The Grinders 7-10-09 at the Naked Bean Cafe

Members: Dallas (bongos and whistling), Brain (vocals and guitar), Chris (vocals, guitar, banjo, ukulele), Jim (ukulele), Waylon (guitar), Sun (vocals).

Hope you enjoy.

New Skull: Straw-colored Fruit Bat (Eidolon hevlum)

I just received a new skull in the mail the other day, the Straw-colored bat (Eidolon hevlum), which is a large and quite common bat species found throughout Africa. This is my first Chiropteran, the order to which all bats belong to, and is apart of my attempt to get at least one skull from each mammalian order (I still have a long way to go unfortunately, especially considering how there are more orders of mammals now then when I started collecting skulls...)



One of the interesting things I noticed about this skull was that the premaxillae, the bones in the front of the snout that hold the incisors, are not fused to one another. It turns out that this is actually a not a unique feature across Chiroptera and in my research I found many weird premaxilla morphologies in different bat species. In some of the weirder cases the premaxillae are unfused to one another and create a wide space between them, while in others the premaxillae are well fused to each other yet only fuse to the skull posteriorly, like in this Horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hildebrantii) below. However, it's notable that some specimens of straw-colored fruit bat have fused premaxilla, as do closely related species, so this individual may just be underdeveloped.





Most bats are carnivorous and their dentition resembles other insectivores such as moles, hedgehogs, and shrews; however, fruit-bats are herbivores and their teeth look much more like those of primates. But as you can see in the above photo, the back teeth of this fruit bat are not as highly cusped as primates (think of your own teeth) and don't look like they play as important of a role as do the cheek teeth of other fruit-eating animals.

It turns out that fruit bats don't actually eat fruit. What they actually do is chew on fruit, suck out the juice and spit the fibrous pulp back out. Because they don't actually need to mechanically digest the tough parts of fruit their teeth do not need to be so highly adapted. It makes me wonder if this is a nice look at an evolutionary transition though, and if herbivores with carnivorous ancestors usually go through similar stages, where first they begin to take juices and soft parts and then after a sufficient amount of time begin to become more adapted to taking advantage of some of the tougher to digest nutritious plant parts. This can be tested pretty easily by looking at the fossil record of other herbivorous species and see if their dentition goes through similar stages. I'll try to read up further on this.

References:

Happold, D.C.D., 1987. The Mammals of Nigeria. New York: Oxford University Press.

Nowak, Ronald M., 1997. "Straw-colored fruit bat" (On-line). Walker's Mammals of the World Online, Version 5.1.

Ruiz, K. 2002. "Eidolon helvum" (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Eidolon_helvum.html.

Bankrupt methodologies

I recently added the National Center for Science Education as a friend on my facebook, because they do some really great work combating creationism in schools and supporting evolution. However, while fighting creationism, the NCSE tries not to scare away the majority of the American populace that believes in a god by espousing that science and faith are completely compatible. I've discussed why I think this is disingenuous before.

Today on my news feed I saw an article posted by the NCSE by their Faith Project Directer Dr. P.M.J. Hess, a Catholic theologian, that appeared on the Washington Post's website. In the article, Hess is attempting to debunk claims made by a fellow from the Discovery Institute named John West that evolution and faith are incompatible, however, he never actually says why he is wrong. The first thing Hess says is:

"West sets up a simplistic dichotomy--either you believe in God or you believe in evolution. This black or white view ignores the fact that for many scientists, science deepens their religious faith, and for many people of faith, scientific insight complements their belief. West's goal here is not to examine the shared history and complex interconnections between science and faith, but rather, to promote a creationist agenda."

Just because some scientists can hold on to two contradictory views doesn't make it right. This is an illogical argument from authority. And if we accept his last claim that West has a creationist agenda, then what can we say about Hess' agenda? In this article, Hess is trying to say that science doesn't nullify faith, so he seems to be supporting the idea of a god that created the universe. The people at the Discovery Institute do not deny that things evolved like biblical literalists (the people the word creationist usually refers to), they just say it had to have happened with the help of an acting god. Where is the line between creationist and non-creationist now? Can Hess really criticize the DI folks for being unscientific in their assertions when he asserts that a god that created the universe exists without a shred of evidence to support it?

