Eye bones

Strange Obsession with Bony Eye Rings

Ever one of those head-tilt ponders while staring at something that suddenly becomes very fascinating, all the while you're whispering in your head, "What the fuck is that?"
I'd like to call those puppy thoughts, because whatever you're staring at is just as interesting and thought provoking as an adorable baby dog trying to understand the noise coming out of that chew toy. With all your millions of years of evolution, you suddenly become reduced to a head-tilt, all the while your brain swimming with questions.

Anyone who enjoys looking at bones of dead things may have noticed these extremely odd and unique bony structures around the eyes of certain animals, almost resembling bony rings surrounding the eye socket. These odd, almost robotic looking rings are typically seen in reptiles and fish, but not mammals and crocodiles. I figured they had something to do with the eye function, like perhaps how they attached to the skull or had to do with how they focused the eye because of the camera lens like structure.
That was my guess, but I wasn't exactly right.

• Sidetracked: Eye Evolution

Before diving too headlong into these weird eye adaptations, I think it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with the evolution of the eye, because it is one of the most impressive organs to be forged through the ages. Often the weapon of creationists, the eye in all of it's complexity as been a beautiful enigma for scientists for centuries. The squishy, fluid balloons that sit in your skull have the power to drink in the world around you and flash the images to the wrinkled mess operating your body. How can something so amazing, so oddly specific in it's function come to be?

There's is a misused and misquoting piece of Darwin's Origin of Species that is often haphazardly tossed into arguments against and for evolution that is often brought up when it comes to the human eye:

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.

Plucked out of context, this sounds like Darwin helps the "designer" argument for the complexity of the eye, which is not at all how he viewed the subject.
If you want to check this yourself, you absolutely can in chapter five of Origin of Species, but the quote goes on as follows:

Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. (Darwin 143-144)

 So, how did eyes evolve into the glorious, often beautiful, complex windows into the world? It's Okay To Be Smart did a series on evolution back in December called 12 Days of Evolution, which I've gushed lovingly about before.
In this particular episode, they go on to talk about the evolution of the eye from humble beginnings into the amazing variety ones sees today. I also very much recommend watching the amazing Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos, as he very eloquently talks about this process in his storytelling, magical narrative.

• Eye bones: What the hell are they?

The bony structures are called Sclerotic Rings, and they are still somewhat of a mystery. The rings are apparently still found in modern day birds and fish, but the exact function of the rings is still debated. From the couple articles I looked through, it seems the rings most likely are for helping maintain the shape of the eye, especially for larger eyes of marine reptiles.
Some of the best examples of well preserved sclerotic rings are that of Ichthyosaurs, a large marine reptile that looks like a doe-eyed dolphin. In an article from UC Berkeley, a certain species of Ichthyosaur, Temnodontosaurus, had the largest eye ever recorded for any animal. These rings probably helped these massive eyes keep their shape and structural integrity.

Speaking of marine reptiles, I'm sure most people know about Mosasaurs from being the giant badass Shamu attraction from Jurassic World, but these guys also had some pretty impressive eye bones that have been heavily researched.
A team of researchers from Tokyo Gakugei University published an article on PLoS One about how they are using the rings to help classify species of Mosasaurs between one another. Since this is a peer reviewed scientific paper, it's pretty scientific term heavy and dry, but it's pretty fascinating to read.
Along with the common assumption that the rings had something to do with the maintaining the eye's shape, the rings may also have served as "providing the point of muscle insertions fr visual accommodation", like I had thought originally. Score one for me!
What I didn't know was that the rings also may correlate to whether or not dinosaurs were nocturnal, which is really interesting. I went hunting for the paper referenced in the PLoS One article about this claim, but it's unfortunately not available online. It's most likely one of those papers you have to pay for, which is a bummer. I'll keep digging around and maybe do another blog post when I can find more material on the subject, but the idea of nocturnal dinos sounds pretty cool.

From what I've gathered through my couple hours of poking around the internet on a whim, these unique eye bones, or Sclerotic Rings, still have some research to be done by much more brilliant minds that myself.
I think the next thing I want to dig into is going to be the purpose of sails on dinosaurs and other early life forms. I think the research for that is going to be about the same as the eye rings, a lot of great and strange ideas worth sorting through with the hopes of one of them making sense.
I also need to be a certain dinosaur to do research on and make a post about, and have a couple in mind I want to fan-girl out over. Maybe a monthly recap is in the future too.
We'll see.

Until then!

-M



Sources of my internet poking:

UC Berkeley article about giant eyed Ithyosaurs

PLoS One talking about Mosasaurs

Perot Museum: Art meets Science

Alamosaurus and T-Rex

This is not the first time I've been to the Perot Museum and it is definitely not going to be my last. I think I've been at least three times so far, and each time I still get those wonderful butterflies of excitement in my tummy when I walk inside. Since the museum is so new, it still has that sparkle that hasn't been dulled over thousands and thousands of field trips that will eventually wear it all down.
Sadly, that's the state of most museums in the DFW area, especially Fort Worth. The museums have seen so much foot traffic and natural destruction of curious children that it starts to look extremely dated and defeated.
That's not the case with the Perot Museum. It's gorgeous. The exhibits are still shiny and exciting with new information and up to date displays and interactive games for the kids at every turn. They've done a great job keeping it very entertaining but also really alluring for adults. It doesn't feel overly children geared, and is unapologetic in it's clear cut facts about evolution and science.
Thus, Perot Museum has got to be one of my all time favorite places to visit.

The building itself is so hypnotically strange from the outside, so unique you can't help but fall in love right away. I'm not going to do this building description justice, but I can't help but describe it as a giant, gray mud hut with a slanted window falling down the side of it.
Hey, I warned you it was going to sound weird.

Here's what it looks like from the outside:

Weird, right?

It looks more like a modern art museum than a museum of natural history, and I'm sure this was absolutely on purpose. It wants to dray you in and surprise you with education. 

I guess calling it an art museum isn't too far from the truth though, because the exhibits are set up like works of art. They are beautifully displayed and alluring, especially the Gem Hall, which is like walking through a hidden treasure vault.

The museum is made up of several floors with different exhibits on each one, but my absolute favorites are the Life: Then and Now (dinosaurs), Becoming Human, and the Gem Hall. All of them are fantastic, but I of course adore the dinosaur hall the most and love the fact that the top floor of the dinosaur exhibit is all about birds and lets you get close to the tall Alamosaurus face.

Amazingly realistic dinosaur skeleton replicas tower over the guests, frozen in mid action as fan-favorite t-rex stomps along side the breathtaking Alamosaurus who stretches high above the first floor. A massive pterosaur sores above with long skeleton wings spanning several feet while avicious Mosasur flanks the opposite wall. 

A parade of other dinosaurs and far distant cousins surround the t-rex and Alamosaurus battle: hadrosaurs grazing calmly, raptors sprinting with claws displayed as they ready attack, and a Pachyrhinosaur mulls about towards the back.

Murals of these creatures in the flesh hang as testaments to how beautiful they would have been in life as well as in death, the backdrops to help fill the imagination.

 
 

Being Human is my next favorite, a perfect hall to visit right before Darwin Day even though this post isn't going live until after the 12th. I actually was at the museum on the 4th but haven't gotten around to write about it until now. 

As a side note, totally unrelated to the post, I'm actually home sick from work with a mild cold. While it sucks I'm feeling like three-times-hammered dogshit, I was able to get my Darwin Day blog post finished and get this post going during my recovery time. I'm sitting on the couch listening to my dogs snoring and my husband playing Xcom, musing about the upcoming awesome events and my past visit to the museum.

Not a bad way to spend a sick day.

Walking into the Being Human hall is so dreamy. There are pillars of cubed pictures showing our clearly human skulls along side our almost human ancestors floating high above wax hyper realistic wax models of hominids and humans. A long white table height display is not far from these silent statues showing the always humbling diagrams of hand and arm bone similarities between all species. Outlines of a cat's arm is shown next to a bat's, a frogs beside a whales, and our wiggly fingers besides chimps.

A giant table displaying the entire tree of life is topped with magnifying glasses so you can read the incredibly small print of all the names around the massive family pinwheel, the jagged lines tracing back in fewer and fewer brackets until it reached the very middle in all its simplicity. A small red dot in the blur of names simply states "You are here".

Behind this table Darwin's own small paper doodle is displayed above the reality he inspired the great scientists after him to discover.

 

While I'm very much in love with the dinosaur hall, the Gem Hall is pure magic. Sparkling treasures rest behind panes of glass and under soft light, casting shimmers across the dim and haunting room. Natural precious gems in their raw form vying for attention beside the often more impressive cubed and otherworldly minerals. 

It's hard not to lust after these remarkable treasures.

