biocanvas:

Volvox aureus, a type of freshwater green algae, with daughter colonies.

Image by Gerd Günther.

ulaulaman:

The forest from the past.
In the image there is the reconstruction of a 300-million-year old forest discovered by a team of archeologists in Mongolia, China.
The research was published on PNAS with a open access article, Permian vegetational Pompeii from Inner Mongolia and its implications for landscape paleoecology and paleobiogeography of Cathaysia by Jun Wang, Hermann W. Pfefferkornb, Yi Zhang, Zhuo Feng

Plant communities of the geologic past can be reconstructed with high fidelity only if they were preserved in place in an instant in time. Here we report such a flora from an early Permian (ca. 298 Ma) ash-fall tuff in Inner Mongolia, a time interval and area where such information is filling a large gap of knowledge. About 1,000 m² of forest growing on peat could be reconstructed based on the actual location of individual plants. Tree ferns formed a lower canopy and either Cordaites, a coniferophyte, or Sigillaria, a lycopsid, were present as taller trees. Noeggerathiales, an enigmatic and extinct spore-bearing plant group of small trees, is represented by three species that have been found as nearly complete specimens and are presented in reconstructions in their plant community. Landscape heterogenity is apparent, including one site where Noeggerathiales are dominant. This peat-forming flora is also taxonomically distinct from those growing on clastic soils in the same area and during the same time interval. This Permian flora demonstrates both similarities and differences to floras of the same age in Europe and North America and confirms the distinct character of the Cathaysian floral realm. Therefore, this flora will serve as a baseline for the study of other fossil floras in East Asia and the early Permian globally that will be needed for a better understanding of paleoclimate evolution through time.

In official press releasePfefferkornb says:

It’s marvelously preserved. We can stand there and find a branch with the leaves attached, and then we find the next branch and the next branch and the next branch. And then we find the stump from the same tree. That’s really exciting.

And about the likenesses with Pompei:

It’s like Pompeii: Pompeii gives us deep insight into Roman culture, but it doesn’t say anything about Roman history in and of itself. But on the other hand, it elucidates the time before and the time after. This finding is similar. It’s a time capsule and therefore it allows us now to interpret what happened before or after much better.

You can see the images of the findings on gizmodo.

(via scientificillustration)

thescienceofrealities:

First Photos of 298 Million Year Old Forest Unveiled.

“ Scientists have just released the first photos of the incredible 298 million year old buried forest that was recently found below a coal mine in Yuda, China. The extensive array of tree and plant fossils that were photographed were found still arranged in a forest landscape - a first for fossil discovery. The entire forest was covered by fallen ash, which erupted from an ancient volcano, preserving it for eternity.

Had it not been for the volcanic eruption, the Permian Era forest and trees would’ve been transformed into coal over the millions of years that have passed since it thrived on the super continent of Pangea.

The vegetation and animal species that grew over the layer of volcanic ash have compressed to form the coal mine that lies above the discovered site.

The fossil forest is located in Inner Mongolia, in the northern region of the Helanshan Mountains.

The area preserved by the volcanic ash is suspected to be a staggering 6.2 miles in length - almost the full length of the coal mine, which is 7.72 square miles in area.

Thus far, the scientists have explored only 10,763 square feet of the ashen fossil forest, uncovering a multitude of leaf, tree, and plant fossils, some of which still bearing a greenish hue.

An array of ferns have been found in addition to extinct trees with leaves still attached to the stem, and branches leading down to their trunks.

The volcanic fossils give an accurate indication of where each plant grew in relation to the others in the forest.

Scientists were lead by University of Pennsylvania’s Hermann Pfefferkorn.

The team will continue to explore and document this “Permian vegetational Pompeii.”

They will continue to catalog this nearly 300 million year time capsule as they go on. “

Source.

(via historiantinanatural)

matthewvonhumboldt:

Crinoids

http://asoldasthehills.org/Echinoderms.html

(via scientificillustration)

rhamphotheca:

GETTING A LEG UP ON WHALE AND DOLPHIN EVOLUTION

NEW ANALYSIS SHEDS LIGHT ON ORIGIN OF CETACEANS

via AMNH (2009)

When the ancestors of living cetaceans—whales, dolphins and porpoises—first dipped their toes into water, a series of evolutionary changes were sparked that ultimately nestled these swimming mammals into the larger hoofed animal group. But what happened first, a change from a plant-based diet to a carnivorous diet, or the loss of their ability to walk?

A new paper published this week in PLoS One resolves this debate using a massive data set of the morphology, behavior, and genetics of living and fossil relatives. Cetacean ancestors probably moved into water before changing their diet (and their teeth) to include carnivory; Indohyus, a 48-million year-old semi-aquatic herbivore, and hippos fall closest to cetaceans when the evolutionary relationships of the larger group are reconstructed.

“If you only had living taxa to figure out relationships within this group of animals, you would miss a large amount of diversity and part of the picture of what is going on,” says Michelle Spaulding, lead author of the study and a graduate student affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History. “Indohyus is interesting because this fossil combines an herbivore’s dentition with adaptations such as ear bones that are adapted for hearing under water and are traditionally associated with whales only.”

