Misunderstandings of Human Evolution

224 pages | 8 line drawings | 6 x 9 | © 2013

The idea of a missing link between humanity and our animal ancestors predates evolution and popular science and actually has religious roots in the deist concept of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the contemporary imagination, and new fossil discoveries are often hailed in headlines as revealing the elusive transitional step, the moment when we stopped being “animal” and started being “human.” In The Accidental Species, Henry Gee, longtime paleontology editor at Nature, takes aim at this misleading notion, arguing that it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how evolution works and, when applied to the evolution of our own species, supports mistaken ideas about our own place in the universe.

Gee presents a robust and stark challenge to our tendency to see ourselves as the acme of creation. Far from being a quirk of religious fundamentalism, human exceptionalism, Gee argues, is an error that also infects scientific thought. Touring the many features of human beings that have recurrently been used to distinguish us from the rest of the animal world, Gee shows that our evolutionary outcome is one possibility among many, one that owes more to chance than to an organized progression to supremacy. He starts with bipedality, which he shows could have arisen entirely by accident, as a by-product of sexual selection, moves on to technology, large brain size, intelligence, language, and, finally, sentience. He reveals each of these attributes to be alive and well throughout the animal world—they are not, indeed, unique to our species.

The Accidental Species combines Gee’s firsthand experience on the editorial side of many incredible paleontological findings with healthy skepticism and humor to create a book that aims to overturn popular thinking on human evolution—the key is not what’s missing, but how we’re linked.

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo12789718.html

Feathered Dinosaurs for Korean Museum
by Dennis Wilson

This project was commissioned for an exhibit that explores the evolution of flight among dinosaurs.  All models are life size, scientifically accurate to the latest research and are feathered in our usual manor of applying each feather one at a time. 

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Feathered-Dinosaurs-for-Korean-Museum/11774005#!

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please read this interesting article by Nico Danan on blog.marinexplore

Fabien Cousteau: 31 Days Underwater and the Life of an Aquanaut

Fabien Cousteau is the grandson of late undersea pioneer and explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Following in the footsteps of his grandfather and the Conshelf underwater habitat, Fabien shares his thoughts and motivation behind Mission 31, his undersea expedition to start in November this year.

31 days at 63 feet under the sea, what will you accomplish that your grandfather could not with Conshelf?

Conshelf was a series of three different habitats. The one that most people know about was Conshelf II, where the dive team lived at 10 meters (33 feet) for 30 days, and dove to even deeper depth on a daily basis, 75 feet or more. The difference here with my grandfather’s habitat is that we are based at twice the depth, 65 feet. We will be diving daily from 65 feet down to 150 and even 200 feet......

http://blog.marinexplore.com/fabien-cousteau-31-days-underwater/#!

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please read this interesting article by Wes Judd on Australian Geographic

New mosquito repellent makes you "invisible"

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A new vapour developed in the USA renders humans virtually undetectable to mozzies.

SCIENTISTS HAVE CREATED WHAT might be the most effective insect repellent ever.

While the majority of existing repellents create an odour that is unpleasant for mosquitos, using a yellow oil known as DEET, this new blend of chemicals renders the insect senseless.

“These chemicals make you invisible,” says Dr Ulrich Bernier, a research chemist at the United States Department of Agriculture research service, and creator of the new formula......

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/new-mosquito-repellent-is-ultra-effective.htm#!

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please read this interesting article on http://www.amphibians.org/aboutus/

Why save amphibians?

In the closing of her Nobel acceptance speech, the late Wangari Maathai told a story: “I reflect on my childhood experience when I would visit a stream next to our home to fetch water for my mother. I would drink water straight from the stream. Playing among the arrowroot leaves I tried in vain to pick up the strands of frogs’ eggs, believing they were beads. But every time I put my little fingers under them they would break. Later, I saw thousands of tadpoles: black, energetic and wriggling through the clear water against the background of the brown earth. This is the world I inherited from my parents.

Today, over 50 years later, the stream has dried up, women walk long distances for water, which is not always clean, and children will never know what they have lost. The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder.”

Frogs, salamanders and caecilians are woven through our cultural fabric the world over. They provide children with beauty and wonder and play an integral role in the functioning of ecosystems. Because of their sensitivity to change, amphibians are believed to be bellwethers of ecosystem health.

But the world over, amphibians are in trouble, as entire species are being driven to extinction by threats that include loss of habitat, disease, contamination and climate change. The latest figures from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species™ show that there are nearly as many threatened species of amphibians as birds and mammals combined, and that the proportion of threatened species is higher for amphibians (30.2%) than for either birds (12.5%) or mammals (20.6%).

