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Jurassic Plants Make A Comeback
Makarand writes "BBC News is reporting that
saplings of the Wollemi Pine will go on sale
by the end of 2005. This is the only plant survivor from the Jurassic age. After it was discovered in 1994 in a single
Australian grove, the tree's home has been kept a top secret. Research to find the best way to grow the plants on a
commercial scale has now paid off and the pines are set for a return. As they grow slowly and like low-light conditions they will be marketed as indoor plants." This looks like an interesting addition to any home, even if the article's title is a bit of a misnomer.
Eh? Surely ALL plants we see around us today are survivors from the Jurassic age. Sure, they are descendants, but so is the Wollemi Pine.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
How do we know this is the only plant species to survive? What are the criteria? DNA mutates all the time, so how is this plant different?
.: Max Romantschuk
Is there anything else special about this plant other than its been around since the jurassic period? I can see these saplings going for a huge sum so for that I'll like to know why I or anyone would want to fork out big $$ for it.
Everything mutates, but the fittest survives. If the fittest is already well adapted then any mutation must be radical to offer an improvment - or conditions need to change so that the plant/creature is no longer competitive in its ecological niche.
However it isn't necessarily unique. We have also seen the same over shorter periods of time for animals. Think of the coelacanth, for example.
See my journal, I write things there
Specifically it must have beenL. olivacea which I guess means olive colored, since as in the photo it had no markings, it just looked like a beautiful hunk of chalky, greenish colored velvety living stone. Can't believe I found it. Some really bizarre, ugly, and beautiful pics on this page. Also more interesting photos here>/a> and here.
I also am thinking of throwing out the pencil plant (Euphorbia tirucalli) stem which will certainly take root by itself, but apparently causes cancer! I wouldn't want a cat to eat it.
Nearly all the plants we see around us today are species which were not around during the Jurassic age.
;-)
Remember Biologists (by virue or vice of studying this stuff) have very different ideas about what a descendant is.
This is the same species which implies that it could (if we ever figure out that pesky time travel machine) cross breed with the plants growing in the Jurassic age. Modern plants (also descendants, but certainly not of the same species) would not be expected to have this ability.
Or you could look at it like this:
These are the real McCoy, but the modern plants are just cheap knock-offs (and probably Japanese imports to boot too!)
How about my favorite living fossil plant, the genus Equisetum, the horsetail ferns? Also known as scouring rushes, they incorporate silica in their stems and make them feel like sandpaper. This is the only surviving genus of the only surviving family (Equisetaceae) of the only surviving order (Equisetales) of a class (Sphenopsida) that emerged during the Devonian Period, around 375 million years ago, some 200 million years before the Jurassic Period (~175 mya).
So, surrounded by the first land vertebrates, early wingless insects and some animals which would eventually evolve into the arachnids, the Equisetum grew and thrived for 30 million years, and watched the gymnosperms arrive. Another 130 million or so, and Equisetum watched the rise of the dinosaurs. Another 50 million and Equisetum watched the angiosperms (flowering plants) arrive and take over dominance of the plant world, and watched as the ecological shift started to kill off the dinosaurs. 30 million years later, Equisetum watched as the asteroid finished off the dinos and the twitchy little mammals found greatness thrust upon them. Over the next 140 million years, Equisetum watched as the mammals grew tall and short, big and small, flew and crawled and ran and swam.
Recently, Equisetum watched as one bunch of upstart, big-headed mammals learned to control fire, plants, other mammals, and go on to create ceramics, double entry accounting, antibiotics, TiVo and Mr. Coffee. If we think of Equisetum's long residency on Earth as a single year, starting on January 1, then humans showed up around 11:00pm on December 31.
Turn off the computer and go take a walk in the woods, folks. It's an amazing world we live in.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Today, the tree's home is a closely guarded secret. No roads lead to the area. Even scientists studying them are blindfolded as they are flown by helicopter to the site.
... anyone ?
GPS
Yep, hemocyanin is blue.
If Spock's blood is really green, it's either a different copper-based molecule or perhaps chlorocruorin (iron-based, found in some worms), or possibly something vanadium-based. (Among others, sea squirts have vanadium-based blood. Colors are green, blue or orange, depending on the specific molecule.)
Speaking of Star Trek, since Klingons have violet blood (based on one of the movies), it's probably based on hemerythrin (also iron-based and found in some invertebrates here).
-- Alastair
I'm not trying to suggest anyone is directing evolution - my point is that environmental selection pressures (mostly in the developed world) really don't exhibit much strength anymore. Furthermore, sexual selection in humans does not follow stereotypical examples found in most other mammals - yes woman/men select partners based on criteria - but each person's criteria is infinitely different than anothers (not just the colour of the throat or size of the shoulders).
This, I contend, is because we choose partners for more than just transfer of genes to the next generation. Think how many countless couples choose not to have any offspring - this trait is not weeded out of the population for a variety of socio-economic reasons. But that just underscores my point - socio-economic selection pressures don't exist in "nature"!
Going back to my original post, my point was that to some extent, we no longer evolve based on selection pressure a causing trait b to be inherited more often.
because there would still be a differential death rate due to environmental factors
In the developed world (where I contend that natural selection pressures are altered), I think you'd be hard pressed to say that the majority of the population experiences selection from the natural environment (most people don't worry about dying for lack of food or shelter).
"Nokia is not a country, it's the capital of Finland!" -Moderated "Informative". Yeesh.
which historically has been unsuccessfully attempted with atrocious measures like genocide.
Unsuccessful? Seen any Roma lately? No, because they're all dead. A successful genocide. (There may be a few left, but the traits of the average human genome have been altered by effectively wiping out a distinct ethnic group)
This isn't universally apparent now, but the "judenhas" genocide was also quite successful. By eliminating 60% of the Jewish population, and driving the rest into a clustered enclave where reproductive pressures will see them overwhelmed and dissipated within 50 years.
But that's beside the point...the discussion was about the notion that humans currently do not undergo natural selection, which is absurd. We most certainly do.
Here's another way of looking at the claim that "humans aren't evolving". On the North American continent, visit Montana or somewhere north of there, and look at a glacier. Is it moving? By any concievable practical definition, it is immobile and stationary. Yet it's velocity is the same as when it traveled 200 km down from the mountains a millenia ago.
In the same way, we can say that natural selection in humans (and all other major lifeforms) is stopped, since it's progress is far to slow for us to ever observe a change again.