Play Ball!
There's no particular reason for me to be posting this one. The title caught my eye, then the electron micrograph sparked my imagination. Thus do I share it here.Enjoy
Missing Link Found in Ancient Embryos
By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 23 January 2007
12:10 am ETThe discovery of spherical fossils that resemble tiny baseballs could reveal how the earliest known egg-laying organism developed from embryo to adulthood.
In 1998, researchers discovered thousands of 600-million-year-old fossilized embryos in the Doushantuo Formation, a fossil deposit in South China. Two years later, the same team unearthed fossils of a tubular coral-like animal, called Megasphaera ornata, which appeared to be grown-up versions of the embryos discovered earlier.
The case for a relationship between the two fossil types now has been strengthened by the recent discovery of about 80 intermediate-stage fossils that have traits in common with both groups.
The finding, to be detailed in the February issue of the journal Geology, could provide the missing link between egg and adult versions of one of Earth’s earliest animals.
Along those same lines, I was reading about the meteors found in Canada that have been dated to be older than the Sun. Must have come from the pre-big bang, bang.
ReplyDeleteThis was soooo cool. I rarely stop in the middle of the day to read an article like this. I sent it along to all my nerdy pals, including my 12 y.o. boobooson, his dad, and a few others.
ReplyDeleteThanks fer sharin'.
Pre our wee big bang anyhow, Mary. Sol be still a baby, eh. Well, young adult. Give 'im a few billion years more and he'll blow up into a nice old Red Dwarf.
ReplyDeleteAnd chunks of the Earth will end up in somebody else's Canada, eh.
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My nerdiness is so glad to oblige, MM.
I can't decide which seems stranger though, the soccer or the baseball...