Frontiers of Paleozoology

The world throbs anew with the announcement of the recent discovery in New Zealand, of a new penguin genus, Crossvallia, in size second only to the celebrated Pinguinus ingens,  of which  more here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/02/when-penguins-ruled-earth.html

Recent sightings of giant penguins

This just in:

www.india.com/news/world/scientists-discover-fossils-of-man-sized-penguin-in-new-zealand-2751386

Figure shown 1/50 of actual size

For full  scientific background on these discoveries, google

   =>  Pinguinus ingens

Dinosaur hoax unmasked !

In these days of increased awareness of the perils posed by Fake News ^TM (proprietary mark registered by World of Dr Justice, Inc., all rights reserved, y compris en URSS), we must each of us be unceasingly vigilant.  And just the other day, an outright hoax was perpetrated on an unsuspecting public, by an otherwise respected news source:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/feathered-dinosaur-tail-amber-theropod-myanmar-burma-cretaceous/

The “dinosaur”, these gentlemen would have us believe, was covered in feathers from tail-tip to top!   Feathers, if you please!

Now, back in my day, we schoolchildren knew better than that:

     =>  Dinosaurs are reptiles, covered in scales.
     =>  Birds fly, and are covered in feathers.

So what, then, was this prehistoric fossile, which indisputably does exist?

Why, none other than a late specimen of Pinguinus ingens,  which you can read all about here.

~  The World of Dr Justice ~

~~  Science U Can Trust  ™ ~~

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/03/ask-dr-science.html

Note:  
In fairness (and this blog is about nothing if not fairness -- well, okay, about hamsters too), we must acknowledge some skepticism in the scientific community about the very existence of penguins:

   http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-existence-of-penguins.html

There.  Due diligence done.

Tullimonstrum gregarium

The past couple of years have seen a remarkable series of fossil discoveries, from Yutyrannus huali, through Pinguinus ingens, down to Protungulatum donnae.

This next creature does not represent a new fossil find -- that dates back almost half a century -- but rather a brand-new (and quite surprising) taxonomic determination.    Let the New York Times tell it:

Some thought the 300-million-year-old creature was a mollusk, like a snail. Others assumed it was an arthropod like an insect or crab. And others believed it was some sort of worm.

Now, a team of researchers from Yale University say they have figured out the monster’s identity:  It’s a vertebrate most closely related to the lamprey.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/science/solving-the-tully-monsterscold-case.html

Scale model of the “Tully monster”

(actual length:  fifty feet)

Etymology of the Latin designator:

Tullimonstrum:  meaning, ‘monster found by Mr Tully’ (in Illinois)

gregarium: meaning, ungainly though it may have been, this creature liked to hang out with his homeys.

For a scientific summing-up of recent paleontological triumphs, click here.

Timurlengia’s failed proof of the Urysohn Metrization Theorem

The scientific world is abuzz with this late-breaking discovery, of a small but “brainy” ancestor of the giant, feared  Tyrannosaurus rex:

Fossil Hints T. Rex Got Smart Before It Got Big

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/science/tyrannosaur-fossil-indicates-dinosaur-got-smart-first-then-grew-big.html?_r=0

Discovery of brainy T rex ancestor sheds light on dinosaur's dominance
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/14/iscovery-brainy-t-rex-ancestor-dinosaurs-timurlengia-euotica-uzbekistan

Seasoned readers of popular science news -- which often contains much speculation and puffery -- will be rightly skeptical, as to how in heaven’s name  paleontologists could deduce that some crumpled heap of fossil bones corresponded to a creature with superior intelligence -- after all, none of the soft cerebral material has survived, let alone its noetic capabilities.   Even the sheer size of the brain cavity -- a highly imperfect indicator -- can hardly be in play here, since the creature, Timurlengia euotica,  was far smaller than its T. rex descendents, with a cranium to scale.

The answer -- not surprising once you think of it -- lies not in the conformation of the bones themselves, which tell us virtually nothing about intellectual capacity, but rather in what was found with those bones -- just as Cro-magnon or Neanderthal skeletons buried with particular styles of flint tools, provide a window into their industry.

In the case of Timurlengia,  the bones are rather ill-preserved, except for the right forepaw, which, holding a fragment of carbon, is stretched towards a stone tablet, on which is sketched the outline of a proof of the Urysohn Metrization Theorem.  Tragically, the creature never lived to the Q.E.D.

