From The BBC:
Gigantic fossil rodent discovered
The fossilised skull of the largest rodent ever recorded has been described by scientists for the first time.
The remains of the one-tonne beast, found in Uruguay, indicate that it would have been as big as a bull.
It is thought that the three-metre-long herbivore would have roamed estuaries and forests 2-4 million years ago.
The mammal, which is more than 15 times heavier than the largest living rodent, is described in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The authors say the animal would have lived alongside carnivorous "terror birds" and sabre-toothed cats.
"If you are a rodent you cannot run so well so you would have had to fight with these predators," said Dr Rudemar Ernesto Blanco of the Institute of Physics in Montevideo, Uruguay, one of the authors of the paper.
"It might have reached this size to protect itself."
Fighting giants
The half-metre-long fossil skull was discovered by an amateur palaeontologist in a boulder on the Rio de La Plata coast in the south of the country.
The remains had lain in the Museum of Natural History in Montevideo for three years before being studied and identified as a new species, Josephoartigasia monesi.
It was recognised as a new creature by examining and comparing its teeth with other known species of Josephoartigasia.
"Its incisors are extraordinarily large - much larger than any other rodent," said Dr Blanco.
The researchers have speculated that the creature may have used the teeth to cut wood in a similar way to a modern day beaver.
"The other possibility is that they used them for fighting."
The team spent nearly one year estimating the body mass by comparing the skull with other living South American rodents.
Most weigh less than 1kg. However, there are exceptions such as the 60kg capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris), and the closest living relative of the newly discovered creature: the pakarana (Dinomys branickii).
The comparisons allowed them to estimate the creature's weight at nearly one tonne (1,000kg) and predict its length.
"We think it was around three metres from the tip of the nose to the tail," said Dr Blanco.
The creature's tail would have been little more than a stump, according to the team.
Island paradise
The skull is not the first oversized creature to be discovered in South America.
Other finds have included car-sized armadillos, giant ground sloths and hook-beaked terror birds.
The previously largest-known rodent was Phoberomys pattersoni, a 700kg creature nicknamed "guinea-zilla" and discovered in Venezuela.
South America is well studied by biologists because its plants and animals developed in isolation to the rest of the world's flora and fauna.
Until the emergence of the isthmus of Panama, connecting it to Central and North America about three million years ago, the landmass had been cut off for tens of millions of years.
"It is highly probable that we can find more material of this fossil and other related species," said Dr Blanco.
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Giant rats!
Car-sized armadillos!
Terror birds!
How cool is that? Now all we need is King Kong.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Swim Call!
We had a swim call today.
Basically, that means that people can jump off the side of the ship and cavort around in the ocean for an hour. In the many years I've been on this ship, it's the first time.
You'd think that would be fairly common; but there are a dozen issues, from scheduling to water temperature to dangerous sealife, that can cancel it. So we're enjoying the rare opportunity.
We're also grilling lunch on the flight deck, and dueling with pummel sticks. (Pictures may be added when I get back to shore; there are security issues that prevent me from uploading them from here.)
It's a good day!
Basically, that means that people can jump off the side of the ship and cavort around in the ocean for an hour. In the many years I've been on this ship, it's the first time.
You'd think that would be fairly common; but there are a dozen issues, from scheduling to water temperature to dangerous sealife, that can cancel it. So we're enjoying the rare opportunity.
We're also grilling lunch on the flight deck, and dueling with pummel sticks. (Pictures may be added when I get back to shore; there are security issues that prevent me from uploading them from here.)
It's a good day!
Thursday, January 17, 2008
The Ones Who Walk Away...
Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is another one of those stories that are science fiction only in the loosest sense of the word. If I had to place it, I’d probably call it religious fiction (though that isn’t exactly right, either, since there is no explicit reference to God or any organized religious doctrine.)
A fable, maybe? Or a thought experiment? Or just call it fantasy and be done with it.
At any rate, it’s very well-done; you feel the pull of those who walk away, while the analogy to life-as-we-live-it is close enough that it’s hard to be comfortable with that decision. Could we have a society in which there are no victims, at all, in any sense? If not, can-or-should we just walk out?
You can’t make Omelas without breaking a few eggs, after all.
