New to me: Furahan Biology and Allied Matters

This is a blog I found via Darren Naish's Tetrapod Zoology.  It discusses and even does a great job of designing and even animating an alien ecosystem.

link.

Darren Naish @ Tetrapod Zoology Interviews Dougal Dixon of After Man Fame

Mounds of speculative awesome.

Go read.

An Essay on Creating Life on a Gas Giant for the Cosmos Series

link.

These images, especially the last one, really captivated me as a teen.  They are gorgeous.  They are fascinating.  They are utterly alien.

First Crazy Thought of the Day: Martian Life Extinguished by Utopia and Hellas Impacts

I linked to the paper and the posted a chunk of the press release which claimed Mars had a Great Oxygenation Event about 4 billion years ago on Wednesday.  I got a bunch of hits for it.  It seems I was one of the earliest rebloggers of this.  The purty pic didn't hurt, I am sure.  However, the idea itself was interesting...and got me thinking.

4 billion years ago was an interesting time.  For Mars, it was the so-called Noachian System[1]: between 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago.  This is the wet time for Mars when water was prevalent on the surface.  This is the time frame which fossils of life are likely to be present.  It's also when the oxygen inclusive atmosphere was present. 

 Interestingly, its also when three of the BIGGEST impacts found (short of Thea, erm, with? on? Earth) took place.  The Hellas Basin is one of the most notable impact craters in the solar system.  So notable it was mapped very early when folks pointed telescopes at Mars.  Its 2300 km across.  There's a second, larger, but not as deep impact on Mars: the Utopia Basin, where one of the Viking landers set down.  For that matter, the Argyre Basin (another impact) also formed 3.9 billion years ago.  This one is 1,800 km across.  In contrast, Chicxulub, which did in the dinosaurs was /only/ 180 km across.

The dino-killer was nothing in comparison to these.  

So.  What-if...

Life arose on Mars.  In fact, it was developing faster because the world was cooling faster. It even had a basic continental drift and life was 'accelerating' faster.  The GOE happens 1.6 billion years earlier and life /could/ have been headed to having a hypothesized Ediacarian Period at or around 3.3 billion years ago.   We might have had an intelligent Martian 2.8 billion years ago.  Except...

Mars gets hammered.  Hellas impact's energy alone would produce at least four orders of magnitude more energy than Chicxulub.  This scale of impact happened at least three times, one larger, one somewhat smaller in the time scale which complex life has been alive here on earth, plus or minus. 

While killing microbial life is much, much harder than complex life.  I can all too well imagine something on the order of just one of these be very disruptive, if not devastating.  It might not have killed it off.  However, it might well have killed off photosynthetic, oxygen producing life.  And the chances of a Martian variant of a Gaian system arising.

 So, first crazy thought of the day.

1.  A system is sometimes called analogous to a Period, like the Cretaceous.  However, the length of the Noachian is closer to a terrestrial Era, but that's neither here nor there. 

A quick source (PDF) on mongo impacts on a simulated Mars is here.

What a World with Ammonia in Place of Water Would Look Like

Hat tip to Randy.

The Squamazoic!

Ok.  So something good did come out of the April 1st tradition.  Go read Darren's Squamazoic post.  He gets in a number of digs at different ... theories...in there.

Xenopermian: Alas, a Teaser, Alternate Anomodont Phylogeny

This week was also brutal though I did move the ball forward on finishing the post, but just could not get it done for today.  There are three clades left living in the Xenopermian of anomodonts.  They are the descendents of Tiarajudens, the dicynodonts and Venjukoviamorphs (suminids and friends).

Enjoy.

Last Teaser Before the Post

Suminia vs Elyardia, in the fuzz, basal to derived in 45 million years.

Xenopermian Query: Other Anomodont Lineages?

Hey folks. 

I'm working on the Xenopermian and it occurred to me that I have three major lineages within the anomodonts playing significant roles: the dicynodonts (duh), venjukoviamorpha (semi duh) and anomocephaloidea (slightly duh).

Are there any others that are a bit more obscure but interesting?

Next Xenopermian Teaser

Xenopermian Teaser for Friday: Dem Skulls

According to one of the describers of Suminia, Scott got the skull(top two cranial views)  really really close to the real deal.  The bottom two is Elyardia hensonii, so named by Zach.

Xenopermian Gift Teaser for the Weekend