(Additionally, some tefillin found near the body  indicate the creature may have been Jewish.)

Scientists point out that this achievement, which will doubtless impress the peanut gallery, is not quite as impressive as it looks:  since, in the case of Timurlengia, the form of the proposed theorem ran:  “Every space that is regular and first-countable  is metrizable.”   We ourselves, better instructed, sadly shake our heads.  In that guise, the theorem does not go through:  second-countability is required.

Nice try, though, Tim.

At all events, this intellectual career, however impressive or otherwise, was destined to be short-lived.  The hormones kicked in, the youngster shot up, and quickly evolved into that massive Jurassic bully we all know and loathe, the aptly named Tyrannosaur.  From then on, intellectual endeavors fell by the wayside, as T. rex was able to make a living much more simply  by stealing lunch-money from the other dinosaurs.

~  The World of Dr Justice ~

~~  Science U Can Trust  ™ ~~

For additional, extraordinarily reliable paleontological reporting, try this:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/02/when-penguins-ruled-earth.html

Paleontology Porn

One of the formative events of my early years, was my first visit to the American Museum of Natural History, shepherded by my grandmother, in 1955, at a time when my academic preparation had not yet included kindergarten.  It was all a wonder, to someone who had never previously been outside his native hamlet in Tennesee;  whose family owned no television (we were, in retrospect, what might have been called poor), and few books.  And the most striking feature, for a lad of that age, was (as you might expect) the great Hall of Dinosaurs.

What they might have done in the ensuring half-century, to tart the thing up, I do not know, and shudder to think.  But at the time, it stuck to The Facts.   Not Gradgrind facts, however, but huge facts, megaliths, a mystery in themselves.  The fossil bones were genuine;  their assemblage into the giant skeletons, while the work of man, was an informed work and quite certain, given the constraints of geometry and the extraordinarily complete preservation of the specimens they presented, the few missing bones being scrupulously filled in with artificial material of distinct coloration.  The fossil eggs, arranged in a clutch, were WYSIWYG, with no illustrative speculation as to the shape and structure of what once had lain inside.  The great hall, with its imposing high ceiling  (that in itself was beyond anything I had seen or fantasized before), was disceetly lit, and quite silent -- much like a church.   There were no voiceovers, animations, videos, push-button interactive displays, employees in dinosaur suits, or any other claptrap.  And it was very, very impressive.

True, there was a gift shop on a lower floor, where you could purchase small models of individuals dinosaurs in their hypothetical fleshly shape.  But even these were serious, as playthings went:  heavy and expensive (made of bronze, I believe), in realistic and now “Jurassic Park” dramatic postures, and studiously monochrome, the color of verdigris.  They were nothing like the zippy-dippy multi-colored cheap plastic throwaways available today, which are given in scads to quieten fretful children who then take them for granted, until they lie broken and neglected at the bottom of the overstuffed toybox;  no.   At the time, I could only afford one of them (a brontosaurus), and cherished it, as being much the most precious of my exiguous collection of toys (no more than three or four of them at the time;  my grandmother, in whose care I then dwelled, being of the old school);  yearned to someday also own a tyrannosaur, or a dimetrodon, or a triceratops (a wish not to be gratified for several years thence);  and it was a real blow when, one summer's day in the year of our lord 1955,  a neighbor boy  there in Garden City  walked off with it, and I never could get it back.

But one thing I never did lose was the sense of wonder at that vanished age, not disguised as anything more accessible or contemporary  by colorful conjectural “re-creations”;  a reverence for the scientific labor that had gone into discovering the fossils and digging them up, analyzing and measuring and painstakingly reassembling the detritus of the past;  and the beginnings of an appreciation for the concepts of evidence, and epistemology -- of conjecture and confirmation.

~

A child who today should walk to such a place, after his taste has been jaded, and senses blunted, by repeated exposure to the loudly vocalizing twitching-twinkling  Technicolor full-flesh megamodels of the animatronic age, would no doubt be very little impressed by that spare and spartan room, not very different from the paleontologist’s own workshop:  any more than those born to a McMansion could but sniff at the tiny, falling-apart, government-built white-painted rented houses in which the scientists resided at that time in Oak Ridge.  Yet in those bungalows dwelt minds operating at the frontlines of physics and chemistry:  footsteps in which I have endeavored to follow, though Providence would ultimately ordain a somewhat different course.  (Though in another way I did return to those roots:  my father had “Q” clearance, and I…)

~

Sad is the lot of laudator temporis acti.   And truly a great many scientific breakthroughs have taken place in America since those days, particularly in the fields of mathematics, computer science, and cosmology.  Yet I generally do not envy today’s children, encircled with pandering plastic.

