Obama vs Attenborough – showdown in the Ediacaran

The Ediacaran period (635-541 Ma) is perplexing for palaeontologists. From the Cambrian onwards (541 Ma – present), fossils are often quite easily recognisable as the remains of ancient life and can mostly be recognised and classified. The Ediacaran, on the other hand, requires a lot of head-scratching; even simply demonstrating that what is being observed is a body fossil can be fraught with difficulty. For the most part, Ediacaran organisms were soft-bodied and, when found as fossils, they are often preserved as casts. When simple body plans abound, it is easy to muddle up trace fossils, body fossils, and the products of abiogenic processes. Additionally, preservation bias can occur within a single organism composed of multiple parts – sometimes only a small part of the organism is preserved. It is sometimes necessary to demonstrate that the fossils in question are not simply a small part of a larger, more complex organism, but are much simpler.

Mary Droser’s research team from the University of California – Riverside have done that for two new organisms, one which has been described and the other which is due to be published. Droser described them as a new, unique body plan and it took them a while to verify that they were individual organisms (in the press release quotation, Droser mistakenly refers to them as animals, despite that not being verified). These new organisms are from a newly described fossil bed in the famous Flinders Ranges of Australia, which they have named the “Alice’s Restaurant Bed” after the Arlo Guthrie song. It’s quite a long song:

The paper describing the bed is titled You can get anything you want from Alice’s Restaurant Bed: exceptional preservation and an unusual fossil assemblage from a newly excavated bed (Ediacara Member, Nilpena, South Australia). Droser and her colleagues have a knack for memorable paper titles, a personal favourite of mine is When the worm turned: Concordance of Early Cambrian ichnofabric and trace-fossil record in siliciclastic rocks of South Australia. 

As already mentioned, they have named two new species, one is awaiting publication, the other has been named already in another memorably titled paper: Stuck in the mat: Obamus coronatus, a new benthic organism from the Ediacara Member, Rawnsley Quartzite, South Australia. (“Stuck in the mat” is a reference to the organism’s way of life, partially embedded in microbial mats.) This organism has been named after former US President Barack Obama to honour his passion for science, whilst the forthcoming organism has been named Attenborites janeae after naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough for his advocacy of science and support of palaeontology (Droser and Gehling both worked on Attenborough’s First Life documentary as well).

Obamus coronatus (left) and Attenborites janeae (right). Credit: University of California – Riverside

It seemed to me that Attenborough has a lot of organisms named after him and although I am a big fan of his, and I do think he deserves to have some organisms named after him, it seems to be overkill. So I had a bit of a look into how many organisms have been named after Attenborough, which also led me to find that Obama has a lot named after him too. So who has the most?

I haven’t excluded names which are no longer valid as the naming still happened in the first place.

Starting with Sir David Frederick Attenborough OM CH CVO CBE FRS FLS FZS FSA FRSGS:

Source: EPA

The first organism named after the UK’s adopted grandfather was Sirdavidia, a plant, for which there is only one species (as far as I can tell). He has two other plants named after him, Blakea attenboroughi and Nepenthes attenboroughi, as well. The rest are all animals and include two spiders, Prethopalpus attenboroughi and Spintharus davidattenboroughi, the beetle Trigonopterus attenboroughi, the dragonfly Acisoma attenboroughi which was named to commemorate his 90th birthday, the crustacean Ctenocheloides attenboroughi, the fish Materpiscis attenboroughi, the echidna Zaglossus attenboroughi, and finally the plesiosaur Attenborosaurus. Add on Attenborites and it is quite the haul.

How does everyone’s most loved/hated former US President, Barack Hussein Obama II, compare?

Obama has no plants but he does have the lichen Caloplaca obamae. He instead boasts more animals, one of which belongs to the same genus as one of Attenborough’s: the spider Spintharus barackobamai. He also has the spider Aptostichus barackobamai to his name. There is also the blood fluke Baracktrema obamai, the beetle Desmopachria barackobamai, the bee Lasioglossum obamai, the horsehair worm Paragordius obamai, the fishes Tosanoides obama and Etheostoma obama, the bird Nystalus obamai, and finally the extinct reptile Obamadon. Again, once Obamus coronatus is added, that is quite the haul.

If you decided to tally up these organisms, you will have noticed that they are neck and neck on twelve apiece. Is there a way to declare a winner? Both have two genera each named after them but as far as I can tell they are monospecific, so we can’t toss a load of extra species onto one pile. Is there another way to decide?

