Creature Feature: Helicoprion.

As the Monty Python sketch above will tell you, paleontologists can get crazy when it comes to piecing together dead animals. The most notable case is Anomalocaris, in which several of its parts were confused for being parts of different organisms. Juvenile dinosaurs frequently lead to new species due to subtleties in the jaw and spine as well as size.

This is one time I really have to wonder: Are you sure this is right, science?

 

Helicoprion was a strange-looking shark that swam the pre-dinosaur seas (290 m.y.a.). It lived between the Late Carboniferous and Triassic - in land life terms, right after the cool synapsids died and right before the dinosaurs got started. It may have been anywhere from 10-15 feet long.

It also had a jaw that would make most modern horror monsters run screaming in sheer WTF. That jaw could presumably coil and uncoil, lashing rows of sharp teeth at anything it pleased. We aren't exactly sure where it was located, but it was definitely in the lower jaw. Do not let this uncertainty be any consolation- it's the difference between being lashed at by a giant toad or being licked by one of the Xenomorph's inner mouths, neither of which would be any more pleasant if sharp teeth were added.

Nobody really knows what Helicoprion used this weird jaw for. Our best guess is that it was used to pierce ammonites, squidlike molluscs with shells like snails, right in the shell's air chambers. It also could have used that coil to lash out at schools of fish. I will even go out on a limb and suggest 'mating display' if this thing was on the outside, even though sharks don't have visual mating displays today. Regardless of where it was placed, the coil had rows upon rows of sharp teeth, so whatever got in there was put through a meat grinder.

To make this even more disturbing, Helicoprion had relatives. That is how we know science might be right with this one: we have more complete shark skeletons with jaws like that. The whole ocean was filled with sharks that had jaws like buzzsaws. By comparison, our sharks are cute and cuddly.

Awww, look! It's only got ONE set of teeth! 

 

So, the next time one of those killer shark movies comes out, bear the following in mind: Just like you, that shark has teeth inside its mouth as opposed to stuck on a death coil. Science, if you were trying to create a nightmare machine, good work.If you were trying to revive one of Dagon's minions...good luck with that.

Bio-Art: B3T

Of all the booths at Greenfest, one of them got my attention for being so original, creative, and fun that I just had to devote a post to it. Yes, Books, Bottles, and Bulbs Terrariums was awesome enough that, as soon as I saw what they were selling, I knew I had to have one and take it home:

Yes, those are terraria made from everything under the sun. As the title says, books, bottles, and bulbs can all be made into perfectly fine plant containers when pots aren't handy .Or, hey, even if pots are handy, sometimes it's just nice to put a plant in a rare liquor bottle.

Putting terraria in things besides glass tanks is nothing new. My first terrarium was a soda bottle, for example. The Morgan recently had us make jar terraria in honor of Earth Day (in April). All you have to do is get a little creative if you want your own indoor garden. Look for old jars or...anything else that can hold water and dirt, really.

 B3T's works take that same idea and apply a whole new level of creativity. There are liquor bottles, lightbulbs (warning: these can spill) and other miscellany that can be made into perfectly fine containers for house and water plants. Basically, whatever the artist can find can become a terrarium if it can hold water and a few aquarium rocks. Then it's up to her (in this case) to make it look aesthetically-pleasing.

And mine? Mine's just a small bottle with a little bit of Japanese moss in it. Not very complex or spectacular, but still pretty in the same way a 'sand candle' is. The water needs to be changed every few weeks to keep things healthy. Yay for instructions!

GREENFEST 2012! (Part 2).

Continuing from where we left off yesterday...

11. Ecowood makes hardwood decorations out of old-growth forest. How old are we talking? 400-800 years, apparently! At first reading, this does not sound too eco-friendly to me. Unique, perhaps. I probably should have asked for more details.

12. Of course Mercy For Animals would be at Greenfest. Meat is one of the least-green foods out there for so many reasons. My rebuttal: Is popping pills in capsules that might have gelatin any more natural? I'm all for not treating the animals cruelly, but our teeth say we should be omnivores. It's also harder to get the necessary nutrients when you're allergic to nuts (TAUNT TAUNT TAUNT).

13. The Zeitgeist Movement was one of the more intriguing booths this time around. Their premise is, basically, that even though we have the technology to solve all our problems, we do not use it to those ends. Our tech outdates our culture. We're still thinking as if we don't have the technology when we do. They gave me DVDs, so I'll probably watch them after that last final.

14. Ohhhhh man, have I wanted to do a spot on aquaponics for a while! The pipes going from the fish tank to the plants are basically turning the tilapia's, ah, waste products (particularly nitrogen) into fertilizer for the plants above. The siphoning helps keep the water clean and grows the plants. It was also one of the rare times I got to see tilapia alive instead of on the plate - hey, farm-grown fish, too!

15. There was a less-mongering booth than MFA advocating sustainable farming. The Meatrix was back (I love that movie - it should get its own spot on this blog sometime) and I got swag from that. There was also a red angus cattle farmer from Missouri. Not too far from me, that place.

Also, did you know that pigs build nests for their young? I didn't until I saw this booth. D'awwww.

16. For those of us who have pets, ecologically-friendly pet toys are a thing! Honest Pet Products has  all sorts of things for cats and dogs (although sustainable cat litter was at another booth). The pink fabric mouse I got for Styxie was made by women in Mongolia. I wonder where that mouse went?

17. Hydroponics is a neat way of growing plants quickly without taking up too much space. Strawberries apparently grow very well this way, but you have to keep picking them. Not a problem. The 400+ setup fee is.

18. There was a booth dedicated to earth, wind, and solar-powered energy sources. Right next to them was a booth that only did wind. Me, I'm a solar fan; the sun's going to be around for a very long time, so we'll have energy for a bit without killing bats via air suction. Anywho, had I been in any position to sign up for alternative energy, I might have. ComEd has...nasty sources.

19. I took a little walk down "green beauty row," a section devoted to ecologically-friendly beauty products. Some were believable, like lotions and lip glosses; others I am not so sure of. I'm wary of thinning 'strips' that promise miracle results after one use. I'll buy detoxification. Anything else is pushing it.

20. Ever wonder what shea butter looks like when it's not blended into other things? Well...that. Mind, that's a lot of shea butter. It actually comes from a small nut grown in Western Africa. That 'shell' is African cookware. I would have bought something, but experience has taught me that almonds are not the only nuts I'm allergic to.

21. These wipes were biodegradable, but that was not their main appeal. They come in this neat little tablet form about the size of a LifeSaver, if not a little smaller. Just add water to get an instant handwipe! (I tried to get a video, but it failed miserably.) If you got a whole bag full (50 tablets for 5 bucks - not bad), you also got a little carrying case in which you could pop out a tablet with bleach or what have you ready and waiting. Yep, I got one.

22. Sweet Beginnings was one of the five or so counters selling products from their own bee farm. They didn't just have honey - there was a whole mom's day gift basket containing other goodies made from honey, too. For the record, their honey goes amazingly well with Stash green-white fusion tea. I will buy from them again if I get the chance!

23. B3T - Books, Bottles, & Bulbs Terrariums - was probably one of my favorite booths at the whole festival. The owner of this one will be getting her own Bio-Art post tomorrow, so no spoilers!

...and there was even more where that came from! I was trying to be ambitious and do 15 instead of 10, but alas, sleep calls. One of the booths will receive extra-special coverage in my Bio-Art post tomorrow, then I'll go back to blogging the other events. Look forward to it!

GREENFEST 2012! (Part 1.)

After almost a full week of being MIA, this blog can come back with a vengeance!From this week on, I'll be doing daily entries again! That said, this entry and tomorrow's (and Monday's) will be special in more ways than one.

You may have noticed that a lot of my entries encourage conservation. Usually, if something is endangered, I'll be all "blah blah blah, save the trees, we probably won't see this species again." It all sounds so hopeless and depressing, not to mention repetitive and annoying.

Well, not this time. This time, I went to Greenfest, one of Chicago's biggest eco-friendly events. It's so eco-friendly that every visitor got a reusable tote bag - a good reusable tote bag that I can tell won't break after just a few uses. Enough about the tote bag. Let's sink our teeth into the first part of this massive entry; I'm going to be covering everything I saw there over the next two days. (For the sake of your sanity and mine, however, I will try to limit it to ten booths per entry.)

1.  First booth I saw belonged to O organics. If you live near a Dominick's store, you are probably familiar with their label. They have almost all of your favorites in organic form - from pizza to baby food. Their stuff is pretty good, as I was reminded by their juice and tea samples, and I got some free popcorn to boot! As far as I know, they don't BS like Jewel's brand of organics, Wild Harvest, which I have seen using trans fat.

