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#i want to see creatures that existed but never left any fossil records
8bitida · 2 years
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Oh how I desperately want to time travel not to change the past, but to just see the dinosaurs and watch the earth change and evolve over billions of years
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teratonomy · 4 years
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Why are aptonoth and apceros classified as parasaurolophus and ankylosaurus even though they don’t really resemble their inspiration all that much?
Before I answer, I’m gonna preface this by saying that I’m way more familiar with saurischians than I am with ornithischians. That statement also comes with the massive qualifier that I have to use morphology-based taxonomy to classify everything, which, as any scientist worth their salt will tell you, is really bad. Thankfully, though, we can make it work.
Let’s start with the aptonoth. Instead of using a render or screenshot from the latest game, I want to show you something else.
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Left to right: Concept art for the felyne, ioprey, aptonoth, anteka, mosswine, and popo from Monster Hunter Illustrations (モンスターハンターイラストレーションズ, カプコンオフィシャルブックス) | Source: Monster Hunter Wiki contributor user:BurnZ.
Cool, right? I’ve always been a sucker for behind-the-scenes content, and this concept art scratches that itch pretty nicely. But the reason why I dredged this from the bottom of the muck is because it gives us a pretty unobstructed look at the aptonoth’s design, and more specifically, what the developers intended for that design.
A common debate among paleontologists is whether or not species in the genera Parasaurolophus and Charonosaurus had skin frills. This hypothetical structure would have extended between the top of the crest to an anchorage point on either the neck or the top of the back. It’s speculated that the crest might have been used for intraspecific communication, as both a sexual selection tool and a way for members of a group to ID individuals. There are plenty of paleoartists that choose to either include or omit the skin frill when trying to envision what these creatures looked like.
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(1) Top: Paleoartist’s interpretation of Parasaurolophus and Charonosaurus without frills. | Source: Gabriel Ugueto. (2) Middle: Paleoartist’s interpretation of Charonosaurus with a frill. | Source: Wikipedia contributor user:Debivort. (3) Bottom: Paleoartist’s interpretation of Parasaurolophus with a more prominent, exaggerated frill. | Source: Stock image by Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Look familiar?
You could argue that the aptonoth’s body structure looking similar to a hadrosaur’s is just a coincidence/artistic choice/whatever, but I think that Capcom’s choice to include that hypothetical crest feature early on is a very deliberate way of acknowledging the frill debate in the paleo community.
As for the apceros? Well, let’s take a quick look at its MHW render.
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In-game render for the apceros from Monster Hunter: World. | Source: Monster Hunter Wiki contributor user:Kogath.
Right off the bat, we’re limited in what we can ascertain about the apceros because we can’t directly view its skeleton. This means we can’t see features such as the scale-like pattern on the skull surface (the caputegulae), or the amphicoelous centra on the caudal vertebrae. We can, however, extrapolate a few things based on what we can see.
Some of the ankylosaur traits that apceros does have are the sideways-facing nostrils, disproportionately long hindlimbs (compared to forelimbs), three toes on the hindlimbs, a singular cranial horn (unlike Ankylosaurus’ two cranial horns), a beaked jaw, and a club-shaped tail (we’ll get to the spikes in a second).
There are, however, a few traits that apceros is missing: a second cranial horn (that’s backwards-facing as opposed to downward-facing), phylliform (leaf-shaped) teeth, and osteoderms arranged in lines (as opposed to the shell-like configuration).
So if apceros is missing these traits, why would I classify it in the genus Ankylosaurus, instead of putting it in a new genus?
To be honest, the thought had occurred to me at the time. Back when I started this project in—holy shit, 2015, that was five years ago—I wasn’t as informed on the topic as I am now. Being a college student at the time, I think my approach was more along the lines of, “I have midterms, I don’t have the time to create an entirely new fictional genus just for a hobby that’ll never see the light of day. Fuck it, I’m just gonna throw it in the same genus as the type species.” I had something of a well if it ain’t broke mentality back then (along with other priorities).
To give past-me some credit, I think that motto actually paid off in this case. A lot of the contentious traits that call apceros’ placement into question can actually be explained if you consider those traits modifications or loss of the ancestral condition. Take cetaceans for example: despite being classified as mammals (which are characterized by hair), whales, dolphins, and porpoises have virtually none. And yet we still classify them as mammals because this trait was found earlier in their lineage. You could probably get away with applying that reasoning to the apceros:
The teeth: Loss of dentition isn’t unheard of. Modern birds no longer have them despite being present in their ancestors (along with all of their close relatives, the non-avian dinosaurs). You could argue that apceros lost its dentition for whatever reason, and instead developed ridged/serrated tomia on their beak for handling vegetation (not unlike those seen in geese).
The armor: If apceros’ armor was once more similar to Ankylosaurus’, then perhaps the osteoderms became highly fused. Armadillosuchus arrudai is a good example of an organism that developed a similar shell-like structure for defense against predators. In a case of convergent evolution, perhaps apceros rapidly gained a similar cervical shell.
