The Biology, Agriculture, and Paleontology thread

They probably have fossils including bones of the foot in species that are related to the one you saw. If they can tell from the skull that a given fossil is a transitional between two species that have a more complete fossil record they can reconstruct the way the transitional fossil should look, and if the discovered fossils show the expected traits in the parts that we have it's probably fair to assume that even the missing bits would've followed the same trend.

Is it? I guess there is moral responsibility to ensure good health in our pets and livestock but it's not like we don't already treat animals as possessions.

Regardless if good health for animals mean subjecting them to dangerous and unethical experiments isn't it a misguided means to that goal?

@Joe: Nope. Even a few centuries of the most unethical animal experiments you can imagine still pales in comparison to the ways animals suffer in the wild naturally. And even if that wasn't so, that being in a laboratory magically makes things worse even considering wild animals vastly outnumber lab animals, in the very long term its drop in the bucket regardless.

In any case, animal experimentation is rarely as bad as people imagine, and for the most part most of the "unethical" suffering is either not scientific in goals (e.g., cosmetics testing) or else is easily preventable with no loss in furthering science.

Okay well frankly I have to say I disagree with your general philosophy considering the evil that man has inflicted on man throughout the 20th in name of benefitting humanity with science.

But we all ready hunt and kill animals animals for sport any way, so why should I cause a fuss?'o

What suffering of animals were you hoping animal experiments could prevent?

GM Potatoes With Health Benefits Approved By USDA: "The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has just given the go ahead for farmers to start commercially growing several different genetically modified potatoes, the New York Times reports. The potatoes, which come in Russet Burbank, Ranger Russet and Atlantic Varieties, have been engineered to produce less of an ingredient that can turn into a cancer-causing agent when fried. The potatoes also resist bruising, a common occurrence in harvesting and transport which can reduce their value or even render them unsellable."

Do homing pigeons navigate with gyroscope in brain?: "No one knows how homing pigeons do it, but now a team of Swiss and South African scientists have discovered that the bird's navigation is affected by disturbances in gravity, suggesting that they navigate using a gravity map and that they may carry an internal gyroscope to guide them home."

Rice yield increase of 30 percent enabled by use of a photosynthesis 'switch,' researchers learn: "Scientists at the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture have found that they can harness photosynthesis – the process that plants use to convert light energy to chemical energy – to increase rice yields by up to 30 percent.

A research group led by Andy Pereira of the Crop, Soil, and Environmental Sciences Department faculty examined a protein that acts as a "switch" to activate genes that can enhance the photosynthesis activity of rice plants. The researchers discovered that the protein, known as higher yield rice (HYR), could enable the plants to survive stress, thrive and increase productivity."

Ancient New Zealand 'Dawn Whale' identified: "University of Otago palaeontologists are rewriting the history of New Zealand's ancient whales by describing a previously unknown genus of fossil baleen whales and two species within it.

Otago Department of Geology Ph D student Robert Boessenecker and his supervisor Professor Ewan Fordyce have named the new genus Tohoraata, which translates as 'Dawn Whale' in Māori.

The two whales, which lived between 27-25 million years ago, were preserved in a rock formation near Duntroon in North Otago. At that time the continent of Zealandia was largely or completely under water and the whales were deposited on a continental shelf that was perhaps between 50 to 100 metres deep."

Hypothetically speaking, if plastics remained abundant in the biosphere for millions more years, even moreso than today, could animals and plants eventually evolve to utilize within their bodies somehow?

IIRC there actually are some microorganisms that can digest plastic.

There are also efforts to bioengineers organism to devour waste plastic present in dumps.

edited 19th Nov '14 8:08:21 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I saw a hermit crab in a yogurt tub once, don't know if that helps.

One man's trash is a hermit crab's treasure.

That rice article also mentions projects to make crops more resistant to drought conditions. That'll be helpful in so many places.

edited 19th Nov '14 10:25:08 PM by Parable

So you're the one responsible for those Telstra/Samsung Galaxy ads!

Out of India: Finding the origins of horses, rhinos: "Working at the edge of a coal mine in India, a team of researchers has filled in a major gap in science’s understanding of the evolution of a group of animals that includes horses and rhinos. That group likely originated on the subcontinent when it was still an island headed swiftly for collision with Asia, the researchers report."

How the hummingbird achieves its aerobatic feats: "The sight of a tiny hummingbird hovering in front of a flower and then darting to another with lightning speed amazes and delights. But it also leaves watchers with a persistent question: How do they do it?

Now, the most detailed, three-dimensional aerodynamic simulation of hummingbird flight conducted to date has definitively demonstrated that the hummingbird achieves its nimble aerobatic abilities through a unique set of aerodynamic forces that are more closely aligned to those found in flying insects than to other birds."

Hummingbirds confirmed to fly like bugs, surprising nobody.

I wonder what early Hummingbirds were like before they mastered the art of bugfly.exe

Were they giant, cumbersome kiwis?

Enabling biocircuits: New device could make large biological circuits practical: "Researchers have made great progress in recent years in the design and creation of biological circuits — systems that, like electronic circuits, can take a number of different inputs and deliver a particular kind of output. But while individual components of such biological circuits can have precise and predictable responses, those outcomes become less predictable as more such elements are combined. Scientists have now come up with a way of greatly reducing that unpredictability, introducing a device that could ultimately allow such circuits to behave nearly as predictably as their electronic counterparts."

