Linkfest: Spider, Orangutan, and a dozen others

Last entry for the year! Hope everyone enjoys their extra second of 2008! Now some links:

From Science Daily: How the Spider Spun Its Web: Missing Link in Spider Evolution Discovered

Even in this form, spiders creep me out.

From National Geographic News: Whistling Orangutan May Hint at Language Evolution


From Wired Science: 12 Elegant Examples of Evolution

Darwin - Big Idea Big Exhibition

London's Natural History Museum just opened an exhibition in celebration of Darwin's 200'th birthday in February. Darwin Big Idea Big Exhibition is on display until April 19th, after which I really, really hope it becomes a traveling exhibition. Mainly so I ogle this with my face pressed helplessly against the glass:

*drool*

These photos are from the slide show on the Natural History Museum website, by the way. That first one is of course Darwin's notebook, and the very first cladogram he drew when working out his idea.
And here is a model of the HMS Beagle. I have always wanted a model of the HMS Beagle. Always, always.
These are the mockingbirds Darwin collected on the Galapagos. The birds there inspired Darwin to think about species changing over time.
Is this a first edition of On the Origin of Species? Why yes! Yes it is!

Meanwhile, the National Museum of Australia in Canberra is having a Darwin exhibition of their own until March 29th. And theirs features this Augustus Earle painting!
If you're lucky enough to be close to either of these museums, don't miss out!

Weekend Poetry

I got an email from Craig Gosling today, and he sent me some more poems! So, Weekend Poetry is back!

Archaeopteryx Nightmare

The Archaeopteryx is fictitious, shall I tell you why?
It doesn’t fit into God's plan; it's just a secular lie.
Fossils found all over the world are not the missing links.
As is said of fishy facts, something in Denmark stinks.

I can't let facts get in the way when I read my bible.
I can't let science confuse me, it's simply secular libel.
How can scales turn into feathers, a beak turn into teeth?
How can legs turn into wings, the concept causes me grief.

As I lay me down to sleep, I hope I don't have dreams
Of flying reptiles with feathers and teeth, animals so extreme.
The Archaeopteryx cannot exist, the bible tells me so.
Fossils are lies and science is wrong, this I truly know.

I'll stick to claims of Iron Age profits with faithful resolution
and ignore all those scientists who do swear by evolution.
Archaeopteryx, you never lived, you're not a missing link;
you don’t fit into God's plan, for those of us who don't think.

- Craig Gosling

Also, I see this has been bumped from the front page yet again... *sigh*
I'll have an actual blog entry sometime this week, once I sort through all the Google Alerts in my inbox I've ignored for the past two weeks. Ciao

AMI Website

The Association of Medical Illustrators has finally launched their new website, and I am extremely impressed with it (especially considering what we used to have.)

Check it out: www.ami.org

Tiktaalik (Your Inner Fish)

The star of the 2008 Penn Reading Project and everyone's favorite tetrapod, Tiktaalik now has his own music video!

Music by the Indoorfins

Penn Reading Project

And here's a video interview with Tyler Keillor, the artist and fossil preparator who made the Tiktaalik model, which won the 2008 Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prize for three-dimensional art.

Cladograms: History, Diversity, and/or Geography

Cladograms at their most basic level give information on which species or groups of species are most closely related--in other words, which have the most recent common ancestor. Cladograms can also give information on evolutionary history (how long ago the branching events occurred) and diversity (which branches became most 'successful').

Here is one from Nature that does both of these things:
What's more unusual is to have a phylogeny that also includes geographical information. I came across this one yesterday on the blog Living the Scientific Life:
Read the above linked blog for a summary of the article. I'm just here to show you the cladogram! This one combines the traditional phylogeny with history (in this case by color-coding the nodes and including a key) and geography, by ending each branch at the location of the modern species. In this case it seems to have worked out cleanly, with only one case of crossed lines. But, I'd imagine other attempts, perhaps with non island-dwelling species, would be much messier.

What I want to find now is a cladogram that manages to combine all three: evolutionary history, diversity, and geography, in one image. Perhaps in some cases it would even be possible to place the nodes on the geographical location where the common ancestor is thought to have lived!

Evolution of a Tasty Meal

Someone on SomethingAwful.com, in a thread on wallpapers, shared this awhile back and I forgot to post it! Unfortunately, I don't know where it's from originally. Watermark your digital art, people!

Never mind the fact it shows a dinosaur evolving from a pelycosaur. It's cute!

click for big