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)

roomthily:

U.S. Forest Service model showing the possible shifts in tree species in 2100 based on two different climate change scenarios

via Yale e360

scipsy:

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

dailyfossil:

Hallucigenia 

When: Early to Middle Cambrian (~540 to 500 million years ago)

Where: Found in what is now British Columbia and China 

What: Hallucigenia is another odd fossil first known from the Burgess Shale formation of Canada. This largest individuals only reach 1.2 inches (~3cm) long, but there has been a lot of scientific debate centered around this tiny species.  Before we get into the debate over its phyogenetic position, first we need to talk about which way is up! Or anterior for that matter. The first reconstructions of Hallucigenia had it walking on the stiff looking spiny projections, with the more flexible tentacles used to bring food to its mouth, which was reconstructed as being on a large bulbous projection. The modern interpretation is reversed in almost every way; it walks on the tentacle feet, the spines are on the dorsal surface for protection, and its head is on the opposite end. The modern reconstruction does not even have a large bulbous projection, as it is now thought the appearance of this blob in fossils is the inner organs of Hallucigenia being squeezed out though its posterior as it was flattened either at or after death. This strange form  walked along the ocean floor, eating tiny food particles. 

So now we /might/ know how this animal really looked… but what is it related to? Common suggestions have been: velvet worms (Onychophore), an extremely basal Arthoropoda, or as a member of a phylum now extinct.  There is no firm consensus even today. 

The Royal Ontario Museum recently put up a spectacular website on the Burgess Shale that you should check out if you would like to learn more about Hallucigenia and its contemporaries. 

http://burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/en/index.php

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)

plantedcity:

Infographic: ‘Our Dwindling Food Variety’

From National Geographic:

As we’ve come to depend on a handful of commercial varieties of fruits and vegetables, thousands of heirloom varieties have disappeared. It’s hard to know exactly how many have been lost over the past century, but a study conducted in 1983 by the Rural Advancement Foundation International gave a clue to the scope of the problem. It compared USDA listings of seed varieties sold by commercial U.S. seed houses in 1903 with those in the U.S. National Seed Storage Laboratory in 1983. The survey, which included 66 crops, found that about 93 percent of the varieties had gone extinct. More up-to-date studies are needed.

The infographic accompanies the feature article ‘Food Ark’, which looks at efforts to protect and enhance the global food supply. Also included with the article are sections on some amazing ‘Seeds Worth Saving’ and how to ‘Grow Your Own Heirlooms’.

Plant lineage biome shifts within southern hemisphere landmasses.

From Crisp et al., Nature, 2009.

“Rafflesia arnoldii is the world’s largest flower having a diameter of about one meter and weighing up to ten kilograms. It is a rare flower and not easily located. It grows only once a year and blooms for around five days. According to researches in discovery news, this flower that looks and smells like rotting flesh is related to flimsy flowers like violets, poinsettias and passionflowers. Hence it also called as “meat flower” or “corpse flower”.

The flower is pollinated by flies and carrion beetles attracted by its vile smell. It contains about 27 species and found in Indonesian rain forests of southeastern Asia and Philippines. Rafflesia is an official state flower of Indonesia, Surat Thani Province in Thailand and Sabah state in Malaysia.”

(via mesatawe)

geneticist:

electricorchid:

The castor oil plant (Ricinus communis) is the source of ricin, one of the most toxic proteins known. Ricin is actively taken up by cells and inactivates ribosomes, effectively blocking protein synthesis. It is thought that castor oil plants evolved this toxin as a way to protect their oil-rich seeds from being eaten.  | +

Are Wildfires Getting Worse?

The burn area in Arizona is bigger than Chicago and New York City combined.

By Jeremy Singer-VinePosted Thursday, June 9, 2011, at 6:25 PM ET

The Wallow fire in eastern ArizonaAs of Thursday afternoon, the nearly 400,000-acre Wallow fire in eastern Arizona was still 0-percent contained. The burn area, bigger than Chicago and New York City combined, is already the second-largest fire in the state’s history. Arizona’s largest blaze happened in 2002, making the state seem either particularly unlucky or part of a broader trend. Are large American wildfires becoming more common?

Yes, at least in the West, home to most of the nation’s largest wildfires. A 2006 paper in Science found a dramatic increase in large U.S. forest fires (defined as those larger than 988 acres) from 1970 to 2003 in an area roughly comprising the 11 western-most contiguous states. Not only were there almost four times as many fires from 1987 to 2003 than from 1970 to 1986, but the fires in the later period burned nearly seven times more land. The researchers also found that the average time between discovering a fire and containing it increased by almost a month, from 7.5 days to 37.1 days.

The paper’s authors attribute much of the increase in large conflagrations to longer and hotter fire seasons—with snow in the West melting earlier and temperatures rising higher than in the past. As a result, trees, shrubs, and grasses are drier for longer, meaning there’s more opportunity for them to catch fire. The lengthening of the fire season has been drastic: The average time between a year’s first reported wildfire and its last was 78 days longer during the years 1987 to 2003 than 1970 to 1986, an increase of 64 percent. A study of Canadian wildfires from 1920 to 1999 found similar results, with total burn area increasing over the last three decades.

While shifts in temperature help explain the overall rise in mega-blazes, changes in population and land use might be more important in certain regions, including the Southwest. Broadly speaking, more humans mean more potential sources of ignition; indeed, the Forest Service says people (rather than lightning, sparks from rock falls, or other natural causes) started the Wallow fire, possibly via an unattended campfire. The urge to put out any uncontrolled fire may also share the blame. In certain landscapes, naturally occurring fires may burn grass, trees, and other combustibles in conveniently small sections, creating over time what ecologists call a “mosaic“—alternating patches of recently burned and unburned land. When a fire starts in one patch of the mosaic, it quickly runs out of fuel. But for much of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, we tried to suppress even the smallest natural blazes, converting the mosaic into a more homogenous swath of flammable material.

Though fire-management techniques are shifting toward a greater tolerance for small wildfires, aggressive fire suppression is still standard practice in populated regions. Ponderosa Pine forests, which have fueled the Wallow fire, are notoriously prone to the broken-mosaic problem. Historically, these forests experienced frequent, but low-intensity surface fires rather than severe canopy blazes.

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Lisa Elenz of the U.S. Forest Service and Dr. Brian Oswald of the Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture.

electricorchid:

The Cape pangolin (Smutsia temminckii), with its long tongue and strong claws, is designed for tearing open termite mounds and gobbling up the termites inside. It curls up into an armoured ball when threatened, protected by large scales made of keratin. Pangolins are vulnerable to overcollection for the muti trade. | photo by Nigel J. Dennis | +

electricorchid:

The rick rack cactus (Selenicereus anthonyanus) is a rare epiphyte from the rainforests of southern Mexico. Its stunning flowers open at dusk, to be visited by moths and bats. | +

The Gila cliff dwellings are built into naturally-formed caves along a steep canyon. Their depth and southern openings afford them great thermoregulation benefits, capturing the sun’s heat in the winter and providing shade from that same heat in the summer.

scientificillustration:

Sauropod neck lengths

From: ‘The long necks of sauropods did not evolve primarily through sexual selection’ Journal of Zoology, Taylor, M.T., Hone, D.W.E., Wedel, M.J. & Naish, D. in press.