece, and probably many more.

I saw a tv episode once on what evolution would do with today’s species in another million years, and one of the things suggested was that at least one specie of octopus would leave the sea to seek food in the forests on land. While this is an intriguing thought, I wonder if the octopus would have to develop some kind of support for its internal organs, to keep them from dragging along the ground, or a thick skin that could resist tearing and leaving those organs scattered behind it. Because it isn’t exactly dealing with the full force of gravity while it’s in the water, but it would have to once it came ashore.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus

Nimravs

I couldn’t help but look up Nimravidae; the name reminded me of ‘nimrods’, which of course have nothing to do with Nimravidae. Naturally, I didn’t know that until I looked it up.

The Nimravidae were a cat-like creature whose fossils have been found in North America and Eurasia. They are sometimes called ‘false saber-toothed cats’. They existed from about 40.4 million years ago to 7.2 million years ago, spanning some 33.2 million years.

It is thought that the ancestors of nimravids and cats diverged from a common ancestor about 50 million years ago. Nimravid diversity appears to have peaked about 28 million years ago before the family began a slow descent into extinction. This diversity was apparent in the size and shape of their teeth, as well as the size of the body. Some nimravidae were the size of modern lions, and they had various other smaller sizes down to the size of a small bobcat. Their legs and tails were proportionally shorter than those of true cats.

When nimravid first appeared, the global climate was warm and wet, but it trended cooler and drier shortly after that. This meant the lush forests were transforming to scrub and open woodland, where the nimravids flourished. North America and Asia were connected at the time, and they inhabited both. Europe was more of a cluster of islands rather than a continent at the time, but there must have been some land bridges, for the nimravids also found their way there.

Still later, the woodlands were replaced by savanna in North America and Asia, and the nimravids in those areas died out. Portions of humid forests continued in Europe for a time, but when those died out in the late Miocene, so did the rest of the nimravids.

One has to wonder if the saber-tooth tiger that Fred Flintstone put out of the house every evening was really a saber-tooth tiger or actually a nimravidae.

On second thought, there may be a tenuous connection between ‘nimrod’ and ‘nimravidae’. The dictionary tells me that ‘nimrod’ refers to a person who is good at hunting. As a carnivorous species, the nimravidae had to be good at hunting. Now I wonder if that influenced whoever named this family of creatures. Or what exactly does ‘nimravidae’ mean in whatever language they used to construct this name?

  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimravidae

https://www.britannica.com/animal/Nimravidae

Dimetrodon

First, the dimetrodon was not a dinosaur. It went extinct some 40 million years before the first dinosaurs came into being, so it wasn’t even a contemporary of dinosaurs. However, it is often mistaken as a type of dinosaur, probably because life that long ago is all jumbled up in people’s minds.

Having said that, the dimetrodon lived around 295-272 million years ago. Its most prominent feature was a large neural spine sail on its back, formed by elongated spines extending from the vertebrae. Without the spine, it resembled a lizard, as it walked on 4 legs and had a tail. Its tall, curved skull had teeth of different sizes in the jaws. Most dimetrodon fossils have been found in southwestern United States, specifically from a deposit called the Red Beds of Texas and Oklahoma. However, there have been some fossils found in Germany. There are over a dozen species within the dimetrodon genus.

Although reptile-like in appearance, the dimetrodon is more closely related to mammals than to modern reptiles, although it is not a direct ancestor of mammals. It is assigned to the group ‘synapsids’, a group traditionally called ‘mammal-like reptiles’.

It was probably one of the apex predators of its time, feeding on fish, reptiles and amphibians. Smaller dimetrodon species may have had different roles in their ecological niche. The back sail may have been used to stabilize its spine or to heat and cool its body. Some recent studies argue that the sail would have been ineffective at removing heat, as large species have been discovered with small sails, and small species having large sails. This would appear to rule out heat regulation as its main purpose. It is proposed that the sail was most likely used in a courtship display, such as threatening rivals or showing off to potential mates.

Most species of dimetrodon range from 6 to 15 ft, and are estimated to have weighed between 60 to 550 lbs. The largest known species is about 13 ft. The smallest is 2 feet.

I remember seeing sail-backed giant lizards in a few movies. Always, they were supposed to be at least as tall as a man at their shoulder. Something that could easily eat a man without giving it much thought. This article only gave their length, not their height at their shoulder, so I can’t tell how much the movies may have ‘blown up’ their size. Considering they were most likely using a modern lizard with an fx sail glued to their back, the film crew probably got very close to make them look a threatening size.

