Michael
has been a friend of and contributor to the Virtual Fossil
Museum for a long time.
A retired geneticist, he is astonished at the rapid pace
which modern molecular sequences is unfolding the great
tree of life - oops, the forest of life. He leaves footprints
about in different social media, mainly engaging in evolution
versus creation and intelligent design (which he calls
the ultimate oxymoron). He also blogs,
using paleoart and scientific illustration as teaching
tools to present
what he calls Evolutionary Anecdotes.
He believes that anyone who truly observes nature, can
learn evolutionary
biology because: "You can learn a lot just by watching".
He uses art and is particularly fond of using vintage
scientific illustrations from during and even way before
the time of Darwin in these teaching examples.
|
| Aves
Order Charadriiformes Shorebird Beak Variation |
Black-tailed
godwits with long legs and beak well adapted to feeding of
the shoreline |
Bar-tailed
godwit, noted for longest known non-stop flight of any
bird, 10K Km over 9
days |
|
Image
of Slender-billed curlew in between whimbrels by John
Gould, circa 1837 - Aves
Order Charadriiformes,
Family Scolopacidae,
Genus Numenius, with 7 extant species |
Image
of Black-tailed godwits by John Gould, circa 1837
- Aves
Order Charadriiformes,
Family Scolopacidae,
Genus Limosa |
Image
of Bar-tailed godwits by John Gould, circa 1837
- Aves
Order Charadriiformes,
Family Scolopacidae,
Limosa lapponica |
From
raptor to longest flight ever is quite an evolutionary anecdote. |
| Further
study:
- Szekely,
T., R. P. Freckleton, and J. D. Reynolds. "Sexual
Selection Explains Rensch's Rule of Size Dimorphism in
Shorebirds." Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences (2004): 12224-2227.
- Lindenfors,
P., T. Szekely, and J. D. Reynolds. "Directional
Changes in Sexual Size Dimorphism in Shorebirds, Gulls and
Alcids." Journal of Evolutionary Biology J. Evolution
Biol: 930-38.
- Hedenström, Extreme
Endurance Migration: What Is the Limit to Non-Stop
Flight?, PLOS Biology, May 2010.
|
