National Tour Hits High Gear

A national tour to promote my book, Dinosaur Odyssey, and the PBS KIDS show, Dinosaur Train, hits high gear this week. This past Thursday and Friday, I was at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, where I did a lecture one evening and four Dinosaur Train-related events for kids the following day. The latter attracted more than 1500 children and adults, resulting in a fun and chaotic morning for all involved! Tomorrow (Tuesday, March 30th) I will be in San Diego at the San Diego Natural History Museum to give a book talk at 6:30 pm (http://www.sdnhm.org/exhibits/dinosaurs/programs.php), followed by a similar event close to home at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco on Thursday evening (April 1st). The latter talk will occur as part of the weekly “Night Life” festivities at the Cal Academy, with a live DJ and other activities. (For tickets, go to: https://www.calacademy.org/event_tickets/index.php?d=April%201,%202010&e=Nightlife%206:00%20PM). Then, this weekend, I head to Washington, DC, to participate in the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on April 5th, where, in the guise of “Dr. Scott the Paleontologist,” I'll be talking with hundreds (thousands?) of Dinosaur Train fans on the White House South Lawn, encouraging them to get outside, get into nature, and make their own discoveries! (For more information, see: http://www.whitehouse.gov/easterEggRoll). A number of other book talks and Dinosaur Train events are currently in the works, so stay tuned. For updates on upcoming events, visit: http://www.scottsampson.net/index.php?page=talks

I'll be back to generating a regular blog post/essay next week when I return from my travels. Meanwhile, thanks very much to all of you who are participating in these events!!

Note: Promotional image for Night Life at the Cal Academy in San Francisco, property of the California Academy of Sciences.

From Sand Monsters to Rock Stars

Most posts on The Whirlpool of Life deal with weighty issues like mass extinction, sustainability, and shifting worldviews. Today’s offering stands in stark contrast, yet it addresses a question that I am asked frequently. How do paleontologists go about naming dinosaurs and other extinct creatures?

The trigger for this discussion is yesterday’s announcement of a new dinosaur, Seitaad reussi, from the high desert of southern Utah. Seitaad’s world debut was made in conjunction with publication of a paper in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE describing this new Jurassic-aged beast (1). The exquisitely preserved partial skeleton was collected several years ago near Bluff, Utah, by the paleontology team from the Utah Museum of Natural History, where I am a research curator. The two authors of the study, Joe Sertich and Mark Loewen, are ex-students of mine (Sertich is now a doctoral candidate at Stony Brook University, and Loewen is now an instructor at the University of Utah).

Seitaad is (or, more precisely, was) a prosauropod dinosaur: a mid-sized, long-necked, small-headed, two-legged herbivore that was a locomotory switch-hitter—capable of walking on two or four legs. It belonged to the first major radiation of dinosaurs (formally referred to as basal sauropodomorphs) that swept across much of the supercontinent Pangaea during the Late Triassic and Early Triassic. Seitaad lived in an arid desert setting, and the only known individual apparently experienced a premature demise in a dune collapse. Although small as dinosaurs go (~10-15 feet long; 150-200 lbs), this prosauropod may well have been the largest herbivore in its habitat, with titanic relatives like Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus still millions of years away. I greatly enjoyed Mark and Joe’s excellent study of this ancient desert denizen.

I also enjoyed their choice of moniker, which is both interesting and pretty typical of the process that paleontologists (and biologists generally) go through in naming newly discovered animals. The first part of the name, Seitaad, refers to a mythological sand-desert monster from Navajo (Diné) lore, simultaneously honoring the local indigenous peoples and the name of the rock unit entombing the specimen (the Navajo Sandstone). The latter part of the name, reussi, derives from Everett Ruess, a famous young explorer, poet, artist, and historian who mysteriously disappeared in the southern Utah desert in 1934.

So here’s the deal. You can name a dinosaur, or any other newly discovered organism, after a place, a time, a person, some particular feature of the creature in question, or just about anything at all, as long as the name has not been used previously. One caveat. It’s regarded as highly uncouth (and, for all I know, against the rules) to name a new species after oneself. With that single exception, however, the honoree may be real or fictitious, human or nonhuman. Once the subject(s) of the name is (are) chosen, you must then follow a formal (though not cumbersome) set of do’s and don’ts dictated by International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.

The two-part name—for example, Seitaad ruessi, Tyrannosaurus rex, or Homo sapiens—is a biological standard set in the 18th Century by the famed Swedish biologist Carolus Linnaeus, and still used to this day. The first part of the name is called the “genus,” whereas the latter is the “species.” The genus-species duo represents a hierarchy, with the genus being the more inclusive category. So a single genus often contains multiple species (e.g., Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, etc.).

Mark and Joe are certainly not the only paleontologists with a penchant for mythology. If one looks solely among dinosaurs beginning with letter “A,” examples include: Achillobatar (named for the mythical hero Achilles), Aeolosaurus (named after the Greek god of winds), and Atlasaurus (for Atlas, a giant who, in Greek mythology, held up the heavens). In 1995, I added another to the bunch (2)—Achelousaurus, a ceratopsian (horned) dinosaur named after Achelous, a mythological river god of the ancient Greeks who was capable of shape-shifting. In order to fight Heracles (Hercules of Roman mythology) over (what else) a woman, Achelous changed himself into a bull. Heracles won the battle when he ripped off the horns of the bull. The name fits because Achelousaurus was a hornless ceratopsian dinosaur that evolved from horned ancestors. Many, many more mythological creatures can be found embodied in the names of dinosaurs.

Just as mythology is one common theme used for naming dinosaurs and other animals, famous characters are another. Indeed fame seems to be a regular attractor for scientists naming new critters, whether the honoree is real or fictitious. As noted, Seitaad’s second name refers to legendary adventurer Everett Ruess. Extending the scope beyond dinosaurs, we might cite the wasp named Mozartella beethoveni, the snake Montypythonoides, the trilobite Mildesdavis, the crustacean Godzillus, or the diminutive midge Dicrotenipes thanatogratus (“thanatos” is Greek for “dead” and “gratus” is Latin for grateful, in honor of the Grateful Dead). Another of my favorites is a fossil turtle dubbed Ninjemys, after the cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

My single nomenclatural foray into the realm of celebrity is Masiakasaurus knopfleri, a little buck-toothed, dinosaurian predator found on the island of Madagascar. The genus designation up front combines the Malagasy word for vicious and the Latin word for lizard, whereas the species name honors singer, song-writer, and world renowned guitarist Mark Knopfler, ex-lead of Dire Straits. The full translation is “the vicious lizard of Knopfler.”

Why Mark Knopfler? Well, way back in the mid 1990’s, when there were still cassette tapes and Sony Walkmans (remember those?), one of the crew members brought a pair of small speakers along with her tape player. Among the bands featured on the quarry playlist that summer was Dire Straits, a particular favorite of expedition leader David Krause. As serendipity would have it, when we played Knopfler’s music, we tended to find more fossils of the new little meat-eater, whereas these bones were few and far between when the music wasn’t playing. Back in camp one night, my longtime friend and colleague Cathy Forster (George Washington University) suggested that we name this new dinosaur after our musical talisman, Mark Knopfler. For some reason, the consensus among crewmembers (perhaps influenced by beer consumption) was enthusiastic support for the idea.

When Masiakasaurus made its first public appearance on the cover of the British journal Nature (3), the media response was swift, overwhelming, and, shall we say, unanticipated in its direction. While some reports addressed the interesting scientific aspects of this theropod dinosaur, the bulk of the media coverage concentrated on the Knopfler reference. Needless to say, I was not used to receiving phone calls for interviews from Rolling Stone or Guitarist magazine. Some media outlets, in particular the British tabloids, went so far as to question our motives, suggesting that the moniker referenced Knopfler’s physical appearance, or perhaps his status as a rock dinosaur! As for Knopfler himself, I am pleased to say that he accepted the honor in the spirit intended, stating for the record, “The fact that it’s a dinosaur is certainly apt, but I’m happy to report that I’m not in the least bit vicious.”

So that’s my two bits on names. Hearty congratulations to Joe Sertich and Mark Loewen on their big announcement. Oh, and keep your eyes open for more announcements of new Utah dinosaurs in the near future . . .

References
1. Sertich, J.J.W and Loewen, M. A. 2010. A new basal sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic Navajo Sandstone of southern Utah. PLoS ONE, 5 (3), DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0009789

2. Sampson, S. D. 1995. Two new horned dinosaurs from the Upper Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation of Montana, USA, with a phylogenetic analysis of the Centrosaurinae (Ornithischia: Ceratopsidae). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 15(4): 743-760.

3. Sampson, S. D., Carrano, M. T., Forster, C. A. 2001. A bizarre predatory dinosaur from Madagascar: implications for the evolution of Gondwanan theropods. Nature, 409: 504-505.

Images (from top to bottom)
1. The partial skeleton of Seitaad reussi, which preserves the central portion of the body.
2. The skeletal reconstruction of Seitaad reussi, with the preserved elements highlighted.

3. Joe Sertich with Seitaad reussi specimen.
4. Prosauropod dinosaurs in desert setting. Painting by Eleanor Kish.

5. Mark Loewen with Seitaad reussi specimen.
6. Masiakasaurus knopfleri, the buck-toothed predator from Madagascar. Artwork by Bill Parsons.

Nature Flows Downhill

A radical notion with deep implications for our understanding of the universe is now percolating within scientific circles—nature flows downhill.

You may recall learning about the second law of thermodynamics, the unwavering propensity of energy to disperse and, in doing so, transition from high quality to low quality forms—“increasing entropy,” to use the physicists' preferred term. High quality in this case refers to energy that can be put to use for a variety of purposes, whereas low quality energy generally refers to heat. Ecologist Eric Schneider (1) expresses the second law a little differently, arguing that "nature abhors a gradient," where a gradient is simply a difference over a distance—for example, in temperature or pressure. It helps me to think of this trend toward reducing gradients as nature flowing downhill. That is, if we think of a gradient as a more of something on one side and less of it on the other side, stuff tends to slide downhill from the more-side to the less-side.

In nature, open physical systems—including those of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere—embody this law, being driven by the dispersal of energy, and particularly the flow of heat, “downhill” in the direction of some equilibrium state. Phenomena as diverse as the motions of lithospheric plates, the northward flow of the Gulf Stream, and occurrence of deadly hurricanes are all examples of this process at work.

Growing evidence suggests that life is no different. It’s often been said the life's complexity contravenes the second law (since organization is the opposite of chaos or entropy), indicating the work either of a deity or some unknown natural process, depending on one's bias. Yet the evolution of life and the dynamics of ecosystems strictly obey the second law, continually dissipating low quality energy. Living systems carry out the task not by burning brightly and disappearing, like a forest fire, but through stable metabolic cycles that store chemical energy and continually reduce the solar gradient (that is, the difference in available energy between the sun and the Earth).

Photosynthetic plants, bacteria, and algae capture energy from the sun and form the core of all food webs. So virtually all organisms, including us, are made of sunlight—temporary waypoints in the flow of energy. As energy goes from plants to herbivores, around 90% is lost to heat. This rampant dispersal of energy continues up the food chain when herbivores are consumed by carnivores, and again when carnivores fall prey to other carnivores. As a result, meat-eaters like orcas and lions must subsist on about 0.00001% (one hundred thousandth of one percent) of the energy originally captured by plants. This precipitous trend toward diminishing returns explains why ecosystems tend to have many more plants than herbivores, and many more herbivores than carnivores.

From the point of view of the food web, life appears extremely inefficient in delivering energy. But if the goal is to disperse energy, life is phenomenally successful.

Moving from ecology to evolution, life has become increasingly complex over the past 3.5 billion years, evolving from microscopic single-celled bacteria to macroscopic multicellular organisms of stunning diversity. Accompanying this bewildering increase in diversity has been a corresponding increase in biomass (the mass of living organisms). This dramatic transformation is not due simply to natural selection, as most evolutionists still argue, but also to nature's "efforts" to grab more and more of the sun's flow. The slow burn that characterizes life’s metabolism enables ecological systems to persist over deep time, changing in response to external and internal shake-ups.

Ecology has been summarized by the pithy statement, "energy flows, matter cycles." Yet this maxim applies equally to complex systems in the non-living world; indeed it literally unites the biosphere with the physical realm. More and more, it appears that complex, cycling, swirling systems of matter have a natural tendency to emerge in the face of energy gradients. This recurrent phenomenon may even have been the driving force behind life's origins. (For those interesting in the origin of life, I strongly recommend the following video [2]).

This idea that nature flows downhill is not new, and is certainly not mine. Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger was one of the first to articulate the hypothesis, as part of his famous "What is Life" lectures in Dublin in 1943 (3). More recently, Jeffrey Wicken (4), Harold Morowitz (5), Eric Schneider and others have taken this concept considerably further, buoyed by results from a range of studies, particularly within ecology. Schneider and Dorian Sagan provide an excellent summary of this hypothesis in their book, "Into the Cool" (1).

The concept of life as energy flow, once fully digested, is profound. Just as Darwin fundamentally connected humans to the non-human world, a thermodynamic perspective connects life inextricably to the non-living world. This radical idea, once broadly distributed and understood, is likely to provoke reaction from many sectors, including religion and science. The wondrous diversity and complexity of life through time, far from being the product of intelligent design, is a natural phenomenon intimately linked to the physical realm of energy flow.

Contrary to the current consensus among biologists, evolution is not driven by the machinations of selfish genes propagating themselves through countless millennia. Instead, ecology and evolution operate in tandem as a highly successful, extremely persistent means of reducing the gradient generated by our nearest star. In my view, evolutionary theory (the process, not the fact of evolution!) and biology generally are headed for a major overhaul once investigators fully comprehend the notion that the complex systems of earth, air, water, and life are not only interconnected, but interdependent, cycling matter in order to maintain the flow of energy. Nature—living and nonliving—flows downhill.

Outside the halls of science, seeing ourselves as inextricably embedded in these flows of matter and energy has great potential to help us reconnect to nature. Currently, we tend to view humanity as somehow apart from (and above) “nature.” Many commentators on sustainability (including myself) talk about our “relationship with nature.” But in many respects this is a twisted notion. We may as well speak of the human relationship with humanity, since we are part of nature in exactly the same way that we are part of humanity. Recognizing our bonds not just to other life forms but to the nonliving aspects of nature can go a long way toward bridging the human-nature divide.

References
1) Schneider, E. D. and D. Sagan. 2006. Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
2) Lecture by origin of life researcher Eric Smith: https://www.umail.utah.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=bd6cc3778b064ad483adea8217d2542b&URL=http%3a%2f%2ffora.tv%2f2007%2f04%2f18%2fInevitable_Life
3) Schrödinger, E. 1944. What is Life: The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
4) Wicken, J. 1987. Evolution, Thermodynamics, and Information: Extending the Darwinian Program. Oxford University Press, New York.
5) Morowitz, H. J. 2002. The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex. Oxford University Press, New York.

(Note: This post is modified from a piece of mine that originally appeared on Edge.org in January, 2006.)

Evolution & Climate: An Unholy Matrimony?

Last week, a New York Times article by Leslie Kaufman (1) highlighted an alarming new trend: the recurrent pairing of evolution with global warming by conservatives. On the face of it, this marriage seems odd and unexpected; the former relates to the turnover of life through billions of years of deep time, whereas the latter labels a decades-old trend toward atmospheric heating.

What do these disparate notions have in common? Both tend to make conservatives—and particularly religious fundamentalist conservatives—very nervous. Evolution, of course, raises fundamentalist ire because it portrays an entirely different story of our origins than does the bible. Concerns about human-induced global warming are a little tougher to pin down. Rev. Jim Ball of the Evangelical Environmental Network is quoted as saying that many global warming deniers consider it “hubris to think that human beings could disrupt something that God created” (1). But a deeper reason is that reducing greenhouse gas emissions threatens continued industrialization, or at least business as usual, and pro-business lobbies are waging a (thus far very successful) campaign to discredit climate science and shift public opinion.

Ok, but that still doesn’t explain why links are being forged between biological evolution and atmospheric temperatures. The answer here is education. Over the past century, fundamentalist Christians have adopted a succession of strategies aimed at keeping evolution out of the classroom, or at least have it “balanced” by alternatives (2). Each time, pro-evolution advocates have been able to thwart these efforts. The most recent iteration of this dance centered on “intelligent design,” the proposition that the sheer complexity of life necessitates design by an intelligent being. Once again, the evolutionists prevailed, achieving a resounding victory in Pennsylvania district court in 2005 (2).

Unable to inject intelligent design into science classrooms, fundamentalists redoubled their efforts to discredit evolution, pushing the mantra known as “teach the controversy” (i.e., create the illusion of academic controversy and then argue that it must be taught in schools). Advocates with a clear creationist platform attempted to have stickers placed inside biology textbooks prompting students to regard evolution as “just” as theory. Once again, a district court decision—this one in Atlanta in 2005—determined that the stickers violated First Amendment separation of church and state (since evolution alone was the target).

Undaunted, anti-evolution fundamentalists have now decided that the recent public angst over global warming can be put to good use. By creating (fictitious) debates among biologists and climate scientists over the veracity of evolution and global warming, respectively, it might be possible to foment doubts in the general public and legislate for more “critical thinking” in schools. Astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University argues that this strategy may involve even grander aims, “casting doubt on the veracity of science—to say that it is just one view of the world, just another story, no better or more valid than fundamentalism” (1). Legislative bills questioning the science of the Big Bang, evolution, global warming, and/or human cloning have now been introduced in several states, including Kentucky (still pending) and Oklahoma (not enacted).

The concern among many scientists and educators is that a few state-level victories linking doubts about global warming and evolution could have a cascading influence on school curricula around the country. Even if the legislative efforts are not successful, the appearance that the science is in question could induce text book writers and teachers to downplay or even avoid these key topics, as it has in the past.

Evolution and global warming have two other things in common. Both are founded on in-depth research supported by the vast majority of specialist researchers (within evolutionary biology and climate science, respectively), and both are accepted by less than half of the American public. It’s ironic that a society so utterly dependent on—indeed in love with—technology should question the veracity of big ideas embraced by the same scientific community that generates that technology. The profound disconnect between scientific and public consensus is a critical matter, and bridging this gap deserves our utmost attention.

Why should we be concerned about the presence or absence of evolution and global warming in the science classroom? Because literacy in both areas may well be key to sustainability, and thus to the persistence of civilization.

Rising global temperatures represent one of the greatest threats we now face. If greenhouse gas emissions continue apace, all major indicators suggest that the resulting increase in sea levels, desertification, habitat losses, and species extinctions will result in untold human suffering (not to mention its impact on nonhuman lifeforms). Whether or not you fully accept that global warming is happening or that humans are the primary cause (there is overwhelming evidence for both), doesn’t it make sense to heed the warnings of the world’s top climate scientists and cut greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2020? The alternative path is simply too frightening to consider. And if you agree in principle with such a precautionary approach, then it should make equal sense that we promote climate literacy in schools, thereby equipping the next generation with the necessary knowledge to address this global, long term issue.

As for evolution, this idea resides at the core of all the life sciences, including such areas as agriculture and medicine on which we all depend. Biology without evolution is like physics without gravity, something to consider next time you board a plane. Today, most of us in Western societies live without any meaningful sense of place or deep time, a disastrous situation for a culture seeking to become sustainable. Expanded to encompass the Great Story of cosmos, life, and culture, evolution supplies an amazing and profound narrative with the potential to embed us back into nature and imbue our lives with deep meaning. Evolution can help reinsert our minds back into the flows of energy and matter that our bodies have never left. But this will happen only if the epic of evolution is taught in schools, where it is all but absent at present.

One of the things that most concerns me is the persistent mindset that entrenches science and religion as opposing forces. The ongoing, often venomous battles involve fundamentalists on both sides who seem to think that annihilation of their opponents ideologies must be the goal. Yet the sustainability clock is ticking ever louder, and I find it difficult to envision a solution arriving in time without bridging the science-religion divide and engaging both sides in conversation. Fortunately the vast majority of science and religion practitioners are not fundamentalists, and much room remains for productive discussions that can transcend this debate and identify mutually beneficial solutions.

Nevertheless, notwithstanding the need for compassion and compromise, science education should be based on scientific consensus, not on public opinion. Whereas the former is established through the hard-won process of peer review, the latter can be shaped and distorted by disinformation campaigns. With few exceptions, when big ideas change in science, we don’t throw out all the preceding insights; we build on them. Our understanding of evolution will undoubtedly grow by great leaps and bounds in the coming decades, but no grounds exist for suspecting that we will toss out Darwin’s key insights altogether. Similarly, there is virtually no doubt among leading atmospheric scientists that our climate is warming rapidly, or that we need to dramatically reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases if we are to stave off a calamitous future. So presenting the hard science of these ideas in school classrooms is critical to our future.

References
1. Kaufman, L. 2010. Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets. New York Times, March 3, 2010.
2.Scott, E. C. 2008. Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction, Second Edition. Greenwood, Santa Barbara.

Tomorrowland

A couple of weeks ago while in Orlando, Florida, my family and I paid a visit to Disney World. Not surprisingly, the nagging trepidations I felt leading up to the big day were far outweighed by the all-but-uncontrollable excitement brimming from our seven year-old daughter, Jade. As it happened, we spent much of our day in and around Tomorrowland. “How bad could it be?,” I thought as we walked past Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe. After all, I’m interested in the future.

Over the next couple of hours, our futuristic adventures included Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, where we were invited to blast aliens allied with the evil Emperor Zurg (sworn enemy of the Galactic Alliance). Then there was Stitch’s Great Escape, where we were trained to guard dangerous alien prisoners. Next my wife and I shared our first roller coaster experience, zooming through the darkness down Space Mountain. I was particularly intrigued to experience Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress, which blends nostalgia and futurism to show the story of a “typical” American family (read white and affluent here). Walt Disney was a futurist of sorts, and a big believer in the power of technology.

Munching on popcorn as we exited the park at dusk, I found myself reflecting on the futuristic vision of Tomorrowland—and becoming increasingly bothered. Now I realize that a kid-oriented theme park is not the first place one should seek out wise prognostications. Nevertheless, it seems likely that this wildly popular 21st Century cultural attraction conveys elements of the vision broadly held by Western societies.

In particular, I think that Tomorrowland embodies three implicit—and, to my mind, disturbing—assumptions. The first is that humans are divorced from nonhuman nature here on Earth. The only nonhuman lifeforms I saw in Disney World’s vision of the future were aliens and an ageing animatronic dog named Rover (in the Carousel). The unstated message is clear; whatever the future holds for us, it need not involve the plethora of nonhuman lifeforms currently living on the planet. I guess Earth-bound species are superfluous if we’re destined to explore the galaxy (“To infinity, and beyond!”).

The second assumption is that technology can fix anything. Got a problem? Just apply a little old fashioned human ingenuity and you’ll soon have a microwave oven, containment field, or handheld blaster that provides a solution. The third and closely related assumption is the inevitability of progress. With the ever-accelerating power of technology at our disposal, continual progress—defined mostly in terms of labor-saving devices and rocketships—is our destiny and the future looks ever brighter.

Now for the anticipated dose of reality. Contrary to the vision of Tomorrowland, we are inextricably embedded in nature and entirely dependent on its constant supply of air, water, and food. At least for the foreseeable future, we don’t have another planet, let alone a galaxy of planets, to turn to if we mess this one up. So this world must be our priority, and any vision of the future needs to feature a healthy, vibrant Earth. Technology simply is not going to bail us out of all our eco-predicaments—we also need to shift the way we think about the places we live and the other creatures that share these places with us. And finally, material progress cannot continue infinitely on a finite planet. We must rethink the notion of “progress” and redefine it in terms of human health and the health of the planet.

At this point, many of you are probably thinking, “Ok, fair enough, but Disney World? Come on. Shouldn’t Disney World just be a place of fun—a wonderworld escape from all the bad news we face daily?” In my opinion, the answer is yes and no. On the one hand, I’m certainly not advocating that Disney incorporate eco-disaster elements like global warming and mass extinction into their parks; fun should definitely be the theme. On the other, even theme parks should be conscious of the implicit messages they convey to both children and adults. The unhappy truth of the matter is that civilization and its supposedly bright future of techno-gadgets and space travel is currently in jeopardy. Arguably the greatest threat is dysfunctional human thinking, including prevalent notions like the human-nature divide, blind faith in technology, and the inevitability of progress.

Imagine for a moment if Tomorrowland became a big part of the solution instead of perpetuating the problem. On a larger scale, what might happen if Disney devoted a substantial portion of its mega-power to promoting a sustainable vision? Picture all those amazing, creative minds applying their energies to illustrate new, healthier ways of thinking. Mickey Mouse, Buzz Lightyear, and the Disney princesses could all be enlisted in the cause, helping kids reconnect with the nonhuman world and grow up to be stewards of the planet. Fantasy? Perhaps, but sustainability is going to require not only changes in parenting and education, but also in the bombardment of messages that our children receive daily and hourly through the media.

My strong hunch is that the media will not make the necessary changes voluntarily, at least as long as the mantra of materialism remains dominant. But a sufficiently large grassroots movement that set about to change the messages our children receive could not be ignored even by the largest corporations. The first steps in this process are building awareness of the problem and fostering discussion of potential solutions. For starters, think about the messages—explicit and implicit—that you expose yourself (and perhaps your children) to every day. How do these messages constrain the way we view the world and our interaction with it? Now think about changing your behavior so that you and your family receive healthier, more accurate messages that are consistent with our current moment in history.

Please understand. I do not mean to disparage all of Disney’s cultural contributions. As a family, we’ve enjoyed many Disney movies, and the Disney theme parks differ from most others in an important commodity—magic. It’s amazing to watch kids stand in awe when meeting Cinderella, or smile uncontrollably upon spotting Mickey Mouse. My wish is that this remarkable sense of magic be linked to the wonder of Earth’s natural bounty to help forge lasting connections between children and nature. Yes, I may be a naïve dreamer, but it’s a dream worthy of our energies.

(Note: all images courtesy of wdwmemories.com)

Dead as a Dinosaur

Dinosaurs are frequently cited as the ultimate exemplars of failure. “Dead as a dinosaur” has become deeply embedded in our vernacular. Yet death for a species, and even for groups of species, is as inevitable as your death. Somewhere around 99% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. The 10-50 million species that comprise the modern day biosphere (the uncertainty due mostly to our lack of understanding of microbial diversity) are but the latest players in a four-billion year drama—“The Greatest Show on Earth,” to borrow the title of Richard Dawkins most recent book.

Similarly, the event that decimated the dinosaurs about 65.5 million years ago killed off only those forms like Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops horridus alive at the end of the Cretaceous Period (with the exception of some birds, which managed to survive this biologic bottleneck). Dinosaurs had existed for 160 million years prior to that doomsday event, birthing a bewildering array of forms that succumbed to the scythe of extinction long before a giant asteroid slammed into the Gulf of Mexico. By comparison, we humans have been around a mere 200,000 years or so, and our small clan of bipedal primate cousins originated about 6 million years ago. In other words, dinosaurs are a great success story rather than a bunch of prehistoric washouts.

The notion of dinosaurs as failures underscores a pair of conditions that threaten the persistence of humanity: myopia and hubris. Lacking a meaningful sense of deep time, we tend to lump all pre-human life-forms into a single box labeled “extinct.” Virtually blinded by our severe temporal myopia, we ignore the multi-billion-year skein of lifeforms, the dramatic comings and goings of organisms through the geologic ages. Meanwhile, our hubris derives from a worldview that transforms other life forms to objects, and places humans not only outside but superior to (nonhuman) nature. While I confess to a certain personal bias on the matter, it’s simply ridiculous to thumb our noses at dinosaurs and laugh derisively at their present day absence. We might as well speak contemptuously of our great grandparents; after all, they’re no longer with us.

Ecology and evolution are deeply intertwined. Just as the death and decay of organisms provide raw materials for subsequent generations, so too the deaths of species spawn new possibilities for future generations of species. Without extinction, there would be insufficient ecological space for evolution to explore alternative solutions and diversify into new life forms. When initially faced with some change to their native environments, species don’t grimly stay put and evolve into new forms better suited to the transformed conditions. They move, tracking the old habitat. In general, it’s only when the old habitat disappears that species are forced to adapt or die. Mass extinctions—the dying off of multiple, distantly-related lineages over vast areas in a short span of time—occur when external forces alter or wipe out a range of environmental settings, cutting off opportunities for tracking habitats.

Over the past half billion (500 million) years, there have been five major mass extinctions, with the dinosaurs wiped out in the most recent of these. We now face the sixth mass extinction, which threatens to tear apart the fabric of the biosphere and wreak drastic consequences for most life on this planet, including us. In better times, species losses tick along at a barely discernable rate—perhaps one every five years. At present, somewhere between 50 and 150 species disappear every day, never to be seen again. (Once again, uncertainty in the actual value comes mostly from a lack of basic knowledge about how many species exist.)

This time around, a single species—Homo sapiens—has become the external force driving the decimation of millions of other species. Yes, we are the asteroid now colliding with the planet. The list of anthropogenic factors is all too familiar, among them habitat destruction, overhunting, toxic pollution, and climate change. In particular, the duo of global warming and environmental destruction has eradicated habitats at a pace far exceeding the abilities of many species to track or evolve. At the current rate of extinction, about half of all species alive today will be extinguished by the close of the 21st Century, an eco-evolutionary experiment not run since the end of the Cretaceous. Paleontology teaches us that the biosphere takes up to 10 million years to recover from a major mass extinction. So the decisions we make today will have cascading consequences well into the unimaginable future.

Are we (currently) capable of wiping out life on Earth? No. Although this claim is commonly made, life has persisted without hiatus for almost four billion years, and it will be here long after the last human. Life forms at the small to microscopic end of the size spectrum are the most resilient, some of them hunkered down miles below the Earth’s surface. Humanity, on the other hand, is nowhere near immune from the profound changes now taking place. Like it or not, we are inextricably embedded into nonhuman nature and dependent on its flows of energy, food, and water for our very survival, as well as for our physical, mental, and emotional health. So we have every reason to raise our awareness of these issues and act accordingly.

Nevertheless, notwithstanding many years of dire warnings from biologists, the sixth extinction has barely touched the collective consciousness of Western cultures. Global warming currently garners the media spotlight, yet recent polls show a significant drop in the numbers of people concerned about this issue. Despite the bounty of rhetoric, we’re not behaving as if we live on a planet in peril. Consider the recent climate change summit in Copenhagen, where world leaders had a unique opportunity to make history, but failed to reach a meaningful agreement. At this pivotal moment in history, we lack the strength of public opinion necessary to spearhead a WW II-style mobilization to achieve sustainability. Why?

In large part because we’re crippled by an outdated worldview. As a species, we need new glasses capable of curing our temporal myopia and inserting us back into the evolutionary epic--the Great Story. We need a mindset that moves beyond our human-centered hubris and inserts us back into the natural world. Learning the scientific truth of the matter is part of the solution, but connecting with the nonhuman world through direct experience is equally important. Those of us raised in urban settings may find it tough to establish meaningful connections of this sort, but we can make key steps in the right direction. We can also encourage our children move beyond our limited perspective—to see the world in new, healthier ways that are truer to our nature and critical for a sustainable future.

"But hold on a minute Sampson," I can hear you saying. "If all species eventually go extinct anyway, why should I lose sleep over the current hemorrhaging of life forms?" The answer to this question comes down to ethics, morals, and values. Do we have the right to kill off other species? Do we have the right to rob future human generations of the opportunity to see a whale, a tiger, or an elephant in the wild? More to the point for most of us, is it reasonable that we knowingly bring about the downfall of civilization while alternative paths lie before us, untaken? Your call.

(Image credit: Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops, by Michael Skrepnick)

The Meaning of Feathered Dinosaurs

The past few weeks have witnessed a spate of remarkable announcements about feathered dinosaurs. First came the story of University of Kansas scientists reconstructing feathers on the four-winged Microraptor to test the gliding abilities of this little dinosaur (1); the authors concluded that Microraptor was fully arboreal, spending it’s lifetime largely in trees, and that avian flight likely evolved from the trees down rather than from the ground up. Next came stunning back-to-back news from two different teams that reconstructed color in the feathers of dinosaurs, giving us our first glimpses of dinosaur coloration (2, 3). Most recently, a study by David Hone and colleagues (4) clearly demonstrates that the feathers of Microraptor attached directly to the bone, as in birds living today, and that the feathers are preserved in life position, rather than being displaced after death, as some have argued.

Together, these announcements got me thinking about the larger meaning of feathered dinosaurs. Beyond the amazing (and seemingly unending) succession of discoveries, most based on exceptionally preserved fossils coming out of China, what larger lessons might we take away from these so-called “dino-birds”? Below I describe my top three. Other paleontologists would undoubtedly come up with different lists, and the items noted here would apply equally well to many non-dinosaurian phenomena. Yet I think that the burgeoning science of feathered dinosaurs admirably underscores each of these points.

1) Never say never.
Scientists like to talk about the limits of science—that is, the limits what’s knowable through scientific investigation. In doing so, we’re prone to make claims like, “Blah-blah-blah [insert topic here] will never be known with any degree of confidence.” Then along comes some bright, skeptical (typically young) investigator who finds a way to probe the supposedly intractable question from a new angle, making those earlier claims seem foolish. This is exactly what happened with dinosaur colors. Limited largely to fragmentary piles of bones and teeth, many paleontologists have lamented that we will never know the colors of dinosaurs. Then it was discovered that fossilized feathers preserved with some Chinese theropod dinosaurs preserve a color-bearing melanin pigment called melanosomes, and that these color-specific cues can be used to reconstruct feather coloration.

Anchiornis is the smallest known dinosaur, about 13 inches long and 100 grams (~4 oz), somewhere between the size of a robin and crow. It was also the animal for which Quanguo Li and colleagues(3) reconstructed coloration over the entire animal. The authors state that “[T]he body was gray and dark and the face had rufous speckles. The crown was rufous, and the long limb feathers were white with distal black spangles.” This claim is astonishing. Just five years ago, few would have imagined that we would ever have the hard data to make such a statement about any dinosaur. And keep in mind that Anchiornis lived more than 150 million years ago!

When it comes to paleontology, many of these surprising insights are possible only because of the application of new technologies. The discovery of dinosaur color depended on the ability of researchers to explore the shape and density of melanosomses in the microstructure of feathers. Similarly, Dave Hone and his colleagues(4) had to examine Microraptor fossils under ultraviolet light to see the detailed interface between bones and feathers.

The lesson here? Feathered dinosaurs teach us to never say never. Questions that appear impenetrable at the moment may well become answerable in the future with the advent of new technologies and new ways of thinking. At the moment, we have no way to determine the skin colors of non-feathered dinosaurs like T. rex or Triceratops. But don’t bet on this staying unknown. History tells us different.

2) Ignorance exceeds knowledge.
There is a major bias among nonscientists that we’ve pretty much figured out all the big stuff about nature. All we’re doing now, people seem to think, is making minor adjustments to our understanding—adding a few more grains of sand to the mountain of knowledge. This myth is perpetuated by school textbooks, which tend to give the implicit impression that the topic under consideration (e.g., biology, chemistry, physics, etc.) can be summarized as an accumulation of facts.

Feathered dinosaurs teach us differently. When I was a kid, dinosaurs were depicted as sluggish, dim-witted, swamp-dwelling, drab-colored behemoths sharing far more in common with Godzilla than with chickens. Thanks largely to the discovery of bird-like dinosaurs, sometimes called “raptors,” this view has been tossed on its head. Almost overnight it seemed, dinosaurs emerged from the swamps as complex, fast-moving, brightly colored creatures with a range of complex behaviors previously unimagined—for example, nest brooding, herding, and burrowing. Feathered dinosaurs showed us that not all of these ancient reptiles were giant; indeed some were no larger than mid-sized birds. To my knowledge, no one in the 1960s pictured little four-winged dinosaurs living in trees.

Science has only scratched the surface of what might be known. To use dinosaurs as an example, more “new” varieties of dinosaurs have been named in the past 25 years than in all prior history, with no signs that the well of discovery is running dry. Similar kinds of statements might be made for virtually all areas of science. Even in disciplines such as physics with a much longer track record than paleontology, ground-breaking, innovative work remains to be done. Science has tended to create artificially walled “silos” around each discipline, walls that today are being torn down. As a result, some of the most exciting work done today occurs at the interfaces of once separate disciplines, often with appropriately hybrid names like “geobiochemistry.” I am excited about 21st Century paleontology, which is becoming increasingly integrated, synthesizing the traditional study of fossils with knowledge and tools from such disparate fields as geochemistry, histology, molecular biology, and paleoclimatology. There’s no question—countless exciting discoveries await talented, hard-working folks with access to as yet unimagined tools. Expect the unexpected.

3) Evolution happens.
Despite the fact that we just celebrated the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s famous treatise on biological evolution, and even though virtually all practicing biologists regard evolution as the abundantly documented centerpiece of their field, only about one half of Americans accept the veracity of this idea. Anti-evolutionists frequently make the claim that we paleontologists have no evidence of intermediate forms in the fossil record. Feathered dinosaurs tell a different story.

When I was a kid, life was a lot simpler. Even kids knew that reptiles (including dinosaurs) had scales and birds had feathers. This naïve categorization has been roundly defeated by not one or two but well over a dozen kinds of dinosaurs with feathers or feather-like structures (but see note below). Indeed the line between dinosaur and bird has blurred to the point that paleontologists frequently describe a new Mesozoic beast as a bird only to have others show that it’s a dinosaur, or vice versa.

Back in the old days (i.e., when I was a kid), biologists often spoke of missing links. In one sense, feathered dinosaurs are exemplary missing links. In another sense, these “dino-birds” underscore the double inaccuracy of the term; missing links are neither missing nor links. Most trivially, intermediate fossil forms are not missing because we’ve found them. More profoundly, they are not links, because evolution rarely follows a simple, ladder progression, with one form evolving into another and so on. Instead, evolution typically branches like a bush, generating not one but numerous lineages that spawn variable numbers of descendents and persist for differing amounts of time. Feathered dinosaurs are an ideal example of this kind of arborescent evolution. Microraptor and Anchiornis are not directly ancestral to modern day birds, but their lineages branched off the dinosaur family tree around the same time as birds did. That’s why they share so many features with living avians, including true feathers.

Dinosaurs aren’t extinct. They fly around above our heads today, charm us with their songs, and adorn our dinner tables. In that sense, all birds are feathered dinosaurs. And they’re not the only well documented example of transitional fossil forms. We have similarly robust evidence for the origin of amphibians, whales, and many other groups—including hominids. Evolutionary biologists need to do an even better job of taking their message public. Evolution happens.

References
1) Alexander, D. E., E. Gong, L. D. Martin, D. A. Burham, and A. R. Falk. 2010. Model tests of gliding with different hindwing configurations in the four-winged dromaeosaurid Microraptor gui. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0911852107.
2) Zhang, F., S. L. Kearns, P. J. Orr, M. J. Benton, Zhou, Z., D. Johnson, Xu. X & Xiaolin W.. 2010. Fossilized melanosomes and the colour of Cretaceous dinosaurs and birds. Nature, doi:10.1038/nature08740.
3) Li, Q., Gao, K.-Q., Vinther, J., Shawkey, M.D., Clarke, J.A., D'Alba, L., Meng, Q., Briggs, D.E.G. and Prum, R.O. "Plumage color patterns of an extinct dinosaur." Science,. doi:10.1126/science.1186290.
4) Hone, D. W. E., H. Tischlinger, Xu X., Zhang, F. 2010. The Extent of the Preserved Feathers on the Four-Winged Dinosaur Microraptor gui under Ultraviolet Light. PLoS ONE, 5(2): e9223. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009223.

(Note: One of the hallmarks of science is that every claim always remains open to questioning. Although the vast majority of vertebrate paleontologists now agree that birds are descended from small-bodied feathered dinosaurs, it is worth noting that a small contingent of naysayers remains. Among them is John Ruben of Oregon State University, who has a brand new paper out making this claim. I have not yet read this publication, but think that it is appropriate to mention it here: Ruben, J. 2010. Paleobiology and the Origins of Avian Flight. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi:10.1073/pnas.0915099107.)