Let’s get started.
Putting together the nodes and handlers is going to be somewhat painful, and slow. It might be a bit more fun, along with giving me a way to test the general concept and implementation, if I implement the handlers to help me do a particular experiment or two. There will be no getting away from days of going through, method by method, bit by bit, but this should be a much more interesting way to get started.
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The semiprecious stone amber is fossilized tree resin. Sometimes, insects and other small critters are trapped by sticky tree sap, and become encased in amber. Sometimes, microorganisms are found inside amber. Sometimes, they’re yeast that can be revived and used to brew beer.
Here’s an article about the yeast, revived and used to brew beer.
Amber Ale: Brewing Beer From 45-Million-Year-Old Yeast
Here’s the homepage of the folks who used ancient yeast to make beer.
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There are different candidates for the oldest preserved human footprints in North America. The older sight has a less certain date than the younger one. Today we look at ways of dating fossils, other than using carbon 14.
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It took a bit of digging, but I found out why the domestic dog fossil found with the remains of the La Brea woman didn’t cause more of a sensation. Using carbon 14 dating, the dog fossil turned out to be around seven-thousand years younger than the fossil of the woman. What is carbon 14 dating, and how does it work?
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The La Brea Woman was found in close association with the remains of a domesticated dog. Her remains have been dated to between 9,000 and 10,000 years ago. Were there dogs that early in North America? How long ago were dogs domesticated?
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Fossils aren’t just remains of animals. Some of them are materials and marks left by organisms as they went about their lives. Called “trace fossils,” they are, instead of a snapshot of death, a snapshot of life.
Here are some articles about the traces humans left on our moon.
On the Moon, Flags & Footprints of Apollo Astronauts Won’t Last Forever
New Images Offer Sharper View of Apollo Sites
Here are some articles about some 190,000,000-year old dinosaur footprints.
Visit This Massachusetts Park With Dinosaur Footprints
And here are some articles about some 3.7-millean-year old footprints, left by some of our early ancestors.
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In the previous episode we talked about where the oil that formed them came from. Today, we talk about the fossils found in them. Located in the middle of a major city, the La Brea Tar Pits have given up fossils as much as 55-thousand years old.
Here’s a link to a 5-minute video that shows how material is processed from the tarpits, including the large bones and microfossils.
Behind the Scenes at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum
Here’s a link to the Page museum, where fossils and reconstructions from the tarpits are on display.
Between technical difficulties, research and recording, I’ve just barely managed to squeeze in some time to do some little chores with the code for my artificial life experiment software. I call my subleq based digital organisms “figures.”
The very next thing is to implement save and restore functions, so I can keep a population and play with it later. I hope to take care of that by the end of the weekend, but no promises.
Once that last little chore is done, I’ll zip up and archive figures0.3. Closing in on the end of this round, my thoughts have been drifting toward the next.
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Around the same time that the ancestors of humans branched from the apes, organic sediments were being laid down that would eventually turn into oil. Some of this oil worked its way along fault lines, and began seeping out of the ground at the surface. Located in L.A. these tar pits would capture animals, preserving their bones for the descendants of those early apes to puzzle over.
Here’s a link to an article about the down side to building a city over an oil deposit that is seeping out of the earth.
The Fiery Underground Oil Pit Eating L.A.
Here’s a 13-minute video about the 1989 explosion, caused by methane gas from the oil deposits under the city.
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The Burgess Shale is a deposited of shale that was formed from large underwater avalanches that berried organisms around a half-billion years ago, preserving the soft parts of the bodies. However, the fossils have been squeezed down to a thin layer of carbon, leaving shadows of what the creatures once were.
Here are a couple of links to more information about the Burgess Shale.
Smithsonian Institution Burgess Shale Home Page
The Burgess Shale – Royal Ontario Museum
Here’s a link to an episode about the Cambrian explosion.