Eheu, fugaces !

When Penguins Ruled the Earth

In what must surely rank as the greatest scientific find of the past century, top scientists today announced the most spectacular fossil find in recorded history: Enormous prehistoric penguins.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17179607

The species is known to men of science and good taste  as Pinguinus ingens, a standard Latin binomial -- ingens in that language meaning ‘ginormous’ and also ‘ingenious’, in reference to the mighty brain of these Jurassic giants, the largest ever recorded for a terrestrial species.   The creatures discussed in the BBC article, standing a little over four feet tall (thus towering over the human predecessors of the time) are actually a subspecies,  Pinguinus ingens minor.  Its sister species, Pinguinus ingens major,  stood eighty meters high at the shoulder

P. ingens minor, with an entourage of mastodons

In its time, it reigned supreme.  P. ingens major  throned  at the very top of the global food-chain, feasting on mastodons and dinosaurs  whenever the spirit took him.  He had no known natural predators -- the only potential danger stemming from the extraordinarily cunning and violent sabre-toothed hamster  (Cutus longidentis) which in those days sported the size and temperament of a rhinoceros.   Yet at a single Jeeves-like look from one of those frosty fellows so formally attired -- as much as to say, “Do you… have an appointment ? ?” --  the sabre-toothed hamster would grin ingratiatingly and slink away backwards  into the bush.

Such are the findings of modern science.

So --  take it from Dr. Justice.

“Science You Can Trust”  ®

~

[Breaking update]  We interviewed some leading scientists for their take on these astonishing events.  Reached in his book-lined Harvard office,  Professor Steven Weinberg remarked:

This is fantastic.  I’m quitting physics.  Paleopenguinology is where the action is.

Physicist heart-throb Brian Greene  was equally enthusiastic:

Forget the Higgs boson.   Let the search for the Higgs penguin  begin !

Higgs penguin in its natural habitat

What -- You think I’m making this up ??  O ye of little faith!  Google “Higgs penguin” and you’ll see!   (Never doubt me again.)

“Science You Can Trust”  ®

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwzOXzZWUik

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

~  Bonus factoids ~

Did U know…

=>  … that 70% of the world’s fresh water  is concentrated in Antarctica, in the form of icebergs?

=>  … that 90% of the world’s cuteness is concentrated in Antarctica, in the form of penguins?

(Yes, yes, hamsters are cute too;  these scientific statistics are based on total biomass, not headcount.  Hamsters don’t weigh very much.)

 For additional  trustworthy science-y truthiness, click here:

“Science You Can Trust”  ®

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

Relief for beleaguered Nook lovers!

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/p/read-murphy-on-your-nook.html

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *    *

[ Update 4 IV 12]  Further feathered progenitors:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/science/dinosaur-dig-in-china-turns-up-largest-known-feathered-animal.html?hpw

"Yutyrannus huali, a giant, previously unrecognized dinosaur. The name of the species means 'Run like hell, here come the penguins!!'"

The New York Times article offers what purports to be a  nice photograph of Yutyrannus fleeing in terror before the onslaught of Pinguinus ingens.  However, as a Man of Science ("Science U Can Trust"), I must reluctantly voice some scepticism.  For, the "photographs" in question  were in color.  Now:  Had color photography even been invented, way back then?
(So you see how solicitous Dr Justice ever protects you from possibly bogus science.)


Update:  Photo of fossil of our feathered friend:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-04/05/content_14985993.htm
Warning:  Not for young children;  he looks a bit shmooshed.

[For further  fuzzy penguin  funstuff,  
simply click here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/penguins  ]


=>  Coming soon !    The "World of Dr Justice" interviews an actual  Higgs penguin !!!


In the meantime, while you're waiting, why not buy my books? 

[Update 7 Feb 2013]

Protungulatum donnae, earliest known ancestor of the saber-toothed hamster:

Bug !   Yum !!

