Status Updates From Complexity: The Evolution o...

Burger ends this book on a very dark note. He writes “Regrettably, I am a pessimist who sees modern industrial society as unsustainable and human nature as incapable of diminishing its biological and cultural appetites.” So what do we do? He doesn’t say. (A)

Depressing fact: in 1980, Africa was estimated to have 76,000 lions; this estimate plummeted to 35,000 in 2014. Can this loss of animal and plant life be stopped? (A)

Nobel laureate Robert Laughlin writes, “the earth’s capacity to render up unimaginably large amounts of oil, gas, and coal on demand is a fundamental premise of modern civilization.” The more we burn these energy reserves, the hotter the climate grows. (298)

Cool facts: mammal-like forms appeared around 220 million years ago. Primates arose about 60 million years ago. Apes developed 20 million years ago, and human ancestors began walking upright 6 million years ago. Agriculture began 10,000 years ago, and humans learned to make steel 3000 years ago. (F)

One of the most terrifying things about the history of planet earth is the Permian extinction that occurred 250 million years ago. Over 90% of everything alive on the earth died. It took 30 million years for the planet to recover from this disaster. (F)

Wow. The hiccups in human beings turn out to be a remnant of a time when our ancient ancestors had both gills and lungs. The mechanism that causes the hiccups is the one that was once used to switch between reading water and breathing air. (F)

It amazes me that until around 500 million years ago, no creature had yet evolved with eyes. That means that for the first 4 billion years of this planet’s existence, nothing was able to see it. (F)

This book divides the 4 1/2 billion year history of life on earth into 10 stages. The first stage relates to the planet’s earliest years. Here is a link to a video that shows a simulation of this terrifying period. https://youtu.be/StqZI9pMq0U (V and F)

Over the past 50,000 years, the human brain has not increased in size. I wonder why? (A)

Our ancient australopithecine ancestor called Lucy lived 3.3 million years ago. Her brain was only about a third the size of our brains. That means that over 3 million years our brains increased in size by three times. That is incredibly fast for evolution. What caused this to happen? (A)

Mammals need 5 to 10 times as much food as reptiles do in order to live. Being smart is expensive. (F)

Recent fossil discoveries suggest that horseshoe crabs have been around for around 400 million years in something like their present form.To give you a sense of how old this is, 400 million years ago was when plants were just beginning to come onto the land. Here is a picture of a horse shoe crab. (V and F) https://goo.gl/images/GvM47C

Today’s most primitive mammals are the monotremes. They still lay eggs, and their arms and legs are splayed out sideways like reptiles. Here is a short video about them. https://youtu.be/xlprSsIUaZM (V)

It is also incredible to realize that the dinosaurs survived for 200 million years. We Homo Sapiens have only been around for 200,000 years. (F)

Crazy to think that the dinosaurs had to go extinct in order for our ancient mammalian ancestors to become successful and for the existence of primates to be possible. (F)

As human embryos begin to develop they first form kidneys that are like the kidneys of fish. This kidney is reabsorbed and a second kidney like that of reptiles develops. This kidney is also reabsorbed before finally a mammalian kidney forms. It’s so that this record of our evolutionary past is echoed in our own development. (F)

Cool fact: When scientists take a squid eye gene and give it to a fruit fly embryo, it creates a fruit fly eye rather than a squid eye. The same genes create all different eyes. (F)

Astronomers believe that shortly after the earth formed 4 1/2 billion years ago, it collided with another planet. The debris that resulted gave us our moon. Here's a link to a documentary that simulates this. (V) https://youtu.be/57merteLsBc Amazing!

Now I'm learning about all the earth's different biomes. Here is a picture of the tropical rain forest of southeast Asia. This is a difficult place for animals to live because the trees only bear fruit every few years, but wow-- it's incredibly beautiful here. http://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/hp331-2014-34...

Just learned that the oldest organisms on the planet are Bristlecone Pines. Some of them are more than 4000 years old. (F)

I just learned that all the world's most severe deserts are at around 23.5° North latitude which is strange because I thought the hottest places on earth would be near the equator. Why is this? (A)

Wow. I had no idea 95% of Hawaii's native plants are found nowhere else in the world. I guess this is a big reason that islands seem so exotic. (F)

"One of the grand surprises at the end of the late 20th century was that we could put a human gene into a bacterium and have that bacteria produce a human enzyme!" No one expected this because our species has been separate from the bacterial lineage for over 2 billion years, but this is how we are now making insulin for people who suffer from diabetes! (F)

Here is a cool picture of the history of life. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-...

In case you don't appreciate bacteria, 2.7 billion years ago, Cyanobacteria figured out how to rip apart water molecules to use their hydrogen for energy. The waste product this left behind was oxygen, which gave us our atmosphere. Thanks, Cyanobacteria! (F)

This is what millipedes looked like during the Carboniferous period. Wow. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-...

Wow--Oxygen is now 21% of the atmosphere. During the Carboniferous period, it was 30%, and bugs were much bigger. (F)