------------------------
Postscript: Wikipedia helpfully clarifies some things. The full title, not included in this anthology, was "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Variations on a Theme by William James)."
James' theme was as follows:
Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?
With all respect to William James: Le Guin's story tells it a lot better. But it does come to the same point.
A fable, maybe? Or a thought experiment? Or just call it fantasy and be done with it.
At any rate, it’s very well-done; you feel the pull of those who walk away, while the analogy to life-as-we-live-it is close enough that it’s hard to be comfortable with that decision. Could we have a society in which there are no victims, at all, in any sense? If not, can-or-should we just walk out?
You can’t make Omelas without breaking a few eggs, after all.
------------------------
Postscript: Wikipedia helpfully clarifies some things. The full title, not included in this anthology, was "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Variations on a Theme by William James)."
James' theme was as follows:
Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?
With all respect to William James: Le Guin's story tells it a lot better. But it does come to the same point.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The Canadian Comet of DOOM!
From NewScientistSpace:
Did a comet wipe out prehistoric Americans?
The Clovis people of North America, flourishing some 13,000 years ago, had a mastery of stone weaponry that stood them in good stead against the constant threat of large carnivores, such as American lions and giant short-faced bears. It's unlikely, however, that they thought death would come from the sky.
According to results presented by a team of 25 researchers this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Acapulco, Mexico, that's where the Clovis people's doom came from. Citing several lines of evidence, the team suggests that a wayward comet hurtled into Earth's atmosphere around 12,900 years ago, fractured into pieces and exploded in giant fireballs. Debris seems to have settled as far afield as Europe.
Jim Kennett, an oceanographer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the team's three principal investigators, claims immense wildfires scorched North America in the aftermath, killing large populations of mammals and bringing an abrupt end to the Clovis culture. "The entire continent was on fire," he says...
If the team's impact theory holds up under scrutiny it could help explain three mysterious events that coincided around 12,900 years ago.
Cold spell
At this key time, the climate changed abruptly in the northern hemisphere, suddenly cooling in a period known as the Younger Dryas. In addition, the distinctive Clovis culture seems to have vanished in North America, while at least 35 genera of the continent's mammals went extinct – including mammoths, mastodons, camels, ground sloths and horses.
For years, many researchers have chalked up the onset of the Younger Dryas to a major change in North America's plumbing. Near the end of the last ice age, meltwater from the continent's principal ice sheet flooded into proglacial lakes in the centre of North America, and from there drained southward into the Mississippi river.
But by 12,900 years ago, the ice had retreated sufficiently from the northern Atlantic coast to let meltwater rush suddenly eastward. As an estimated 9500 cubic kilometres of fresh water poured into the Atlantic, it switched off the ocean's salinity-driven "conveyor belt" current, shutting down the Gulf Stream that carries heat from the tropics to eastern North America. It was this that triggered the Younger Dryas cooling, say many palaeoclimate experts.
However, some of the comet proponents now propose a different trigger for the cold spell. The massive airbursts over Canada could have destabilised the continental ice sheet, opening new drainage channels to the east. Additionally, dust and debris from the explosions may have darkened the ice, absorbing solar heat and accelerating melting. "What we suggest is that the meltwater outflow from the proglacial lakes and from the temporarily melting ice sheet was the result of extraterrestrial impact," says Kennett.
The comet-strike also offers a third and radical hypothesis for the massive extinction of mammals, which for years palaeontologists have blamed on the sudden Younger Dryas freeze, combined with the hunting prowess of newly arrived Clovis bands. In the 12,900-year-old carbon-rich layer at Murray Springs, Arizona, and in sediment cores taken from the Carolina Bays (see "Marks of a comet?", below), chemist Wendy Wolbach of DePaul University in Chicago has detected significant quantities of soot – a product of the intense heat of wildfires.
Raging wildfires
Moreover, geologist Luanne Becker at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has detected a chemical signature of wildfire – polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – in samples taken from three of the team's study sites. Kennett and other team members say this suggests the cometary explosions ignited wildfires that swept across much of southern North America, wiping out large populations of animals. "I don't want to sound catastrophic here," he says, "but this is wild stuff. There is significant evidence of massive biomass burning."
