Scorched earth

So - two full buying days and I'm running out of money. I always manage to spend more than I bring, leaving Tucson with a list of complicated arrangements to sort out at home. It's better than missing out on a good buy. After sorting out the fish, trilobites and shark teeth my main concern now is a bed that doesn't deflate fifteen minutes after lying down on it. I'm sleeping on the floor of a friend's selling room, watched over by the huge skull of a Tarbosaurus and a hadrosaur tail balanced carefully on a metal stand. I'm not scared of the teeth, but I'm terrified of knocking the table.

It's hot and dry here, and I keep forgetting to drink water. They're very big on dust in Arizona. Dust and gravel. Out of the city, though, the desert is beautiful. The Sonora has those iconic saguaro cactus lining the hills and I want to try to get a trip at some point next week - doesn't really matter where. In the past I've been to Mexico, Tombstone, Bisbee and a few places nearer Tucson. The Grand Canyon is reasonably close, and to my shame I've never managed to make it there. Maybe this will be the year.

Dead cow

I recently got a new batch of files back from the photographer and can put some more lines up on the website. You know. At some point... Actually, I have managed a couple of new ammonite entries. Took me a little while to remember how to format the images. I have great plans for when I get back, though. Longer term procrastination.

Among the additions will be little pieces of a mesosiderite from Chile. Mesosiderites are a type of stony-iron meteorite with an even balance of the familiar iron-nickel material and a silicate mixture. There aren't very many known falls, and these pieces are from one of the larger ones in the endearingly named Vaca Muerta area of the Atacama desert. Dead Cow. Not a holiday hotspot. That's one above. Not very exciting looking, I know, but it came from outer space! Plus as meteorite material goes, it's very cheap. I have a couple more meteorite lines to put up, too - Seymchan pallasite from Russia and relatively run-of-the-mill NWA chondrite stuff. Not NWA like Dr Dre. They're from North West Africa.

Anyone collecting in the Atacama deserves to find something. It's the driest place in the world, with almost no rain at all. Not a nice place to spend a lot of time. Nobody goes hunting for meteorites in the Bahamas, or in Milan. It has to be somewhere inhospitable. If it's not sand, it's ice. If it's not ice, it's mosquitoes. Meteorites aren't picky about where they fall, but it's easier to find a meteorite in the desert than in a forest, under a branch of Debenhams, or at the bottom of the deep blue sea. In the desert, anything that's not sand is worth checking out. Finding meteorites must make it well worthwhile being dusty and thirsty all the time. Thankfully.

To the sun

After a cold and icy winter, I'm looking forward to getting to Arizona this year. It'll be about 22C in Tucson over the next few days, which would be manageable. Haven't really been planning this trip much this year, so I'll have to work out what I need over the next week, pile my scraps of scribbled paper and have a guess at just how empty I can leave the bank account. The scary part. Then I need to gather all the stuff I want to take, get the suitcase from the loft and leave it in a huge pile for everyone to trip over for a week. I think that's the best way to prepare for a journey. I'll be flying to New York for a couple of days first, and while Edinburgh's snow has finally gone, there's plenty of it there. Hopefully there won't be any trouble with flight cancellations and so on - Riley has been delayed in returning from Ohio by the weather and should get back today.

This will be my 12th Tucson trip I think, and I've been pretty lucky with travel so far. A few delays, missed connections and so on, but nothing more than a few hours here and there. The thought of spending a couple of days in an airport is not appealing. £19.67 for a packet of crisps and some water, then sitting hunched over a book for hours on end. I hate all the waiting around involved - departure lounges, waiting for the line of passengers to finally be allowed to shuffle out of the plane, the queue for the passport control gates, and the agonising fifteen minutes at the baggage carousel. I do like some aspects of travel, though. I don't like watching movies I really want to see on a plane - the tiny screen and uncomfortable seat don't really do a film justice - but I quite like having a range of films to choose from that I haven't picked myself. You can feel better about watching a terrible film. And even though the food may not be much cop, I love it when the meal comes. Maybe it's just because something is happening. Even having to tuck your elbows into your flanks to butter your cracker and worrying your coffee is about to spill into your salad doesn't spoil it. Cramped dining. Thrills.

