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

Municipality of Anchorage

It isn’t just a city, it includes suburbs, the urban core, a joint military base and most of Chugach State Park. It is the 4th largest city in the US by area, and larger than Rhode Island.

In 1867, US Secretary of State William Seward brokered a deal tp purchase Alaska from Russia for $7,200,00, about 2 cents an acre. The idea was lampooned by his political rivals, but in 1888, gold was discovered along Turnagain Arm, just south of modern-day Anchorage.

Alaska became a US territory in 1912. Anchorage started as neither a fishing nor mining camp.

There were a number of indigenous settlements along the Knik Inlet (north of Anchorage) for years. By 1911, the families of ‘Bud’ Whitney and Jim St Clair lived at the mouth of Ship Creek (on the south side of the Knik Inlet). There were joined there in 1912 by Jack and Nellie Brown.

In 1914, the Alaska Engineering Commission chose a site near the mouth of Ship Creek for a railroad construction port. The area quickly became a tent city, while a townsite was mapped out on higher ground to the south. Anchorage was incorporated on November 23, 1920.

On March 27, 1964, an earthquake of magnitude 9.2 struck Anchorage, killing 115 people and causing $116 million in damages. It was the world’s 2nd largest earthquake in recorded history. Because much of the city was built atop glacial silt, there was much soil liquefaction, leading to massive cracks in roads and the collapse of large swaths of land. Dozens of house that were originally 250 to 300 feet above sea level sank with the land they sat on, coming to a rest at sea level.

Although there have been many attempts to move the capitol to Anchorage or to a location closer to Anchorage, they have all ultimately been defeated. Even so, Anchorage has over twice as many state employees as Juneau, and is to a considerable extent the center of state and federal government activity in Alaska.

Cities often grow where they have easy access to trade routes, whether by water or land. Even Anchorage follows that stereotype, starting where an ocean inlet gave access to a creek from inland. And it continued by becoming a railroad hub, making (rail)roads where there hadn’t been any before. It currently has an international airport, which is fitting, since it is only 9.5 hours or less to most large cities in industrial countries.

We didn’t get to Anchorage when we went to Alaska; we took a cruise, and it didn’t go that far north. We may have to try again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchorage,_Alaska

Good Ol’ Saxons

The Saxons were a group of early Germanic peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country near the North Sea coast of what is now Germany. According to one proposal, the Saxon’s earliest area of settlement is believed to have been Northern Albingia, which is close to the probable homeland of the Angles. During the late Roman Empire, the name ‘Saxon’ referred to Germanic coastal raiders. Later, they were associated with settlements along the coast of Normandy.

Later still, the Saxons, Angles, Frisians and Jutes settled in England and became known as Anglo-Saxons. These were no longer raiders. The political history of the continental Saxons is unclear until the time of the conflict between their legendary hero Widukind and the Frankish emperor Charlemagne. Charlemagne won the conflict, and organized the Saxons into a Frankish province. Although the continental Saxons are no longer a distinctive ethnic group or country, their name lives on in the name of several regions and states of Germany.

But as I stated earlier, the Saxons, Angles, Frisians and Jutes either invaded or migrated to the island of ‘Great Britain’ around the time of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. For centuries before that, Saxon raiders had harassed the eastern and southern shores, and some had been granted permission to settle in these areas as farmers.

Tradition says that the Saxons (and others) were brought in to protect the Britons from raids by the Picts (of Scotland), Gaels (of Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man) and others. The Saxons were allowed to settle on the Isle of Thanet (eastern Kent) in exchange for their services as mercenaries. (Thanet is no longer an island, but is connected to the English mainland.) For whatever reason, more land was granted to the Anglo-Saxons, and more of them arrived to settle it. It is uncertain whether this was a peaceful process or not.

Eventually, in about the 6th century, the Anglo-Saxons took over all of the southeastern portions of Britain and formed 4 realms: The East saxons created the Kingdom of Essex; The Middle Saxons created the province of Middlesex; the South Saxons created the Kingdom of Sussex; and the West Saxons created the Kingdom of Wessex. Between the reigns of Egbert to Alfred the great, the kings of Wessex gained sway over the other realms and unified the country. They eventually organized it as the Kingdom of England in the face of Viking invasions.

One has to wonder if they saw the irony of becoming victims of coastal raiders, when that was how their own people started out?

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

Our Sister Planet

What did you learn about Venus - sometimes called our sister planet - when you were in school? Unless you are still in school, chances are that at least some of those ‘facts’ have changed.

Venus has been called Earth’s twin, because it is similar to Earth in size and mass. Venus’ diameter is 7,520.8 miles, only 396.7 miles smaller than Earth’s. Its mass is 81.5 % of Earth’s. But in other ways, they are not very alike at all.

Venus is still the second planet from the Sun, it is still named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It orbits the sun in 224.7 Earth days. A Venus day is 243 Earth days, so its day is longer than its year. It also rotates in the opposite direction as Earth, so on Venus, the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. It still does not have any moons.

Venus has the densest atmosphere of the 4 inner planets, which consists of more than 96% carbon dioxide. At Venus’ surface, the atmospheric pressure is 92 times that of Earth, or roughly the pressure found at 3,000 ft underwater on Earth.

Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, with a mean surface temperature of 863°F. Mercury is closer to the sun, but Venus is hotter. It is shrouded by an opaque layer of clouds of sulfuric acid. It may have had water oceans at some point in the past, but they would have vaporized due to a runaway greenhouse effect. That water vapor would have photodissociated, and the resulting free hydrogen swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind because Venus doesn’t have a planetary magnetic field. It is postulated that the surface of Venus is a desertscape interspersed with slab-like rocks and is periodically resurfaced by volcanism.

In my youth, I remember reading books and short stories that postulated that Venus weather included perpetual rain, and that Venus was a water planet. In both cases, humans from Earth had colonized Venus. But given the updated information on Venus’ atmosphere and surface, colonization may have to wait until some type of reclamation can happen. Perhaps remove some (a lot!) of carbon from the atmosphere, and set up some type of artificial field around the planet to keep the solar wind from removing any more of the lighter elements from that atmosphere. If we can lessen the green-house effect, then maybe the volcanism will also settle down a bit.

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