A week of weird and wonderful tales. Mudsucker whales, the giant Amazonian pirarucu (fish for it in the galleries), the adaptive radiation of orcas, toads with an inflated sense of self, and another reminder that
After reading that last one, if you need to be reassured that animals aren't all idiotic, here is a roundup of 2009's brainiest.
If a mammal can stand on its own two feet, why shouldn't a fish stand on its four ? Tomorrow's issue of Nature carries a report about four-footed fossil trackways from Poland dating back about 397 million years. Yes, that's 20 million years older than our beloved Arctic half-burbot Tiktaalik -- so much for neatly wrapped bundles and happily ever after. Whatever it was, it was bigger than Ichthyostega, it had five fingers. And walking along a tidal flat on a balmy day in the early Devonian, it left behind one heck of an ancient carbon footprint.
This just might turn out to be a perfect year for walkingfish.
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It has two ears, a heart, a forehead, and a beak for eating honey. But it is provided with fins for swimming.
About the blog
A collection of articles, for all those folks who can't get enough of dinos, dolphins and Diptera every week. Send around articles you'd like to share, your comments or ideas to:
punching DOT llama AT gmail.com