Joe has told me that I write far too many blog posts about food. So, since we promised lots of posts about geology, and have managed hardly any, here is one on graptolites.
No, not the latest diet fad, but a type of fossil. This one is called Dicellograptus cambriensis*, from the Ordovician (about 450 million years ago) of Wales. Each of the branches is about 2 cm long. This is one of average-ish size, but they ranged from a couple of millimetres to more than a metre and a half long. As with most fossils, their soft tissue has rotted away, and only the more decay-resistant part is left. This is made of a protein similar to collagen (what your skin is made from).
Graptolites were animals, and the ones that most graptolite workers study** floated/swam*** in the sea during the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian periods (between about 488 and 407 million years ago)****. Their main use is for dating rocks - they are found all over the world, there were many different species, and most of the species did not exist for very long. This means that if you look in rocks of the right type, you're likely to find graptolites. If you know which species you are looking at, you know exactly how old the rocks are. This is useful if you are looking for oil, trying to find gold, or are just trying to make an accurate geological map.
Of course, I still haven't told you much about what they actually were. That's because we don't know very much. We know a lot about the structure of their skeleton - in the example here, each branch is a series of tubes piled up obliquely. Each protrusion on the branches is the mouth of a tube. We know that they were colonial, like a coral, with individuals living in the tubes. However, we don't know how many individuals lived in each tube. Was there one big animal per tube (like one of their living relatives) or several small ones (like their other living relative)?
So, we know a lot about graptolites in terms of which species lived when, and which species evolved into which others. We know very little about them as living animals though, and that is the part that I find most interesting.
Lucy
*The fossil name ought to be in italics, but I don't seem to be able to do that via flickr, so please just pretend the italics are there.
**There are a number of other types, but we don't usually talk about them.
***I am being deliberately vague, but they definitely did one or the other, or possibly both. Ask two graptolite workers and you'll get three different opinions.
****There are relatives of graptolites living today, but unless you have a zoology degree you probably won't have heard of them. If you're interested, the names to look up are Rhabdopleura and Cephalodiscus.
Sunday, 27 February 2011
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Royal Tea
Browsing in the supermarket, I spotted this: British-style Royal Milk Tea. I couldn't resist the chance to see what the Chinese think British tea is like.
Lower photo shows the contents of the cup: tea powder and milk powder mixed. The little plastic pot contains jelly. Yes, you read that correctly, jelly. There was also a straw, the reason for which became clear after making the tea.
Upon adding hot water, the powder dissolved and the jelly sank to the bottom. The straw is for drinking the tea and sucking up the small pieces of jelly. It tasted like a cup of medium-strength tea with UHT milk. The pieces of jelly at the bottom didn't melt, but stayed as small cubes to be chewed. Nice, but I certainly wouldn't give it to the Queen.
Lower photo shows the contents of the cup: tea powder and milk powder mixed. The little plastic pot contains jelly. Yes, you read that correctly, jelly. There was also a straw, the reason for which became clear after making the tea.
Upon adding hot water, the powder dissolved and the jelly sank to the bottom. The straw is for drinking the tea and sucking up the small pieces of jelly. It tasted like a cup of medium-strength tea with UHT milk. The pieces of jelly at the bottom didn't melt, but stayed as small cubes to be chewed. Nice, but I certainly wouldn't give it to the Queen.
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
Ligers and I
Had a trip to the zoo on saturday! It's set among wooded hills and ancient quarries, so it's quite spread out with a decent amount of walking between the enclosures, fairgrounds, and other bits and pieces. Some parts (the crowded ones) were pretty horrendous, but there are some beautiful little spots amongst bamboo groves away from the madding crowd... Anyway, just wanted to tell you about some strange goings on that are still leaving us baffled...
Ligers are truly magnificent animals - absolutely enormous, and the photo clearly doesn't do them justice. It's amazing how these cross-breeds of lions and tigers are actually bigger than either! Anyway, there were two, in a big enclosure, prowling around and being admired by a small but noisy crowd of onlookers, and separated by nothing more than plate glass...
Despite the crowds of tourists, one of the ligers became obsessed with us. It was staring at us wherever we went, until we started to get slightly unnerved. In the spirit of true scientific enquiry, we split up, one of us going for a wander at a time, to see who it followed. It was definitely me (Joe). Seeming to realise we were playing some game, it gave me a rather worrying growl, before crawling away from us backwards until we could only see its eyes, staring at us... It was really quite spooky.
Even stranger, one of the spider monkeys had a similar reaction, although in that case it merely seemed confused and curious. When we left, it ran around the cage until it couldn't get any further... and it was obviously us again, with several people in the crowd laughing and pointing.
We wondered whether it was the beard. If it gets too hot in the summer and I have to shave it off, we'll go back and re-run the experiment. As long as the snakes on fieldwork don't share this fascination, we'll be fine...
Ligers are truly magnificent animals - absolutely enormous, and the photo clearly doesn't do them justice. It's amazing how these cross-breeds of lions and tigers are actually bigger than either! Anyway, there were two, in a big enclosure, prowling around and being admired by a small but noisy crowd of onlookers, and separated by nothing more than plate glass...
