For some reason just being a turtle is an idea that came along and just really works [09 Oct 2008|01:27am] How the Turtle Got Its Shell Bone fragments from a 210-million year-old, land-dwelling reptile from New Mexico suggest that the earliest turtles didn't have much of a shell at all. Over millions of years, rows of protective armour plates gradually fused together and to the reptile's vertebrae, eventually creating a complete shell. "Turtles ultimately originated from something that looked like an armadillo," says lead author Walter Joyce, a palaeontologist at the Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, Connecticut. ... Exactly why turtles evolved their shell remains a mystery, Joyce says. A full shell might offer added protection and stability. And the proof could be in the pudding – their body plan is the world's oldest, changing little over 200 million years. "For some reason just being a turtle is an idea that came along and just really works," he says. "And the proof could be in the pudding – their body plan is the world's oldest, changing little over 200 million years." This sounds suspiciously like the Chelonic Principle to me. 3 comments|post comment

Existential threats, No. 24,897,229,330,200,763,341 [09 Oct 2008|08:38pm] [ mood | worried ] Giant mutant murder catfish has developed a taste for human flesh! The locals have told me of a theory that this monster has grown extra large on a diet of partially burnt corpses. It has perhaps got this taste for flesh by feasting on remains of funeral pyres. See, this is why I've always worried about those Zoroastrians. When we're all hiding from a race of titanic vultures, ravenous for human flesh, don't say I didn't warn you. 3 comments|post comment

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