THIRTY SIX ✖ VOICE

[wedonot]

[Hi, Barge, someone else really doesn't want to talk about the flood, so Charles is taking this opportunity to talk more about science. Everyone loves science, especially when it's a distraction from things like promising your best friend you'd come rescue him from Auschwitz and sincerely meaning it because you're a telepath and can pretty much do what you want. :\

Science is generally easier to talk about than feelings. :c]

I'd imagine most of you are familiar with the concept of mass extinctions, wherein the population of all living things on Earth is decreased by over fifty percent. It is, after all, what helped propel mammals into being the dominant life forms on Earth after the dinosaurs went extinct. But despite the widespread devastation each time, some species do survive, and can remain largely unchanged since they originally evolved. The horseshoe crab, for example, is virtually identical to its relatives that have been preserved as fossils from several million years ago.

Others are considerably less well known and familiar to us, and some potentially have yet to even be rediscovered. Although it's quite rare to rediscover a species after it's been thought dead for thousands if not millions of years - for example, it's highly unlikely that a Brachiosaurus has escaped the attention of modern science while roaming the woods of North America - it has happened before.

One such species was considered extinct by the scientific community until December 23, 1938. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer - a museum curator in South Africa - told local fishermen that if they ever found anything unusual in their hauls to call her in immediately. On this particular day, she was called down to the docks to investigate a captain's haul and discovered a five foot long fish with navy blue scales and white spots that looked like nothing she'd ever seen before. After hurrying the specimen back to the museum and preserving it as best she could after the local morgue refused to help preserve the body, she began to go through her books trying to locate the fish, but couldn't find any information about it. When a friend from Rhodes University was finally able to come look at the specimen, he immediately recognized it as a coelacanth, an ancient fish thought to have gone extinct since the end of the Cretaceous period. A population of fish had apparently been living on the east coast of Africa for potentially millions of years, largely unnoticed by human populations because they spend most of the day very deep under water. Occasionally a fish would be caught by a fisherman, but as the flesh is incredibly oily and often makes people sick, they were often tossed away as trash without a second thought. A second population was more recently discovered in Indonesia.

There are plenty of other examples of so called "living fossils", and Lazarus taxa, both plants and animal, but a discovery like this is generally unheard of, especially considering the coelacanth is generally considered to be a step in understanding how land based animals developed locomotion, as fossil evidence suggests that tetrapods evolved from fish whose fins eventually developed into legs and allowed them to walk out of the water and onto dry land. I've often wondered if another similar discovery might be made with further exploration. Living things are, after all, incredibly resilient, and we still haven't mapped the entirety of our planet's surface.

[Private to Steve]

Do you have a minute? There's something I need to discuss with you.

[Private to Jean]

Merlin tells me you two have been experimenting with the limits of your abilities.

Comments

private;

[thestarspangledman]

I've always got a minute for you, Charles. [He's ensconced in the art room, midway through a sketch, but hey, he can always come back to it later.]

What's up?

private;

[wedonot]

[You're the best, Steve. :c]

Has anyone let you know what happened between your teammates before the flood ended?

private;

[thestarspangledman]

[He's pretty certain he's not, but he can try and be. :D]

...I know that Natasha was in Zero, but not much more than that.

[takeyouapart]

[Because most of Merlin's self-education has focused on what's considered current necessary knowledge to function in the 20th and 21st centuries, most of this is actually news to him! Also, kind of horrifying. :/]

How does that happen?

[wedonot]

[They're just coelacanths! They won't hurt you. :3]

How does what happen? A species avoiding detection by the scientific community for so long?

[takeyouapart]

No, the first part. The -- mass extinctions.

text;

[aggravating]

can't teach evolution in sunday school

[hi :c plz don't ground him]

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[wedonot]

[He won't jeez, you got stabbed. :|]

I suppose it's a good thing I won't be teaching Sunday school, then.

[Private]

How are you feeling?

text private;

[aggravating]

hungover.

[Just... yeah. Not mentioning the stabbing, and not... well. Not getting more into it than that, right now.

Sorry, Charles :c]

Private

[burnmythoughts]

[Jean's grin is earnest and fond and still a little excited.] We have! We haven't gotten very far, yet, but - it's nice having someone to practice with. [She's missed it, and she wasn't expecting it when she arrived.]

Private

[wedonot]

I can imagine. And I have to admit, I'm a bit jealous, flying seems like it would be quite fun.

Private

[burnmythoughts]

Once I master it maybe I can take you for a ride.

[megamind]

I bet you'd have a field day with the chicken-to-dinosaur project with the activation of atavistic genes. You should look up information on that. After all, why hope that you can find a dinosaur, when you can engineer one?

[wedonot]

I think that's a bit too mad science for my tastes.

[megamind]

But think of what it can mean for your people! Learning how to activate genes for intelligence, for cancer prevention.

[silvestris]

You've probably heard all the 'living fossil' jokes before, so I'll spare you. This time.

[She can't decide if she looks forward to these lectures, or if she resents him for being interesting.] So, extinction and rediscovery. Was this one brought on by all the childhood trauma floating around?

[wedonot]

[It can be both. B)]

It was brought on by reorganizing one of my bookshelves after my younger self decided to investigate, so I suppose you could say so.

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[theonlyresponse]

Is there no Atlantis?

private - text;

[wedonot]

Atlantis is widely believed to be a myth, although there are a few sites archaeologists believe might be the inspiration for the story, such as the island of Santorini. Why, is it real in your world?

[sharpememory]

Dude, what the hell. I can read books, you don't need to lecture at me.

[wedonot]

You also didn't need to listen or respond. [Use the scroll function, Barron.]

[toldinthebook]

Interesting lesson. [ Also known as something that Emma didn't expect to see on the comms. A science lesson. Okay. Random ]

[wedonot]

Thank you. [It happens every so often. :c]

i am sorry in advance :c

[espanola]

Species seniority is impressive, but isn't the spread of species equally or more so? Have you heard of Cymothoa exigua?

no worries!

[wedonot]

The tongue eating louse? Yes.