PENGUINS: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

Everyone knows what a penguin is, but their biologic diversity and geologic history are not common knowledge.

CLASSIFICATION:

Class Aves

Family Spheniscidae

MODERN-DAY DIVERSITY OF PENGUINS: There are 6 main groups (their "common" names are listed in blue color below), with a total of seven genera and 18 living species [their scientific names italicized). Eleven of these living species are threatened by extinction.

THE GREAT PENGUINS:

Emperor: Aptenodytes forsteri: world’s tallest and heaviest penguin; [Antartica] 

King: A. patagonicus: world’s second largest penguin; [South Atlantic and South Indian oceans].

THE CRESTED PENGUINS:

Southern Rockhopper: Eudyptes chrysocome [subantartic waters of western Pacific and Indian Oceans] 

Northern Rockhopper: E. moseley [southern India]

Snares: E. robustus  [New Zealand] 

Royal: E. schlegeli [subantarctic waters of Macquarie Island and adjacent islands, halfway between New Zealand and Antartica]

Erect-Crested: E. sclateri [New Zealand]

Fiordland: E. pachyrhnchus [New Zealand]

THE LITTLE PENGUINS:

Little: Eudyptula minor [New Zealand]

Australian little penguin: E. novahollandiae [New Zealand]

THE YELLOW-EYED PENGUIN:

Megadyptes antipodes: world’s smallest penguin [New Zealand]

THE BRUSH-TAILED PENGUINS:

Adélie: Pygoscelis adeliae [Antartica]

Chinstrap: P. antarctica [Antartica]

Gentoo: P. papua [ice-free areas of sub-Antartica islands and the Antartica Peninsula]

THE BANDED PENGUINS: (Occur where cold waters exist in temperate climates) 

African: Spheniscus demersus [The only penguin in Africa: South Africa & Namibia].

Humbolt: S. humboldti  [Peru]

Magellanic: S. magellanicus  [Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and Falkland Islands].

Galápagos: S. mendiculus [The only penguin to live at the equator]. 

COMMENTS:

Penguins are mostly confined to the Southern Hemisphere, although one species Spheniscus mendiculus, which is one of the “Banded Penguins,” lives at the equator. It should be noted, however, that Spheniscus demersus (a “banded penguin”—see list above) lives in rocky areas washed by cold current.

A juvenile Spheniscus demersus, the South African penguin. The juveniles are shades of gray with a lighter chest. Photo taken at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey, California, where they have a rocky shoreline “live” exhibit of puffins. Images  courtesy of a member of my family (Summer, 2023).

An adult of Spheniscus demersus. After a year, the juveniles obtain their adult plumage. Photo taken at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey, California, where they have a rocky shoreline-live exhibit with webcams. Photo courtesy of K. Solomon (2023). 

Penguins do not live in the Arctic, and, contrary to popular opinion, only five species, out of 18, live in Antarctica.

Gentoo penguins are the fastest underwater birds in the world. They can reach speeds of about 22 miles per hour.

Emperor penguins are the world’s deepest diving birds. They can dive to depths of up to 1,800 feet.

GEOLOGIC RANGE OF PENGUINS: Middle to late Paleocene (approximately 60–55 million years ago) to modern day.

The earliest known penguin is Kumimanu biceae, of middle Paleocene age [as old as approximately 60 m.y.a.], from South Island of New Zealand. Its discovery was announced in Dec. 2017. 

Kuminmanu biceae: This very elongate and stream-lined penguin was the size of a human (5 foot, 9 inches and approximately 223 pounds), which is 1.5 times the size of the Emperor Penguin of today.

Another New Zealand Paleocene species (about the same age and size as K. bicaea) is K. fordycei Ksepka et al., 2023; it may have been the largest penguin to ever have lived.

REFERENCES CONSULTED:

en.Wikipedia.org

Ksepka, D.T. and six others. 2023. Largest-known fossil penguin…Journal of Paleontology 97:434–453. (pdf is $36 dollars for non-members of their society).

Monterey Bay Aquarium: www.montereybayaquarium.org

Georgia Aquarium: www.georgiaaquarium.org

THE GIANT PLACODERM FISH DUNKLEOSTEUS AND TITANICHTHYS

The first fishes were the Ordovician/Silurian jawless agnathans, which gave rise to sharks and their kin. By the Devonian Period, they had an armour-plated head/thorax region, and, although, they lacked true teeth, their mouths had sharp bones that acted like teeth. During their apex, placoderms were widespread and dominated the seas, rivers, and lakes. They went extinct at the end of the Devonian Period 360 million years ago (mya) (Long, 1995). 

At least two placoderms were the first creatures to reach gigantic lengths of reportedly 8 m or more, but these total lengths are only estimates because the posterior portions of these “giants” are not preserved. The giant placoderms are Dunkleosteus (pronounced dun-kel-os-tee-us) and Titanichthys (pronounced titan-ick-theez). Both were arthrodire placoderms and belong to the dinichthyids: “meaning “terrible fish.” Until dinosaurs evolved, these two placoderms taxa were the first creatures to reach gigantic sizes. 

Dunkleosteus:

Discovered in 1867, 10 species reported.

Family Dunkleosteidae

Late Devonian (Famennian Age) (370 to 360 m.y.a)

Reportedly 13-30 feet (4 -10 m) long, but lengths greater than 16 feet (5 m) are estimated because only the head plates are currently known (the rest of their bodies are not preserved).

Two views (left side and front--oral) of Dunkleosteus, a rubber model made in 2006 by Safari, Ltd.

Known from USA (e.g., New York), Canada, Europe (Belgium and Poland), and Morocco.

Dunkleosteus most likely fed on anything available (e.g., brachiopods, bivalves, gastropods, trilobites, cephalopods, other placoderms, and earliest known sharks). The remains of this placoderm have been found with regurgitated fish remains.

Lived in shallow water as juveniles and ventured into the open ocean as adults.

Titanichtys:

discovered in 1885, 7 species reported.

family Titanichyidae

Late Devonian (Famennian Age) (370 to 360 mya)

Front side-view of Titanichtys.

Reportedly 23-25 feet (7-7.6 m) long; but lengths are estimated because only the head plates are currently known (the rest of their bodies are not preserved).

Known from Eastern North America, Morocco, and questionably Europe.

Titanichtys has only small plates in its mouth and lacks any sharp cutting edges. This placoderm might have been a filter feeder (ate plankton?), similar to the lifestyle of a basking shark.

References Used:

Long, J.A. 1995. The rise of fishes, 500 million years of evolution. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London. 223 pp.

prehistoric-wildlife.com   [for both genera] 

 

 

“HITCH HIKING” ACROSS THE PACIFIC

This post concerns the tsunami-driven rafting and associated trans-oceanic transport of shallow-marine animals that took place March 11, 2011 because of the magnitude 9 earthquake along the east side of Japan. The quake was caused by an undersea megathrust (18 km depth) east of the Sendai area, Japan. 

Google Earth Image showing the epicenter of the quake and the arrows indicate the main directions of the tsunami-generated waves that transported debris eastward toward North America. 

The quake-related earth movements lasted approximately six minutes and created huge tsunami waves less than an hour after the quake. These waves reached 128 feet above sea level and traveled inland as far as six miles (10 km) in the Sendai area, in Honshu of northern Japan. The waves overrode the world’s largest sea walls. If you want to see hundreds of photos and incredible videos of the effects of the quake, just Google: Japan 2011 quake. You need to see a sampling of them in order to begin to comprehend the amount of damage caused by this quake event.

According to the National Ocean Service [see reference below] in March 2016, the earthquake and related wave damages claimed 16,000 lives and injured 6,000 more. At least 50,000 people were forced to evacuate. Although 70 percent of the debris sank nearshore, an estimated 1.5 million tons of debris was sent adrift eastward across the northern Pacific Ocean. Many species and debris were transported up to 4,300 miles from Japan to Midway Atoll, Hawaii, south-central Alaska, as well as to British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California.

The quake, which was felt all across northern Japan, also damaged severely the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (“Number One”) in Okuma on the Pacific coast and released highly hazardous toxic/radioactive wastewater into the sea and also radiation into the air. Even 12 years after this historic meltdown, this power plant remains a highly hazardous toxic waste site. It is located about 100 km (60 miles) south of Sendai.

 

At least 289 species of living invertebrates were tabulated. Most were invertebrates: sponges, bivalve mollusks (e.g. mussels, oysters), gastropod mollusks (“sea slugs”), worms, cnidarians (e.g., sea anemones), bryozoans, arthropods (e.g., isopods and amphipods, and crustaceans (e.g., gooseneck barnacles and crabs), as well as barnacles and echinoderms (e.g., sea stars). A few (living) fish were also transported. Mollusks were the most abundant taxa.

Note: No four-legged (including rats or primates (i.e., monkeys) were transported by the rafting.

Most of the debris consisted of durable, non-biodegradable (man-made) material such as plastic, fiberglass, and Styrofoam. Small boats (including some “ghost” boats and large pieces (up to 170 tons!) of boat docks (some at least 80 feet long) were also transported. Natural debris, such as woody debris and even large pieces of trees, is short-lived and decomposable—rarely surviving a trip, that can last many months across the whole Pacific Ocean. Only a few Japanese trees made the trip. 

The following references were used in compiling the above information:

Carlton, J.T. and eight others. 2017. Tsunami-driven rafting: transoceanic species dispersal and implications for marine biogeography. Science 357 (no. 6358). Pdf available online for free.

National Ocean Service. March 2016. Ocean service.noaa.gov/aa-updates/japan-tsunami-marine-debris-html

santacruzsentinental.com

science.org

 

ZEBRAS: A GRADATIONAL GENETIC CONCEPT

Zebras are highly recognizable because of their stripes. These animals are perissodactyl equines native to southern Africa, in regions other than deserts and rainforests. They all belong to genus Equus, which includes horses, donkeys, zebras, and asses. Zebras have excellent hearing and eyesight, and they are highly social animals; thus, they have sophisticated communication sounds. If necessary, they can run at speeds about 35 to 40 miles per hour. They are constantly on-the-move to find fresh grass and water, and sometimes, they gather in huge herds of thousands of individuals. Their lifespan in the wild is about 20 years, but, in captivity, they can live up to 40 years (Wikipedia).

During the Pleistocene, enormous herds of horses once lived in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America. Those in the America’s and in Europe eventually died out, leaving abundant zebras only on the plains of Africa, plus some rare forms in Asia, e.g., the Asiatic onager (Fenton and Fenton, 1989, p. 579). Until recent years, it has been reported that there are three living species of zebras. Equus quagga, also called the “plains zebra,” is the most common and widespread. According to Pedersen et al. (2018), at least 600,000 plains zebras currently inhabit the African savannahs. These animals can be up 880 pounds. This species has also been referred to as burchellii, but the name quagga has taxonomic priority.

Equus quagga displayed in the Age of Mammals Exhibit Hall at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, southern California (nhm.org). Image taken by the author.

The other two “species” of zebra are Equus zebra, also called the “mountain zebra,” is only up to 620 pounds and lives only in southwest Africa; and Equus grevyi, which is the rarest and weighs the most (up to 990 pounds). It is restricted today to a very small area in south-central Africa.