Hess goes on:

"While West's question is valid, his dichotomy is a sham. Consider the humble grapefruit. You can says it's yellow and it's roughly spherical. Asking, "Is this fruit yellow or spherical?" has no meaning. Yellowness and sphericity are not contradictory; likewise, "religion" and "evolution" can be complementary ways of looking at the same universe."

He never goes on to say how religion and evolution are in anyway analogous to the properties of color and shape though. After this there's a few more paragraphs of argument from authority: essentially that since these people and institutions* said that science and faith are compatible without explanation, they are compatible...

*He cites the Vatican Observatory's Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, the International Society for Science and Religion, himself as a professor, and the those of the American public who accept both evolution and a god. He refers to the portion of the public that thinks science and faith are compatible as the 'silent majority', however according to Gallup , that's bull.

Hess concludes with this:

Evolution can certainly be compatible with religious faith. Because the evidence for evolution is so overwhelming, we must consider it to be a truth about the natural world--the world which we as people of faith believe was created by God, and the world made understandable by the reason and natural senses given to us by God. Denying science is a profoundly unsound theological position. Science and faith are but two ways of searching for the same truths.

He gives a good reason to believe in evolution here: that the evidence is just too overwhelming that you cannot deny it; however, he gives no good reason to be faithful. And then, the whopper: "Science and faith are but two ways of searching for the same truths"...

He essentially refuted his entire argument with that one statement. Hess was trying to establish that science and faith do not conflict just like non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA), but if they are two different methods to search for the same truths then obviously one is going to try to take over the role of the other. If he really believes in this statement then why doesn't he support his belief in evolution with his faith instead of evolution's overwhelming evidence? Supposedly they're both valid methods...

Faith is a horrible method for ascertaining truth simply by it's definition. Faith is inherently a baseless presumption and there is no reason to think it should have any relevance to reality or a universal truth of any kind. People do not really believe faith is a valid method for searching for truth, because if I were to tell Hess that I believe that Elvis was still alive and was responsible for 9/11 but that I had no evidence for it, I'm sure he would dismiss me as a crazy kook, and for good reason. There's no rational basis for such an idea and it's advantageous for us as a society to shun baseless ideas as well as those foolish enough to espouse them.

The fact that the NCSE supports this guy and his position is rather sad. They do great work in fighting creationists and advocating separation of church and state in the classroom for the benefit of our students, but their positions on faith are philosophically bankrupt.

Authoritative Toxicology

For the past two years I've been working in a vascular toxicology lab, but I'll say right now that I'm no expert in toxicology and only have a minor interest. My major interests deal with the evolution of life as a whole and that's hopefully where I'll be taking my professional career in the near future. But anyways, I've been fortunate enough to have some background in toxicology and I appreciate the perspective it's given me.



I saw an article the other day on Science Daily News about the potential carcinogenic effects of Cannabis smoke and was rather taken a back by one of the quotes near the end. But before I talk about that, lets take a look at the actual research that was being discussed.

In this study from the UK entitled "Evaluation of the DNA Damaging Potential of Cannabis Cigarette Smoke by the Determination of Acetaldehyde Derived N2-Ethyl-2′-deoxyguanosine Adducts" the researchers exposed calf thymus tissue in vitro to acetaldehyde, which is found in both tobacco and Cannabis cigarettes, to see if it would induce a significant amount of DNA damage. They also exposed the tissue directly to Cannabis and tobacco smoke and saw similar effects to the acetaldehyde study.



It's obvious from the data that Cannabis smoke is significantly damaging the DNA in these in vitro studies, but what's lacking from the paper is a discussion of the biological relevance of these results. I wonder just how many N2-ethyl-dG adducts someone needs before they start having a significant chance of developing cancer, because there are always detectable background levels of these adducts in our lungs, so just how many do we need before this becomes a serious problem? I haven't yet been able to find any quantitative studies that address this question. However, the fact that smoking is linked to cancer is pretty solid and this particular type of DNA damage is directly associated with increase risk of cancer. But it would be really interesting to see a more in depth look so when we see results like those in this paper we can have some perspective on just how big of a deal these adducts are. Maybe there already has been a study that shows what I'm looking for that has evaded my previous searches. I'll keep looking.

