Tiktaalik: The “Fishapod”
by National Geo staff
Discovered in Arctic Canada in 2004, 375 million-year-old Tiktaalik had not only gills and scales but traits of a tetrapod (four-legged land animal), including limblike fins, ribs, a flexible neck, and a croc-shaped head.
Why it matters: Tiktaalik is seen as evidence of the period when our aquatic ancestors began moving ashore—along with other fins-to-limbs fossils, such as Acanthostega (Acanthostega picture), the most primitive known tetrapod. Early Darwin supporters speculated that such fishes had given rise to amphibians. “Acanthostega and Tiktaalik have taken this to a new level,” said geologist Donald Prothero, of Occidental College in Los Angeles.
The discoveries of these and other “missing link” species have helped dispel what Darwin called perhaps “the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory” of evolution—the former lack of transitional fossil species.(via: National Geo) (illustration by Zina Deretsky, NSF)
(via dendroica)
Charles Darwin. On ‘The Descent of Man.’
Read this twice in a week in 2 different places. It must mean something.
in just 3 months i’ve banged on so many doors. sometimes doors open, but they don’t offer what i’m looking for. in just 3 months i’ve met quite a number who look like they could potentially be behind the doors i’m knocking on. they just don’t emphathize with me enough to lend a helping hand. but who says when u ask for help it should be offered?
James Cameron heads into the abyss: the film director’s dive could be a boon to deep-sea science
The director who once jokingly proclaimed himself the “king of the world” is about to become the master of the depths. If all goes to plan, James Cameron, director of the 1997 blockbuster Titanic, will soon use his own unique submersible to become the first person since 1960 to reach the deepest place in the ocean. But although most attention will be focused on the boldness of the engineering feat, his expedition includes a substantial scientific component aimed at better understanding one of the world’s most extreme and least studied environments.
“The goal of all this is not just to set records and do grandstanding dives,” Cameron told Nature just hours before heading to sea. “We want to push the envelope not only of scientific knowledge but also of engineering.”
Challenger Deep is a gash more than 10,900 metres deep in the Mariana Trench, off the coast of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean. The first and so far only humans to make it to the bottom were Jacques Piccard, a Swiss oceanographer and engineer, and Don Walsh, then a US Navy lieutenant. They made their deep trek in the bathyscaphe Trieste, a primitive craft that went straight down and back up and has long since been decommissioned. Only unmanned remotely operated vehicles — the Japanese Kaiko in 1995 and the US Nereus in 2009 — have been to the bottom since.
The above submersible, Deep Sea Challenger, will travel to the deepest point in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench: the Challenger Deep.
i will be climbing mountains.
i will be swimming with turtles.
i will be talking to seastars
One day i will see myself make waves.