There actually is as I held one back. The fish Teleogramma obamaorum is named for both Barack and Michelle Obama so it does add to his list. Astonishingly, Barack Obama has more organisms named after him than the arguably more appropriate David Attenborough. Michelle Obama isn’t limited to sharing with her husband; the spider Spintharus doesn’t just include the species S. davidattenboroughi and S. barackobamai, as there’s also S. michelleobamaae. 

Whilst I’m mentioning family members, Sir David’s late brother Richard Attenborough got in on the act as well. The Jurassic ankylosaur Tianchisaurus nedegoapeferima gets its specific name from a combination of Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Bob Peck, Martin Ferrero, Ariana Richards, and Joseph Mazzello.

One person who might envy Obama’s impressive list of namesakes is, of course, Donald Trump, who so far has the moth Neopalpa donaldtrumpi and the fossil sea urchin Tetragramma donaldtrumpi. The latter was named simply because its discoverer is a fan of Trump, whereas the moth bears a striking resemblance due to its “hair” and apparently diminutive genitals:

By Close up photograph of the Head of a Male Neopalpa donaldtrumpi.jpg: Dr. Vazrick Nazariderivative work: Kmhkmh – This file was derived from: Close up photograph of the Head of a Male Neopalpa donaldtrumpi.jpg:, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55126737

 

I’m hoping he stops at two.

 

My dog’s scientific papers

My dog is not the smartest of dogs. She knows barely any tricks and often does stupid things but sometimes she surprises me. Like the time we wrote a couple of scientific papers together. She’s called Peanut and she looks like this:

This is Peanut at her most majestic.

This isn’t just an excuse to post pictures of my dog, though here is another:

We actually wrote a couple of scientific papers together. Instead of focusing on palaeontology or science communication, the two things I should supposedly be able to write about, or rolling in fox poo and eating plants, which are Peanut’s areas of expertise, we decided to write a couple of papers on computer science. This is the first:

Looks good, right?

Have a good read of that and see how far you get. It is tempting to go off on a tangent and discuss how people have the propensity to perceive text to have deeper meaning if they have to invest a lot of time to understand it, leading to intelligent sounding statements which are really lacking in profundity, but that is a story for another time (that’s not a planned blog post, I don’t even write the planned ones). There is no meaning to this paper, it is all nonsense. I produced it using the automatic paper generator SCIgen, which creates fully formed papers including typical formatting, graphs, diagrams and citations, all of which is complete nonsense yet appears to be grammatically sound. It can even be downloaded as a pdf, our second paper looks like this:

Available on request from either myself or Peanut.

It is all a bit of fun but it does have a legitimate function. Journals suspected of having low publishing standards can be exposed by submitting a paper from SCIgen, as can predatory conferences which prey on inexperienced researchers in an attempt to exploit them for money. In case you are worried that computer science is flooded with SCIgen papers, there is even a free program designed to spot them. They do look good though:

Look, sciencey stuff.

Jump to the references in the paper and you should find that the authors – in this case, Peanut and me – have been involved with other papers. I was shocked to find that Peanut had been publishing papers as far back as 1999. Not only did I feel deceived but I am baffled too; she was born in 2007.

She’s been busy.

In case you wanted to see us hard at work, this is us (she is the hairier one):

This post has partly been an excuse to share pictures of my dog, follow her on Instagram at adogcalledpeanut if you want to see more pictures like this:

Just be aware that the Sun actually shines out of my dog’s arse:

And she is going to ditch her career in computer science to fly off on the Millennium Falcon:

Doncaster Dinosaur Fouling

Most, if not all, councils have a page for reporting dog fouling in public places. My local council has one for reporting dinosaur poo, which you can see here.

Naturally, it’s not real. Instead, it’s a nice little bit of advertising for the local museum which has a new website, which you can see here. I recommend a visit, I used to volunteer at Doncaster Museum and they have some great material in their collection, a passion for local history, and they were always good to me as a volunteer.

Pointless Dinosaurs

The BBC quiz show Pointless is the only quiz show I watch. The idea behind it, if you’re not familiar with it, is that every question has been presented to 100 people and the number of points for each answer depends on the number of people who responded correctly; as a contestant or a viewer joining in at home, you want to score as low as you can and, if possible, guess a coveted pointless answer (which increases the prize money). So not only do you need to know the answers, you need to be able to guess what others might not know. It rewards obscure knowledge. The only downside to the show really is that the prize money is incredibly low compared to a lot of run-of-the-mill quiz shows on TV. I would also like to see a more interactive version for viewers at home, particularly on the last round where only pointless answers will suffice – it is not always clear whether one achieved a pointless answer at home, as they only read out a handful of pointless answers.

Yesterday, there was a round on dinosaurs. I was hoping for something difficult; despite being a qualified palaeontologist, there are a lot of dinosaurs I either don’t know or would struggle to guess based on the limited information given. It seemed like a round where pointless answers could abound. Instead, this is what we got:

 

As I was watching the show with my mum, I allowed her to answer them. She found them all easy and even quoted Jurassic Park for C. Believe it or not, C was a low scoring answer whilst D was pointless. Out of 100 people asked, nobody knew the answer to D (if you ever read a study based on polling 100 people, remember, 0% of the British public knew the answer to D – it’s a small, useless dataset). I feel embarrassed for my country.

I’ve deliberately avoided giving the answers, however, if you genuinely need to know what they are, drop me a comment and I will provide them.

To follow it up, they had a very easy Star Wars round (I’m a Star Wars nerd) and the final round included an International Rugby category, which the finalists chose, and again my mum got a pointless answer (she often watches rugby when I have it on TV). Had we been on the show, we would have won it.

Remind me, how many claws did a Velociraptor have?

I’ve had this sign for a while now, I think I got it in a Loot Crate, yet have only just noticed that rather well-endowed forelimb.

I have a Twitter account!

Despite not making regular use of this blog, I’ve decided to create a Twitter account to go alongside it. Naturally, if I get round to writing more regularly (I have a couple of half-written posts on the go), I will be posting them on the Twitter account, and it will also function as a place to quickly share science news which piques my interest, as well as sharing the tweets/links of researchers.

I’ve never used Twitter before so I’m getting used to it at the moment. Give me a follow and I’ll try to keep it up to date with some fascinating palaeo-related babble. Seeing as I don’t find time to write, yet I waste a lot of potential writing time browsing social media, this may well be a bit of a remedy. Check it out here: https://twitter.com/palaeobabbler

It looks something like this.

Blue Planet II is smashing the viewing figures

In one of the most reassuring signs this year, the cutting edge nature documentary series Blue Planet II, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, is dominating in the ratings here in the UK. On the night of the season premiere on the 29th of October, Blue Planet II was watched by an average of 10.3 million live viewers, compared to 9,6 million for the Strictly Come Dancing viewers (which was on before), and 4.3 million for X-Factor. I end up watching the show on a Monday, whilst many others watch it through the week, apparently bringing the figures up to 14.01 million.

For the second episode, set in the darkest depths of the oceans, 10.8 million watched live – a figure which will rise when the full viewing figures come in. Last year’s Planet Earth II never dipped below 11 million viewers per episode, peaking at 13.14 million, so Blue Planet II looks to be surpassing it already. I’d love to know how much of the audience is young people potentially being inspired both to study and protect their planet. I’d also like to review each episode, but that’s not going to happen.

If you’ve not managed to watch the show already, enjoy the trailer.

Jurassic Park – the most important fan theory and the franchise future which never was

Let me get one thing out of the way first: I hate Jurassic World. My opinion on the film is often dismissed due to the assumption that I hate it because of scientific inaccuracies, when really I think it is a terrible film which failed to understand what was good about the original Jurassic Park film. Worse than that, it was a success, meaning that we now have no chance of getting a better version of the franchise and have to suffer through more sub-par films. Admittedly, I did have some accuracy-related criticisms before the film came out and since then I added a few more (bloody inaccurate stegosaurs), but mostly I hated it as a piece of cinema, to the point where I have several draught posts which went on and on critiquing the film that I doubt I will ever publish.

At around the same time as I was becoming increasingly despondent about the franchise, I was rereading the books. I couldn’t help but think that the franchise would slot right in with the modern move towards the big budget, gritty, serialised TV shows. Jurassic Park was a brilliant family film, whereas Jurassic Park the TV show could be much more adult watching (with a better name, naturally). The films do not follow the books, leaving a lot of unseen events which could be pilfered from the writings of Crichton whilst adding a lot more. I wanted to see more about the business side of things, the ruthless industrial espionage which jeopardises everything. The show would be about people, not dinosaurs, much in the same way that The Walking Dead is about people rather than zombies – they just happen to be people living through a zombie apocalypse.

My idea faces some major obstacles, not least that Jurassic World did well and its sequel, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, is out next year (I will still try to stay optimistic). The other major problem is that a series with similar themes has recently done brilliantly: Westworld. Also from the mind of Michael Crichton, Westworld has many of the same philosophical themes, lots of intrigue surrounding business, and some fascinating characters. It’s what Jurassic Park could have been.

I will still fantasise about what could have been and a recent fan theory has plugged some gaps in my ideas. Originating on Reddit, this fan theory has found a wider audience thanks to Cracked covering it in one of their videos. Watch for yourself:

Why do I love it? Well, firstly it makes quite a lot of sense and takes care of some inaccuracies. It also takes care of one of the major scientific inaccuracies in Jurassic Park which I don’t have a big problem with for the original film – the technique for extracting DNA just would not work. This never particularly bothered me as it was wild speculation at the time which made the film work, it’s only really since then that scientists have been able to say that it is inaccurate. So is the new technique mentioned in Jurassic World, by the way. Rebooting the series would have us relying on a well known inaccuracy, whereas this fan theory suggests that us film-watchers have been misled in the same way that many of the major characters were misled.

Imagine incorporating this fan theory into a rebooted TV series. Dodgson’s company, BioSyn, would desperately be trying to copy InGen’s cloning technique and failing miserably, having to resort to espionage and theft in an attempt to find out just how Hammond was doing it. Meanwhile, Hammond was taking more of a Jack Horner-esque approach by manipulating the genetics of extant animals, putting him over a decade ahead of BioSyn. It was all a show but he needs experts to sign off on the park and establish that these theme park monsters are convincing as dinosaurs. At the same time, we would be seeing many of the park issues which are found in the book, particularly escaping dinosaurs (a friend of mine suggested a Predator-style film as a worthwhile sequel, which would make an excellent focused episode) and we would have some resolution on the sick Triceratops (which is a Stegosaurus in the book).

In Jurassic World, the Masrani company owns the park and it is they who are responsible for abominations such as the Indominus rex. I’ve disliked the idea of hybrids since the original Jurassic Park 4 concepts came out, so basing a film around them was unlikely to ever really appeal to me, however, in the context of my imaginary series, the Masrani company might be a competing company who have managed to see through the InGen ruse and are making their own dinosaurs, even looking at bizarre hybrids which tend to fail (in a castle in Switzerland?).

There is plenty of source material available too. There were a number of comics which, if I remember correctly, did look at escaping dinosaurs having to be tracked down. There was also a planned animated series set after the first film – Escape From Jurassic Park – aimed at adults and which had some decent ideas. Some of the artwork is available and a full rundown of the individual episodes too, see here. I particularly like the duplicity of Hammond, deceiving the others into thinking that he intends to set up a biological preserve when he plans to reopen the park, the introduction of new characters, the development of BioSyn’s Dinoworld resort in Brazil using stolen InGen dinosaurs, issues arising for BioSyn due to the rapid growth of InGen dinosaurs, raptors hunting marines, escaped dinosaurs spreading through South America causing opportunist hunters, poachers and scientists to try to stake their claims; all ideas which could be used.

Admittedly, a Jurassic Park reboot series could go very wrong. I don’t hate the series Terra Nova, but that is nowhere near the quality I would want even though it was a dinosaur series produced by Spielberg.

Alternatively, Cracked also did a video about how to improve Jurassic World through a simple tweak:

I love you to the Moon and back

I’m not the most romantic of people. Despite at least one of my favourite films being a quirky romance (Amélie) and my favourite poem fitting into that category (He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven by WB Yeats, but also check out my favourite Yorkshire dialect poem Erroo’as by Benny Wilkinson), I tend to cringe when anyone is being soppy about their partners. The phrase I love you to the Moon and back has always garnered a derisive snort from me, but that will have to stop.

The Moon is an average of 238,855 miles from the Earth and at perigee, its closest point, it is 225,623 miles away. On average, a person walks around 7,500 steps per day, which amounts to around 216,262,500 steps in an 80 year lifetime. With the average stride, this amounts to around 110,000 miles, which isn’t enough to get halfway to the Moon even at its closest point. Loving someone to the Moon and back would equate to around four lifetimes of walking, which is extremely dedicated.

It is also approximately 451 times more miles than the romantic benchmark set by The Proclaimers. 