The tail: Clubbing predators is all well and good, but as stegosaurians have repeatedly proved throughout the fossil record, thagomizers are the way to go. If you look at the apceros’ tail, you can see osteoderms more akin to traditional bony deposits unlike the fused ones on its back. I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to postulate that these osteoderms gave rise to dermal spikes. I’m not sure what selection pressures would specifically lead to the acquisition of a thagomizer, but if the existence of thirteen stegosaurian genera that persisted over 44 million years is anything to go by, it must’ve been relevant.
TL;DR: The apceros (Ankylosaurus therianopla) probably belongs in the same genus as the type species A. magniventris because it shares the majority of its characteristics. Any characteristics that are missing could be attributed to a rapid loss of, or change to, any of the aforementioned features. If someone who’s much more educated on ornithischian evolution came along and offered compelling evidence for why apceros should be in its own genus (or hell, its own family), I wouldn’t have any qualms with reclassifying it. As it is, I’m fine with apceros’ current placement.
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awed-frog · 6 years
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About your griffin post, about it being Protoceratops... It's not true. Mark Witton did an in-depth discussion about it.
Yes, about that - as I said in the notes, I’m grateful to the person who posted the link because I’d never heard of any of that, and the more diverse perspectives on stuff, the better. That said, a few things about his rebuttal (and yours):
1. When it comes to religion, mythology and folklore studies, there’s no such thing as ‘true’ and ‘not true’. You can categorize theories with other words, such as ‘likely’, ‘probable’, ‘possible’ and ‘utter troll dung’, but those are not exact sciences, so while it’s possible to follow a rigorous and scientific approach, it’s difficult (or even impossible) to prove anything in a definite way.
2. Adrienne Mayor’s book had an interdisciplinary approach. Mark Witton’s article did not. Now, this is more to Mayor’s credit than to Witton’s demerit, because you’re not going to contact fifteen colleagues for a blog post, but it’s worth noting that the lack of interdisciplinary research is a huge problem in academia, and it’s especially noticeable in ancient history (or maybe I notice it more because it’s my field, I don’t know). Since people tend to be either word-minded or numbers-minded, what you get is a series of extremely well-prepared specialists looking at stuff - while being completely ignorant of 98% of the world they’re examining. An ancient Greek scholar, for instance, will know a lot about linguistic shifts but squat about bread making, and that’s a bad way to understand a whole culture. Mayor, who’s more on the word side of the equation, made an effort to consult with science-oriented colleagues; Witton didn’t do that (although, as I said, that’s perfectly normal for the writing format he was using) and it shows.
3. About his first argument, ie that griffins are found in Near Eastern art: who cares? What you need to do here is not look at how you see the world, but at how a Greek person would see the world. Near Eastern griffins are not relevant - not because they don’t exist (they do) or because they’re not objectively fascinating (they are). They’re not relevant because they’re not mentioned in this context by Greek texts. None of the authors Mayor discusses made a connection between the Central Asia griffins and the Persian griffins. Maybe they didn’t know about the other ones, maybe they saw them as different animals - I honestly don’t know. But if they didn’t draw a connection between the two thing, then neither should we. I know mythology books tend to have categories on ‘monsters’ and offer enthralling images of ‘sirens’, ‘giants’ and ‘demons’ from around the world, but the fact is, how a specific culture understands that monster is likely to differ a lot from what their neighbours think of them. Sphinxes are a good example. There’s the Egyptian sphinx and the Greek sphinx - those are never discussed in the same papers because, despite the fact they do have superficial similarities, they’re very different creatures in what concerns their role in their respective societies’ religious and conceptual landscapes.
4. About his second argument, ie that protoceratops bones are not as widespread as she suggests, and one wouldn’t trip on skulls every two seconds - again, so what? As long as those fossils can be placed in that area at the right time, I’m good. This is not a scientific experiment the Scythians are carrying out: one skull is enough to suggest a story behind it, one trader sharing that story in his travels is enough to make it grow, and one bartender telling Herodotus about it is enough to validate it. The Amazons are a very good example of how that works. The idea of a tribe of women warriors had fascinated the Greek for centuries (they’re mentioned in the Iliad) before Herodotus wrote about them confirming they were real people doing real stuff. Western scholars have been scoffing at him ever since - and they kept scoffing until Soviet archaeologists started finding graves of women who’d been buried with weapons. Now - did archaeologists ever find a cemetery that was 100% badass female warriors? No. Did they find a cemetery that was 50% female warriors? Also no. To the best of our current knowledge, some of those Siberian-based tribes had - occasionally - warrior queens, or high-status women who used weapons. They were not Amazons in the traditional sense of the word, but it’s not that hard to imagine what must have happened there: one foreign delegation headed by an armed queen would have been enough to make any Greek go wtf and ooooohh, because that would have been so exotic - Greek women didn’t use weapons (and neither did Persian women, or Egyptian women - cultures some Greeks would have been familiar with) - so the sight of that must have left quite a deep mark. And since that’s how humans work, one warrior queen can become ‘a whole race of man-hating badass women’ in two seconds flat. I mean, we know that’s how storytelling works, and what happens with dubious or spotty record keeping, but also - how many times has that happened to you? You meet one Korean guy, he’s the only Korean you know and he’s an asshole - before you know it, you start to assume that’s what all Koreans are like. It’s just how we’re wired, and I guess it was supposed to be about protecting us from poisonous plants (‘Sure, that other red berry almost killed my brother, but what about this one?’ - that would have seen us extinct in no time), but it’s also something we need to keep in check, because no - people are not ‘all the same’ just because they belong to the same ‘tribe’. 