The origin of whales, dolphins, and porpoises—with their highly modified legs and lack of hair—has long been a quandary for mammalogists. About 60 years ago, researchers first suggested that cetaceans were related to plant-eating ungulates, specifically to even-toed, artiodactyl mammals like sheep, antelope and pigs. In other words, carnivorous killer whales and fish-eating dolphins were argued to fit close to the herbivorous hoofed animal group. More recent genetic research found that among artiodactyls, hippos are the cetaceans’ closest living relatives…

(read more: American Mus. of Nat. Hist.)   (image: Carl Buell)

(via scientificillustration)

Meet some new friends!

rhamphotheca:

Spider Eye Arrangement By Family

1. Family Lycosidae – the Wolf Spiders
2. Family Salticidae – the Jumping Spiders
3. Family Salticidae, genus Lyssomanes – the Magnolia Green Jumpers
4. Family Araneidae – the Orbweavers
5. Family Pisauridae, genus Dolomedes – the Fishing Spiders
6. Family Pisauridae, genus Pisaurina – the Nursery Web Spiders
7. Family Ctenidae – the Wandering Spiders
8. Family Oxyopidae – the Lynx Spiders
9. Family Philodromidae – the Running Crab Spiders
10. Family Dysderidae – the Woodlouse Hunters
11. Family Tetragnathidae, genus Tetragnatha – the Longjawed Orbweavers
12. Family Thomisidae, genus Xysticus – the Ground Crab Spiders
13. Family Agelenidae, genus Tegenaria – the Funnel Weavers
14. Family Agelenidae, genus Agelenopsis – the Grass Spiders (aka Funnel Weavers)
15. Family Selenopidae, genus Selenops – the Flatties (aka Crab Spiders)
16. Family Sparassidae, genus Heteropoda – the Huntsman (aka Giant Crab Spiders)
17. Family Sparassidae, genus Olios – Giant Crab Spiders (aka Huntsman)
18. Family Sicariidae, genus Loxosceles – the Brown Spiders (includes the Brown Recluse)
19. Family Uloboridae, genus Hyptiotes – the Triangle Weavers
20. Family Zoropsidae, species Zoropsis spinimana – the False Wolf Spider
21. Family Deinopidae, species Deinopis spinosa – the Net-casting Spider (aka Ogre-faced Spider); note that the four other eyes are not visible from the front.
22. Family Diguetidae, genus Diguetia – the Desertshrub Spiders
23. Family Antrodiaetidae, genus Antrodiaetus – the Folding-door Spiders (aka Turret Spiders); these are primitive spiders (mygalomorphs).
24. Family Segestriidae – the Tube Web Spiders
25. Family Scytotidae – the Spitting Spiders

(via: Spiders.us)

(via scientificillustration)

rhamphotheca:

Life cycle of scyphozoans (“jellyfish”).

1-8 – planula attachment and metamorphosis to scyphistoma stage; 9-10 – scyphistoma strobilation; 11 – ephyra release; 12-14 – transformation of the ephyra into an adult medusa.

(via: NOAA photo library)

(via scientificillustration)

scipsy:

Tyloses shown in a tangential longitudinal view of a secondary xylem vessel (via Botanical Society of America)

Owen’s archetypal vertebra. Apparently adapted from one in “Von den Ur-Theilen des Knochen- und Schalen- gerustes” by Carus (1828). From “Richard Owen and the concept of homology,” by Alec Panchen.

deliciousdimension:

Pattern appears to be a universal design principal, a binding force, which inspires all of life and nature.

dailyfossil:

Deinotherium - Hoe tusker

When: Mid-Miocene to Early Pleistocene (~10 million to 3 million years ago)

Where: Asia, Africa, and Europe

What: Deinotherium is a proboscidiean. The only two living species in Proboscidiea are the African and Indian elephants, but there are dozens of fossil species in this order. Unlike some other groups that not only have a much greater number of fossil species than living but a much wider variety of morphologies to go along with that, most fossil elephants well… look like elephants!  That being large, graviportal, and trunked.

However, even though there is less extreme differences in morphology within proboscidieans, there are still a lot of variations on the basic elephant body plan.  One great source of variation is in the tusks. The tusks of Deinotherium are enlarged incisors of its lower jaw whereas in modern elephants the tusks are enlarged upper incisors.  The clade containing Deinotheirum spilt off from the rest of the order roughly 40 million years ago, and the last common ancestor had slightly enlarged upper and lower incisors - thus it appears that some elephant clades further enlarged one set over the other. Oh, one last note about Deinotheirum… it was over 3 times the size of the modern african elephant. It was the 3rd largest land mammal ever to lumber accross the Earth! 

(via scientificillustration)

mochamouse:

Ernst Haeckel

scipsy:

Neurospora crassa (via)

scipsy:

Diatom (via AWI)

scientificillustration:

n109_w1150 by BioDivLibrary on Flickr.

From: Svenska lafvarnas färghistoria

Stockholm :Tryckt hos C. Delén,1805-[1809]
biodiversitylibrary.org/item/48625