A Paleozoic moon rises, hanging full and swollen on the horizon. Three hundred-million years ago the moon is closer, and its pull is stronger. At some distant ocean’s shore the tides rise high and horsehoe crabs clamber up onto the beach to spawn, drawn by the moon into a dance that they will continue, year after year, to the present day.
Farther inland, the moon climbs above a tropical forest of tree-sized horsetails and a different dance commences. Antennae probe the thick, humid air and the moonlight glints across multi-faceted eyes. Rivers of roughened cuticle eight feet long flow up from the frond litter and across the forest floor, and the air is filled with rustling as they snake around the gritty trunks of the horsetail jungle.
One by one, giant centipede-like forms emerge from the forest along the edge of an ancient lake. Their pace slows as they crawl across the lakeshore mud, but their stride never falters. Dozens of stout, spiny legs undulate in absolute precision, propelling the animals across the beach towards moonlit rendezvous. Their dance, unlike that of the horseshoe crabs, will falter after a few million years. The world will change, and their unparalleled invertebrate stature will prove impossible to maintain.
Year after year, the number of Arthropleura on the beach will diminish. None will remain at the close of the Carboniferous, but in certain places, the footsteps of their dance will be preserved.
Brendan Hanrahan reports on the installation of a new dinosaur sculpture in front of the Yale Peabody Museum—a life-sized bronze of the giant ceratopsian Torosaurus latus. YPM Preparator Michael Anderson created the piece, which takes the bold step of restoring this cousin of Triceratops without cheeks, an issue currently debated in certain circles.
BBC News has a stimulating story on genetic tinkering that allows bald mice to regrow fur, with potential applications for reversing human hair loss. As a formerly shaggy character now endowed with a certain scalpular prominence, I’ll be interested to see where this research goes.
Personal trichology aside, this study rates an HMNH seal of approval strictly for the dramatic before-and-after pictures of hairless to fuzzy mice.
A few choice resources for anyone looking to learn more about temnospondylous tetrapods, which gave a bit of background for the articles presented here:
Dr. Robert Reisz at the University of Toronto has a Bestiary page that serves as an excellent introduction to the cast of critters stomping around the Late Paleozoic.
The exhaustive (and entertaining) Palaeos website has a handful of pages on several different temnospondyl groups, as well as a list of technical references.
The Tree of Life has a couple of temnospondyl pages, including a discussion on their relationships (or lack thereof) to modern amphibians.
