For what purpose did the human brain evolve is a question that has puzzled scientists for decades.In 2010 Colin Blakemore, an Oxford neurobiologist argued that a mutation in the brain of a single human being 200,000 years ago turned intellectually able primates into a super-intelligent species that would conquer the world. Homo sapiens appears to be a genetic accident.
We failed to build a radio during the first 99% of our 7 million year existence
We are the only species of the billions of species that have existed on Earth that has shown an aptitude for radios and even we failed to build one during the first 99% of our 7 million year history, according to Australia National University’s Charles Lineweaver.
Several years ago my daughter and I took a minivacation to Kelleys Island, home of the famous Glacial Grooves. While we were there the island experienced an explosion of mayflies – they were everywhere. A recent report from a famous fossil site in Brazil indicates they’ve been doing that for a long time.
The mayfly fossils were found in the Crato Formation, which formed in large lakes in what is now northeastern Brazil during the Cretaceous Period, the last period of the non-avian dinosaurs. The lakes may have been 30 miles wide and 60 miles long.
The Crato Formation is an example of what is known as a lagerstatte, a site that has a lot of fossils or fossils that are preserved exceptionally well, sometimes (but rarely) both. Another lagerstatte you might have heard of is the Burgess Shale, a 500-million-year-old Middle Cambrian site in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia. Another is the 150-million-year-old Solnhofen Limestone of the Jurassic Period from the Bava
Lampreys are blood-sucking predatory fish. The earliest ancestors of all vertebrates, including ourselves, were thought to resemble their worm-like babies. Now, recently discovered fossils have overturned that theory, raising new questions about what our ancestors were really like.
Giovanni Pari; Derek E.G. Briggs; Robert R. Gaines
Abstract:
Soft-bodied fossils of Cambrian age, now known as Burgess Shale-type
biotas, were first described from the Parker Slate of the northwest Vermont
(USA) slate belt in the late 19
th century, 25 years before the
discovery of the Burgess Shale in British Columbia, Canada. Here, we report
the rediscovery of fossiliferous horizons at Parker s Cobble, the site of
the original quarry, which was thought to have been exhausted by
excavation. New discoveries include a radiodont, multiple specimens of a
new bivalved arthropod, a priapulid, and other undescribed forms. Pervasive
soft-sediment deformation suggests accumulation near the toe of a steep
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