Cerebrum nasus is a medium sized quadruped with a unique adaptation to navigate a world that seldom has light. While equipped with eyes that can pick up ultraviolet light, the Cerebrum Nasus “sees” it’s world through it’s large multifaceted nose. This large fleshy organ holds multiple nostrils to pick up the slightest of shifts in scent. It also can emit and register as an electroreceptor. Communication between individuals is also processed through the organ via electric fields.
This melon will become vibrant during mating season as a way to attract and will accompany a unique electo-song as a way to entice females. Each song is unique to the individual and is entirely inaudible.
Borealopelta is an exciting recently described Nodosaurid that is remarkable because it was essentially mummified - the osteoderms, skin, and even color were preserved in three-dimensions. The fossil was so heavy and so buried in its environment that it actually broke under its own weight, but luckily the pieces were kept and transported successfully. Borealopelta was found in the Clearwater Formation of Alberta, Canada, living about 110 to 112 million years ago, in the Albian age of the Early Cretaceous. Borealopelta had died on the shore of the Western Interior Seaway and was washed out to sea after death, buried on the ocean floor quickly (topside - down) with very little distortion, making the fossil look like how the dinosaur looked when it was alive.
Photo by Machairo, CC BY-SA 4.0
Borealopelta shows the positioning of armor when the animal was alive, a unique thing for an Ankylosaur which usually aren’t preserved articulated enough to know with this level of precision. In addition to that, the osteoderms had keratin sheaths over them, indicating the spikes and other structures were even longer in life than they were in typical ankylosaur fossils. In fact, this probably applies to most armor structures in dinosaurs, indicating that things like Triceratops had amazingly long horns. Since these structures - in both groups of dinosaurs - were primarily sexually selected ones (meaning, they got so ridiculous because other dinosaurs found them sexy), the sheathes wouldn’t have been really used for defense very much, though they would have been capable of doing so.
By Nobu Tamura, CC BY-SA 4.0
Borealopelta was preserved with pigmentation - a structure usually only found in things like small birdie dinosaurs (with Psittacosaurus as a notable excpetion) - indicating this dinosaur would have been reddish-brown colored, with countershading for camouflage in its environment, though it’s difficult to tell what sort of environment that would have been since the animal was washed out to sea. The armor on its back that wasn’t so extensively keratinized (ie, not the big shoulder spikes, but the bumpy osteoderms all over) probably would have allowed it to defend itself, since the camouflage indicates it would have been hunted by prey (why hide if nothing is chasing you?). This dinosaur was recently discovered, and hopefully more research of it will show us even more about Borealopelta and other Ankylosaurs.
Dakotornis is our last miscellaneous Neornithean! Known from the Bullion Creek Formation of North Dakota, it lived sometime between 61 and 56 million years ago, between the Selandian and Thanetian ages of the Paleocene of the Paleogene. Known from very limited remains, it was first thought to be another wading bird - but it can’t be definitively assigned to any sort of group or lifestyle.
Sources:
Mayr, G. 2009. Paleogene Fossil Birds. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
“"It’s a hopeful, optimistic chapter,“ said Louise Rollins-Smith, PhD, associate professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, and a co-author of a study recently published in the journal Science.A collaborative group of investigators at multiple institutions showed that the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis continues to be as lethal now as it was more than 10 years ago.
The antimicrobial defenses produced by frog skin, however, appear to be more effective than they were before the fungal epidemic began.Rollins-Smith and her colleagues began studying how frogs combat B. dendrobatidis in Panama in 2004. For several years, Douglas Woodhams, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow on her team, and laboratory manager Laura Reinert made multiple trips to Central America to collect samples of frog skin secretions.
At the time, the fungal disease was spreading eastward from Costa Rica through Panama.“There was a predictable wave of pathogen moving to new populations,” said Rollins-Smith, who also traveled to Panama in 2010. “It gave us the opportunity to collect samples from populations of animals that had already encountered the epidemic and from the same species in places where the epidemic had not yet occurred."The researchers found that skin secretions from frogs in areas with endemic (established) disease were more effective against the fungus compared to skin secretions from frogs that had not been exposed to the disease.”
