Read Online The Darwin Awards Next Evolution: Chlorinating the Gene Pool by Wendy Northcutt - Free Book Online
Authors: Wendy Northcutt
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belts! The innocent victims were two totaled cars: a 1994 Jeep Cherokee and a 1998 Ford pickup.
Darwin kindly asks her readers to turn off those cell phones! Many times that erratic driver we pass has a phone in his ear. YOU are just as erratic when you are on that phone. For your own safety, and for the safety of those around you, HANG UP!
Reference: Lewiston Sun Journal
SCIENCE INTERLUDE: FLOWER POWER
By Steven “DarkSyde” Andrew
A few hundred years ago a new fad swept through the privileged ranks of European aristocracy. It was a substance refined from an enigmatic plant brought back from the New World. Hailed as a godsend by some, more recent experience has shown that long-term consumption can lead to erratic behavior, serious weight fluctuations, and systemic organ failure. Even first-time users can, although rarely, fall victim to fatal cardiopulmonary shock. But it is not all bad. I must confess, on my first date with my future wife, she and I both indulged. The mysterious extract soon worked its neurotransmitter magic. We gazed enraptured into each other’s now-blazing eyes, and we fell madly in love.
If you travel back to the opening days of the Cretaceous Period, you are well advised to watch your step. Saurian monsters abound. Hungry eyes watch from ambush. Hordes of tiny ratlike mammals slumber by day in fur-lined burrows, emerging to feed at dusk. Aside from running afoul of a carnivorous titan, you must be careful of the little critters as well. Tread on the wrong lair and you might crush dear old Great-to-the-Zillionth Grandpa in his sleep, wiping out the entire human race and giving rise to the dreaded Grandfather Paradox. With so much to worry about, it is easy to miss the most important new organism to arise in ages, standing low in the tangled bank at the steamy water’s edge.
It is the world’s first blossom.
The little pockets of flowers were unobtrusive in a world ruled by colossal carnivorous monsters. But the small flowering shoots had already struck a partnership with the most successful animal taxon on earth, the insects, and would soon team up with the rest of the animal kingdom. In its own vegetable way, the flower was poised to take over the world.
Botanists classify so-called higher plants, meaning those with roots, veins, and leafy structures, into two main groups: angiosperms and gymnosperms. Flowering plants are angiosperms. Conifers, which produce the familiar pinecone, are an example of gymnosperms. Both produce seeds. However, the seeds of angiosperms are surrounded by a fleshy vessel, or an angio in Latin, forming an often tasty wrapper. The seeds of gymnosperms lack an equivalent structure and thus are “naked,” or in Latin, gymno.
The origin of flowering plants is a hotly debated topic. Some say there is indirect evidence for a possible ancestor over two hundred million years ago. But the oldest unambiguous fossil evidence for a flowering plant is found in China and dates to about 125 million years ago. It was named Archaefructus sinensis , “ancient Chinese fruit.”
Regardless of when they first evolved, plants had hit on an ingenious survival strategy. Rather than playing an inadvertent role in the mandibles, jaws, and gullets of ancient insects, they created a sort of organic peace offering, free for the taking. Pollen and sweet nectar was given as payoff for cross-fertilizing the new angiosperms. The flower blossom itself likely evolved as a visual transponder beacon. The blooms even developed secret patterns invisible to the eyes of vertebrates, flashing rings and other enticing patterns in ultraviolet wavelengths to wave in their insect couriers.
By the Middle Cretaceous, some ninety million years ago, birds were probably in on the act, recruited by flowers to carry plant pollen in their feathers and seeds in their stomachs. They flew across the young and growing Atlantic Ocean to every island and continent. Flowers of all kinds evolved, each in elegant
Darwin kindly asks her readers to turn off those cell phones! Many times that erratic driver we pass has a phone in his ear. YOU are just as erratic when you are on that phone. For your own safety, and for the safety of those around you, HANG UP!
Reference: Lewiston Sun Journal
SCIENCE INTERLUDE: FLOWER POWER
By Steven “DarkSyde” Andrew
A few hundred years ago a new fad swept through the privileged ranks of European aristocracy. It was a substance refined from an enigmatic plant brought back from the New World. Hailed as a godsend by some, more recent experience has shown that long-term consumption can lead to erratic behavior, serious weight fluctuations, and systemic organ failure. Even first-time users can, although rarely, fall victim to fatal cardiopulmonary shock. But it is not all bad. I must confess, on my first date with my future wife, she and I both indulged. The mysterious extract soon worked its neurotransmitter magic. We gazed enraptured into each other’s now-blazing eyes, and we fell madly in love.
If you travel back to the opening days of the Cretaceous Period, you are well advised to watch your step. Saurian monsters abound. Hungry eyes watch from ambush. Hordes of tiny ratlike mammals slumber by day in fur-lined burrows, emerging to feed at dusk. Aside from running afoul of a carnivorous titan, you must be careful of the little critters as well. Tread on the wrong lair and you might crush dear old Great-to-the-Zillionth Grandpa in his sleep, wiping out the entire human race and giving rise to the dreaded Grandfather Paradox. With so much to worry about, it is easy to miss the most important new organism to arise in ages, standing low in the tangled bank at the steamy water’s edge.
It is the world’s first blossom.
The little pockets of flowers were unobtrusive in a world ruled by colossal carnivorous monsters. But the small flowering shoots had already struck a partnership with the most successful animal taxon on earth, the insects, and would soon team up with the rest of the animal kingdom. In its own vegetable way, the flower was poised to take over the world.
Botanists classify so-called higher plants, meaning those with roots, veins, and leafy structures, into two main groups: angiosperms and gymnosperms. Flowering plants are angiosperms. Conifers, which produce the familiar pinecone, are an example of gymnosperms. Both produce seeds. However, the seeds of angiosperms are surrounded by a fleshy vessel, or an angio in Latin, forming an often tasty wrapper. The seeds of gymnosperms lack an equivalent structure and thus are “naked,” or in Latin, gymno.
The origin of flowering plants is a hotly debated topic. Some say there is indirect evidence for a possible ancestor over two hundred million years ago. But the oldest unambiguous fossil evidence for a flowering plant is found in China and dates to about 125 million years ago. It was named Archaefructus sinensis , “ancient Chinese fruit.”
Regardless of when they first evolved, plants had hit on an ingenious survival strategy. Rather than playing an inadvertent role in the mandibles, jaws, and gullets of ancient insects, they created a sort of organic peace offering, free for the taking. Pollen and sweet nectar was given as payoff for cross-fertilizing the new angiosperms. The flower blossom itself likely evolved as a visual transponder beacon. The blooms even developed secret patterns invisible to the eyes of vertebrates, flashing rings and other enticing patterns in ultraviolet wavelengths to wave in their insect couriers.
By the Middle Cretaceous, some ninety million years ago, birds were probably in on the act, recruited by flowers to carry plant pollen in their feathers and seeds in their stomachs. They flew across the young and growing Atlantic Ocean to every island and continent. Flowers of all kinds evolved, each in elegant
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