5. Another argument he makes is that Central Asia to Greece is rather a long distance for Chinese whispers and legend swapping, and that’s so wrong I don’t even know what to say. This is exactly what I meant when I said people can be experts in their field (in Witton’s case, paleontology) while being pretty ignorant about others, because the ancient world was way more connected than what we imagine it to be. We know that even in prehistoric times, there were crowded trade routes moving from the Baltics to Greece, that people travelled hundreds of miles to go to some sanctuary on a Scottish island, and that yeah - ideas and legends did travel with goods, sometimes in a very lasting way. The traces of Buddhist doctrine, for instance, are all over Greek philosophy. This is a subject that’s only recently been explored because people like to believe Greek culture was born fully-formed without any foreign influences, but the studies on the exchanges between India and Greece - well before Alexander’s times - are fascinating. So no, I’m not disturbed in the slightest by the fact news about ‘griffin skulls’ seem to have travelled from the Gobi to Athens. That stuff happened, and as I mentioned above, all you need is one person - one guy who’s well-spoken enough, convincing enough, or convinced enough - one guy who doesn’t want Greek traders anywhere near his gold-stuffed mountains - talking to a second person. Today we’ve only got about 10% of Greek literature, but Greeks were an inquisitive bunch, and the country was littered with self-styled historians, geographers and anthropologists who spent their time either traveling around or paying drinks to whomever seemed foreign enough to be interesting. That method has limits, by the way - I myself once invented a fair bit of my town’s history because I was sixteen and bored and those tourists had seen me with my Latin textbook and asked me if I knew anything about Roman settlements in the area, so. I mean - half of a Greek historian’s paragraph start with ‘A man in Samos told me’ - God knows who they were even talking to. A local priest keen to increase tourism, the village idiot - anything’s possible.
6. Finally, something else that’s just uh is how Witton says, why single out griffins? What about other monsters? And, well, that’s the whole point of Mayor’s book. We know for sure ancient people found fossils; what we’re trying to figure out is what impact (if any) that had on their worldview. For instance, fossils did not suggest the idea of evolution, but they did mess with (or confirm) some of their religious beliefs. I’m hoping to summarize other chapters of Mayor’s book in more detail, but just a couple of examples: the Greeks, like many other ancient people, believed their ancestors to have been much taller and stronger than themselves -
(This, by the way, it’s another tantalizing way the outside world may - or may not - have influenced thought and belief: did the Greeks believe that because of the monumental architecture older cultures had left behind, or did those staggering things confirm an idea that had sprung from a different source? Like, humans tend to be pessimistic mofos, so it’s plenty possible you’d assume people are becoming smaller and weaker just because, and next the finding of a Daedalic temple just confirms that for you, because how the hell could anyone built that and Jesus Christ? Or maybe you find that temple first, and adjust your theology accordingly. We just don’t know. Hell - we’re struggling to explain contemporary religious phenomena - everything and anything from ISIS to spontaneous lynchings in India to cults - we have zero chance of fully understanding Greek religion in a way that allows us to say, ‘that’s right’ or ‘that’s wrong’.) 
- and they also believed in monstrous giants dying in riverbeds (many Greek rivers are named after giants). Both things are probably related to the giant-ass femurs which kept cropping up in fields and - well - riverbeds, so no - griffins are not the lone exception. We know of people finding stuff they assume to be giant bones, divine cattle, cyclops - if you can think of it, there’s probably a fossil for it.
Ultimately, I just want to say: Mayor does offer some rather sweeping statements, but, then again, her book is aimed at a general audience. Too many conditionals and no one’s buying it (or understanding it). On the other hand, she also never pretends to hold any Universal Truth over the subject she’s exploring, because that’s how (good) academia works: you expect (and encourage) rebuttals, corrections, discussions. That’s how we progress. 
Personally, what attracts me to these theories is that they’re part of a movement that’s arising - bloody finally - acknowledging man is not the centre of the known and unknown universe. 
Until very recently, we were told the physical world has zero influence on what we think and how we feel - because we’re a superior animal, that is, so that stuff doesn’t touch us in the same way it does other (lower) beasts. And while that is true to an extent - if there’s an inconvenient river, we move it - saying that the world around us has no impact on our souls, brains and way of life - that’s just laughably pretentious. We now know something as banal as the weather can completely transform our mood and our decision-making, even on the long term - that trees make us smarter, that urban landscapes are likely to give migraines - there are studies in experimental archaeology in how landscape influences thought (like, you bury someone in a fetal position because the ground is too hard, you make yourself feel better by imagining he’s like a baby in the mother’s womb and will one day be reborn), and a lot of new ideas about folklore and religion. This line of studies on fossils is one example of that; another is how geography impacts theology - I don’t remember who it was, but I know someone suggested the reason human sacrifice is more common in tropical cultures is because in a jungle, death will immediately (and very visibly) feed new life, whereas in colder climates the relation is not that apparent. And again, it may never be possible to prove right and wrong there. Even if we had a time machine, these things are tricky to understand. People think of faith and belief in different ways, approach their religion through their own filter, will pretend to go along with stuff for personal gain. Who knows. The only thing we can be sure of is that those fossils would have been understood differently by different people. To some, that would have been proof of mythical monsters. To others, a way to strengthen their flock’s faith and thus cement social cohesion. And to others still, it was probably just a way to make money - a temple displaying a ‘griffin skull’ would have led to people selling griffin statues and opening griffin-themed restaurants, same as you see today in places like Lourdes or Fatima. Humans are messy. History is messy. That’s what’s beautiful (and infuriating) about both.
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ezatluba · 2 years
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Say hello to handstanding spotted skunks, 'the acrobats of the skunk world'
By Ashley Strickland
September 1, 2021
There are more spotted skunks than previously believed, according to new research.Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter.
At first whiff, you might think all skunks are the same. Not so.
Meet spotted skunks, "the acrobats of the skunk world." Scientists have discovered that there are more of these species than they thought, according to new research.More recently, the agreed-upon number was four. But a new study published Wednesday in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution said there are seven spotted skunk species.
"North America is one of the most-studied continents in terms of mammals, and carnivores are one of the most-studied groups," said study author Adam Ferguson, Negaunee collections manager of mammals at the Field Museum in Chicago. "Everyone thinks we know everything about mammalian carnivore systematics, so being able to redraw the skunk family tree is very exciting."
Spotted skunks are the smaller relatives of the common striped skunk. About the size of a squirrel, these elusive carnivores live across North America. And when the time comes to scare off a predator, these little guys perform a handstand and kick out their back legs.
A spotted skunk is shown doing its signature handstand."When they're stressed, they bounce up onto their forelimbs and then kick out their hind limbs, puff their tail up, and they actually can walk towards the predator, like basically making them look bigger and scarier," Ferguson said.Enter your email to subscribe to the CNN Fareed Zakaria global analysis newsletter.
The skunks typically drop back down to all fours in order to take deadly aim and control their vile-smelling spray. Their small stature doesn't cause these creatures to back down from a fight, either.
A study released in 2013 included a video of a Western spotted skunk handstanding and facing off with a mountain lion over a deer carcass. For reference, spotted skunks typically weigh less than 2 pounds (0.9 kilogram).It's just another example of their boldness, something he admires about skunks in general, Ferguson said.While the common striped skunk has made its presence known in urban areas, as well as its natural habitats, striped skunks haven't made the same inroads and so largely remain out of sight. These "ecologically cryptic" creatures live in dense environments and remote areas and seem less adaptable to urbanization than their larger, striped counterparts, Ferguson said. Given their agility, spotted skunks are great climbers, and they are a lot more carnivorous than other skunks, feasting on bird eggs, lizards, snakes and rodents. Great horned owls are their main predator.The fact that spotted skunks are so good at keeping a low profile makes them harder to study. Since the discovery of the first spotted skunk in 1758, scientists have questioned just how many species exist. Over the years, the differences observed between some spotted skunks led researchers to believe there were as few as two species and as many as 14. Making the determination that there are seven species came down to analyzing genetic data from spotted skunks. But first, Ferguson needed specimens to study. Trapping skunks isn't the easiest job -- Ferguson and his colleagues made six trips to Mexico while researching spotted skunks and never caught one. And if you do trap one, you're bound to be sprayed. "We call it the smell of success because it means we've actually encountered one, which is the goal ultimate goal," Ferguson said.Ferguson was inspired to make "wanted" posters and distribute them across central Texas in feed stores and areas where ranchers and trappers operate. The posters described the need for any spotted skunks that may have been trapped or found as roadkill and showed photos of the creatures. The researchers offered to come pick up the skunk specimens and store them in a designated "skunk freezer."
A "wanted" poster asks for roadkill skunk specimens to be used in research.The researchers also relied on specimens in museum collections, which included spotted skunks found in Central America and the Yucatan. In the end, they had 203 spotted skunk specimens to use for the study and extract DNA. The genetic data revealed that some of the skunks, once considered to be the same species, were in fact very different. "I was able to extract DNA from century-old museum samples, and it was really exciting to see who those individuals were related to. It turns out that one of those was a currently unrecognized, endemic species in the Yucatan,'' said study author Molly McDonough, a biology professor at Chicago State University and research associate at the Field Museum, in a statement.
One of the new species from the study is the Yucatan spotted skunk, which is about the size of a squirrel and only found in the Yucatan Peninsula. The scientists also describe the Plains spotted skunk, whose population has been declining over the last century and has been suggested as an endangered species."The study wouldn't have been possible without the museum specimens we had," Ferguson said. "The only reason we were able to get sequences from the Yucatan were museum specimens that were collected 60 or 70 years ago."Understanding individual species of skunks can help scientists learn more about something unique to these creatures: their reproductive biology. Spotted skunks may breed in the fall, but they don't give birth until the spring. In other words, their reproductive system purposefully delays implanting the egg inside the uterus.
Adam Ferguson (far left) and guests are pictured in the Field Museum's collections with spotted skunk specimens."It just sits in suspension for a while," Ferguson said. "We want to know why some species have delayed implantation and others don't, and figuring out how these different species of skunks evolved can help us do that."
Skunks have come a long way since they first appeared in the fossil record 25 million years ago, evolving and splitting into different species by responding to the climate change caused by the ice age. Knowing more about spotted skunks can also help conservation efforts to protect these animals. Skunks have their own role to play within the ecosystem, consuming fruit and defecating seeds that help with the dispersal of plants, as well as preying on crop pests and rodents, Ferguson said.
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akira-seijuro · 4 years
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Hmm you see I turned 24. I am not narcissistic but I am when it comes to my birthday, I am the Empress of every existential entity on this one fucking day. You don’t get it? Fine, but I do.
Lets see, a small girl holding a peach colored teddy bear in a world filled with dinosaurs, mammoths and well, plants and water bodies. Beautiful world. But just one girl standing there, right there absorbing all that she can and believing that the world is just this, till the sight of the horizon with no one to communicate, the only human growing a spine. I do not actually mean those historic beings, it’s metaphoric for all character-set society with standard roles to observe which is rhetoric and non-adaptive at the same time because every one looked like they belong to different species of humans. She was the weird one trying to be one of those historic beings, the best of those for 13.5 years bearing all the torture of the dirty minds, passive minds and well, stupid minds trying to make believe that she was one of them, one of all those there. Nevertheless, she was beneficial to every single person she encountered in that ice age and the Mesozoic era before, she helped them by remembering the paths as to where they could find food, how they can play defensive and the offensive. She was the damn good empress of that small world democratically praised. But then once they didn’t need her, she was cast aside and sent into exile. Oh if you are wondering about her parents, she was brought up by two humans that belonged to the Mesozoic era. So she was self sufficient in food and all other she needed to survive to perform her duties as the little girl before and after the peach teddy bear tore apart by her cousins. So, as I was telling you, she was exiled by her fellow Mesozoic human species after they became self-sufficient, a common characteristic of many homo sapiens I would say.
Then she realized she either needs to adapt and become one of them, one that could tear up a person after he/she is no use or leave them. Well, given her character, common, she is the main character what else do you expect?  So, she left them. Lived alone for years, seeing the the destruction of ice age and Mesozoic era and  how the world turned it’s back on the creatures it once homed and nurtured because it was unable to accommodate them. It just put itself as first priority just like how the air hostess always said, put your own oxygen mask first then get to your child. It just followed the rules very strictly for once. While this transformation into a pure Cenozoic happened, there came fossil fuels that were made out of her so called friends, she learnt to be able to use the fossil fuels, not her friends, now to go to places and electricity and for the good, blah blah blah. See, the transition, it wasn’t smooth, it had taken the lives of many, well it also was making the lives of many Mesozoic humans inhabitable, so she saw all the struggle. World turned it’s back on her father, so she saw him trying to adapt with all the means available and fellow Mesozoic humans pretending, sometimes truthfully trying to use their.. Wow. Finally. the word comes out. their ‘brains’ to go against the world that was turning it’s back. She used to think, weren’t we all supposed to be the same, we all have digestive system, nervous system, reproductive system in all our bodies. Why different DNA’s? Why these DNA’s were not able to adapt. Why weren’t we able to become X-Men, so much of collateral damage so that the world can find it’s perfect match as to who can live on it. How inhospitable was this environment because of the competition, why was there a lot of chaos all of a sudden and suffering, pain and difference in standard of living across the world based on a paper product that was different everywhere. How could a paper dictate how forward a world can be at one place and different at another. I know too many real questions. Obviously she tried going with the herd, fell in love that was never nourished, she was laughed at because the questions were too real, some called her retarded for not being able to fake an emotion, some called different names because she believed that humans can co-exist without taking gender and blood into consideration. Family doesn’t necessarily mean having the same last name. Scientifically we all have the same last name. Sapiens. But fuck science, right. Doesn’t let the bureaucrats flourish, doesn’t promote Julius Ceasers’ because you know not all the can be Julius’, but being the senators who stabbed him, it was always easier to be one of them in all the universal  time coordinated plus or minus based time  zones. North pole keeps shifting, still humans fasten the process by a year, 34 miles. Record. So proud. El Ninos’ don’t stop, plates keep rubbing against each other, volcanoes, my god, they have had enough. They bottled up for centuries and they were sick and tired of tiny bugs trying to show off everywhere. So, yes, where was I? co-existence. Fancy word. She realized she needed to get out of this comfortably disillusioned circle and go to some oblong place where she can see some things straight as in how she needn’t prove her character or have to put in so many efforts to see what is in front of her. Congratulations babe! she thought she finally made it.
Just about to enter the free zone of independence, she was hit hard with neoplastic activity in her family. Metastasis to her beloved man who made her feel like a princess for 14 years. It was an achievement. Trust me. I haven’t seen anyone who has more guts than her when it comes to standing up for what she believed in. Man taught her well, though he himself couldn’t do that. He was her army, her general, her armor that cut through anyone that tried to fight her. Though this might be an exaggeration, she was one of the closest to being an ideal human according to Epictetus and Buddha, a Julius Caeser species, say some 60% because she stuck to her ideals which sometimes did not shed the light, which sometimes threw her into infinite darkness, because her body and brain were not built to live in any other way. So metastasis was one of those things that threw her into infinite darkness, because of just one word. Love. What the fuck man, a chemical reaction in brain can cause a human with wbc, rbc and thrombocytes go bizarre? Shut up. But it is true. No wbc can counter the excessive production of cortisol or insufficient production of dopamine. She badly needed serotonin-nor-epinephrine re-uptake inhibitors. She, only she made all the calls to define the way she could take care of herself, because no one could and no one gave a damn because everything looked strong and alright on the outside. She met more cenozoic humans, mesozoic humans, got more cortisol and got her brain shrunk and body bulged up. She practically was failing in terms of self defense of the mind game. Note that she was commendable at playing video games. She tried to channel many people struggling with the same cortisol function, such as Vincent Van Gogh, Ellen DeGenres, Angelina Jolie. She read tirelessly, she painted and developed her signature styles in everything, she wrote countless pains, she wore her broken heart on her sleeve, trying to spread warmth even when she knew that there was no hope. She defined herself, she built a character and strength for herself and was real. She became the human who could be happy, sad, depressed, ecstatic, a person who could jump when someone she believed in succeeded and cried when someone she saw was in pain. She was emotional. But, she always had the right emotion with respect to the situation, just how a human could be. A real human being. She was good, she was bad, she was warm, she was cold. She was distant and she was close. There wasn’t a single human whom she met, who didn’t connect with her soul, the ones whom she believed in especially. Likewise they were able to be their own selves with her because she was accommodating and simply put, she gave everyone a chance, she gave a fuck. But that’s a dangerous zone. Being original. So people tend to deny that. But nevertheless, she was a lone wolf crying in silence, howling at the moon every night. When she lost, she accepted and held her head with grace. She took charge and tried to honor her dad’s death. She was the person who tried until the very end just like her dad. She still is too. Unfortunately, not all want to be given so much fuck. Because shit gets real when they live as an original. She fell in love again, this time consciously and responsibly, she did not want to give up without trying. But cenozoic human liked her too, at least she thought he did and she wanted to live with a renewed hope. That she could do it. That she could have almost everything.That she would laugh, she would cry, she could have a safe space that would not require her to put in efforts, she felt understood, but little did she know about that differently placed human. The reason why she could make friends with anyone on the planet, who necessarily was not from her place was because she was a human being first and she behaved like one instead of affiliating herself with certain alias of the herd. That was why people opened up, she encouraged being real, she made people dis comfortable first, but then comfortable with themselves later, that created a bond. She never forgot to show gratitude, she was loyal and worst, she was courageous to grow a spine everywhere, every time life threw a punch at her. But world was may be too real to believe in, her renewed strength turned into pain, unbearable and shattering once again. She was not a dark person, but life was dark to her. People she loves, always left her and disappeared one way or the other. She just wanted someone to make her laugh. Stop saying bullshit that you don’t need anyone to make you laugh, you alone are enough. Yes, she alone was enough to survive and sometimes happy, but having someone to share it with, who could have her back, being able to love someone takes shit load of strength and courage, to believe to share a future, which might sound melodramatic, but man she laughed without pain because of this guy many times. Now she is afraid if she could ever laugh again. I don’t think she does anymore. She gave up. She realized, she is probably cursed and would never be happy, would always see the loss and renewal of the world but she would always be alone. The only thing she could probably do is live authentically and help those who are not enabled like her. Because there might be many little girls, but not all would have the belief of beauty or the privilege of being self sufficient when they are in their own ice age and Mesozoic era. As she thought before, she is broken beyond repair, beyond any save. She is exhausted and she is done to an extent that a cry for attention by ending, on her birthday would eventually turn into a blame game, worse would not actually gain any attention for a second, even though many people would meaningfully shed a tear for her, because she is an inspiring, bold, emotional and brilliant badass woman. She is now a woman standing at the edge of a dessert still growing a spine to see the sun rise beyond the horizon on the other end, all alone, without hope and without love because she still has a leash that only lets her be in the dark fearing to explore beyond what eyes could make her see, trying to keep her mind in its right size, fighting every breathe, because she is universally disappointed and unloved.
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Transcript analysis: Bold highlighted are areas to look into, people, theories, questions etc. 
Well, this is 2009 (modern) And it's the Bicentenary (200th anniversary) of Charles Darwin. And all over the world, eminent evolutionists are anxious to celebrate this. And what they're planning to do is to enlighten us on almost every aspect of Darwin and his life (RESEARCH DARWIN, methods, thoughts, experiments etc) and how he changed our thinking) I say almost every aspect, because there is one aspect of this story which they have thrown no light on. And they seem anxious to skirt around it and step over it(why are they so in fear?) and to talk about something else. So I'm going to talk about it. It's the question of, why are we so different from the chimpanzees?
01:02 We get the geneticists (an expert in or student of heredity and the variation of inherited characteristics) on telling us how extremely closely we are related -- hardly any genes of difference, very, very closely related. And yet, when you look at the phenotypes, there's a chimp, there's a man; they're astoundingly different, no resemblance at all. I'm not talking about airy-fairy stuff about culture or psychology, or behavior. I'm talking about ground-base, nitty-gritty, measurable physical differences. They, that one, is hairy and walking on four legs. That one is a naked biped. Why? I mean -- (Laughter) if I'm a good Darwinist, I've got to believe there's a reason for that. If we changed so much, something must have happened. What happened?