Ergilornis rapidus, a 1.2-1.5m tall bird (4′-5′) from the Early Oligocene of Mongolia (~33-28 mya). Closely related to modern cranes, trumpeters, and limpkins, it was part of an extinct group called eogruids – flightless birds which existed across Eurasia for a large portion of the Cenozoic from roughly 40-3 million years ago.
Although the earliest known eogruids were smaller and less specialized, and may even have still been somewhat capable of flying, later forms like Ergilornis had highly reduced wings, long legs adapted for running, and convergentlyostrich-like feet with only two toes each.
Exidia nigricans or formerly known as Exidia plana
With Ohio’s spring torrential downpours, the temperate forest patches around Cincinnati are becoming a plethora with classic jelly fungus in good form.
This species is fairly difficult to Identify if you are new to Exidia genera, like I am.
Exidia glandulosa is the more common Black Witch’s Butter and for this reason, it is always associated with photos similar to this one on a brief google search. In truth the way we can macro-id this species involves it’s fruiting form when it starts forming or when it dries out entirely. In these cases we see blocklike morphology of the fruiting body or, when finishing this fruiting stage of the life cycle, plate like blocks. Read more.
Given the tightly-lobed, brain-like morphology with brown pre colour turning dark black later still retaining ridges. We can rightfully assume that Exidia nigricans ,P. Roberts (2009), is our candidate. Read more on issue. Other blogs with similar topic.
Sharks have a secret weapon in their snouts that helps them hunt prey. It’s an organ that can sense faint electrical signals given off by other, delicious creatures. Now, engineers in Indiana have made a new material for electronics that mimics the shark’s sensor. It even works in salt water, which is usually a harsh environment for electronics. (Drop your smartphone in the ocean, for instance, and that’s the end of the phone.)
The new device may be useful in ways from studying marine life to building new tools for submarines. It’s made from a substance called samarium nickelate, or SNO. And it can detect some of the weakest electric fields found in the sea.
Thrips are tiny
insects, typically just a millimetre in length. Some are barely half
that size. If that’s how big the adults are, imagine how small a thrips’
egg must be. Now, consider that there are insects that lay their eggs inside the egg of a thrips.
That’s one of them in the image above – the wasp, Megaphragma mymaripenne. It’s pictured next to a Paramecium and an amoeba at the same scale.
Even though both these creatures are made up of a single cell, the wasp
– complete with eyes, brain, wings, muscles, guts and genitals – is
actually smaller. At just 200 micrometres (a fifth of a
millimetre), this wasp is the third smallest insect alive* and a miracle
of miniaturisation.
The wasp has several adaptations for life
at such a small scale. But the most impressive one of all has just been
discovered by Alexey Polilov from Lomonosov Moscow State University,
who has spent many years studying the world’s tiniest insects.
Polilov found that M.mymaripenne has one of the smallest
nervous systems of any insect, consisting of just 7,400 neurons. For
comparison, the common housefly has 340,000 and the honeybee has
850,000. And yet, with a hundred times fewer neurons, the wasp can fly,
search for food, and find the right places to lay its eggs.
On top of that Polilov found that over 95 per cent of the wasps’s
neurons don’t have a nucleus. The nucleus is the command centre of a
cell, the structure that sits in the middle and hoards a precious cache
of DNA. Without it, the neurons shouldn’t be able to replenish their
vital supply of proteins. They shouldn’t work. Until now, intact neurons
without a nucleus have never been described in the wild.
And yet, M.mymaripenne has thousands of them. As it changes
from a larva into an adult, it destroys the majority or its neural
nuclei until just a few hundred are left. The rest burst apart, saving
space inside the adult’s crowded head. But the wasp doesn’t seem to
suffer for this loss. As an adult, it lives for around five days, which
is actually longer than many other bigger wasps. As Zen Faulkes writes,
“It’s possible that the adult life span is short enough that the
nucleus can make all the proteins the neuron needs to function for five
days during the pupal stage.”
The official tumblr of the Speculative Evolution forum! Speculative biology is simultaneously a science and form of art in which one speculates on the possibilities of life and evolution.
