Comments View as Flat

1. 

   Biodiversivist Posted 10:09 am
   25 Aug 2007

   That was fascinating

   Thanks for sharing it. I wonder how long it will hold on.

   In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

   Permalink

2. 

   marvelle Posted 2:19 am
   26 Aug 2007

   Nice...

   ...images. The spread in NatGeo was great.

   Thanks for this!

   Permalink

3. 

   caniscandida Posted 10:10 am
   26 Aug 2007

   what's in a name; sharks

   The auction will be a great way to raise a lot of money for an obviously meritorious cause.

   It is good that there are some wealthy people who are pleased to give prodigious amounts to causes of great value to our society, such as art collections and museums, theaters and concert halls, university buildings, wings of hospitals, and charitable foundations.  That they so often seem to insist that their names must be displayed on their benefactions looks like a bit of immodesty, but I suppose we must be prepared to forgive them that.

   In this case, though, if the winner of the auction for any of these "lots" chooses to have the specific epithet be a version of his or her own name (traditionally the genitive-case form of the name's latinization, as Sarah has done, though she might have put it in the feminine gender: vanschageniae), it would hardly show much conceit, seeing how very few people in the world are going to notice it or even recognize it.

   Often in fact there is an element of chivalry, or courtesy, that comes into play in composing the specific epithet of a new species.  The famous late-Jurassic sauropod formerly known as "brontosaurus," Apatosaurus louisae, is named for the wife of Andrew Carnegie, the paleontological expedition's sponsor.  And the late-Cretaceous hadrosaur discovered with its eggs at its nesting site in western Montana, Maiasaura peeblesorum, is named for the Peebles family, the owners of the ranch on which the site was located (a piece of land subsequently purchased by the Nature Conservancy).

   So not impossibly there is a wealthy Gristmiller who has read this, will attend the auction, will give the highest bid for the shark, and will graciously name it for Sarah.

   About the shark: One thing that interests me about it is the shape of the body, which resembles that of some fairly well-studied sharks of the early Permian, of the genus Orthacanthus.  They both have a long, eely body, which is an adaptation seen in many vertebrate forms, not especially swift-swimming but suited for making sudden quick lunges.  Also, the gorgeous life-sized reconstruction at the American Museum of Natural History, consisting of the cast of a skull set in a sculptured body made of wire, a true work of art, gives it a leaf-shaped tail very similar to the tail of this Indonesian shark.  The relative size of the fins is different, though.  And Orthacanthus got up to nine feet in length, which is larger than the new shark.

   We need to observe the shark's behavior.  It looks like a bottom-feeder, according to Conservation International's short video.  But is that all it does?

   One of the beautiful reconstructed scenes by Robert J. Barber, showing episodes in vertebrate evolution, at the AMNH, is called "The Environment of Texas in the Early Permian."  In it, an Orthacanthus is seen in a shallow inland stream, eeling its way, with open jaws, toward a big fat amphibian called Eryops, as though to take a bite out of its paunch.  Very nice and dramatic, but I have doubts that a shark would go after such formidable prey, which could easily turn and give it a very nasty bite in return.

   This is why paleontologists need to study the data of field biologists.  They will never (in this disappointing world of sin, and limitation in time, at least) be able to see how extinct animals behaved.  But they rely on being able to construct analogies with the behavior of those animals' living relatives, or of animals who seem for other reasons comparable.

   Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

   Permalink