How about you? Seen any good dimetrodon movies lately?

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimetrodon#:~:text=Dimetrodon%20(%2Fda%C9%AA%CB%88m,member%20of%20the%20family%20Sphenacodontidae.

One Hump or Two?

A camel is an even-toed ungulate, which means it walks on 2 toes on each foot. They also have distinctive fatty deposits (humps) on the back. The Dromedary (94% of the world’s camel population) has 1 hump. The Bactrian camel (6% of the camel population) has 2 humps. The Wild Bactrian camel is a 3rd species and at less than 1% of the camel population, it is critically endangered. All of these camels are suited to a desert habitat. Except for the Wild Bactrian, camels have been domesticated for a long time, and have been a vital means of transport for passengers and cargo. As domesticated animals, they also provide food, such as milk and meat, and textiles via fiber and felt from hair.

 Sometimes the word camel is used in a wider sense, to include not only the Old World camels but also New World camelids (llama, alpaca, quanaco and the vicuna). These new world animals are technically camelids, not camels.

 Camels live an average of 40-50 years. An adult dromedary camel stands 6’1” at the shoulder and 7’1” at the hump, while Bactrian camels can be a foot taller. Camels can run in short bursts at 40 mph, and at a sustained speed of 25 mph. Dromedaries weight as much as 1,320 lbs, while Bactrians can get up to 2,200 lbs.

 The earliest known camel is called Protylopus and lived in North America 40 - 50 million years ago. It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, it was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. Other ancient forms of camels or camelids were the Stenomylius and the long-necked Aepycamelus.

 The direct ancestor of modern camels (and perhaps of New World camelids as well) was Paracamelius, which existed 3 - 5 million years ago. It spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, and to the ‘Old World’ via the Bering Land Bridge. There have been surprising finds of fossil Paracamelius on Ellesmere Island (very much north of Canada and barely west of Greenland) which indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This particular creature is estimated to have stood around 9 feet tall.

 Which just goes to show that given enough time, evolution can completely adapt to an environment that otherwise would kill the original animal.

  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel

Jonah in a Basilosaurus

Okay, probably not what happened, because we are talking about an extinct species here. Basilosaurus means “king lizard” and it is a genus of large, predatory, prehistoric whale, living from approximately 41.3 to 33.9 million years ago. It was first described in 1834, based on fossils found along the Gulf Coast of the US, along with a few fossils in the eastern US. It was thought to be a giant reptile, hence the -saurus ending to the name. They were later discovered to be an early marine mammal, but it was too late to change the name.

 Likewise, the genus Basilosaurus was something of a wastebasket for odds and ends of fossils that nobody thought belonged anywhere else. But most of those have been removed and placed in more correct classifications, leaving 2 species in this genus.

 Unlike modern whales, who swallow their food whole, the Basilosaurus had various types of teeth, such as canines and molars, so it probably chewed it food. It was the top predator of its environment, preying on sharks, large fish and other marine mammals, such as another early whale, the Dorudon, which seems to have been their predominant food source.

 At a size of 49-66 ft (15-20 m), Basilosaurus  is one of the largest known animals existing from 66 million to 15 million years ago. Basilosaurus Isis is  slightly smaller than Basilosaurus Cetoides by about 7 feet.

 Basilosaurus appear to be closely related to even-toed ungulates, such as giraffes and buffalo. Does that mean it was a land animal that reverted to living in the sea? I don’t know.

 It is not believed that Basilosaurus could produce high-frequency sound and echolocation, which some modern whales can do.

 Studies of a complete skeleton fossil as well as overlapping skeletal reconstruction indicate Basilosaurua had about 70 vertabrae. They were shaped much like eels, and probably moved much like eels as well, mostly at or near the ocean’s surface, as they do not appear to have had a method for diving.

 So, if a person by the name of Jonah had been at sea during the time period, I suppose he could have been eaten by a Basilosaurus. But living through being eaten would have been problematic, since the Basilosaurus would have chewed before swallowing

 Since these were marine mammals, I suppose their ancestors were land mammals that - for whatever reason - decided to return to the water. And other branches of the family went on to become giraffes and buffalo, among others? What a family tree!

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilosaurus