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THIRTY SIX ✖ VOICE
[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.
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.
private;
...I know that Natasha was in Zero, but not much more than that.
private;
Agent Romanoff stabbed Tony in the leg and was intending on torturing him for information about where you were. He wouldn't tell her, [Which he figures is sort of an OBVIOUSLY, because Tony might be an obnoxious ass who was very good at saying the exact wrong thing to the exact wrong person, but Charles knew he was capable of being loyal and selfless and protective of people he cared about, whether that person be a teammate or a stranger.] and he and Dr. Banner eventually brought Agent Romanoff down to Level Zero. He's recovering, but I thought you should know.
[And maybe you should tell him he's a good person because he can stand to hear that a few thousand more times and hopefully it'll make him realize we're not all lying to him. :v]
private;
....[He's just quiet for a moment, absorbing that thoughtfully. He had known Natasha was creepy as a kid, he'd seen himself, but the ten-year-old version of Steve was too stubborn and foolhardy to consider her dangerous. (Even if she could play baseball better than him. :c Most people could at that point.) But he nods, and gives Charles a small smile.]
Thanks, Charles. --I guess I should go thank him. Maybe bring him something to do while he recovers, too.
private;
Charles returns the small smile, knowing that's kind of a horrifying thing to process and not pushing him on it. If he'd been told his future teammate had been trying to kill him during a flood, he wouldn't want to spend too much time thinking about it.]
I'm sure he'd appreciate that.
private;
I may not be able to provide tinkering things, but I can at least bring him a sketchbook or something.
private;
... But right, the more awkward half of this.]
You did get your warden item back, didn't you?
private;
private;
private;
private;
private; handwave or action?