The authors of this paper not only did in vitro work, but also took lung samples from eight human cadavers, four smokers and four non-smokers. It turns out that there was no significant difference in the N2-ethyl-dG adduct levels between any of the individuals, even though two of them smoked at least 20 tobacco cigarettes per day and one of them was an occasional Cannabis smoker (Smoking Cannabis is practically analogous to smoking 20 cigarettes and it's rather dirty stuff. I think this may have something to with the fact that Cannabis is still a street drug and doesn't have the advantage of being processed, enhanced, and cleaned up by a large private company. So if it was legalized, maybe it wouldn't be so bad, but I digress.). So, if smoking is supposedly related to the formation of these adducts in significant amounts, which is exactly what the in vitro work demonstrated, how come we don't see a significant increase in N2-ethyl-dG adducts in the smokers? This is what the authors had to say:

"The lung tissues were obtained from cadaveric or nonheart beating donors with no information available regarding the period between last cigarette smoke exposure, death, and subsequent tissue retrieval. Therefore, it is possible that a significant period of hospitalization prior to death without cigarette consumption could have allowed N2-ethyl-dG adduct levels in the smokers to have reverted back to background levels. Chen et al. analyzed leukocyte DNA obtained from smokers showing the presence of elevated levels of the N2-ethyl-dG adduct, which were decreased significantly following cessation of smoking for 4 weeks (8). Details concerning the DNA repair and mutagenic potential of the N2-ethylidene-dG adduct are not known; however, it has been shown that N2-ethyl-dG blocks translesion DNA synthesis and induces deletion mutations plus has the potential to generate G to C transversions (16, 35)."

It's understandable that N2-ethyl-dG adduct levels may return to background in a living human, since we're constantly overturning cells and any cells with a significant about of DNA damage probably wouldn't survive for too long; however I'm not sure if this can be applied to cadavers assuming they were smoking up until death. But as they mentioned, we can't be sure when the last time the patients smoked. Either way, it's been demonstrated that smoking increases DNA damage in humans before, so I'm not sure why the authors decided to include this data set when it seems that something has gone wrong.

But now to the quote from the paper that this post is really all about:

"In the United Kingdom, there are continual ongoing debates as to whether cannabis should be legalized, thus rendering it to be more readily available for public consumption (46, 47). The data obtained from this study suggesting the DNA damaging potential of Cannabis smoke highlight the need for the stringent regulation of the consumption of Cannabis cigarettes, thus limiting the development of adverse health consequences such as cancer.
In conclusion, we have provided convincing evidence for the DNA damaging potential of Cannabis cigarettes using a newly developed sensitive online column-switching LC-MS/MS method that allowed the dose-dependent detection of N2-ethyl-dG adducts in DNA exposed to cannabis cigarette smoke."

Uh, what? Smoke causes N2-ethyl-dG adducts in calf thymus tissue, therefore the government should make sure no one ever smokes it? Is that really the only logical conclusion we can make from this?

I can't pretend to be too surprised of course. We are constantly surrounded by an attitude that is incredibly accepting of drug prohibition. But what surprised me about this quote is that it's in a scientific publication about the chemical reactions of natural compounds within a living organism. Since when did science journals become places to argue public policy issues? Well, it turns out that it's really not that uncommon for papers dealing with smoking, as I saw once I started doing some background reading in smoking and N2-ethyl-dG adduct literature. I'm sure such rhetoric can also be found in environmental journals as well, although I'm only guessing.

Now, I don't smoke Cannabis, or do drugs of any sort (other than the prednisone and aminosalicylates I'm currently being prescribed, but I promise you they're no fun) so please don't think I'm against drug prohibition cause I like to dope up. I'm against drug prohibition mainly because it's an authoritative policy that takes away the rights of the citizens and is an intrusion on our personal lives. No matter how harmful you are to yourself, if you aren't harming anyone else in the process than I don't understand why the government should have any say about the issue. Our government is here (or it least it should be and is how our founders envisioned it) to protect our rights, not take them away. Yet some people just don't seem to appreciate having personal responsibilities, and other people are all too eager to take control of others, and so now we have a situation where our governments have taken away our ability to do and have certain things, which is just such a ridiculous idea to think about.

Of course, there's also the argument on how horrible prohibitive policies work and how counter-intuitive they are, since you spend billions of dollars enforcing them and decreasing supply, yet you don't change the demand and the profits for such prohibited items go up, increasing motivation to sell them illegally, which brings with it all kinds of genuinely illegal acts. We ended alcohol prohibition in the 30s for good reasons and it's about time we as a society began reading our history, taking a look at modern data, and having an honest debate about the issue of legalization and liberating ourselves of these deleterious authoritative policies.