Early classifications of zebras were based on features, such as skull dimensions, presence or absence of a mane, and stripe pattern. These early classifications resulted in various numbers of species ± various numbers of subspecies. A modern-day DNA study (Pederson et al., 2018), however, supports variations in zebra populations being clines rather than species or subspecies. In biology, a cline is a measurable gradient in a single characteristic biological trait of a species across its geographical range. Clines can be smooth, continuous gradation, or more abrupt changes from one geographic region to the next. Thus, clines do not equal taxonomic recognition in the way species or subspecies do. This 2018 DNA study shows, furthermore, that there are nine populations of zebras, and only two of these overlap with traditional categorizations (one of which is the quagga population = the largest population and most distinct population, which originated in South Africa around 370,000 years ago). The population genetic structure does not mirror the traditionally reported, morphological-based subspecies delineations. 

References Cited: 

Casper–Emil, T. Pedersen and seven others. 2018. A southern Africa origin and cryptic structure in the highly mobile plains zebra. Nature Ecology and Evolution, v. 2, pp. 491–498. (pdf available online for free)

Fenton, C.L. and M.A. Fenton. 1989. The fossil book-a record of prehistoric life. Doubleday, New York, 740 pp.

Wikipedia.org

A REMARKABLE EXAMPLE OF A SPECIES PAIR

Species pairs are two species that closely resemble one another in morphology and are similar in geologic age, yet these species can have lived in geographically far-apart areas.

An excellent example of a species pair are two species of the cassid warm-water, shallow-marine gastropod Galeodea. This genus lived only during the early through middle Eocene time. One species (shown on the right side of the following diagram) is Galeodea turneri Gardner, 1939, which lived during the early Eocene in eastern Texas. The other species (shown on the left) is Galeodea sutterensis Dickerson, 1916, which lived during middle Eocene (approximately 50 million years ago) in California. 

Comparison of the close morphology of the front and back views of the east Texas G. turneri versus similar views of the California G. sutterensis.

The presence of these two species is indicative that the waters where they lived were once connected. During the time that they lived, there was an open connection between Texas and southern California. In addition, this connection extended up along the eastern seaboard area of North America, across the then much narrower Atlantic Ocean, and eastward into the Tethys Sea, including southern England and the Paris Basin, France. The Tethys Sea closed up following Eocene time when Africa and India collided with Eurasia. 

Reference Cited:

Squires, R.L. 2019. Revision of Eocene warm-water cassis gastropods from coastal southwestern North America: Implications for paleobiogeographic distribution and faunal turnover. PaleoBios 36L1-22, figs. 1-5.

 FAUX DIAMOND CRYSTAL PAPERWEIGTHS

These glass (silica) paperweights are popular in “curio shops” because of their vivid colors and multi-faceted surfaces. One side is flat, and the opposite side is pointed. Most are 5 cm in width (as for the examples shown below), but larger sizes (8 cm width) are available. They have great “eye appeal,” to the consumer. I know this because many years ago I purchased several (normal size) in order to obtain a full range of their colors. I also know that some mineralogists frown on anyone who buys these items.

The paperweighs are artificial but look like real crystals. The are made out of melted glass (silica). Some are colorless (these can be referred to as “rock crystal,” but most are solid-colored (e.g, pink, red, yellow, green, blue, purple). I searched online in order to find out how they are manufactured, but I could not find out any details. I also tried to find out where they are made, but this information is very scarce. So my searches were largely futile. I surmised that they are made from melted glass with elements (in powdered form--as oxides) added to create certain colors. I did detect one manufacturer (Pujiana Hongdingwang Houseware Company in Pujiana Country, Zheijiang Province of China), but no information was provided by them in terms of how they make these “crystal diamond” paperweights.

                                         red paperweight

pink paperweight

                                       yellow paperweight

                                          orange paperweight

                                          green paperweight

blue paperweight

                                         purple paperweight

                                                     

                                          clear paperweight

Chemical elements (mostly as oxides) produce which color when added to the melted silica. These elements are summarized below:

Red–add iron, cadmium, or lead.

Yellow Color/Amber–add sulfur or cadium.

Green–add chromium

Blue–add cobalt, iron, or manganese.

