Some things never change

I just saw this National Geographic article from back in March, and my first thought was, "A hundred million years, and things haven't changed a bit."

The title? Ancient Flying Reptiles Likely Had Sex As Youths.

Beelzebufo

Illustration by Luci Betti-Nash / Associated Press
I love that name. Really cool name for the worlds largest known toad. Unfortunately it's extinct, because I agree with PZ Meyers, I want one as a pet. Probably just as well. Fang, Attack Rabbit is probably just the right size for a nice snack. The females got up to 10 lbs and 16 inches long. They are related to the currently popular Pac-Man frog, and Kenneth Chang of the New York Times quoted discoverer Dr. David Krause as saying that the female Beelzebufos were “lady Pac-Man frogs, on steroids.”

I read several articles about it, but this quote from a story in the Los Angeles Times caught my eye:

“Krause, along with Susan Evans and Marc Jones of the research department of cell and developmental biology at University College in London, painstakingly removed Beelzebufo's fossilized parts, like an ancient jigsaw puzzle, from deep sediment that dates to the late Cretaceous period, 65 million to 70 million years ago.

That was the time of the dinosaurs, and Earth was a young -- and very different -- place.”

The Earth was young?? The Earth is about 4.54 billion years old plus or minus 1%. Seventy million years ago, it was still ~4,470,000,000 ± 45,000,000. In other words, the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old now, and 70 million years ago, the Earth was about...4.5 billion years old. Sixty-five or 70 million years is a drop in the bucket, geologically speaking. I’ll give them “very different.”

As one of my coworkers said when I pointed this out, "Another confirmation that our science education in the US sucks..."

This blog post was continually interrupted by a total eclipse of the moon! I had to run outside every five minutes. Unfortunately, I don't own a camera that could take a picture of it.

Chinese giant salamander

National Geographic photo.

I may not have much of an imagination, but I can imagine this crawling out of a swamp 160 million years ago. It is considered a living fossil, gets up to 5 feet long, and of course it is critically endangered. It happens to be a delicacy. Why am I not surprised?

Click the box below to see one in motion.

Chinese giant salamander moving along stream

© BBC Natural History Unit

National Geographic has a 2003 story about finding the fossils of its ancestors.

I've been fascinated with "living fossils" ever since I was a kid (many many moons ago) and read about the 1938 discovery of the Coelacanth. I still act like a kid if I see one. I have squealed with delight and run over to gaze with reverent awe at pickled coelacanth specimens in Natural History Museums in both San Francisco and London.

More fascinating amphibian photos on the National Geographic website can be found here.

I just don't understand

I just don't understand why people feel the need to believe in some sort of higher power when we've got such an amazing natural explanation for life on Earth.

Most people on Earth used to believe that the Sun, moon and stars revolved around the Earth. Now, most people don't seem to have a problem believing that the Earth is a tiny speck orbiting a relatively average sized star which is hurtling along on the inside edge of one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. There is strong evidence for these theories.

Up until very recently, most people believed that the continents were static and had always been where they are now. It was suggested in the late 1500's that they might have once been joined, but it was generally considered "just a coincidence" that they looked as though they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Since the mid 1900's, most people understand that the continents were once one, and have split and moved apart or crashed into each other over billions of years, and are in fact still moving. There is strong evidence for the theory of plate tectonics.

I understand that evolution is threatening to a lot of people's religious beliefs, but the evidence for it is overwhelming. This is a completely natural, elegant, and powerful process (yes, the Richard Dawkins influence is showing). This evidence includes the obvious fossil record, as well as genetics, comparative anatomy, and species geographic distribution among many other things. I don't understand why people will accept other scientific evidence, but not these.

I really can't understand why scientists, biologists in particular, can understand all this and still feel a need to believe in the supernatural. Maybe someone can tell me. I feel that the natural process is so much more incredibly awe-inspiring.