Thursday, February 28, 2008

Darwin Declares a Winner...


So it turns out that, based on new fossil evidence discovered by a team of Canadian scientists, the horseshoe crab has existed, in more or less it's modern form, for at least 445 million years.

Now, evolution doesn't pick sides, but that's pretty decent. Let's go over some highlights.

The horseshoe crab got its start during the time of the trilobite. They appear very similar, and some have suggested that they are closely related. But regardless, trilobites died out, and the horseshoe crab endured.

Sea predators began to get bigger and nastier, but the horseshoe crab lived on. Dinosaurs came to dominance on land. The mighty tyrannosaurus perished. The mighty brachiosaurus perished. The mighty stegosaurus perished, but the horseshoe crab endured.

It survived through ice ages and global warmings, clinging to its highly successful evolutionary niche.

So, let's give a big hand to the horseshoe crab!

Now for a shirt plug. This design is hot off the presses. The horseshoe crab has won the evolutionary lottery for over 400 million years, but most people will never know, because The Evolution Will Not Be Televised. And that's our shirt for the day:

www.cafepress.com/trilobite


By the way, read all about the new fossil horseshoe crab find at ScienceDaily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207135801.htm







Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Something Every Fossil Fan Needs!

I assume that the majority of my readers are at least moderately interested in the Trilobite and/or fossils. You are, after all, at "Trilobite Blog," which is located at "trilobiteclothing.blogspot.com." Anyways, for those of your interested in Trilobites, there is something that you need to look at, if you haven't already.

Yes, I'm talking about Sam Gon III's website, Guide to the Order of trilobites, which I'm going to go ahead and call the definitive internet guide to the trilobite. Check it out at http://www.trilobites.info/.

I opted to download the ebook version of the website, as I like that format better. Apparently it is also offered in printed form, for those who don't want to print it out themselves.

And now, for a sponsor's message! I do run Trilobite Clothing, and this is one of the many designs available! March through evolution with the trilobite!

www.cafepress.com/trilobite

Monday, February 25, 2008

What's in Your Bookshelf?


So I was going about my business today when I realized how absuredly overstocked my tiny bedside bookshelf is. This isn't my only shelving but I put the important stuff here. Now, I'm fairly list-oriented as a person, so I figured I may as well share a list of what is in my bookshelf. It heavily leans towards non-fiction, and history. Here we go, in no particular order, author(s) in brackets:
************************************
Krushchev's Cold War (Fursenko & Naftali)
Age of Turbulence (Alan Greenspan)
Fall of Berlin 1945 (Antony Beevor)
A Military History of Canada (Desmond Morton)
State of Denial (Bob Woodward)
In the Hot Zone (Kevin Sites)
Postwar (Tony Judt)
The Places in Between (Rory Stewart)
Fifteen Days (Christie Blatchford)
The Second World War Series (all six volumes, Winston Churchill)
A Man Called Intrepid (William Stevenson)
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
A Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawking)
Chaos (James Gleik)
Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Daniel Dennet)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
Lord of the Rings Trilogy (JRR Tolkien)
The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien)
Apollo 13 (Lovell & Kluger)
The Chrysalids (John Wyndam)
The London Hanged (Peter Linebaugh)
Up From Dragons (Skoyles & Sagan)
Paris 1919 (Margaret Macmillan)
Kennedy and Diefenbaker (Knowlton Nash)
Shake Hands with the Devil (Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire)
The Ultimate Dinosaur (Compilation)
Long Shadows (Erna Paris)
The Ancestor's Tale (Richard Dawkins)
900 Days (Harrison Salisbury)
**************************
So there you have it. If you happen to want to gain great insight into the readings that form the basis of my outlook on life, you'd have a decent start here!

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Trilobite Blog: The Final Style

I've finally finished a template that I feel is "good enough" for the blog! It's a modified harbour design. Notice the tiny trilobite icon by every post!

The Verdict is In...

"ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2008) — Geologists at the University of Leicester have solved a puzzle found in rocks half a billion years old."

The puzzle they have solved is how soft-tissue organisms were preserved so beautifully in the burgess shale formation, on of the richest Cambrian fossil beds in the word (for the sake of full disclosure, it should be noted that I live a scant few hours drive away from the formation and am heavily biased toward it).

Turns out that, as had been suspected, it was a mudslide. We all owe a big thanks to Sarah Gabbot and Jan Zalasiewicz of the U of Leicester, as well as Desmond Collins of the Royal Canadian Museum for, and I quote, "[analysing] the shales millimetre by millimetre" to confirm that the formation was not built up of layers of sediment, but by a large amount of material pouring into the area at once.

Read the whole story at Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080219095801.htm

And perhaps it is fitting, then, having solved the issue of how the great diversity of the Cambrian period was preserved, that I should unveil the latest design available in my store, Trilobite Clothing:

It's called "Support Trilobite Diversity," and for the most part it speaks for itself. This design is filed under Fossil Humor, at this link:

http://www.cafepress.com/trilobite/3678496

And here's a teaser pic: