The earliest forms of life on Earth were prokaryotes, & they dominated the biosphere for around 2.5 billion years. And slowly they changed it – aerobic photosynthesis by cyanobacteria (‘blue-green algae’) led first to the oxygenation of the oceans & then to the development of an oxygen-rich atmosphere (incidentally making life impossible for many anaerobic […]
Continue readingTag: science
more on bone-eating snotworms – the fossil years
A while back I wrote about some fascinating little deep-sea creatures – the ‘bone-eating snot-worms’ (Osedax sp.) that colonise the corpses of dead whales falling to the ocean floor. Now Brian Switek, over on Laelaps, has reviewed a paper suggesting that this bone-boring habit has been around for millions of years. The evidence is in the […]
Continue readingengaging students in science through interactive learning
This is another re-post from Talking Teaching. I know that whole interactive-engagement thing is becoming the norm in schools, but I thought it might be interesting (for teachers, in particular) to see some of the back-story 🙂 After my lecture today one of the students said, "I like your lectures, they’re interactive. You make me […]
Continue readinga new hominin from siberia?
The latest edition of Nature carries an item that raises the possibility of another new – & recent – new hominin species, this time from Siberia (Krasuse et al., 2010). A few years ago, when the story about Homo floresiensis first broke, I remember commenting to my classes that it was probably only a matter of time until […]
Continue readingcross-species hanky-panky
My first-year students & I are currently studying plants. This is actually something of a balancing act from my perspective as a reasonably large proportion of the class didn’t study the ‘diversity in plant structure & function’ standard back in year 12 (or don’t remember doing so), so I’ve got to bring them up to […]
Continue readingwhat makes students stick at science?
This is a very relevant question in the light of the government’s recent announcement of its intention to tie a proportion of tertiary funding to student completion and retention rates. (This decision is presumably driven, among other things, by relatively low rates of retention and passing papers/courses, which lead to questions about whether we’re getting […]
Continue readingthe age of mammals
The last 65 million years have sometimes been called ‘the Age of Mammals’ (although I’m inclined to think it should be the Age of Insects, or perhaps – as it’s always been – the Age of Bacteria; after all, in terms of sheer number of individuals, bacteria have got to be the dominant life form […]
Continue readingthe oversized naughty bits of female spotted hyenas
When I visited Pharyngula today I saw that PZ had posted a video about spotted hyenas. Female spotted hyenas. And that reminded me of one of the late Stephen Jay Gould’s wonderful essays on the same subject. (Gould remains one of my favourite science writers -although, having said that, I do find some of his later […]
Continue readingof rain and rotifers
Yesterday we went across to Tauranga to see my in-laws. It was a terrible day for driving; the forecast was for periods of heavy rain & it was pouring down when we arrived. My father-in-law had emptied the rain gauge that morning (23mm, he said), & by 1pm it was back up to 80mm & […]
Continue readingrather nice zoological videos
Over at Terrapin Procrastination there is a lovely long list of zoological videos for you to watch. (I don’t know whether or not to thank PZ for directing me there – right now I don’t have time to procrastinate!). My favourite description from the list would have to be ““sea angel” (pelagic nudibranch) kills and […]
Continue reading