When Will the Dino Bones Run Out

Slate.com’s Explainer answers a question I was just pondering the other day.  The question goes something like this: how long before we start running out of dinosaur fossils to find?  The Answer, according to Slate, is not any time too soon.

I’ll let you read the explination for yourself, while here I will explain what made me think about this.  If you’ve read much of what I’ve written on this blog then you are likely aware that I am hugely interested in dinosaurs.  I often (though not as much lately) post about any latest news regarding dinosaur discoveries.  Still, thinking of all the fossil findings I am more than aware that the amount of preserved dinosaur remains has to be finite considering that the number of dinosaurs was obviously finite and also that fossilization is no easy process in and of itself.  So yeah, I’ve known that mathmatically speaking there will come a day and age when we aren’t finding any new dinosaur bones, I just wasn’t sure when.

Thanks to Slate I can now relax with the assumption that for quite some time I will be pleased to read about new dinosaur discoveries every few weeks or so.  It should also be noted that even if there are not a abundance of fossils being discovered at any given time there are still a lot of opportunities for scientists to learn more about these prehistoric animals.  Our understandings of dinosaurs have advanced greatly since their remains first began to be dug up in the nineteenth century.  Back in the 1800s we thought of these creatures as slow lumbering cold-blooded lizards, nowadays we see them in a wide range of diversity, with complex anatomies which support theories of warm-bloodedness and very close relation to (if not direct evolution into) modern birds.  Heck, as a kid there was still no dinosaur discovieries with recognized feathers, now it seems like every three or four months, especially with the abundance of finds in China (as mentioned by Slate), there is some new dinosaur that is found to be feathered including some genera within the ornithischia order (previously all feathered dinosaurs were of the saurischian order).

So all around I take this as happy news for the dinosaur lovers amongst us.  And all you paleontologists out there, keep up the good work for all us non-scientists, we owe our fascination in part to your efforts.

Galileo and His Telescope

For those of you who have visted Google this fine day of August 25th, 2009 you will see that the search site is paying special homage to Galileo Galilei and his first demonstration of his first telescope.

400 years ago this day, Galileo demonstated his telescope and thus in many ways changed the history of astronomy and his own life drastically.  Modern astronomy is greatly endebted to Galileo and his discoveries and so the moment of telescope presentation siginifies an important one (you can read about it in this Gaurdian article).

Boy, between marking 200 years since Charles Darwin’s birth, 150 years since the first publishing of On the Origin of Species, and now 400 years since Galileo’s telescope demonstration it seems like 2009 has been a big year for “things that happened in science a nice century or more ago.”

Still, all great stuff.

Scientific Questing

Been a long time once again.  Apologies I suppose.

Alright, what’s happening on the science front?  Well I am currently listening to an audiobook called Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory which is absolutely fantastic.  While it certainly talks a lot about the theories of evolution it seems to be more of a focus on the various figures in scince history who have contributed to the development of the theory.  It is really great stuff.  While we may all be really familiar with Charles Darwin and his contributions to the theory, there were many other scientists who were just as instrumental in the gradual acceptance amongst the scientific community of evolution.

That being said, and thinking about some of the characters who were involved in this theory (and they certainly were characters) I find myself fascinated by the pursuits of Peter A. Rona in his hunt for Paleodictyon nodosum.  the New York Times article which I’ve linked here demonstrates something that I am very fond of in science and it is what I’d call the questing for answers.  For some it is not enough to just propse a good sounding hypothesis (actually that shold be enough for any self respecting scientist considering the scientific method) but they really love the hunt for evidence for or against their proposed ideas.  To many of us Dr. Rona’s pursuit might seem strange or even inane but to him and others like him, these quests of scientific discovery are the pinnacle of what it means to know the world.  I applaud that and even, to a degree, envy it.

I love that there a people with the ambition for discovery.  Whether it was the early scientists working on a theory of evolution of people like Dr. Rona who are hunting for answers about an elusive creature.  The desire to discover and know the world further is an essential element to what it means to be a scientist.