Prophet margin

It's 2011. Happy New Year and so on. This week, a bunch of dead blackbirds fell out of the Arkansas sky and a tide of dead crabs washed up on Kent beaches. Portentous events? Spine-chilling omens? Apparently some sect or other expects the world to end in May this year. It's reckoned the crabs were killed by the cold. Sounds feasible to me - it's been freezing. It was also horribly cold last year, and last year - guess what - thousands of crabs washed up on beaches. The blackbirds? As well as in Arkansas, a bunch of birds met the ground with a fluffy thump in Sweden a couple of days later. Oh no! But have a quick look on the net and there are dead-birds-falling stories from 11th March 2010, 28th January 2009, and 23rd July 2008. On the first page of results. And the world keeps turning.

Far more people are fully expecting the apocalypse to come along in 2012. Only a year away! Quick - blow all your savings on cakes, fine wines and electronic goods! Well, actually, nearly two years as it's supposedly December 12th 2012. 12/12/12. Why? Because of The Mayan Prophesy. Except, it's not really a prophesy at all. All that happens is a calendar runs out then - a new one starts. The Maya are still around and are keen to point that out. They aren't smashing their piggy banks.

There have been loads of doomsday predictions throughout history. So far, obviously, none of them has been correct. This must have left scores of sects, cults and prophetophiles trying to bury their disappointment in a nice steak pie and convince themselves they're not secretly a little relieved. There was even a fair amount of nervous tension in what considers itself the civilized world as the year 2000 approached. Quite what was expected, I don't know. The Four Horsemen?  Because it was a nice round number. Something significant ought to happen, because it's a round number. Why are people so keen for the world to end? Some bits of it are really good. I've never been to Tanzania, Japan or Peru and I want to. I think probably what makes people so excitable about the idea of Armageddon is that they have become convinced that they are among a chosen few that are going to do pretty well out of it. Everyone else will die, sure, but they are going to go somewhere really nice. The Rapture, or whatever version of it suits the theory.

Big business, prophesies of doom. All so negative, though. I will attempt to redress the balance a tiny bit. Prophesies of Alrightness. I hereby predict that the world will not end in May. It will not end in 2012. Everything is going to be relatively okay. Remember - you heard it here first.

Baubles

It's been a cold and uncomfortable December, but today's the last day in my usual marathon Christmas run and I'm looking forward to three days off. This year I never quite got round to the whole decorations thing. Dramatic window display aside. One year Ryan brought in a set of fairy lights that have to be two miles long, with seventeen million bulbs. It took us a long time to snake it around the shop and when it was switched on it filled the place with a weird light. And a strange low hum. Festive. They're somewhere in the basement, along with a pile of tinsel and suchlike.

I ought to be better at things like that - seasonal window displays, themed cabinets and so on. I will use the feeble excuse that I'm far too busy with lots of very important things. Anyway. I'll be open on the 28th again and hoping that there's no more snow. I have the VAT return to look forward to. One of the very important things.

Happy Christmas.

Take us to our leader

The theory of evolution provides a clear, demonstrable mechanism for development and diversification of life, for the origination of new species and an explanation of the multitudes of shapes and sizes of living things. New ideas and insights are formed and the theory is built on incrementally with new information, but the underlying principle has remained solid. It is a fact that evolution happens - how and why it happens we can, and will, still learn much more about.

What remains the big question for science - and where those of a religious nature may still look for the hand of a god - is the very origin of life on Earth in the first instance. At what stage can something be called 'living'? It's not an easy question, really. We're comfortable with thinking of single-celled forms as living - though it's not much of a life - but at what point does chemistry become biology? Genetic replication? It's a field of science that sees a great deal of research, naturally, and there are a number of lines of thinking - hypotheses with evidential support which should eventually produce a single dominant theory. This, in turn, will gradually gain acceptance outwith the scientific world and act as a platform for further research. It takes a while for an idea to be suggested, tested, embraced, reach the textbooks and become... general knowledge.

At the moment, areas of work that may provide a solution include oceanic hydrothermal vents (black smokers), ribonucleaic acid (RNA) storing information and developing to DNA, and iron and sulphur layers in areas of volcanism. Another possibility suggested is that material from elsewhere provided the initial source material for life on Earth. Of course, that doesn't solve the problem of the origins of life, merely shifts it elsewhere, but it could deliver an answer to what happened on our planet. Meteorites found in Sudan in 2008 contain amino acids, and other examples with these proto-proteins have been found in the past. It does seem very possible we may all be aliens.

