Friday, March 10, 2006

Where did they dig up that old fossil...

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: "When wandering through a hunter's market in Laos, Robert Timmins of the Wildlife Conservation Society happened upon a previously unknown rodent. Called kha-nyou by locals--or rock rat--the long-whiskered and furry-tailed rodent was reputed to favor certain limestone terrain. Western scientists named it Laonastes aenigmamus or stone-dwelling enigmatic mouse--partially because a live specimen has never been collected--and thought the rock rat represented a new family of mammals. But new research reported in today's Science proves that Laonastes actually represents a fossil come to life.

Paleontologist Mary Dawson of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and her team immediately recognized the strange rodent as a living member of a family thought to have been extinct for at least 11 million years"

How much do we really know about our planet? Do we know enough to make proclomations of extinction on numerous species on a yearly basis? Or to go stark raving mad about global warming? Or to 'scientifically' determine the origins of the universe?
No, because we're human, have been around for abour 6000 years, and been recording everything for the past 300 years.

Another funny thing is how the article is written. Is this really a rodent that spontaneously generated to form a rodent, supposedly 11 million years after it was extinct? No, the species. been around all this time, and it is not a fosssil come to life.
Nice find, now we have another rodent to add to the list of the living. :D

4 comments:

Matthew Celestine said...

Good post.

RobertDWood said...

Thank you!
I'm learning with experiance.

Alexander Blair said...

Do we need any more rodents? :-\ :D

RobertDWood said...

Heh, dunno. If your in the buisness of spreading plauge...

Those ones are cute, in a wierd sorta way.