The ASA is committed to converging a diverse network of global partners with one goal: to protect amphibians and their habitats. We have a blueprint for action in the form of an Amphibian Conservation Action Plan (ACAP) and a track record of conservation successes on which to build. The preservation of core amphibian habitat will be coupled with strategies to mitigate the other threats.

Together we can ensure that frogs, salamanders and caecilians thrive in healthy ecosystems around the world for future generations.

http://www.amphibians.org/

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please read this interesting article by Erin Allday on sfgate

U.S. malaria cases climb as global rates drop

Even as rates of malaria are falling in many of the world's hot spots for tropical diseases, the number of cases in the United States is climbing as global travel becomes cheaper and easier, health officials say.

Rates of malaria - a parasitic illness that is spread by mosquitoes - have dropped 25 to 50 percent in parts of Asia and Africa where the disease is endemic. But in 2011, the U.S. reported 1,925 cases, the most in more than 40 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released last week. California had the second-highest number of cases, 149, behind only New York.

All but a handful of those diagnosed in the U.S. that year became infected in another country. The report suggests that Americans are not taking proper precautions when they travel to places where malaria is prevalent.....

http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/U-S-malaria-cases-climb-as-global-rates-drop-4969319.php#!

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please read this interesting article by Marc Bekoff on psychologytoday

Disabled Whale Missing Two Fins Cared for by Family

A heartwarming story that shows wild animals display compassion and empathy

Here's a story that'll make your day. There's not much to write that's not covered by this short essay called "Disabled killer whale with missing fins survives with the help of family who hunt for its food" so I hope you enjoy what you read and see......

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201311/disabled-whale-missing-two-fins-cared-family

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please read thisinteresting article by Marc Bekoff on psychologytoday

Frankenstein's Cat: Biotechnology, Strange Creatures, and Us

What does genetically engineering animals—glowing fish, frozen zoos—mean?
Published on November 12, 2013 by Marc Bekoff, Ph.D. in Animal Emotions

I finally got around to reading a book with the catchy title, Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts, by journalist Emily Anthes, and I'm sorry I let it sit on my cluttered desk for as long as I did. Highly-acclaimed, packed with a lot of information, very well-referenced, and an easy read, this book made me think hard and deep about our relationships with other animals (the focus of the field of anthrozoology) and just what is okay and what is not.

Some of the examples about which Ms. Anthes writes include cloning endangered and other species, creating frozen zoos, using prosthetics to help injured animals, supplementing their natural senses, and engineering mutant animals and glowing cats...

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201311/frankensteins-cat-biotechnology-strange-creatures-and-us#!

Threatened by rising seas, some of the world’s small island developing states (SIDS) are demanding that the U.N.’s new set of Sustainable Development Goals place a high priority on the...

Small Islands Demand U.N. Protection

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 11 2013 (IPS) - Threatened by rising seas, some of the world’s small island developing states (SIDS) are demanding that the U.N.’s new set of Sustainable Development Goals place a high priority on the protection of oceans and marine resources.

A growing number of SIDS, including Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Maldives, Tonga, Nauru and Kiribati, are making a strong case for a stand-alone goal for the protection of oceans in the post-2015 development agenda known as the SDGs, which is currently under discussion.


Hassan Hussain Shihab, first secretary of the Maldives diplomatic mission to the U.N., told IPS that oceans are a priority for the Indian Ocean island nation, whose 339,000 citizens are threatened by sea-level rise.

“The establishment of an SDG dedicated to oceans is critical to Maldives as the oceans are our source of life, livelihood and the identity of the people,” he said.

Covering more than 70 percent of our planet’s surface, he said, oceans play a key role in supporting life on earth.......

http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/11/small-islands-demand-u-n-protection/#!

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please read this interesting article by Lise Brix on sciencenordic

The mollusc was born in  1499 contemporary of discovery of America and Martin Luther’s Reformation.

World’s oldest animal is 507 years old

It’s time to rewrite the record books. New accurate dating shows that the world’s oldest animal was 507 years old when it died in 2006. That’s more than 100 years older than previously thought.

In autumn 2006 a team of researchers went on an expedition to Iceland, where they discovered something that made the headlines across the world. The discovery even made it into the Guinness Book of World Records.

One of the Arctica islandica bivalve molluscs, also known as ocean quahogs, that the researchers picked up from the Icelandic seabed turned out to be around 405 years old, and thus the world’s oldest animal.

However, after taking a closer look at the old mollusc using more refined methods, the researchers found that the animal is actually 100 years older than they thought. The new estimate says that the mollusc is actually 507 years old:

“We got it wrong the first time and maybe we were a bit hastingly publishing our findings back then. But we are absolutely certain that we’ve got the right age now,” ocean scientist Paul Butler, who researches into the A. islandica at Bangor University in Wales, tells ScienceNordic...

http://sciencenordic.com/new-record-world%E2%80%99s-oldest-animal-507-years-old