(Mis)adventures in Paleontology.

[Morm]

Just look up Helicoprion on google.

Also that ammonite isn't so far off- there are certain ones that look just fucked right up. The name escapes me now but I'll look it up when I get to work on Tuesday. Basically the shell can grow back in on itself and the animal would have died...probably a reproductive structure.

 

[Morm]

Heteromorphic. That's what the fucked up ammonites are called. Weird that I couldn't remember such a simple name. Definately worth looking up if you have a second.

Also with reguards to Helicoprion: The bottom jaw looks like a freaking spiral. The only logical thing it could do is be a sexual selection thing. It's messed up! Stethacanthus, another shark, is also fucked:

The only difference is that these odd structures were probably sensory somehow, tied in at the very least with Ampullae of Lorenzini.

 

[unceunce]

Chain-saw= Bad ass
Shark= bad ass

Chain-saw+Shark= ???

 

[BARILLIAN]

Yeah, I found the picture on this page (also has quite a few other heteromorph ammonites), which in turn took the pictures from this other page, which also has pictures of quite a few extinct and extant animals, though only sorted in alphabetical order.

Regarding Helicoprion, I ran a few searches and it seems there is still no definite idea on how it fed (One theory says it crushes hard-shelled animals by hammering them with the spiky saw), and no complete skulls were found.

 

[Morm]

The thing about that is that I have seen pictures of the specimen and it's pretty clear what was going on. It wasn't even a conveyor belt of teeth, since the teeth appear to have grown from the outsite and moved in or some such garbage.

Shark anatomy will reveal a soft, cartilagenous skeleton- anyone should know this. However, it appears that the jaws are clearly made of a more ossified material (ie. bone). Either way, it's unlikely a shark skull could handle the pressures of crushing animals via hammering.

In my opinion, this animal is another great example of why sexual selection can go bad. I would bet, as with all adaptations that make no sense, that this sexual selection had a runaway effect until the animals were a pile of crap. This, of course, resulted in extinction. A pretty obvious case of this is in Megalocerus (Irish Elk) as well.

Also neat to note that the scales on Stethacanthus as well as all placoid scales on sharks are probably close to teeth precursors. Infact, slightly modified placoid scales in some modern sharks look shockingly similar to teeth. Ever wonder how the sawfish got teeth outside its mouth?

 

[BARILLIAN]

Hm, I heard shark scales actually contain enamel, any truth on that?

 

[Morm]

100% truth. Even things like Gars, which are osteichthyian fish (so somewhat 'advanced' all the way to super 'advanced' fish) have enamal just loaded up on their scales.

 

[Morm]

So I go on a date tonight with a girl that is pretty damn hot. Anyways, after a few drinks I take her to my car and open my trunk. Aside from old star wars cards from when I was 10, there is a plethora of fossil goodies.

She was impressed with my raptor tooth and dinosaur vertebrae I have. As a nice touch, I gave her a fossil Oyster, which some say is an aphrodesiac for paleontologists (ba-dum tsh!)

Suffice to say I earned myself a second date.

Edit: This was posted for Anti cause he likes stories about girls

 

[DM]

Hahaha as do I, well done sir. :naughty:

 

[Kumar]

I envy you a lot. More stories please.

 

[Morm]

Here's my two lessons I learned for the day:

1. Will Smith still sucks
2. Engineers, no matter how sexy, cannot have a personality



So I was watching Hancock with that same girl I gave the oyster to. Enough said (fuck you Hancock). Maybe it was the shitty movie, maybe it was the fact that she doesn't have any interesting stories...but I doubt I'll see her again. Shame too, among the hottest girls I've ever gone out with. I'm pretty sure she felt the same way too. It's fine though, Paleontologists have no time for girls with all the sex they are having all the time.



On the bright side, I'm scheduled for a trip to the field on the 28th til the 31st. I'm sure something will happen, maybe I'll be dive bombed by tar sands beetles again. Those things are fucking mean. Well, I'm tired from a long day of paperwork, fossils and girls. Ah, the life of a paleontologist!

 

[Morm]

Sorry for double post but this is an actual story for you guys and I felt like having a bit of fun with it.

So there I was in Alberta's badlands, bearing through the 30C dead heat of the day. I was walking with a man, 50 in age, and some technition who was pretty damn sexy (she was French Canadian). We were in search of microvertebrate sites containing dinosaur teeth, turtle shell fragments and fish scales mostly. Some other things like marsupial mammals appeared too from time to time (multituberculates, IIRC).

So, we were just cruisin along at a nice pace. Suddenly, the 50 year old man jumped about 3 feet in the air away from a low shrub. Since he was normally quite relaxed and not fast paced I instantly reacted. I jumped probably higher and faster, being younger and more spry. That's when I noticed it: a 4 foot long prairie rattle snake. Not shaking its rattle, not even in a coiled position.

It had just awakened from its hibernaculum. It was groggy, I leapt at the chance. I went for the tail as it slowly came out of its bush refugia. Suffice to say, I almost grabbed the tail and went croc hunter on its ass. It didn't actually happen, since the man happened to be a very well respected paleontologist and I listened to his words of warning. Here's a dramatic reinactment of what probably would have happened:

This is me grabbing the snake, hypothetically

In my minds eye the snake and I are actually best friends but this is alot more likely to occur than us hugging on a rainbow.

okay so this is what happens with a prairie rattlesnake. Obviously this picture isn't of an actual bite but what happens is bruising and flulike symptoms for about a week. Also the bruise looks like pikachu so it's topical and realistic



yeah so that's my encounter with a rattlesnake. I have yet to shoot a bear in the face with a bear banger (ie flare gun) but rest assured I'm back in bear territory soon and I'm not scared. It'll be like the doritos commercial where cloud confronts the bear and uses the three sides of the dorrto to have different outcomes. The only difference is that in my case all the outcomes end with a flare to the face of a bear.