Turtles and dinosaurs: Scientists solve reptile mysteries with landmark study on the evolution of turtles: "A team of scientists has reconstructed a detailed 'tree of life' for turtles. Next generation sequencing technologies have generated unprecedented amounts of genetic information for a thrilling new look at turtles' evolutionary history. Scientists place turtles in the newly named group 'Archelosauria' with their closest relatives: birds, crocodiles, and dinosaurs."

Many animals steal defenses from bacteria: Microbe toxin genes have jumped to ticks, mites and other animals: "Bacteria compete for resources in the environment by injecting deadly toxins into their rivals. Researcher have now discovered that many animals steal toxins from bacteria to fight unwanted microbes growing on them. Genes for these toxins have jumped from bacterial to animals. These genes are now permanently incorporated into the genomes of these animals. Deer ticks, which can carry Lyme disease, are one of the many diverse organisms in which toxin gene transfers from bacteria to animal has occurred."

Synthetic biology, genetic engineering and you: Two-component signaling pathways as elements in synthetic circuit design: "Two of the most exciting areas of science and technology, synthetic biology and genetic engineering, have just taken a step towards a brave new future in which large-scale synthetic biological circuits composed of bioengineered logic gates, orthogonal to (that is, independent of) the host in which they operate, will enable a range of applications that include biosensors, gene expression control, cell motility, programmable gene circuits for cell physiology control, and other sophisticated gene circuits. This capability is based on the use of two-component regulatory system – basic stimulus-response coupling mechanisms that allow organisms to sense and respond to changes in many different environmental conditions. These systems consist of a membrane-bound histidine kinase that senses a specific environmental stimulus and a corresponding response regulator that mediates the cellular response, primarily through differential expression of target genes. ((A histidine kinase, or HK, is a multifunctional, typically transmembrane, protein involved in signal transduction across the cellular membrane; a response regulator, or RR, protein is the second component in two-component signal transduction systems.)"

Female termites found to clone themselves via asexual reproduction: "A pair of researches with Kyoto University has found how the queen of one species of termite, Reticulitermes speratus, ensures her genetic lineage continues by creating duplicate copies of herself. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Toshihisa Yashiro and Kenji Matsuura describe the study they carried out that showed how queens in such colonies reproduce themselves."

Why Vultures Don't Get Food Poisoning: "Vultures don't have a good reputation. Which is a bit sad really since they're an important part of the ecosystem: they ensure all that left over meat doesn't go to waste. But our revulsion at the consumption of day-old meat blinds us to the important question – how are they able to eat this stuff without dying from the flourishing bacteria?

Described in Nature Communications, a team led by Aarhus University's Professor Lars Hestbjerg Hansen explains that the answer seems to lie in exceptional gut bacteria. Before we continue, however, we suggest you don't read the following over dinner, unless your own stomach rivals a vulture's for toughness."

Dogs hear our words and how we say them: "When people hear another person talking to them, they respond not only to what is being said — those consonants and vowels strung together into words and sentences — but also to other features of that speech — the emotional tone and the speaker's gender, for instance. Now, a report provides some of the first evidence of how dogs also differentiate and process those various components of human speech."

Unlike people, monkeys aren't fooled by expensive brands: "In at least one respect, Capuchin monkeys are smarter than humans — they don't assume a higher price tag means better quality, according to a new study."

Brain folding study defines two distinct groups of mammals: "Programs that control the production of neurons during brain development determine how the brain folds, researchers report. The researchers analyzed the gyrencephaly index, indicating the degree of cortical folding, of 100 mammalian brains and identified a threshold value that separates mammalian species into two distinct groups: Those above the threshold have highly folded brains, whereas those below it have only slightly folded or unfolded brains. The research team also found that differences in cortical folding did not evolve linearly across species."

Scientists find 240-million-year-old parasite that infected mammals' ancestor: "The discovery of a 240-million-year-old pinworm egg confirms that herbivorous cynodonts — the ancestors of mammals — were infected with the parasitic nematodes."

Etchings on a 500,000-year-old shell appear to have been made by human ancestor: "phen Munro got the shock of his life. The archaeology graduate student was studying mollusk shells gathered more than 100 years ago on the Indonesian island of Java, where an early human ancestor, Homo erectus, had roamed at least 1 million years ago. As he studied photographs of the shells, Munro spotted one apparently engraved with a pattern of zigzag lines. 'I almost fell off my chair,' he says. That’s because the oldest known engravings date back 100,000 years and were made by modern humans—the only species thought to be capable of making abstract designs."

Myth busted: Pufferfish don’t hold their breath while inflated: "To fend off predators, the black-saddled pufferfish (Canthigaster valentini) famously inflates its body with water, much like a person puffing up his cheeks and holding his breath. But unlike the blue-faced human—and in contrast with scientists' expectations—the pufferfish does not actually stop breathing, researchers report online today in Biology Letters. Scientists placed the fish into clear plastic chambers where they could monitor their respiration. They then poked the puffers with a piece of tubing that sucked in water, simulating a predator attack. As expected, the fish responded by ballooning up and by rapidly gulping down water into a distensible stomach. And, contrary to previous belief, respirometers showed that the fish kept on breathing throughout the process."

What was Earth's first predator and when did it live?

Electric eels zap other fish via 'remote control': "Electric eels produce the most powerful shocks of any fish. They can zap prey with up to 600 volts of electricity, enough to hurt even a human. But the serpentlike fish have an even more amazing trick up their sleeve, new research reveals. The eels can shock their prey from meters away, making them twitch to reveal their hiding spot and providing the eel with an easy snack."