Singh, 2009 is actually a pretty good paper, and it would have been a hell of a lot better if they would have made this one addendum. Instead of saying:

"The data obtained from this study suggesting the DNA damaging potential of Cannabis smoke highlight the need for the stringent regulation of the consumption of Cannabis cigarettes, thus limiting the development of adverse health consequences such as cancer"

...maybe they could have said:

"The data obtained from this study suggesting the DNA damaging potential of Cannabis smoke highlight the need for more education on the the dangers of the consumption of Cannabis cigarettes, thus limiting the development of adverse health consequences such as cancer."

In my opinion, science works best at educating us on what do to in our lives, not dictating what needs to be done against the will of others.

I study a compound called diamino diphenylmethane, or DAPM, that is highly toxic to the liver and yet is the key component of polyurethanes and epoxy resins, which are incredibly common plastic materials. Yet, you'll never hear me, or anyone else for that matter, say the government should ban all DAPM from being used to create polyurethanes, because it would be incredibly ridiculous and impractical to prohibit a useful compound just because it causes damage when not carefully used. The same goes for Cannabis, because it turns out it's incredibly useful medically and industrially and only has significant negative side effects once you start abusing it, which is rather easy not to do with a non-addictive drug.

The government also shouldn't prohibit DAPM and Cannabis for the simple reason that it shouldn't be their role to prohibit material objects. If you allow your government to start prohibiting things for very little justifiable reason then it seems it will only be a matter of time before they begin to abuse that and start taking away more and more things, which is exactly what we see happening to us. The government has a role in protecting our rights, but it's not supposed to be our parent who makes sure we don't do anything stupid. We should have the right to do stupid things as long as they aren't impeding on the rights of other people. Freedom should be our priority, and yet we're so used to giving it up that it becomes the default opinion that manifests itself even in Chemical Research in Toxicology...

References:

Singh, R., Sandhu, J., Kaur, B., Juren, T., Steward, W., Segerbäck, D., & Farmer, P. (2009). Evaluation of the DNA Damaging Potential of Cannabis Cigarette Smoke by the Determination of Acetaldehyde Derived N

-Ethyl-2′-deoxyguanosine Adducts
Chemical Research in Toxicology, 22 (6), 1181-1188 DOI: 10.1021/tx900106y

Photo of the Day

This is an SEM (scanning electron micrograph) I captured of the root-crown interface on a 15 million year old Hemipristis serra shark tooth. The crown, or the portion of the tooth that's visible and used for cutting, is on the bottom, and the root, where the tooth is structured into the jaw, is on the top. The holes you see are foramen for blood vessels and nerves that permeate the tooth in life.

I'm currently doing some work on this genus, and hopefully by the end of the summer I'll have lots of interesting things to share with you about it

[If you want to see more images like this you can visit my Flickr]

Camelid crania

I figured that I should finally make a blog post relevant to the name of the blog, so here is the first installment of what will hopefully be a long series of posts on skulls.

I've been collecting skulls since my sophomore year of high school and have mostly purchased them off the internet, although many of my skulls have been found and prepared by me or by friends of mine. I have never killed a vertebrate, although some of the animals that my skulls belonged to were indeed killed instead of dying from natural causes. I try to take advantage of dead specimens whenever I can so I can add them to my collection, but I don't like the idea of murdering creatures for their parts because they're much too interesting while they're alive and it would be kind of counter-intuitive to my interests as a biologist. Although, I'll note that I have taken part in animal experiments at my lab, but I've never been the one that actually ends the life and I'm not sure if I ever will be comfortable doing so. I do think that animal experimentation is an important and necessary part of modern biomedical research though.



But anyways, I'd like to talk about a few of my favorite skulls, my domestic Dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) and my llama (Lama glama) skulls. Camels and llamas share a recent common ancestor around 11 million years ago and belong to the family Camelidae within the even-toed ungulate order Artiodactyla (which literally means even-toed). Other artiodactyls include pigs, peccaries, hippos, giraffes, deer, cows, sheep, antelope, etc. Pigs, peccaries, and hippos are the most basal group of the order with camelids beings the next most basal, and so they provide an interesting transitional phase between the primitive pig-like ungulates and the ruminants, such as bovids (cows, sheep, goats), cervids (deer, moose, etc), giraffids, and others.

In most ruminants the canines are either highly reduced or absent, with some interesting exceptions such as muntjacs and saber toothed musk deer, but camelids still retain relatively prominent canines. However, what's really interesting is that the largest canine-like teeth in the mouth are actually incisors and the canines look rather puny in comparison. These large tusks are used by males in competitions for dominance and fighting, although I'm not sure if these are more for show, like in primates, or whether they're physically utilized often. If so, ...ouch.



Another aspect of the incisors that's really interesting in camelids is that the non-tusk like upper incisors disappear in adulthood while the large spade-like lower incisors remain. The upper incisors in ruminants never even develop (or at least they don't erupt from the bone) and they use a tough gummy plate to grab food. So it seems the camelids preserve this evolutionary transition of upper incisor loss, and it would make sense for the ruminants to stop developing them completely since teeth can be prone to disease and damage, and if they're unnecessary then it'd be more advantageous for them to be selected against.


Top: Peccary (Tayassu tajacu); Mid: Camel (Camelus dromedarius); Bottom: Sheep (Ovis aries). Note that this camel actually still has one of its non-tusk upper incisors, but the rest are gone. (The bottom jaw of that sheep may look a bit narly; it's a pathological individual, but the only ruminant out of the 13 that I have that has a bottom jaw)

Another thing that these camel teeth show us is how NOT to clean a skull. If you take a look you can see the enamel flaking off of the molars, so whoever cleaned this skull (I bought it from a supplier in India) must have used some serious bleach. Another bad side effect is that the sutures between different skull bones are hardly visible since the very outer layers of the bone were essentially obliterated, leaving the more well-fused core of the sutures on the outside.



Something weird I've observed when comparing the camel and the llama skulls is that the llama has an anteorbital fenestra (hole in the side of the snout right in front of the eye) while the camel doesn't, although some camels do certainly have it. So what's going on here? There seems to be some variation, and seeing weird things like this is not unexpected when coming from domesticated individuals. I've tried researching the function of the anteorbital fenestra before but haven't found out much about it yet, although supposedly its glandular has some exocrine functions and its present in all camelid and ruminant species that I'm aware of.



That'll be all for now, but I have many more artiodactyls to cover and we'll probably look back at some things we didn't cover here on camelids later. I'll leave you with this photo of the llama's braincase through the foramen magnum (the dark portions is where it meets the nasal sinuses and the 'floor' is actually the dorsal side).



And if that's too much of a tease, then you can check out this CT scan of a llama skull here.

Conflicts between science, religion, and the public

It seems to me that the reason that science and religious faith are conflicting is pretty obvious and easy to understand logically. I’ve tried to keep up with the debate for a long time and I’ve just never heard a case where it was argued that science and religion are compatible without going outside logic and relying on emotional and sociological concerns. These concerns are of course what started the debate in the first place and sociological emotions are certainly apart of the foundation for religious belief, so it makes sense why they are the excuses used when people try to say that you can be scientific and religious at the same time.

Science and faith are opposites. It’s really that simple. The reason is because being faithful is the act of believing something without evidence to support it and science is the process of acquiring knowledge based on the evidence discovered. Science isn’t even about believing things, because philosophically we can deduce that it is impossible to know anything with 100% certainty and all we can do is make reasonable assumptions based on reproducible evidence and observed phenomenon, and this process works amazingly well for us here in our natural world. Our modern civilization’s extraordinary intellectual and industrial successes and advancements are based on our scientific attitude toward the world around us.

However, being human beings, we are in many ways still controlled and influenced by our emotions and our instincts. This makes sense biologically. Lower vertebrates are dependent upon emotional and instinctual neural circuitry to stay alive, breed, and react to the stimuli in their environment. They do not possess enough cognitive ability to logically work out their life situations, and so evolving programmed responses to stimuli is certainly advantageous. Higher vertebrates, such as us, have evolved cognitive abilities because it’s very easy to trick programmed behavior and thus if you’re less reliant on emotions and instincts you may be able to comprehend your stimuli and more effectively react to it. Consider how easy it is to outsmart a lizard, or even a mammal such as your dog. But, we still rely on emotional circuitry for a lot of things; it gives us the motivation to find mates, food, and evade danger, without having to think about it logically. Considering how frustrating finding a mate is. If we allowed ourselves to think about the issue in a purely logical framework without emotional involvement we probably wouldn’t be doing as much breeding, and thus, we’d be less successful wouldn’t we?

Religion is a case of hijacking those emotional circuits that we still retain. People aren’t faithful because their cognition tells them it’s a good idea, because it’s certainly not a logical position. People are faithful based on their emotions, whether it is their own fear and insecurity of the unknown or their sociological dependency within their group or tribe who have traditionally adopted faith. If this is true, and based on everything I’ve seen about the neuroscience, psychology, and sociology of religion it seems like a rather stable theory, then this can pose a real problem, because people are being reliant on programmable circuitry rather than cognitive and intellectual abilities. This is the fault of religion, because people aren’t thinking logically and can be emotionally influenced to do things that benefit others more than it does themselves.

So when people deny the findings of science because of their faith it seems that the conflict is between their emotions and their cognition. Because of that, it’s pretty difficult situation to deal with, because no matter how logical and scientifically rigorous your argument is it will be denied anyway. So, for some the idea is that we need to cozy up to the faithful and try to get them to start to accept scientific ideas by telling them it’s compatible with faith. When we do this, we’re being intellectually dishonest. As I said earlier, faith and science are opposites, so it just doesn’t make sense to be skeptical and rational about one thing, and then totally give up those principles on a different issue and believe something without evidence. When scientists are trying to promote the rationality of their discoveries they should not be simultaneously excusing the philosophies that are antithetical to such progress. While it may temporarily help us in increasing the U.S. populations acceptance of the theory of evolution to say that science and faith do not conflict, it will only further endorse the idea that unscientific thinking is okay, and that seems to be a direct contradiction to the goal of scientific advancement, does it not?

However, I am somewhat sympathetic to the position of those who want to publically say that science and faith are compatible. A few years ago I was giving a presentation on evolution using my skull collection for a 10th grade biology class. This was the non-honors class, so many of the kids in there were the type that didn’t do so well in school and were unfortunately less educated, and there was a lot of vocal opposition to what I was trying to teach them. I told them that “there is no reason why you can’t accept what science has discovered about evolution and still believe in some sort of divine creator” or something like that. I didn’t want to alienate them, because it was rather obvious that if what I was saying meant that they couldn’t believe in their god anymore then they were going to just reject everything I had to say, and I didn’t want to be wasting my time. I wanted to really teach these kids something and try to make a difference.

But in hindsight, I was being intellectually dishonest with these kids, and that seems to go against the purpose of education. I don’t just want to give these kids fish; I want to teach them to fish. If we tell our children they can accept what science says and still think foolishly when it comes to issues of the divine, we aren’t helping them much intellectually. If we tell these kids how to think scientifically in all walks of life, then they can make the decisions to accept and reject scientific theories on their own and help our civilization continue to advance in the right direction, the one where people think rationally and respond to their world with the scientific reasoning that has been the driving force of our species' advancement.

If we look at the data, it appears that the younger generations here in America are becoming much more liberal and rational, and so now is not the time to scale back our work in intellectual advancement, it’s time to let it flourish and grow. To tell kids that they can be scientific and faithful when you know that they contradict is an insult to their intelligence, and I think our future generations of thinkers deserve more than that.

[This post was partly stimulated by the Coyne-Mooney debates going on in the blogosphere. You may find them interesting if you were interested in this post]

Austin Oysters

I recently took a 400 mile road trip to Austin, Texas to see my favorite musician, Dax Riggs (awesome show by the way), and while I was there I was dragged to a park near the downtown area. It turned out there was a man-made creek running through some upper Cretaceous sediments filled with a fossil oyster called Ilymatogyra, a close relative of the more commonly known fossil oyster Exogyra.

What's really cool about these oysters is that they don't look like typical bivalves and I at first thought they might be gastropods. Almost every shell I found was identical and was of the same handedness (they all had left handed torison) and the umbo curled around much like a gastropod shell would. However, I was able to find one right handed valve, which looked very different from the rest and was just a small disk that covered the left valve's aperture. I took a picture of it using a microscope and my digital camera, so the quality wasn't that great, but you can see the oyster-like curvature and umbo to it.