Hermes vs The Elements

It's been a very cold, very snowy December. You may have noticed. Aside from keeping people from walking around town to do their Christmas shopping by throwing them all over the icy pavements and freezing their eyeballs into glassy frostballs, the weather has meant it's been difficult for people to deliver parcels.

More and more people are relying heavily on online shopping, and that's understandable. It's easy and convenient. It's warm and you can sit down. I'm very glad I got my site up this year after too long spent thinking about it. The website's first December has helped balance a little of the drop in walk-in trade, and I'm very grateful for that. I'm careful to get things in first class post the next day, but then it's in the hands of the professionals. And this month, that's not been looking like much of a safe bet. Royal Mail hasn't been too bad, have to say. A little slower perhaps, but even without the weather that can happen in the Christmas run-up anyway.

I have felt badly let down by my courier, though. I have a contract with them by way of pre-paid consignment notes - far cheaper than just arranging a delivery as and when. I had a decent sale from a customer in London, who had called the shop on a Saturday. It was packed and ready for collection on the Monday morning, due for pickup later that day. Nothing happened. I phoned the next day and they were apologetic, but expected collection within a few hours. Again, nothing. On the Wednesday, on phoning, I was told no collections were possible across all of Scotland until the following Monday. The customer was okay with this - as long as they made it by Christmas. On Wednesday the following week I finally gave in and phoned around other firms. I gave up on two as I couldn't get through on the phone. Eventually I found an alternative, promised the customer they would have it tomorrow and waited. And waited. The guy showed up 20 minutes after I was supposed to close, but I was very grateful to see him. Cost me an arm and a leg, but I felt the customer's patience had been tried enough.

It's great when a parcel you've been waiting for arrives, but it's also a nice feeling to walk out of a shop with your purchase.

[EDIT] Turns out the parcel, which should have been delivered on Wednesday, is still in a London depot on Saturday morning. Looking like Monday now - two weeks after it was supposed to be collected for next day delivery. Two weeks, two companies and outright failure. Still waiting for the second firm to call me and explain.

Meanwhile, on Hobbit Island...

Flores, in Indonesia, was home to a group of little folk called Homo floresiensis until around 12,000 years ago. They may have been a separate hominin species, or may have been a tribe of cretinous humans - small bodies, pinheads. I wrote a bit about them last year. They were found in 2004, when the  Lord of the Rings films were fresh in the mind, so were unsurprisingly nicknamed Hobbits.

Anyway - some bones have been found in a cave on the island that seem to have belonged to a giant form of marabou stork, Leptoptilus robustus. Scaling up, it was probably about 180cm tall, which would have been nearly twice the height of the hobbits. Marabous are scary looking enough at their current size, so I expect they were given a wide berth. Not quite a terror bird, but I'd bet it made the hobbits uneasy. The article touches on the possibility of the storks eating babies, but that's purely speculative. Turns the usual stork/baby thing on its head.

The island must have been a strange place - dwarf elephants and humans, giant rats, storks and lizards. Islands are often a source of unusual forms of well-known animals. Cut off from the rest of their population, new species gradually develop, and often change in size. Dwarf forms and giant forms. Without the same predators, food sources and so on, the pressures are different and form eventually reflects that. Hence Darwin's finches and tortoises on the Galapagos, for example. Lilliput and Blefuscu as well, of course.

Paired up

I got in a load of one our best sellers in time for Christmas. The ammonites from Majunga (or Mahajanga) in Madagascar are beautiful. The one to the left has been cut in half and the flat surfaces polished, but you can also get them polished on the outside, which shows the intricate suture pattern (below) off to best effect. From some layers the ammonites can be left as they are, when an opalescent layer within the shell shows a rainbow of colour. We sell a lot of these. While - generally speaking - the geologists tend to go for the rough, unpolished stuff, the polished ammonites are just appealing as objects, as decorative... things. Pretty things have a broad appeal.

The chambers of the ammonites shell have mostly been filled in with honey and amber coloured calcite crystals, the green/grey sediment the shells were deposited in, and sometimes the reddish polishing powder used in preparation. The combination of colours in the spiral pattern varies, and people go for different effects - some prefer an even colour throughout, some go for a mixture.

Most commonly, the site produces Cleoniceras cleon, Phylloceras inflatum and Douvilleiceras mammillatum, but there are also nautilus - Cymatoceras sakalavus - found there, like the one on the front page of the shop site. I've seen some huge examples, over a metre across, but mostly those have been cobbled together from pieces of a number of specimens. Usually, the biggest I have in stock are around 22cm across, and those are impressive enough.

Hammer of the gods

Hi. Do you have any of those hammers that find meteorites?

Find meteorites? Do you mean geological hammers? We have those - just over there in the corner.

No, I mean ones that detect meteorites in the ground, so you can find them and dig them up.

Do you mean a metal detector? Not all meteorites are made of iron, but lots are and many others have high iron content. So that's how a lot are found. I don't have metal detectors, though. Sorry.

No, I mean a hammer that attracts meteorites and finds them for you. Then you dig them up.

Attracts them? Like a magnet? A magnetic hammer? You'd have to be very close to the meteorite for that to be much use. 

I just want to find a meteorite.

Cardboard, bubblewrap and rocks

Yesterday morning I had four big boxes of fossils and minerals delivered from a friend down in England. They sat in the corner staring at me while I had some customers. Then mid-morning I picked out some jewellery lines for the website from a supplier who was driving around Scotland in a van. Not quite as much, but small, shiny things that need weighed and priced with fiddly labels. Finally, just after lunch another friend arrived with a carload of stuff for me to look through. I bought a lot - mostly replenishing standard lines.

At the end of yesterday afternoon I had three big bills and three big heaps of new stock to plough through. As much as I love getting new things in, I do sometimes procrastinate when it comes to pricing it. Well - when it comes to everything. I started today with the best of intentions, but have strayed from the task somewhat. Next week will be better. And I must tidy up the basement a bit, too.

Factual selection

I read an article this morning calling for a reappraisal of the work of Patrick Matthew, a Scottish farmer who is credited with the initial idea of evolution through natural selection, some 27 years earlier than Darwin's famous work was published. Matthew addressed the subject in an appendix to his 1831 book 'Naval Timber and Arboriculture'. Not surprisingly perhaps, his revelation flew under the radar somewhat while Darwin and Wallace went on to greater fame.

The essay, by a geologist at New York University, points out that Matthew placed greater importance on the effect of extinction events and the spates of rapid evolution that followed them, suggesting Darwin was inclined to stress a more linear evolutionary process. This seems a little like a tip to the old punctuated equilibrium versus gradualism argument. Well - okay - a lot like that. I find the insistence on divisions like these an oversimplification and helpful only in the very limited sense of understanding the processes that take place. As we know, evolution is far too complicated to state that one method is the one true way and that the others are wrong. Undoubtedly the blank canvas of a post-extinction event world offers the opportunities for speedy adaptation to new roles and habitats, but the continuous reaction to constant environmental change is always there in the background.

Essentially, Darwin produced a fully developed theory and while Matthew got there first (as Darwin later acknowledged, though he had been unaware of the work while he was working on his own theory) it was not the thorough examination the idea merited. That aside, Matthew was not the only one to have put forward the notion before Darwin. What it comes down to, ultimately, is that Darwin was the one to fully explore and expand on the concept of natural selection, and that's why his place in the history of science is entirely justified.

We're doomed

A few years ago I read Bill Bryson's book 'A Short History of Nearly Everything', which I thoroughly recommend. It's a broad oversight of the planet's history, which obviously covers a lot of geological ground. Bryson comes to the subject as an enthusiastic layman and his explanations are entertaining and easy to follow. However - a large proportion of the book is about the numerous very bad things which are likely to happen to us at any given time. He points out that we face painful and terrifying deaths in the microscopic form of a supervirus, in the ginormous, rocky shape of an incoming asteroid, in the hot, nasty lava of a supervolcano and so on. Great stuff, though it might have you looking over your shoulder a little.

Anyway. I mention the book because a group of scientists at Imperial College London and Purdue University in Indiana have, since 2004, been producing a Impact Events Calculator, designed to force meteorophobes into their custom-built underground bunkers for the rest of their lives. Cans of tuna, beans and sweetcorn in dimly lit concrete vaults and a wobbly iron-spring military bed. For ever. I'm not speaking from experience. I'm resigned to my fate; if the meteorite comes, I'm ready to embrace it. I'm getting away from the point a little. What it does is work out what would happen when a meteorite of specific size hits Earth. You type in the dimensions, where you want it to land and at what angle, etc. Then click the button and check the results. I've just wiped out a large part of the Eastern Seaboard of North America. It was an accident.

They have recently updated it to tweak the user interface, but also to include additional effects such as wave height from ocean impact, and a couple of others. The next upgrade will allow you to pick your impact site. Virtual revenge at the click of a button. It's fun to play around with, but then you realise that... You know. It might happen. Look out!

The reaper

The IUCN - the International Union for the Conservation of Nature - recently published a report at the UN biodiversity summit in Japan warning of the scale of the problem facing the planet's animals. One fifth of the world's vertebrates are now facing some level of extinction threat, with a new species making the red list every week. It's not very positive news.

A friend is currently in Mongolia and had a trip through the Gobi desert for a few days. Whilst there he saw bactrian camels, and more than he was expecting to. He met a number of the local nomadic people, and each told him numbers had been increasing significantly for two decades and the spreading desert meant this was likely to continue. Bactrians have the IUCN status of Critically Endangered and they state that the population is declining. There are Non-Governmental Organisations being well paid to ensure their protection. This could be viewed in a number of ways. Firstly that the NGOs work has been successful and the recent growth in numbers pointed to by anecdotal evidence is the result. Secondly that population levels in different areas of their habitat are moving in different directions with an overall downward trend. Thirdly - and cynically - that there is a possibility some organisations are exaggerating the plight of the camel and still taking funding. This most likely happens on some scale, but I'd expect the IUCN's monitoring process is robust enough to have a decent grasp on the bigger picture.

Sadly, there's no doubt the number of species close to extinction is higher now that it's been since we started keeping track and it's definitely exacerbated by human activity. Global warming aside, the main problem has been habitat loss through logging and land cultivation for farming, but pollution, hunting and over-fishing  have also had heavy tolls. Palaeontologists know very well that there have been far more dramatic drops in biodiversity in the past - the fossil record shows this clearly. The difference is that this time we have a level of responsibility. We can do something about it. There are some positives here. Conservation efforts such as hunting restrictions and captive breeding have prevented the loss of a few species, and an increased global awareness should help slow down the growth of the red list at the very least. There's a story today on the work of The Frozen Ark, in Nottingham, where DNA samples of thousands of endangered animals are stored. In case. The point of being able to resurrect 'lost' species is not too far away, and while there is an ethical debate surrounding the field of cloning and the like, it would be completely irresponsible not to act now to preserve what we have; to give the animals we have affected so badly just a touch more hope.

Simply put

'What's this?'

'It's a marble that has the shells of early relatives of the ammonites all through it. These are the shells here... Most fossils are found in limestones, and marble is a limestone that's been metamorphosed under high temperatures and pressures. Usually the rock's deformed by this process and any structures it contained, like fossils or bedding planes are lost. In this case, though, it's probably only been heated and the fossil shapes are still intact. They're called orthocone nautiloids. The orthocone part means straight-shelled and the black and white stripy parts - here, here and here - through the stone are the chambered shells filled with white calcite crystals. When the animals were alive these chambers would have been filled with a mixture of liquid and gas and the nautiloids could regulate their buoyancy by adjusting the mix. They had tentacles that protruded from the front of their shell and their body, which would have been fairly soft and flexible, was protected by the extended first chamber. Its later relatives, ammonites, mostly had spiral shells instead of straight and looked very similar to today's nautilus. They now think octopuses are the most closely linked, though.'

'But - what are they? Are they fish?'

'A squid in a cone.'

'Oh, riiiight. Cool.'

Carried away

 It's a quiet week, so the arrival of the new Mr Wood's Fossils bags is the highlight so far. Finally got round to getting some done with the new logo and colour scheme and I think it's a big improvement. Here are some before and after shots, so you can judge for yourselves.

The reverse has a simplified logo above the address, phone number and website. You probably aren't quite as excited about the new bags as I am; I realise that. That's okay. The whole re-branding exercise was an interesting process - getting the logo restyled, the new website, business cards and so on. I think all that's left really is the front of the shop. It's looking pretty tired, so it will need to be done fairly soon. People like the stencilled fossils on the front and it would be nice to keep them, so perhaps I'll go for the orange-copper colour with darker fossils over the top.

I tried some t-shirts once, but there was a mistake with the order and none came that were my size. I wasn't really sure why I had ordered them and without one for me to wear it all felt a bit pointless. I gave most away to staff and friends within the fossil trade, and they indulge me by wearing them in Tucson and Sainte Marie each year. Maybe I'll try again and make sure I get a couple my size this time.

I'm a bit scattergun with my marketing approach. I'm never sure which adverts are effective, and due to the unusual nature of the business, I'm called all the time by people wanting me to advertise with them. I'm trying a couple of new ways to push the website in the lead up to Christmas this year and hopefully one of them at least will prove useful. Not many people think immediately of fossils as gift ideas, but they are usually well received and I get a lot of repeat customers at Christmas. It'd be good if I can extend the range to the whole of the UK through the website. And maybe - this year - the bags will catch the eyes of a few more shoppers.

A change is gonna come

New Scientist has an interesting article on the complex workings of evolution. In summary - it's more complicated than people think. This shouldn't be big news, but the link with Monday's story on chaos theory was nice.


The author, Keith Bennett of Queens University in Belfast, likens the traditional symbol of the evolutionary process - the tree of life - to a fractal. The cumulative effect of iterative changes creating branching structures repeated at different scales throughout the whole. The relationship between microevolution and macroevolution is a controversial one, with a history of great scientific debate. Microevolution is the change of genetic traits within a species or population - perhaps a colour change in a group of birds' plumage for example - and macroevolution is the actual change from one species to another. For the most part I see one as a natural extension of the other, occurring over longer periods of time and having a more dramatic effect. Macroevolution can only come about through continual small changes.



Bennett is a palaeoecologist and suggests there are slightly different groups of driving factors behind the two scales of evolution, which may be the case to a point. If they are part and parcel of the same overall process, however, I'm not sure of the benefits of separating the two so distinctly, which he seems keen to do. The research behind the article points to a steady stream of speciation, reducing the influence of environmental change. He thinks macroevolution may be primarily driven by internally generated genetic alterations, rather than external influences such as climactic or habitat changes. To me, this slightly misses the point that the success or otherwise of any genetic changes are very often a result of how that modification affects an individual organism within its environment. If it brings it any advantage in terms of camouflage, feeding, breeding, survival in general, then that trait will be more likely be passed on to subsequent generations and gradually becoming widespread. If the environment is changing, then the efficacy of any mutation will be reflected in that to some extent. Environment may not be the main driving force, but it certainly plays a big role.



The main point of the article, I think, is that evolution is not predictable and any pattern we may see within developments are only discernible with the benefit of hindsight. It's a wonderful thing.

Order from chaos

While I was studying geology we had a series of classes on the subject of chaos theory. Our professor was very enthusiastic about fractals and their practical application within geology and other fields. At the time, research was being done using fractals to look for potential economic mineral localities, attempting to predict the seemingly random. To us, it was mostly about the pretty patterns, but his energy and love for the topic was infectious. Can't say I spent a great deal of time afterwards looking further into the theory, but at the time I found it fascinating.

Benoit Mandelbrot, probably the man most associated with chaos theory, died in Massachusetts the other day, aged 85. In the late '70s and early '80s  he published breakthrough work which looked at breaking down apparently chaotic natural forms into sets of scaled repeating patterns which built to larger, self-similar forms. The maths of fractals is a little scary, but the patterns are nice... An early form used triangles with three Koch Curves to produce what's called the Koch Snowflake, there's the brilliantly-named Menger Sponge and almost certainly the best-known, the Mandelbrot Set. I recommend spending a few minutes looking through the gallery links from the Wikipedia entry for fractals. Beauty in mathematics. Fractals have since been used to develop techniques of measuring things previously considered unmeasurable - coastlines, mountain ranges, clouds and so on. The parent science of chaos theory will have a huge range of influence - there is a great deal of fruit still to be picked from these strange trees.