01:51 Now 50 years ago, that was a laughably simple question. Everybody knew the answer. They knew what happened. The ancestor of the apes stayed in the trees; our ancestors went out onto the plain. That explained everything. We had to get up on our legs to peer over the tall grass, or to chase after animals, or to free our hands for weapons. And we got so overheated in the chase that we had to take off that fur coat and throw it away. Everybody knew that, for generations.
02:24 But then, in the '90s, something began to unravel. The paleontologists (scientist who studies fossils) themselves looked a bit more closely at the accompanying microfauna (microscopic interstitial animals living in the soil) lived in the same time and place as the hominids. And they weren't savanna species. And they looked at the herbivores. And they weren't savanna herbivores. And then they were so clever, they found a way to analyze fossilized pollen. Shock, horror. The fossilized pollen was not of savanna vegetation. Some of it even came from lianas, those things that dangle in the middle of the jungle.
03:04 So we're left with a situation where we know that our earliest ancestors were moving around on four legs in the trees, before the savanna ecosystem even came into existence. This is not something I've made up. It's not a minority theory. Everybody agrees with it.
03:26 Professor Tobias(RESEARCH HIM) came over from South Africa and spoke to University College London. He said, "Everything I've been telling you for the last 20 years, forget about it. It was wrong. We've got to go back to square one and start again." It made him very unpopular. They didn't want to go back to square one.
03:49 I mean, it's a terrible thing to happen. You've got this beautiful paradigm. You've believed it through generations. Nobody has questioned it. You've been constructing fanciful things on top of it, relying on it to be as solid as a rock. And now it's whipped away from under you. What do you do? What does a scientist do in that case?
04:10 Well, we know the answer because Thomas S. Kuhn wrote a seminal treatise about this back in 1962. He said what scientists do when a paradigm fails is, guess what -- they carry on as if nothing had happened. (Laughter) If they haven't got a paradigm they can't ask the question. So they say, "Yes it's wrong, but supposing it was right ..." (Laughter) And the only other option open to them is to stop asking the questions. So that is what they have done now. That's why you don't hear them talking about it. It's yesterday's question.
04:55 Some of them have even elevated it into a principle. It's what we ought to be doing. Aaron Filler from Harvard said, "Isn't it time we stopped talking about selective pressures? I mean, why don't we talk about, well, there's chromosomes, and there's genes. And we just record what we see." Charles Darwin must be spinning in his grave! He knew all about that kind of science. And he called it hypothesis-free science. And he despised it from the bottom of his heart. And if you're going to say, "I'm going to stop talking about selective pressures," you can take "The Origin of Species" and throw it out of the window, for it's about nothing else but selective pressures(maybe look into this?).
05:36 And the irony of it is, that this is one occasion of a paradigm collapse where we didn't have to wait for a new paradigm to come up. There was one waiting in the wings. It had been waiting there since 1960 when Alister Hardy, a marine biologist, said, "I think what happened, perhaps our ancestors had a more aquatic existence for some of the time." ( RESEARCH HIM ) He kept it to himself for 30 years. But then the press got hold of it and all hell broke loose. All his colleagues said, "This is outrageous. You've exposed us to public ridicule! You must never do that again." And at that time, it became set in stone: the aquatic theory should be dumped with the UFOs and the yetis, as part of the lunatic fringe of science.
06:27 Well I don't think that. I think that Hardy had a lot going for him. I'd like to talk about just a handful of what have been called the hallmarks of mankind, the things that made us different from everybody else, and all our relatives. Let's look at our naked skin. It's obvious that most of the things we think about that have lost their body hair, mammals without body hair, are aquatic ones, like the dugong, the walrus, the dolphin, the hippopotamus, the manatee. And a couple of wallowers-in-mud like the babirusa. And you're tempted to think, well perhaps, could that be why we are naked? ( Focus on the nakedly appearance of certain creatures etc )
07:11 I suggested it and people said, "No no no. I mean, look at the elephant. You've forgotten all about the elephant haven't you?" So back in 1982 I said, "Well perhaps the elephant had an aquatic ancestor." Peals of merry laughter! "That crazy woman. She's off again. She'll say anything won't she?" But by now, everybody agrees that the elephant had an aquatic ancestor. This has come 'round to be that all those naked pachyderms have aquatic ancestors. The last exception was supposed to be the rhinoceros. ( Look into aquatic ancestors, sea monsters, sea fossils, etc )
07:42 Last year in Florida they found extinct ancestor of a rhinoceros and said, "Seems to have spent most of its time in the water." So this is a close connection between nakedness and water. As an absolute connection, it only works one way. You can't say all aquatic animals are naked, because look at the sea otter. But you can say that every animal that has become naked has been conditioned by water, in its own lifetime, or the lifetime of its ancestors. I think this is significant. The only exception is the naked Somalian mole-rat, which never puts its nose above the surface of the ground.