Pinguinus ingens used to scarf these guys for brunch, then tweeze them out of his teeth.

[Update 7/7/2014]  It is with heavy heart that we, curators of the unimpeachable news-source “The World of Dr Justice” © (“Science U Can Trust”  ™ ) must report the latest instance of an ornithological hoax.  We refer, of course, to the so-called “Pelagornis sandersi” (even the name gives it away -- that is not correct Latin -- “sandersi” my eye), currently being credulously reported in the press.  They even back up their fantasy with one of those “artist’s conceptions”, which we reprint here so that you can laugh at it:

It’ll never fly…

For the impossibility of such a contraption, confer the classic On Growth and Form, by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

All that the hoaxsters have done, is to take a genuine fossile of Pinguinus ingens minor, and affix a couple of plainly ungainly ‘wings’.

No-one is fooled by such things, gentlemen.

[Update 5 September 2014]  Yet another purported gigantoscopic dinosaur find has been announced -- that of “Dreadnoughtus” (! -- We kid U not).   Since the name itself clearly announces that the thing is just a prank, we won’t go into it further.

(ScienceCat chimes in:  Rlly, you hadn’t of ought to do that, CNN.   Science is serious stuff -- srsly !)

[Update 12 September 2014]  And now this formidable monster, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus -- just one link beneath Pinguinus ingens on the Jurassic food-chain!

 

Spinosaurus, fleeing for his life from Pinguinus ingens (not shown) 

Philological phootnote:  “Aegyptiacus” is Latin for ‘aggravating’, in the manner of a little brother or big sister.

[15 March 2016]  The very latest:

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/timurlengia-euotica-new-species-tyrannosaur-uzbekistan-03702.html

That dubious report is subjected to a strict scientific analysis  here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2016/03/timurlengias-failed-proof-of-urysohn.html


[21 March 2016]  For those professional skeptics who scoff at our fine science --
be aware that there are far stranger creatures in evolutionary history than Pinguinus ingens!
Here is one whose (admittedly, improbable-seeming) reality  is vouched for by none other than the New York Times:

HEL-Looooo-ooooooo !

Tullimonstrum gregarium.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/science/solving-the-tully-monsterscold-case.html

Never doubt us again !

.

[Update 11 August 2017]

The latest welcome additions to the prehistoric airborne menagerie are a couple of eleutherodonts.   Though mammals, they were probably oviparous, like the contemporary platypus -- and like the little-known but well-attested citizen of the Proterozoic, Pinguinus volans:   the amazing and adorable  Flying Penguin!

Here we see one of the newcomers, to which the later Flying Squirrel is a later convergent evolution:

 

“Maggie”, the Mesozoic Maiopatagium

[Note:  To get the general public to care about fossils, or anything else, it is essential to dub the specimens with some random female name.]

The aviating powers of Pinguinus volans  were primitive at best, as it could attain a cruising ceiling of no more than eleven inches.  En revanche, it was able to maintain that hovering posture for hours on end.

 

[Update, January 2018]  The latest find:

Gerald Mayr, German paleontologist from Senckenberg Research Institute who led the study, told the media, “It is remarkable that even these early forms reached such an enormous size”. Scientists believe that the bird lived during late Paleocene period, about 55-60 million years ago.

http://www.india.com/news/world/scientists-discover-fossils-of-man-sized-penguin-in-new-zealand-2751386/

Experts suspect that these specimens were no more than the depauperate larvae of Pinguinus ingens, and thus not actually a new species.

All You Really Need 2 Know about Paleontology

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsJCbprEmbo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGWaP7Q5vCI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiWu7Csn2HY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXLTLm0bAok&feature=related

Have a pencil ready;  take notes.)

(The sound is curiously muted on that last version -- another reflection of Minimalism ? -- but the females will definitely induce you to father-forth  further baby Neanderthals ....)

Back in Winthrop House, in 1970 (ah! how we hoped for that decade;  and how bitterly  disappointed),  I used to listen to this   over'n'over'n'over ...
The 'B' side of this 45  was:  "You Didn't Like it 'Cos U Didn't Think of It".
(Truer words were never spoke.)

Update:
A version recovered  from the bottom of the sea.
The sound quality is terrible -- but maybe that's a good thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn-aIZCzYj0

Further troglodyte musicology:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLi0ppwOOwI&feature=related
("It's writ-ten onna wee-yund ...")