UCSB Researcher Reveals Patterns of Extinction, Biodiversity; UCSB Graduate Nurses Hangover, Regrets

John Alroy of the University of California, Santa Barbara, utilized computer modeling to revamp the geological picture of planetary extinction/diversification patterns. Lunar Weight, ourselves a product of said esteemed University, stayed out 'til 3 a.m. and were late to work. Again.

Alroy and colleagues' research overturns conventional wisdom that There have been five or six mass extinctions since life began on Earth, suggesting instead that there were only three or four.

LW overturned a glass of orange juice and got it all over the floor and left it for our roommates to clean up because, as we said, we were late.

Alroy's work, which samples the overall rates at which fossils of specific families and species appear in rock strata of specific ages, redraws the accepted mathematical models for species diversification, which are based solely on the earliest and latest appearances of each species. Alroy's curve looks like a plateau, with a rapid increase in biodiversity followed by a "leveling off" where no new species appear, instead of the old model's assumption of constant species replenishment.

LW's work involved redrawing Beavis. You wouldn't think it's hard, but something about the lower jaw just gets us. Oh, whoops, we were supposed to fetch that file half an hour ago. Coffee. Something fried. Ugh.

The University of California at Santa Barbara: we make winners.

{from Eurekalert, and read to us by kindly old librarians who know there's beauty inside the heart of us young hoodlums}

Fossil Flatfish One-Up God, Look Both Down and Up on His Creation

Fossilized fish with fucked-up faces delight Darwinists, further malign Ben Stein.

In one more indication that the world is going to halibut in a handbasket, Matt Friedman, a University of Chicago grad student, identified three related fossils that may be the missing links between the suave, symmetrical fish we know and love and the flounderish, filet-able freaks known as flatfish, which have both eyes on one side of their body.

These cock-eyed beasties still have eyes on opposite sides of their head, but one has migrated towards the top of the skull, making them look like, well, idiots—but idiots that evidently gained some sort of survival advantage (Not Exactly Rocket Science speculates that the fish may have used the "normal" eye to scan the underwater environment while "its head was lifted just high enough above the surface to give [the other eye] a view").

Aside from helping better trace the tree of life, Friedman's finds help undermine the distinctly American brand of anti-intellectual sophistry known as "Intelligent Design," or I.D. In brief, this school of thought holds that the natural world is too "perfect" to have evolved by the gradual selective pressures called for by evolutionary theory, therefore must have been cut from whole cloth by a sentient being.

The crux of this argument is what's known as irreducible complexity, as promulgated by Michael Behe. The idea is that certain biological structures (Behe's baby is a certain bacterial flagellum) have no benefit to survival and reproduction unless their many parts are all interlocked. Therefore, there's no way each piece could've come about separately through natural selection and differential reproductive success.

NOVA already demonstrated that Behe is full of shit, and used pretty pretty computer graphics to do so. (LW will link to the "Judgment Day" episode whenever possible, as I.D. is the genital herpes of the scientific establishment—impossible to get rid of and prone to ruining everyone's fun)

Nonetheless, flatfish have often been held up as another indication of irreducible complexity, since, until now, there was no series of fossils showing an eye slowly and steadily making its way across animal after animal to join up with its counterpart on the other side. Friedman's find shows that—and for the love of finches, this should be obvious already—just because we haven't found something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Indeed, these protobut not only existed, they'd already been examined and blown off. Friedman found the benchmark fossils in the basement of the Natural History Museum in Vienna, and that fact is, in itself, indicative of a subtler but in some ways more important philosophical victory by the epistemological traditions of science over I.D.

I.D. is, in itself, uncurious. It forms an end to inquiry, an end to searching. It provides little motivation to rifle through stacks of dusty rocks in Austria, because what's your journal article going to be, "Fossil finds confirm the continued non-deadness of God"? For all its inherent undertones of Eternity (a perk of the whole God job), it ends up being the nontheistic traditions of science that sketch out a neverending road of inquiry, an edifice constantly being built. It affirms the idea that pleasure can be found in process of drawing the world, one rock at the time.

Whereas the supposed superiority of I.D. comes from its ability to answer everything, in total, right now, so everyone can go about the more important things like inheriting various winds or some shit like that.

{from Nature (the magazine) News, and dramatized in Lunar Weight's debut production, "Inherit the Wino," showing every third Tuesday afternoon at the New Jersey Turnpike's very own Vince Lombardi Rest Area}

The Week in Sharks: They've Been Getting Laid Far Longer Than You, You Tasty Monkey Morsel You

Oldest preggers fish found. Australian scientists discovered an embryo in a fossil primordial fish (called a placoderm, which is Latin for something awesome). Not an egg, not a teenage fish with separation issues, not a plastic fish doll that cries when you tip it over and seems to have been mutilated in a fit of prepubescent fishminism, but an embryo, replete with placenta and umbilical cord. This internal gestation of young mirrors the reproductive gizmos of many species of chondrichthyes far more than it resembles fish proper, and this is the earliest proof of this type of reproduction found to date.

Since this particular placoderm dates back 375 million years, it is almost undoubtedly a forerunner of both sharks and us monkey folk. Also, since it dates back 375 million years, it probably gave fishlip-service to chastity and then got it on freaky upside-down style in the kelp fields with a rough-hewn but earnest nautiloid.

{from Nature via those bedroom-eyed fish-sexers at Reuters}


Sharks, like Americans, go to Mexico but still end up eating American. Three sharks attacks and counting in the Yankee colonial outpost of Zihuatenejo, Mexico, have surfers panicking, which will hopefully briefly quell the whole self-righteous, in-touch-with-Gaia shit that also, at least in Southern California, somehow melded seamlessly with roofies. The be-denticled culprit(s) have yet to be identified, but Mexican officials—including the fucking Navy—are just merrily a-slaughterin'.

This technique is of questionable effectiveness so far (it presumes a single or select group of monkey-snackers, whereas no sharks actually enjoy monkey-snacking; we taste sort of rank, and anyway, it's been widely known for centuries that you just don't eat raw food in Mexico. Furthermore, from an anthropomorphological perspective, as Capt. Malcom Reynolds once said, "If anyone tries to kill you, you kill them right back"), and while no one's necessarily any safer, at least the media's been able to have a field day. So there'd be many a Malcolm Gladwell in the making disappointed if the Lunar Weight solution gets adopted: figure out a way to design a surfboard and refine surfing technique so that every buoyant Spicoli doesn't necessarily resemble a sea lion with cerebral palsy.

But until that day, the Spring Break nom nom noms will likely continue.

[edited to add] And then there's this not-so-much-green-as-puce perspective from the Michael Weiner nee Savage of ichthyology.

{from the stoically inedible AP, via ABC news}


Basking sharks enjoy great syrup, Pete Doherty. British scientists tracked basking shark migrations "from waters southwest of the Isle of Man to Canada." And like reporters, the massive, planktivorous sharks were proven to have no real conception that "the Isle of Man" and "Canada" may differ in their levels of specificity. Whether or not basking sharks made derisive comments about Quebec in their ancient, mellifluous basking-shark language remains the realm of speculation.

What is apparent, however, is that the basking shark—already endangered—ranges too far be easily protected with traditional imperial pluck and vigour <sic> from hunting by people who feel that their tummies can make better use of shark fins than said fins' owners can.

Incidentally, the two sharks tracked for this study were named "A" and "B". Hey science! Show some poetry! Lunar Weight recommends "Shark" and "That Other Shark".

{from the UK Times to us noble savages}