Ilymatogyra left valves, notice twisted gastropod-like umbos

Ilymatogyra right valve in a light microscope, hence the glare

This was the first time (that I can remember at least) that I've found actual fossil material for myself in the Earth, and it was a pretty awesome experience. I've loved paleontology all my life and I was in an Intro to Paleontology class last semester. I got to work with plenty of bulk sediment and nifty fossils, but I missed out on the field trip to go out and find fossils for myself (which is actually a humorous story, since I missed the van by about 3 minutes because I set my alarm clock to PM rather than AM, although it certainly sucked at the time). I have another chance to go to that same fossil site this summer though, and I'm also planning on potentially going to another site to specifically look for some Hemipristis snaggletooth shark teeth, which I'm currently conducting some research on.

Anyways, here's some interesting references on Ilymatogyra, Exogyra, and some other cool bivalves for those who care, I still need to do some more reading on these guys myself:

Exogyra Evolution

Gryphaeids

Galaxy of the Day

This is NGC 5759 and was taken by the SDSS, or Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The SDSS is a really great tool to look at some really far off galaxies in a macroscopic sense and is used by both Google Earth and Galaxy Zoo, so it's pretty easy to access and explore the amazing imagery. The above picture may not compare to Hubble, but there are too many objects in the sky to have great photos, and considering all the other photos I've seen of this obscure galaxy merger, this is a pretty damn detailed shot.

I'm always in awe when looking at galaxy images and I often spend hours scanning through the SDSS imagery. It's amazing to be able to look at structures of such unfathonable magnitude in size, mass, and distance away. The light from this galaxy likely left millions of years ago and is coming from an object filled with billions and billions of stars, all themselves enormous masses of burning gas and plasma too big to cognitively concieve. Many of these stars likely have their own planets with their own strange geologies and weather systems, some of which likely have strange chemical phenomenon with positive feedback mechanisms potentially supporting life like interactions and chemical reproductions. Considering the massive size and scale it's too likely that something here may just be looking back at us.

However those are just general thoughts that come to mind when looking at galaxies, but this one in particular is special. This is a galaxy merger where a former spiral galaxy is gobbling up what seems to be a smaller companion that may have once been an elliptical. The large tidal tail swirling around the galaxy and connecting it with the smaller one is very evident and the distortion in the former spiral disk is pretty extraordinary, so this companion certainly was no light weight and it's gravitational pull is wrecking a lot of havoc. Something that often occurs in the these stages of mass distortion, however, is large quantities of new star formation as gas clouds swirl and pummel together, and if you look closely you can see a blue tint to the tidal tail, blue being the color emitted from young stars. However, compared to many other galaxy mergers I've seen there doesn't seem to be too much new star formation going on even though there does appear to be a lot of distortion and interaction. This could be due to many things, and I would guess that these galaxies probably had already used up a lot of their gases before interacting or that we are just too late and that this merger has been going on long enough to use up the available gases and all those young giant stars have already died out (giant stars burn their fuel faster and can go supernova within a few million years father than the billions is takes for smaller stars like our sun).

I'd love to know more about this object and others like it and I'd love to have the chance to do research with professional astrophysicists on such issues, although I don't know if I'll ever really have the chance. For now though I can certainly enjoy the amazing view and the knowledge that's already been provided.

Welcome

After a long period of time observing the blogosphere from the outside and occasionally stepping in to comment here and there, I've finally decided to start my own blog. It's my intention for this blog to cover the issues I'm most interested in, such as research in biology and astronomy, along with general scientific discussion and hopefully a chance to share my independent analysis on my own scientific material and research. I have a relatively large collection of animal skulls that I use to help me grasp and comprehend the wonder and beauty of vertebrate life and there are few things I love more than talking about them, so I hope for this to be a place where I may vent some of those ramblings.

Of course, I have many more things to talk about then my skulls and bones and I think this blog will be a great chance to discuss and rant on various scientific issues, current events, and whatever else comes to mind. I try to be a socially proactive person and care about investing intellectually into society, which is precisely why I do my best to advocate for the acceptance of rationalism above the social dogmas people seem to cling to. My love for science stems from my love for being reasonable about things, because it is much more advantageous for organisms of high cognition to understand their world and react to it practically rather than rely on emotions, gut feelings, and instincts. This appreciation of reason is were I derive my opposition to religion, dogmatic political philosophies, and the many irrational and emotional ways that people react with one another that lead to senseless suffering and violence. I consider myself a strong supporter of civil liberties and think its wise to constantly excerise skepticism when giving governments more power for the benefit of the people.

These are all things I'd like to build on and discuss in detail in the future, along with what will hopefully be interesting dialogue about science and research, so lets see how this blogging thing goes.