Light blue–copper

Purple–manganese, or nickel-cobalt

White–add tin 

 MARBLES

Marbles have been “around” (no pun intended) for centuries, and their colors appeal to both young and old. I played with marbles when I was a child, and, fortunately, I kept a small sack of them, thus “I did not lose all my marbles.”

I know that vintage marbles are worth considerable money, especially if you have rare ones. So I looked at my very small collection and tried to evaluate it. I soon discovered that evaluation is not an easy task. After considerable effort (by viewing several videos on “You Tube”), I am only very tentatively confident about my evaluations. Apparently, I have marbles that were made in the 1950’s, thus they have only moderately low value, but they are still fun to have.

YouTube has some really good videos about how marbles are made. Some of the ones being made today show considerable interior complexity and are time-consuming to make. If you are interested in evaluating your marble collection, good luck and have fun.

Marbles are made from silica sand, mixed with both a flux (e.g., potash) to help the mixture flow more easily at lower temperatures and also a stabilizer (e.g., calcium carbonate) to help chemically stabilize the mixture . The colors, like those found in faux crystals, are created when the artisans that make the marbles add different metals (in powdered form) to the molten glass (e.g., copper imparts a light blue color, chromium imparts an orange color). The interior complexity is all hand-done, while the glass is still very hot.

                          Examples of "solids" in my collection

                                                  "swirls"

                                          "clears" or clearies"

                                                "cats eyes"

                             "unusual" marbles in my collection

If you are are a subscriber to “National Geographic Magazine,” it recently (February, 2024) had a very informative article called “The Class Age.”

To see an informative video about how marbles are made, copy and then paste the following website into your browser:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4Pe-w9vXhg

VENUS FLOWER BASKET: NOT AN ORDINARY SPONGE

The use of the name “Venus Flower Basket” as used in this blog refers strictly to the living species of Euplectella aspergillum. I had to make this disclaimer because the common name “Venus Flower Basket” sponge has been broadly applied in the published literature to several loosely defined “euplectellid sponges” that encompass a span of geologic time ranging from the Late Ordovician age to present day. 

CLASSIFICATION

Phylum Porifera (= sponges)

Class Hexactinellidae

Family Euplectellidae

Genus Euplectella

Species aspergillum  Owen, 1841

Note: There is no known fossil record of Euplectella aspergillum. The family Euplectellidae (used in the broadest sense) has a sparse record from the Middle Cretaceous onward (Botting et al., 2022). 

HABITAT: 

Deep-marine (100 to 1000 m depth = 330 feet to 3300 feet; commonly below 300 m).

Western Pacific (especially the Philippine Islands and Japan) and also Indian Ocean.

Lives on muddy sediments on the ocean floor.

MORPHOLOGY:

The walls of this sponge are highly porous. Its tubular body (exoskeleton) is made up of numerous small, siliceous six-pointed spicules-interlocking so as to collectively form create a mesh-like vertical structure that allows ocean water to circulate through the walls. Flexible thin glassy fibers (2 to 8 inches long) anchor the sponge to the muddy ocean floor. The top of the tube also has a mesh-like lid.

OTHER:

The tubular body typically houses a pair of breeding “glass-sponge” shrimps. They are unable to leave the cylindrical tube, thus, they live their entire lives inside the sponge. In return, they clean the inside of tube. This is a mutualistic relationship. In Japan, this sponge (with the shrimp inside) is often given as a wedding gift to newlyweds–– as a symbol of undying love. 

The long fibers anchoring the sponges to the ocean floor are of interest to researchers looking for more efficient, low-cost solar cells or considering new materials to be used for other engineering applications.  

References Consulted:

Botting, J.P. et al. 2022. Extraordinary early Venus’ flower basket sponges (Hexactinellidae from the uppermost Ordovician Anji Biota, China. Palaeontology 65, issue 2. (pdf costs $). 

en.wikipedia.org