The Phylum Echinodermata continued! Please see the links for last week.
Your final two quizzes (#11 and #12) will be “superquizzes” with lots of extra credit. Quiz #11 will be fill-in-the-blank questions from the first half of the course (through bryozoans); quiz #12 from the second.
Pentremites godoni, a blastoid from the Lower Carboniferous of Illinois.
Geology in the News –
How to read a scientific paper? Here are some useful ideas.
The hemimastigophorans are a strange group of organisms currently classified at the phylum level. Recent genetic studies show that they are radically different from animals, protists, fungi and plants, meaning they represent a branch of life at the ‘supra-kingdom” level. There is still so much we don’t know about life, let alone life’s history.
A 31-kilometer-wide impact crater has been discovered under Greenland’s shrinking icecap. So far it has been dated to be sometime in the Pleistocene, but there is much speculation that is is connected to the Younger Dryas climate event. For an excellent review of the topic, see Dr. Crawford’s recent blog post.
A cuddly little therapsid named Kayentatherium has been found preserved with 38 tiny babies. This discovery has implications for mammal evolution because this clutch size is more reptilian than mammalian.