2. Oh, how I love Clif bars. Oh, how I hate that so many of my favorite health bars tend to sneak almonds in there after a while (I'm allergic). Luckily, none of the samples they were handing out had tree nuts slipped in except in trace amounts (i.e. inevitable amounts). So far, they have been great about the nut thing and kept their recipes the same as always. The man in the picture tossed free Clif Crunch bars at me after holding them up to his face. Label to camera, label to camera!

3. Think that organic food is too expensive for you? Think again! Greendeals.org specializes in delivering coupons on organic food right to your e-mail. It helped that they had chocolate covered mulberries and nice-looking spokespeople at their booth.

4. Greenfest was brought to you by Ford! Apparently, they are doing all sorts of things to try and make their vehicles more green. This includes using more eco-friendly steel, utilizing wood that was destroyed by the Mountain Pine Beetle plague, and, of course, painting a car green. Good luck competing with the Prius; you'll need it.

5. Endangered Species chocolate has been one of my favorite brands for a while. Their bars can usually be found in health food stores and are made from only fair-trade chocolate. They used to come with little 'trading cards' - insects for the Bug Bites, named chimpanzees for the Chimp Mints - but if I recall, they stopped that. Still great chocolate for the eco-conscious, though.

6. Naked food juice has been a lifesaver for me over the past few months (especially last night, when dinner was delayed at a volunteer event). For those of you unfamiliar with the brand, Naked juices are basically meals in a bottle. They're like smoothies without crushed ice and fill you up for a bit when solid food is not available. One of their newer products was a blueberry-oat mix (a muffin in a bottle?). Unfortunately, it had almond milk in it...health food, why must you taunt me so?!

7. Ahhh, more chocolate. That title card doesn't lie - Divine chocolate is amazing. They encourage women to farm their cocoa, so feminists can rejoice in buying their sugary goodness It's also really expensive, so I'm glad they had a lot of free samples! ( I did get some white chocolate strawberry medallions towards the end. I intend on sharing them.)

8. Interested in paying a visit in Chicago? Don't forget to check out the Green Chicago Restaurant Coalition's list of environmentally-friendly eateries. (P.S.- if I ever meet any of you in Chi-town offline, I will take you to Gino's East regardless of how green it is. Can't beat a classic.)

9. I actually had to do a bit of research for this one. After hearing how bad Monsanto is via Twitter for a while, MillionsAgainstMonsanto.org finally gave me some solid figures. Those are probably just the tip of the iceberg! This particular fight against Monsanto is from www.organicconsumers.org. As per their website:

"For nearly two decades, Monsanto and corporate agribusiness have exercised near-dictatorial control over American agriculture, aided and abetted by indentured politicians and regulatory agencies, supermarket chains, giant food processors, and the so-called "natural" products industry.

Finally, public opinion around the biotech industry's contamination of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the tipping point. We're fighting back."

10. To round off the night, no hippie fest would be complete without Eastern things like yoga and organic henna. :) I was tempted to get one. They had tweaked Zodiac symbols, too. Speaking of, I need to wrap my head around Vedic astrology next...

Bio-Art: Find A Happy Place in Glowing Bacteria.

Two exams over. Two more due on Thursday. One next week Monday. An interview and volunteer thing this week.

Find a happy place. Find a happy place. Find a happy place...

...ooh, glowy! :D

That cute little beach scene was done entirely in glowing bacteria, probably Escherichia coli. These particular bacteria glow only under blacklight, but is is possible to make bacteria really glow in the dark as well. Since I have actually done this process, I know a few things about how they make bacteria glow in any color you choose.

First, you need to isolate the gene that makes the protein you want. Most blacklight-sensitive bacteria will be using jellyfish ( Aequorea victoria) genes. Some pigments, like the red up there, probably came from an anemone that glowed red in its lifetime. There are even genes isolated from protists that really do glow in the dark! There are special enzymes out there that cut DNA strands at certain sequences, and you need to find the right tool to cut out the ones that glow in the dark. We did not do this in class, but what we did do was pretty cool.



After being isolated, the glowing gene is integrated into something called a plasmid ring. Bacteria aren't like more complex organisms in that their DNA is fixed; instead, they are constantly recombining DNA from their environment and from each other! There was a whole temperature-changing process (I recall ice being involved) to make sure the bacteria took their extra DNA.

Also on the plasmid ring was an antibiotic; this ensured that only the bacteria with the glowing plasmid ring survived and multiplied. We needed a lot of them, after all. We selected the glowing ones out by putting smears on petri dishes laced with antibiotics. This is also how scientists test for antibiotic resistance in bacteria. If they can survive on that plate, watch out!

We had to wait a bit for the bacteria to grow, but after that, we put them under blacklight and practiced painting with them. Yes, painting. With brushes. There were no special scientific tools involved with drawing on a petri dish. By the end, we had a few good practice cultures of bacteria that glowed green under blacklight - just like Alba and GloFish!

Finally, after getting a good, pre-made culture of glowing bacteria, we took out paintbrushes...and just started painting on petri dishes. This has been done with other organisms since at least Alexander Fleming (the guy who discovered penicillin) using E.coli and other microbes, including fungi.  We've been painting with germs for a while, and here's the end result:

I look too sober for my own good. -.-;

Let's Go Spelunking: Mexican Tetra.

Just when you thought cave animals could not get any weirder, this happens:



Those are both the same species of fish, the Mexican tetra (Astyanax mexicanus). It ranges from the Rio Grande in Texas to Central Mexico, both in caves and in surface rivers. The main (but not only) difference between them is simple: One has eyes and one does not.

The eyed and eyeless Mexican tetras have several differences. While the Mexican tetra's surface form looks like, well, a normal silvery fish, the cave form is albino, almost see-through, and, most obviously, eyeless. On the slightly less noticeable side of things, cave tetras store more energy as fat and have much better senses of smell and hearing than their sunlight-dwelling brethren. If you want to see how stuff that evolved in caves is different from its counterpart on the surface world, Mexican tetras are a great place to start. 

Love is blind! (c) Richard Borowsky.

When the blind specimens are born, they have eyes. As the fish grows, opaque skin grows over the eyes, rendering the fish completely blind. The eyes themselves also degenerate as the fish grows older. The coding for eyes is there, it just gets overridden as the fish matures. Nobody knows precisely why, but theories such as protein conservation and sheer dumb luck have both been tossed around.

The exotic pet trade loves these fish, particularly the blind ones. They recommend putting natural rocks into the tank and keeping them in semi-aggressive schools. The appeal is obvious: pet hobbyists, regardless of what sort, like different things.  It's hard to get more different than a blind fish with a see-through body. 

Creationists also love picking on this fish as evidence against evolution. Without factoring in the extensive adaptations this fish has made to cave life, it seems weird that an animal would develop eyes, then suddenly lose them. Clearly they are not familiar with the sheer amount of junk traits humans have retained over time, like our ill-adjustment to something as basic as being bipedal.

Let's Go Spelunking: Cave Shrimp + Crayfish

(Apologies: I went to take a nap and wound up sleeping longer than intended. Come hither, Hell Week...)

Remember when I mentioned that cave creatures had a strange aesthetic to them? Well, to be more specific, creatures that spend their lives exclusively in caves tend to have a few features in common.  These include pale skin, poor or absent eyesight, reduced size, and enhanced senses of hearing, touch, and smell. In human terms, 3/4 isn't bad, nerds.

Lincoln approves of cave shrimp?

Enter the Kentucky and Alabama cave shrimp (Palaemonias). They are both native to the Southwestern U.S. as their names imply. Yes, apparently the South has a lot of neat cave life. They eat anything that washes into the sediments underground. (FYI: Since several kinds of shrimp do in fact eat dirt like this, they are probably not the healthiest seafood in the world.) As the picture above demonstrates, they are smaller than a penny.

Cave shrimp are a prime example of what happens to 'normal' animals once they adapt to cave life. These shrimp are not just blind - they're completely eyeless. They're pure white with translucent skin. If they ever left the safety of the caves, they would die in a heartbeat. Even as they are, they have predators in other cave creatures such as salamanders, raccoons, and equally-blind cave crayfish (a case of the blind eating the blind).

Yes, crayfish live in the caves, too. There are several species (Cambarus pecki in Alabama; Procambarus elsewhere), several of which live in Florida and all of which are endangered. They look a lot like cave shrimp, only bigger, nastier, and with pincers. Like the shrimp, their skin is so light you can see through it - who needs melanin when you live in depths in which nothing can see? It's amazing; we could have saved so much mess in biology if some smart soul had bred translucent crayfish for us to study.

Both species of cave shrimp and all cave crayfish are endangered. The main cause for this classification is poisoned groundwater. As we've said before, freshwater ecosystems are fragile. So are species that are highly adapted to one environment. Cave shrimp will probably not be around much longer, so enjoy them while you can.