Science and the EU

Source: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/11/uk-leave-eu-151111065153614.html

Science is one of those pesky areas of study which can impact on any part of life whether you realise it or not. Scientific research affects the technology we are becoming increasingly reliant upon, it affects healthcare, how we understand and respond to climate change, how we can feed and house an increasing global population, how we can provide energy on a sustainable level, and how we understand our place on this planet and in the universe, among other things. Having UK research at the forefront of science is advantageous as we become more aware of some of the many obstacles we will face over the coming decades.

Currently, the European Union is increasingly the world’s biggest scientific contributor, ahead of the US and China, and the UK sits alongside Germany as one of the major influencers within the EU network, recently becoming number one globally in terms of scientific productivity. The UK is able to help guide scientific research which benefits us, the EU, and has a global impact. Science is becoming increasingly collaborative and we are at the forefront of that progress as a member of the EU, winning the majority of the most prestigious grants (€1.7bn to Germany’s €1.1bn from 2007-2013). In the current funding period, UK-based researchers are lead coordinators for 892 projects, whilst Germany boasts 532 lead coordinators and our position within the EU gives us priority access to major scientific facilities throughout the union.

The UK spends 1.7% of GDP on research, below the average of 1.9% for EU nations, but this is not an issue whilst in the EU. In the 2007-2013 period, the UK gave €78bn to the EU, €5.4bn of which went into research and development; the UK received an impressive €8.8bn in grants for R&D in return. Universities in the UK receive around 16% of their research funding from the EU and 15% of academic staff are non-UK EU nationals (rising to 20% in elite universities).

The free sharing of ideas, increased mobility of scientists and increased collaboration are all major contributors to the advancement of science, which are all achieved through our position in the EU. We also have collaboration between universities, industry, regulators, and healthcare providers, all facilitated by our EU membership (the Innovative Medicines Initiative, for example). The life sciences industry alone is worth around £56 billion per year to the UK economy and EU membership encourages major medical technology and pharmaceutical companies to base projects in the UK.

What if we leave? 

Outside of the European Union, 13 countries successfully receive funding for scientific research, most notably Switzerland and Israel. Both Switzerland and Israel are associated states which are more successful than the UK with grant applications to the EU and receive more funding per capita as well. The UK also has major collaborations with CERN and the European Space Agency, both of which are outside of the EU and are hugely successful on the global stage. EU regulations on clinical trials have been accused of hampering medical research in the UK and the EU’s position on GM crops is enforced – both of which can arguably be improved by leaving the union.

It is not out of the question that the UK could continue to receive EU funding for scientific research, but it would likely take a heavy blow. Those prestigious grants where the UK lead with €1.7bn from 2007-2013? Switzerland and Israel won €0.6bn and €0.4bn respectively. Those 892 lead coordinators? Israel can boast 90, whilst Switzerland manage 15. Some might argue that the money we save through EU payments could be used to fund our own research, even though we would likely still make payments and the economy is expected to suffer during the negotiation period after we depart the union. Our 1.7% of GDP spent on research is paltry compared to Switzerland (2.8%) and Israel (4.4%) and would, if anything, decrease.

One of the major appeals for leaving the EU is the ostensible ability to better control our borders and clamp down on immigration. In order to access EU research networks, freedom of movement is required in order to become an associate state (Israel get out of this due to the date they became associates). After Switzerland’s referendum to limit migration, they were reduced to partial associate status, heavily impacting their ability to receive funding and precipitating a loss in confidence in their researchers’ abilities to commit to EU projects. If they continue their fight against mass immigration, they might find theirselves relegated to third country status and take a further hit to their funding.

Upon exiting the EU, the UK would give up a key position in the European Research Area Committee, able to attend but with restricted input. Priority would be lost for access to facilities, major biotech and pharmaceutical companies would have less incentive to base research in the UK, and non-UK EU researchers would have fewer reasons to remain or take work in the country.

Conclusion

Whether we should remain in the EU is a multi-faceted issue and should not be decided based on a single policy, but when it comes to scientific research it seems obvious to me why fewer than 1 in 8 UK scientists thinks that we should leave. We can either go it alone and risk taking a huge nosedive in available funding, risk scaring off EU researchers and companies, and take a hit to our global standing, or we can remain a heavily funded leader of one of the top research networks in the world. Hindering our scientific advances will only exacerbate other issues which are becoming increasingly important, so this is about much more than science.

A few resources:

The parliamentary science and technology committee inquiries, here.

The inquiry case for remaining in the EU, here.

The inquiry case for leaving, here.

The Nature poll, here, and an article about the debate, here.

Some useful figures on the funding, here.

And some opinion articles which influenced this hasty blog post, here, here and here.