If they are right, the cataclysm could also have devastated bands of Clovis hunters. Archaeologist Al Goodyear of the University of South Carolina, Columbia, reported at the Acapulco meeting that there is indirect evidence of a human disaster in what is now the south-eastern US. Chert points fashioned in the distinctive Clovis style disappear, and a new type of tool appears in the archaeological record: redstone points, judged on stylistic grounds to date from 12,750 years ago. Numbers of Clovis points outnumber redstones by 4 to 1. "If the number of points are diagnostic of the number of people there, which is a pretty reasonable assumption," notes West, "there was at least a 70 per cent decline" in the human population in the region.
Nonetheless, many researchers are likely to greet such apocalyptic scenarios with deep scepticism. Palaeontologist Paul Koch of the University of California, Santa Cruz, says he is intrigued by the new evidence of an impact, but he is far from persuaded by some of the team's sweeping claims. "I'm not convinced yet there were [widespread] wildfires," says Koch. "But if an impact just triggered the Younger Dryas, that in itself is a pretty big issue."
That's kind of staggering. Seventy percent of the people! To say nothing of the ecological devastation.
Who knows what North America might have grown into, if this disaster hadn't struck?
Did a comet wipe out prehistoric Americans?
The Clovis people of North America, flourishing some 13,000 years ago, had a mastery of stone weaponry that stood them in good stead against the constant threat of large carnivores, such as American lions and giant short-faced bears. It's unlikely, however, that they thought death would come from the sky.
According to results presented by a team of 25 researchers this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Acapulco, Mexico, that's where the Clovis people's doom came from. Citing several lines of evidence, the team suggests that a wayward comet hurtled into Earth's atmosphere around 12,900 years ago, fractured into pieces and exploded in giant fireballs. Debris seems to have settled as far afield as Europe.
Jim Kennett, an oceanographer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the team's three principal investigators, claims immense wildfires scorched North America in the aftermath, killing large populations of mammals and bringing an abrupt end to the Clovis culture. "The entire continent was on fire," he says...
If the team's impact theory holds up under scrutiny it could help explain three mysterious events that coincided around 12,900 years ago.
Cold spell
At this key time, the climate changed abruptly in the northern hemisphere, suddenly cooling in a period known as the Younger Dryas. In addition, the distinctive Clovis culture seems to have vanished in North America, while at least 35 genera of the continent's mammals went extinct – including mammoths, mastodons, camels, ground sloths and horses.
For years, many researchers have chalked up the onset of the Younger Dryas to a major change in North America's plumbing. Near the end of the last ice age, meltwater from the continent's principal ice sheet flooded into proglacial lakes in the centre of North America, and from there drained southward into the Mississippi river.
But by 12,900 years ago, the ice had retreated sufficiently from the northern Atlantic coast to let meltwater rush suddenly eastward. As an estimated 9500 cubic kilometres of fresh water poured into the Atlantic, it switched off the ocean's salinity-driven "conveyor belt" current, shutting down the Gulf Stream that carries heat from the tropics to eastern North America. It was this that triggered the Younger Dryas cooling, say many palaeoclimate experts.
However, some of the comet proponents now propose a different trigger for the cold spell. The massive airbursts over Canada could have destabilised the continental ice sheet, opening new drainage channels to the east. Additionally, dust and debris from the explosions may have darkened the ice, absorbing solar heat and accelerating melting. "What we suggest is that the meltwater outflow from the proglacial lakes and from the temporarily melting ice sheet was the result of extraterrestrial impact," says Kennett.
The comet-strike also offers a third and radical hypothesis for the massive extinction of mammals, which for years palaeontologists have blamed on the sudden Younger Dryas freeze, combined with the hunting prowess of newly arrived Clovis bands. In the 12,900-year-old carbon-rich layer at Murray Springs, Arizona, and in sediment cores taken from the Carolina Bays (see "Marks of a comet?", below), chemist Wendy Wolbach of DePaul University in Chicago has detected significant quantities of soot – a product of the intense heat of wildfires.