 

[Doomsday]

hahaha i loled at the dramatic reenactment. jesus though, fucking snakes. that shit's gotta hurt

 

[DM]

Also the bruise looks like pikachu so it's topical and realistic

Haha, holy shit it does!

Man, I wish my job was this exciting. Not much going on in the records department of a law firm.

 

[Morm]

Okay, another update. So much going on now. We are officially within breath-holding distance for more fieldwork. My boss has me on for a day trip this friday to a really badass site. She's notorious for pranks and catching you in embarassing photos so it'll be quite an experience. Lots and lots of fun to be had!


Lets turn the clock waaaay back to the Devonian for a nice discussion. That puts us around 370 million years ago or so.

Meet my friends Tiktaalik

Icthyostega

and Ventastega

Note the presence of supernumeray digits on this, the most basal (and certainly earliest known) tetrapod. Weird how the head is so fishlike...oh wait, that's not weird. Evolutionary theory actually predicted this.

Also

EUSTHENOPTERON (A fish that had very very strong pectoral fins...or dare I say, very finlike arms?)

Okay, so yeah. They aren't amphibians, they aren't fish. Well all except the one just above, it's a fish...but a weird Sauropterygian much like Latimera (Modern coelacanths). They are the earliest known land verebrates! They weren't the first on land either, for arthropods beat us in that race it would seem. They win all the races.

Any thoughts guys? I just pulled this discussion out of my ass cause I want the thread to be more than just me telling you all stories.

 

[DM]

I won't even begin to claim to be anything but ignorant when it comes to discussing evolution, but your post is quite fascinating.

 

[Morm]

Well it's really interesting that you can see a clear progression from fleshy finned fish (Sarcopterygii) to early land vertebates such as Ichthyostegalians.

DM: If you find this sort of thing fascinating, I found some articles (easy reads) that you might like.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/07/080709-evolution-fish.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080625-tetrapods.html

Not trying to spike an evo/religion debate, just pointing out some of the observations that paleo contribute to science.

 

[Realgar]

I remember when they posted an article about the Tiktaalik on Yahoo's front page and all the creationists spammed the "comments" section.

Mormoopid, how do I become you? I'm planning on studying geology, but you kind of have my dream job right now. Advice for someone beginning her college career?

 

[Morm]

My advice is to make friends with your profs. My old invert paleo prof actually is one of my best friends now. He helped me get the job, took me to the Burgess Shale and I lived with his mom for 3 years for retardedly low rents. I had some of the lowest marks in the paleo program and I was certainly the laziest and heaviest drinking but yet here I am, a full time paleontologist because I made some awesome connections.

Another piece of advice would be not to pidgeon hole yourself. If you think you'll get a job in Dinosaur paleontology, guess again. Some good places to explore would be everything other than dinosaurs, especially invertebrates. My entolomogy classes are sought after as well in paleo, since almost no paleontologists know much about insects I'm told.

Where are you from, Realgar? It helps to focus on local stuff too. I'm fortunate living in Alberta as you can learn about almost anything and have it appear in Western Canadian paleo.


Okay so some bad news: My day in the field was cancelled cause of thunderstorms. Pretty friggin lame. I went into the office to prepare some fossils but instead took the day off with pay. When you're as cool as I am you get days off with pay sometimes.

 

[damon65]

thats really interesting stuff. ive always thought about a career in archaology (sp?) or paleontology. i think it may have stemmed from watching jurassic park as a kid.

 

[betaclypse]

Lol I love paleontology when I was little all I ever wanted to do as a little child was go dig up dinosaur bones. (then I realized I'm a whimp and couldn't possibly endure the conditions paleontologists face -_-) What type of fossils do you specialize in, cause I would love to know. I've always loved dinosaurs and other dead crap :D In real life, are there people you work with like Dr. Grant from Jurrassic Park, or is that just Hollywood?

 

[Morm]

Yeah no people that instinctively know how to act around a T.rex not to get eaten exist. I've worked with guys at quarries like at the start of the movie though.

If I were to pin a speciality on myself I'd say it was invertebrates or microfossils such as teeth.



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080617-utah-dinosaurs.html check that out. Apparently the Morrisson formation isn't as useless these days as I thought it was. New discoveries can be made in mundane old exposures.

Pretty neat video about a mummy: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/07/080717-mummy-video-vin.html

 

[tea_and_blues]

Helicoprion is awesome, a structure like that would have to have been mainly sex-selected. It doesn't look like it could have many functions, although we shouldn't forget the general advantages of being more spiky and sharp, maybe dredging with it could have provided advantages as well. We simply do not have sufficient information to make a clear-cut call, but your hypothesis sounds about right.

You're aware that "adaptation" implies "makes sense", right? I think what you mean to say is either not "adaptation", or it is "adaptations that hinder a species in the long term".

 

[Morm]

Adaptation doesn't imply 'makes sense'. I mean that in this case it doesn't have any logical reasoning morphologically or behaviourally to me. Sex adapted selection is the ultimate cop-out for alot of this stuff, sadly, because when we see something that is puzzling or illogical morphologically we just assume it has to do with sex. It's also because bizzare or 'useless' oddities are frequently associated with attraction.

I was wondering when you'd show up, T+B, to contribute :D

 

[tea_and_blues]

You are confusing the word 'adapt' with 'add'. 'To adapt' means to change to suit a set of conditions - in other words, adaptation means 'change to make sense given the conditions'. The word you want is 'addition', not 'adaptation'.

Contrariwise, you might want to say that the adaptation is probably to sexual pressures, and it is, in fact, counter-adaptive to the organism's long-term survival.

Jus' sayin.