They can change color, looking initially like tiny jewels, or golden ladybugs, but can alter the reflectivity of the cuticle so the outer layers become clear, revealing a ladybug type of red coloring with black spots. This color change is accomplished by microscopic valves controlling the moisture levels under the shell.
During the Cretaceous, 139-65 million years ago, shallow seas covered much of the southern United States. These tropical waters were productive–giving rise to tiny marine plankton with carbonate skeletons which overtime accumulated into massive chalk formations. The chalk, both alkaline and porous, lead to fertile and well-drained soils in a band, mirroring that ancient coastline and stretching across the now much drier South....
Over time this rich soil produced an amazingly productive agricultural region, especially for cotton. In 1859 alone a harvest of over 4,000 cotton bales was not uncommon within the belt. And yet, just tens of miles north or south this harvest was rare. Of course this level of cotton production required extensive labor...
As Washington notes further in his autobiography, “The part of the country possessing this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil was, of course, the part of the South where the slaves were most profitable, and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers."
Echinoderms (starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, crinoids, etc.) are well-known for their pentamerous (5-fold) radial symmetry. ...Many living echinoderms pass through a bilateral larval stage, evidence for the well-worn adage "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" (also known as the Biogenic Law, which as a general hypothesis is now largely unaccepted). However, no fossil evidence - that is, an actual bilateral echinoderm - has ever been found (although a few asymmetric fossil echinoderms are known). Until now. Samuel Zamora, of The Natural History Museum in London, and colleagues have just described Ctenoimbricata spinosa, a new genus and species from the Murero Formation (earliest middle Cambrian Period) in northeastern Spain.Via This View of Life.
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| Reconstruction by Marianne Collins |
“Most interesting is that this feeding system appears to be unique among animals. Recent advances have linked many bizarre Burgess Shale animals as primitive members of many animal groups that are found today, but Siphusauctum defies this trend. We do not know where it fits in relation to other organisms,” said lead author O’Brien.Via Life Before the Dinosaurs.
A "treasure trove" of fossils - including some collected by Charles Darwin - has been re-discovered in an old cabinet.From BBC News. The Daily Mail has more pictures.
The fossils, lost for some 165 years, were found by chance in the vaults of the British Geological Survey HQ near Keyworth, UK.
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The find was made by the palaeontologist Dr Howard Falcon-Lang.
Dr Falcon-Lang, who is based in the department of earth sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, spotted some drawers in a cabinet marked "unregistered fossil plants".
"Inside the drawer were hundreds of beautiful glass slides made by polishing fossil plants into thin translucent sheets," Dr Falcon-Lang explained.
"This process allows them to be studied under the microscope. Almost the first slide I picked up was labelled 'C. Darwin Esq'."
This image of an ice wall and the ocean floor at Explorer's Cover, New Harbor, McMurdo Sound is adjacent to remote-controlled photographic equipment. An underwater camera is connected by cable to onshore facilities, which upload images to the Internet via radio signals.