Raging wildfires
Moreover, geologist Luanne Becker at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has detected a chemical signature of wildfire – polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – in samples taken from three of the team's study sites. Kennett and other team members say this suggests the cometary explosions ignited wildfires that swept across much of southern North America, wiping out large populations of animals. "I don't want to sound catastrophic here," he says, "but this is wild stuff. There is significant evidence of massive biomass burning."
If they are right, the cataclysm could also have devastated bands of Clovis hunters. Archaeologist Al Goodyear of the University of South Carolina, Columbia, reported at the Acapulco meeting that there is indirect evidence of a human disaster in what is now the south-eastern US. Chert points fashioned in the distinctive Clovis style disappear, and a new type of tool appears in the archaeological record: redstone points, judged on stylistic grounds to date from 12,750 years ago. Numbers of Clovis points outnumber redstones by 4 to 1. "If the number of points are diagnostic of the number of people there, which is a pretty reasonable assumption," notes West, "there was at least a 70 per cent decline" in the human population in the region.
Nonetheless, many researchers are likely to greet such apocalyptic scenarios with deep scepticism. Palaeontologist Paul Koch of the University of California, Santa Cruz, says he is intrigued by the new evidence of an impact, but he is far from persuaded by some of the team's sweeping claims. "I'm not convinced yet there were [widespread] wildfires," says Koch. "But if an impact just triggered the Younger Dryas, that in itself is a pretty big issue."
That's kind of staggering. Seventy percent of the people! To say nothing of the ecological devastation.
Who knows what North America might have grown into, if this disaster hadn't struck?
Sandkings
“Sandkings” is the thoroughly-creepy, and engrossing, entry from George R.R. Martin. Simon Kress likes exotic pets- especially violent, predatory ones. An imports dealer sells him four “Sandkings”- ant-like insects that build castles and fight wars with each other. They also worship the human being that feeds them, creating huge (from their perspective) carvings of Kress’ face on their castle walls.
(In other words, it’s a sort of live-action “Populous.”)
Some people can handle absolute power; Kress is not one of them. He starves the insects, tests them against small predators, and generally shows himself to be much less sympathetic than the insects. This creates some unease on his part, of course, as the insects grow larger; it’s only a matter of time before they get out and stage their own personal Reformation.
(In other words, it’s a sort of live-action “Populous.”)
Some people can handle absolute power; Kress is not one of them. He starves the insects, tests them against small predators, and generally shows himself to be much less sympathetic than the insects. This creates some unease on his part, of course, as the insects grow larger; it’s only a matter of time before they get out and stage their own personal Reformation.
The Tunnel Under the World
Frederik Pohl’s “The Tunnel Under the World” is a beautiful, Philip K. Dick-like story about paranoia and underlying questions of reality. (Actually, it reminds me of Dick’s novel Time Out of Joint- which was also about a thoroughly-normal suburban world that turned out to be completely artificial and false.)
The ending makes the story; and my biggest regret is that, with the advance of computers, the ending is no longer really plausible to modern readers. They could update it, I suppose; but virtual-reality simulations just aren’t the same.
The ending makes the story; and my biggest regret is that, with the advance of computers, the ending is no longer really plausible to modern readers. They could update it, I suppose; but virtual-reality simulations just aren’t the same.
"Repent, Harlequin," Said the What?
“’Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” was the contribution of Harlan Ellison.
Ugh. I’m sorry, but this was the only story that I really could not find any liking for at all. Or, rather, I found a great deal to dislike. The pretentious Thoreau quote at the beginning. The affectedness of the names: Harlequin? “Ticktockman”? The offhand remark that no one’s made jellybeans in centuries (then where did he get them? And how did everyone know what they were?)
I got the odd impression, after reading it, that Ellison first came up with the title and then tried very hard to write a story to fit it. And the story just isn’t that good.
Ugh. I’m sorry, but this was the only story that I really could not find any liking for at all. Or, rather, I found a great deal to dislike. The pretentious Thoreau quote at the beginning. The affectedness of the names: Harlequin? “Ticktockman”? The offhand remark that no one’s made jellybeans in centuries (then where did he get them? And how did everyone know what they were?)
I got the odd impression, after reading it, that Ellison first came up with the title and then tried very hard to write a story to fit it. And the story just isn’t that good.
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