890 Million Year Old Sponge Fossils Discovered

Pretty amazing discovery, discussed in Smithsonian Magazine. It's equally amazing that sponges are our oldest ancestors. And see here. And here.

Turner, now a field geologist at Laurentian University, is finally ready to step forward with her discovery: The spangled stones she found are sponge fossils dated at 890 million years old, placing sponges as the earliest prehistoric animal that humanity has ever found so far. Published today in the journal Nature, her findings suggest that animals popped up long before Earth was considered hospitable enough to support complex life.

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Walking backwards 400 million years

Please allow me to tell you about today's trip to Missouri's Cuivre River State Park, about 1 1/2 hour drive from St. Louis. My family and our friends had lunch in the picnic area before setting out on a short hike on a half-dry creek bed. To the right you'll see a typical portion of this walk (clicking on these images will give you bigger higher-res versions). No, we didn't see any bears or snakes, but it was a beautiful day (high temperature about 70, after a summer filled with 100 degree days) and we saw quite a few small spectacular things.How about this blue moth, for example? I looked up this article and it really seems to be a moth and not a butterfly. [More . . . ]

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Explore your inner fish

I have just finished reading Neil Shubin’s new book: Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body (2008). Shubin is one of those writers who writes to you as though he is speaking to you.  He manages to keep his sentences short yet friendly while he takes you on a mind-blowing journey from single-celled organisms up to his detailed explorations of human animals. Shubin is Provost of the Field Museum in Chicago, as well as a professor of anatomy at the University of Chicago.

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The audience that really needs to read Shubin’s book will actively avoid reading it, of course.  Just think of the frustration that creationists already have with their idea that evolution teaches that “humans descended from monkeys.”  I hear this wrongheaded claim repeatedly and it gets quite tedious explaining to the creationist ignoramuses that no modern believer in evolution believes that humans descended from “monkeys.”  The irony of correcting creationists, however, is that the story of how the Earth’s creatures evolved is actually incredibly more interesting and challenging than the creationist’s simplistic version of evolution.  For instance, human ancestors include not only primates; they include fish too, and reptiles and worms.  Neil Shubin takes us on this awesome journey and there is much to share along the way.

I previously wrote about one of the incredible transitional forms discussed by Shubin, tiktaalik, an ancient fish that crawled out of the water. Tiktaalik, however, is only one of numerous transitional …

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If you want me to appreciate my ancestors, it’s going to take some time.

My wife and I attended the wedding of a good friend today.  A thoughtful and sometimes light-hearted rabbi presided over the ceremony. 

This ceremony was quite a change of pace from most of the religious weddings I’ve attended.  There was no somber talk about the heavy guilt we bear for being human or how small and pathetically helpless we are, or how we are at the mercy of a God who could crush us for no reason if He wanted.  Instead, the ceremony focused on the interrelationships of the people attending the ceremony.  We were all there to celebrate and support the new marriage as a newly bonded community.  I was really getting into the ceremony, which is unusual for me (I generally prefer empty churches).

Toward the end of the ceremony, the rabbi invited each of us to take a moment to appreciate the sacrifices of our ancestors, to consider all those things our ancestors had done to enable each of us to be standing there today.  Like most people, I started considering the sacrifices made by my parents and grandparents, but that got me thinking about the overwhelming odds that I shouldn’t actually exist at all. 

I shouldn’t exist?  Why would I think that?  Because if my mother had not met my father at the right point in time, and if they had not been amorous at the right time of the right day, the sperm and the egg that became “me” would never have met …

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Continue ReadingIf you want me to appreciate my ancestors, it’s going to take some time.