Mammals shrink faster than they grow - Technology & Science An international team of scientists, including some from Canada, has discovered that mammals shrink at faster rates than they grow — a finding that sheds light on the conditions that potentially contribute to extinction. Their study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows it took about 24 million generations for a mouse-sized animal to evolve to the size of an elephant, but only 100,000 generations for very large decreases leading to dwarfism to occur. The research is unique because previous work in this area has focused on microevolution — the small changes that occur within a species. The paper studied 28 different types of mammals from the four largest continents (Africa, Eurasia, and North and South America) and all ocean basins for the last 70 million years. "A less dramatic change, such as rabbit-sized to elephant-sized, takes 10 million generations." "What caused their dwarfism?
Human Evolution & Archaeology It Takes 24 Million Generations For a Mouse To Evolve Into an Elephant Rainy season brings glow-in-the-dark mushrooms 24 May 2006 With the arrival of Japan's rainy season, a mysterious type of green, glow-in-the-dark mushroom begins to sprout in Wakayama prefecture. The Mycena lux-coeli mushrooms, known locally as shii no tomobishi-dake (literally, "chinquapin glow mushrooms"), sprout from fallen chinquapin trees. As they grow, a chemical reaction involving luciferin (a light-emitting pigment contained within the mushrooms) occurs, causing them to glow a ghostly green. The luminescent mushrooms were long believed to be indigenous solely to Tokyo's Hachijojima Island after they were discovered there in the early 1950s. In 1995, however, mycologists found the fungus growing wild in coastal areas of the southern Kii peninsula, as well as in Kyushu and other areas. The mushrooms thrive in humid environments, popping up during Japan's rainy season, which typically lasts from the end of May to July. [Source: Mainichi Shimbun]
Most Beautiful Dinosaur Park July 16th, 2011 Toxido In this time most of little kids don’t know about dinosaur because they are not still alive but our 3d and historical Hollywood films give a good view on dino life and therefore kids know very well. In old age dinosaur is most biggest animals on the earth and dinosaur also have different species some dinosaur is like to eat vegetable and some dinosaur love to eat others small animals or small dinosaurs some time one big dinosaur is killed another big dinosaur but its so rare. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Mycologists So-Called Life Box - Environment - GOOD The resourceful mycologist (that's a fungi-studier) Paul Stamets has made cardboard packaging that can be planted and will grow into trees. It's called the Life Box. The Life Box suite of products builds upon the synergy of fungi and plants by infusing spores and seeds together inside of packaging materials that can be planted. The Tree Life Box is made of recycled paper fiber. In this fiber, we have inserted a wide variety of tree seeds, up to a hundred, dusted with mycorrhizal fungal spores. The mycorrhizal fungi protect and nurture the young seedlings. Here's a video of Stamets (wearing a hat that makes him look a little like a mushroom himself) explaining how the Life Box works on local San Francisco news. If you run a company that could use these instead of normal cardboard, I will happily post about how responsible you are if you pledge to switch to these things. Via Core77
50-Legged Creature May Have Been Top Predator Of Ancient Seafloor An artist's rendering of a Tegopelte, a foot-long arthropod that lived 500 million years ago.Marianne Collins An ancient cockroach-like creature nearly a foot long once skittered along the seafloor in what is now Canada, a new fossil find reveals. The fossil, a series of 500-million-year-old tracks, captured the movement of a large seafloor-dwelling creature with at least 25 pairs of legs. The animal was likely an arthropod called Tegopelte, a rare giant very rarely found fossilized. Arthropods are invertebrates with exoskeletons, a group that includes today's crustaceans and insects. Reporting the discovery Tuesday (Nov. 8) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers led by Nicholas Minter of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada suggest that Tegopelte was a fearsome predator or perhaps a quick-moving scavenger, capable of "rapidly skimming across the seafloor" with only a few of its many legs touching the ground at a time.
5 Ways To Hack Your Brain Into Awesomeness Much of the brain is still mysterious to modern science, possibly because modern science itself is using brains to analyze it. There are probably secrets the brain simply doesn't want us to know. But by no means should that stop us from tinkering around in there, using somewhat questionable and possibly dangerous techniques to make our brains do what we want. We can't vouch for any of these, either their effectiveness or safety. #5. So you just picked up the night shift at your local McDonald's, you have class every morning at 8am and you have no idea how you're going to make it through the day without looking like a guy straight out of Dawn of the Dead, minus the blood... hopefully. "SLEEEEEEEEEP... uh... What if we told you there was a way to sleep for little more than two hours a day, and still feel more refreshed than taking a 12-hour siesta on a bed made entirely out of baby kitten fur? Holy Shit! We're pretty sure Kramer did this once on Seinfeld. How Does It Work? #4. #3. 1. 2. 3.
How did life originate? How did life originate? Living things (even ancient organisms like bacteria) are enormously complex. However, all this complexity did not leap fully-formed from the primordial soup. Instead life almost certainly originated in a series of small steps, each building upon the complexity that evolved previously: Simple organic molecules were formed. Multicellularity evolved.
Evolushark Artificial selection in the lab Artificial selection in the lab For thousands of years, humans have been influencing evolution, through changes we have caused in the environment — and through artificial selection in the domestication of plants and animals. In many cases, scientists have carefully documented evolution through artificial selection in the lab. John Endler performed experiments in microevolution, allowing artificial selection to manipulate the spots on guppies. After fewer than 15 generations of selection, the markings of guppies in different ponds had substantially diverged as a result of natural selection. Endler then performed another experiment, with the same pond set-ups but without predators. Without predators, there was sexual selection for male guppies that stood out from their background and attracted the attention of the females.