Re SVP

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology was established in 1940 as a means of gathering resources and aiding communication to advance the science. It's based in Illinois but has nearly 2500 members spread across the world. Their annual meeting is going on right now in Pittsburgh, and is always the source of a good number of interesting articles.

One of the presentations was by Michael Habib of Chatham University in Pittsburgh, and concerned the impressively huge species of azhdarchid pterosaurs that have been found in recent years. Quetzalcoatlus, the best known of these giants, had a wingspan of between 10-11m, and Habib reckons they could probably fly 10,000 miles at a go. It's quite a claim, and his calculations necessarily involve a little speculation - on body mass, wing size and shape, etc. - but as Habib himself points out, 'what's important is that the numbers are all big'. My kind of science. These things didn't fly like a madly flapping pigeon, but would have soared like a stork, spiralling over thermals to gain height and winds to provide lift. Quite why they'd want to be travelling such distances is another matter. Sometimes I can't even be bothered to go to the shops. Recent studies looking at their probable feeding methods seemed to rule out continuous flight as a way of life, favouring a land-based heron-style approach; wading in shallow water and stalking in short vegetation. Big as they were, I doubt they could sneak in a quick 10,000 miles between snacks.

Interestingly, not very long ago it was being suggested these things may not have flown at all. A paper last year looked at flap rates and weights of modern birds and thought these giraffe-sized pterosaurs just wouldn't be able to get off the ground. Reaction to this suggestion was fairly dismissive, it has to be said. On a very basic level - why else would they have massive great wings?

Theoretically speaking

For the first time in a while, my one-time-regular Creationist visitor dropped in this morning. I enjoy our conversations, though they can go on a little. He is friendly, articulate and - unusually for someone with his views - he is prepared to listen to arguments running counter to his thinking. Amongst other things, the Theory of Evolution came up once more.

He sees Darwin as a pigeon fancier reading too much into the Galapagos finches, and while accepting of micro-evolution (it's nigh on impossible not to be now without looking a little silly) he maintains there is no evidence at all of macro-evolution. This head in the sand approach is surprisingly common. Refuse to accept it and it can't exist. This is one of the things that winds me up a bit. Flat denial of the glaringly obvious. When people say there is no transitional fossil evidence it's akin to pantomime flat-earthism. It's behind you. Oh no it's not. It's BEHIND you. This YouTube cartoon by NonStampCollector neatly summarises a few of the standard Creationist lines of attack on the Theory of Evolution with clear, concise rebuttals. It also shows an all too common defensive technique - that of evasion and denial. Evasion of direct answers and denial that answers have been provided.

As touched on in the cartoon, there are many demonstrations of macro-evolutionary lines in the fossil record. There are plenty of examples if you want to look, want to see them. Evolution newsgroup TalkOrigins have collected a list of examples with my favourite being the development of birds from dinosaurs. There are still many gaps in the fossil record, of course. There are gaps in our understanding across the whole scientific spectrum and always will be. Reducing a hole in our knowledge to where a theory for all intents and purposes becomes fact will still leave unknowns. Intelligent Design is essentially exploiting those gaps in an attempt to provide a role for a creator. While I get the desire on the part of the theist to do that, I see no problem in simply saying 'We just don't know how that works yet.'

Another familiar analogy brought up by my visitor was a version of the tornado-built jumbo jet thing. Equating the 'sudden appearance' of a complex object such as a human eye with the construction of a 747 by a tornado from the contents of a scrapyard. I think he used a car-from-barbecue model in his comparison. It is a complete misrepresentation of evolution to present it as a random process. It's not random. It's more a case of trial and error leading to progressive change - a mutation will only 'work', be passed on to future generations if it proves to be effective or beneficial. That the outcome can appear to show signs of an intelligent guiding hand is the result of an iterative process working over a great deal of time. Continual refinement; adaptation to surrounding environment and events. The sense of direction is entirely false, an imposition - Homo sapiens as a 'destination' where there is no need for one. The dead ends of the tree of life are not afforded the luxury of contemplating their origins. Humans are an enormously successful species with the highest level of self-awareness our planet has seen. It's in our nature to be introspective, to be ego-centric. We are here, so we wonder why.