08:25 And take bipedality. Here you can't find anybody to compare it with, because we're the only animal that walks upright on two legs. But you can say this: all the apes and all the monkeys are capable of walking on two legs, if they want to, for a short time. There is only one circumstance in which they always, all of them, walk on two legs, and that is when they are wading through water. Do you think that's significant? David Attenborough thinks it's significant, as the possible beginning of our bipedalism. ( Footage of animals wading through water )
08:59 Look at the fat layer. We have got, under our skin, a layer of fat, all over: nothing in the least like that in any other primate. Why should it be there? Well they do know, that if you look at other aquatic mammals, the fat that in most land mammals is deposited inside the body wall, around the kidneys and the intestines and so on, has started to migrate to the outside, and spread out in a layer inside the skin. In the whale it's complete: no fat inside at all, all in blubber outside. We cannot avoid the suspicion that in our case it's started to happen. We have got skin lined with this layer. It's the only possible explanation of why humans, if they're very unlucky, can become grossly obese, in a way that would be totally impossible for any other primate, physically impossible. Something very odd, matter-of-factly, never explained.
10:01 The question of why we can speak. We can speak. And the gorilla can't speak. Why? Nothing to do with his teeth or his tongue or his lungs or anything like that -- purely has to do with its conscious control of its breath. You can't even train a gorilla to say "Ah" on request. The only creatures that have got conscious control of their breath are the diving animals and the diving birds. It was an absolute precondition for our being able to speak. ( Look at the video of the dolphins, and how we will be ‘able to speak to them’)
10:35 And then again, there is the fact that we are streamlined. Trying to imagine a diver diving into water -- hardly makes a splash. Try to imagine a gorilla performing the same maneuver, and you can see that, compared with gorilla, we are halfway to being shaped like a fish. I am trying to suggest that, for 40-odd years, this aquatic idea has been miscategorized as lunatic fringe, and it is not lunatic fringe.
11:05 And the ironic thing about it is that they are not staving off the aquatic theory to protect a theory of their own, which they've all agreed on, and they love. There is nothing there. They are staving off the aquatic theory to protect a vacuum. (Laughter) (Applause)
11:29 How do they react when I say these things? One very common reaction I've heard about 20 times is, "But it was investigated. They conducted a serious investigation of this at the beginning, when Hardy put forward his article." I don't believe it. For 35 years I've been looking for any evidence of any incident of that kind, and I've concluded that that's one of the urban myths. It's never been done.
12:00 I ask people sometimes, and they say, "I like the aquatic theory! Everybody likes the aquatic theory. Of course they don't believe it, but they like it." Well I say, "Why do you think it's rubbish?" They say "Well ... everybody I talk to says it's rubbish. And they can't all be wrong, can they?" The answer to that, loud and clear, is, "Yes! They can all be wrong." History is strewn with the cases when they've all got it wrong. (Applause) And if you've got a scientific problem like that, you can't solve it by holding a head count, and saying, "More of us say yes than say no."
12:43 (Laughter)
12:44 Apart from that, some of the heads count more than others. Some of them have come over. There was Professor Tobias. He's come over. Daniel Dennett, he's come over. Sir David Attenborough, he's come over. Anybody else out there? Come on in. The water is lovely. ( Look into these people )
13:04 (Applause)
13:07 And now we've got to look to the future. Ultimately one of three things is going to happen. Either they will go on for the next 40 years, 50 years, 60 years. "Yeah well we don't talk about that. Let's talk about something interesting." That would be very sad. The second thing that could happen is that some young genius will arrive, and say, "I've found it. It was not the savanna, it was not the water, it was this!" No sign of that happening either. I don't think there is a third option.
13:42 So the third thing that might happen is a very beautiful thing. If you look back at the early years of the last century, there was a stand-off, a lot of bickering and bad feeling between the believers in Mendel, and the believers in Darwin. It ended with a new synthesis: Darwin's ideas and Mendel's ideas blending together. And I think the same thing will happen here. You'll get a new synthesis. Hardy's ideas and Darwin's ideas will be blended together.
14:18 And we can move forward from there, and really get somewhere. That would be a beautiful thing. It would be very nice for me if it happened soon. (Laughter) Because I'm older now than George Burns was when he said, "At my age, I don't even buy green bananas."
14:48 (Laughter)
14:54 So if it's going to come and it's going to happen, what's holding it up? I can tell you that in three words. Academia says no. They decided in 1960, "That belongs with the UFOs and the yetis." And it's not easy to change their minds. The professional journals won't touch it with a barge pole. The textbooks don't mention it. The syllabus doesn't mention even the fact that we're naked, let alone look for a reason to it. "Horizon," which takes its cue from the academics, won't touch it with a barge pole. So we never hear the case put for it, except in jocular references to people on the lunatic fringe.
15:42 I don't know quite where this diktat comes from. Somebody up there is issuing the commandment, "Thou shalt not believe in the aquatic theory. And if you hope to make progress in this profession, and you do believe it, you'd better keep it to yourself, because it will get in your way."
16:07 So I get the impression that some parts of the scientific establishment are morphing into a kind of priesthood. But you know, that makes me feel good, because Richard Dawkins has told us how to treat a priesthood. (Laughter) He says, "Firstly, you've got to refuse to give it all the excessive awe and reverence it's been trained to receive." Right. I'll go ahead with that. And secondly, he says, "You must never be afraid to rock the boat." I'll go along with that too. Thank you very much.
16:47 (Applause)
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