Despite the crowds of tourists, one of the ligers became obsessed with us. It was staring at us wherever we went, until we started to get slightly unnerved. In the spirit of true scientific enquiry, we split up, one of us going for a wander at a time, to see who it followed. It was definitely me (Joe). Seeming to realise we were playing some game, it gave me a rather worrying growl, before crawling away from us backwards until we could only see its eyes, staring at us... It was really quite spooky.
Even stranger, one of the spider monkeys had a similar reaction, although in that case it merely seemed confused and curious. When we left, it ran around the cage until it couldn't get any further... and it was obviously us again, with several people in the crowd laughing and pointing.
We wondered whether it was the beard. If it gets too hot in the summer and I have to shave it off, we'll go back and re-run the experiment. As long as the snakes on fieldwork don't share this fascination, we'll be fine...
Sunday, 13 February 2011
water chestnuts
We were given a box of vegetables as a New Year present.* The things pictured were included in it. Not know what they were or how to cook them, we decided that boiling worked for most things, and put them in a soup. They were delicious.
I managed to find out what they are from Google, and found to my surprise that they are water chestnuts. I've had them before, but only as tasteless crunch in stir-fries. Frankly, I wondered why anyone would bother with them. Fresh ones, however, are completely different - they have a floury texture and subtle taste, rather like potatoes.
*Judging by what's on offer in the local supermarket, acceptable New Year gifts include, but are not limited to, boxes of fruit, coffee, and thermal underwear.
I managed to find out what they are from Google, and found to my surprise that they are water chestnuts. I've had them before, but only as tasteless crunch in stir-fries. Frankly, I wondered why anyone would bother with them. Fresh ones, however, are completely different - they have a floury texture and subtle taste, rather like potatoes.
*Judging by what's on offer in the local supermarket, acceptable New Year gifts include, but are not limited to, boxes of fruit, coffee, and thermal underwear.
Saturday, 12 February 2011
hotpot 1
This was our tea tonight. It's hotpot, a traditional Chinese dish, from the Chongqing region. It's a bit like a fondue, with a sauce of water, oil and a spice mix consisting mostly of chilli and Szechuan peppercorns. Food is boiled in this sauce and fished out with chopsticks when ready. Not to be gone near unless you like really hot food.
hotpot 2
A close-up of the hotpot. We had lotus root, mushrooms, rice noodles, spinach and potato. The nice thing about cooking this, apart from the spiciness, is that if you can keep cooking and eating things for as long as you're hungry.
Friday, 11 February 2011
Who's had too many raspberries, then?
Thanks for the title inspiration, Liam! ;-)
Yes, it's time for another dose of little leggy things, I'm afraid - there's just no getting away from them around here. This enchanting little critter is a springtail, or collembolan. They've got six legs and a pair of antennae, and that ought to be enough to make them insects... but it isn't quite. These things don't have wings, and they've never had them (unlike ants, for example). They also have a soft, velvety cuticle rather than hard plates, and they get their name from a springy fork underneath them - release the catch, and wheeeee...!
Sadly, this group of springtails doesn't do that, which at least makes them much easier to photograph. There was a thin silver one boinging around everywhere, but I gave up on that. In general, springtails are a rather poorly-studied group, perhaps largely because among the biggest one of all is a whopping 17 mm long, and most of them are less than 1 mm (this one was around 2 mm, but at least it stood out!). Regardless, new species are still turning up all the time in China, and there are probably not that many people looking. There's little chance of me recognising anything interesting, I hasten to add... but it is at least a chance to introduce you all to something different!
Just as an aside, these have got about the simplest compound eyes that it's possible to have... each has two lenses, that you can just make out as little black dots, roughly where you'd expect the eyes to be. If not, just imagine it's got eyes wherever you want to stick them. So, is anyone getting to be convinced that our little friends can be cute, yet?
Yes, it's time for another dose of little leggy things, I'm afraid - there's just no getting away from them around here. This enchanting little critter is a springtail, or collembolan. They've got six legs and a pair of antennae, and that ought to be enough to make them insects... but it isn't quite. These things don't have wings, and they've never had them (unlike ants, for example). They also have a soft, velvety cuticle rather than hard plates, and they get their name from a springy fork underneath them - release the catch, and wheeeee...!
Sadly, this group of springtails doesn't do that, which at least makes them much easier to photograph. There was a thin silver one boinging around everywhere, but I gave up on that. In general, springtails are a rather poorly-studied group, perhaps largely because among the biggest one of all is a whopping 17 mm long, and most of them are less than 1 mm (this one was around 2 mm, but at least it stood out!). Regardless, new species are still turning up all the time in China, and there are probably not that many people looking. There's little chance of me recognising anything interesting, I hasten to add... but it is at least a chance to introduce you all to something different!
Just as an aside, these have got about the simplest compound eyes that it's possible to have... each has two lenses, that you can just make out as little black dots, roughly where you'd expect the eyes to be. If not, just imagine it's got eyes wherever you want to stick them. So, is anyone getting to be convinced that our little friends can be cute, yet?
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