 

If the dinosaur exhibit is my true love, the Human Hall is my passion, then the Gem Hall is my incredibly guilty pleasure. I should know more about them than I do, especially as a fossil nerd and anthropology major, but honestly my geology skills are embarrassingly small. I remember bits and pieces from my geology II class from many years ago, but I never really kept up with it. I typically stuck with the biology, evolutionary or anatomy studies of things instead of the actual geology. Each time I visit the Gem Hall, it makes me want to take another geology class so I know what I'm reading. 

But instead I go home and blog about my visit and read about other things for hours. 

We also had a chance to visit the travelling exhibit all about Bio-Luminescent life. We weren't able to take pictures inside, so sadly I don't have any to share here. The whole room was dark with the displays lit up with models and information. Water effects rippled off the walls during the deep sea areas, which were my favorite, and showed the alien life that lives at the ocean floor. They had a display about the Vampire Squid, another favorite, and had some live luminescent fish in tanks we could peek into.

Of course, the fish were pretty tired from the boatload of kids who came in before us, but we got to see a little of their twinkling before we left.

I have seen three of the travelling exhibits including this one, and so far my favorite is still going to be the Animals Inside Out one from the very first visit.

Alex, my husband, surprised me by taking me to the Perot Museum a couple of years ago for this very freaky but amazing exhibit of real, skinned models of animals. It showed the muscles and inner workings of giraffes, goats, camels, and of course a couple humans were tossed in as well. It was all very well done and hauntingly mesmerizing. If I felt like digging through my Facebook to find the pictures I would, but instead I'm going to gracefully bow out of that and let you instead just enjoy the current pictures from the last visit.

While this wasn't my first time here, it was an amazing trip. Jess was with me of course, but my dear best friend Shen had never been before. I'm going to wager that the Gem Hall was her favorite, considering that she was having a mild panic attack over the beauty of some of the pieces there. 

I cannot wait to be able to go back again and see my old favorite exhibits and whatever amazing travelling one they have to offer. 

The museum also does Social Science nights on occasion, which hosts lectures and adult themed (not like...sexy time adult stuff, just with like alcohol and no kids) activities and drinks. One of these days I'll catch one and let you know how it goes. They tend to be on weekends and I am one of those not nine-to-five types, much to my dismay.

If you're in Texas and remotely close to Dallas, there is zero reason for you not to go check out this amazing museum. I'd suggest going in the week to avoid the crowds and catch one of the travelling exhibits, they're usually pretty damn cool.

- M

You can check out my full album of my visit on my Facebook here.

Darwin Day festivities!

Darwin Day signature drink: Primordial Booze!

I had my Darwin Day celebration last night since today I'm going to be at work until about midnight. Tonight is also the release of the very anticipated Dead Pool movie and Zoolander 2, so Darwin Day has been extremely over shadowed. Most of my friends went out to see Dead Pool for the midnight/early release, so my social media has been exploding with that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm also very excited about both of those movies and cannot wait to see them, but Darwin Day is my own little holiday and I take it mildly seriously.
Mildly because I haven't put real blood, sweat and tears into pulling off a grand event just yet, because I always have Jess and/or Shen to celebrate with.

Darwin Day isn't a big deal for the group of people I hang out with, because they accept evolution as a scientific fact, so they're not passionate about the importance of it. Which is awesome, because I have friends who are scientifically literate. I understand not wanting to throw a party about a dusty old man who obsessed over beetles and finches unless you are a huge dork with an unreasonable appetite for the science behind evolution.
I get it.
I guess it falls into the wildly cliche "If you're in love you want to tell the whole world" saying. I want to share this amazing connection we have to the rest of the animal kingdom and the planet with everyone, because I'm just still so madly in love with that fact. I want to celebrate, learn and drink green alcoholic beverages with some of my favorite fellow apes.

Though the box office media has stolen my tiny little bit of spotlight that I usually hog during this time in February, last night was still a lot of fun. We made dinosaur fossil cookies, which I know isn't Darwinian anything but whatever, some chocolate-cinnamon-cayenne pepper cupcakes, and Jess made some super yummy BBQ pinwheels. Oh, and of course, we mixed up some Primordial Booze.
WE ATE LIKE KINGS.
I also made a point of taking a couple pictures of our festivities since I realize how many pictures I'm not taking of these events.



We decided to go with Sir David Attenborough's Darwin and the Tree of Life series to start and finished the evening with an episode from the new Cosmos series with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I wanted to stay out longer and watch the BBC drama I mentioned about in my last post, but I'm still trying to recover from a nasty cold.
I'm actually still feeling pretty awful so I'm taking it extremely easy today until I go to work around 15:00. I got plenty of sleep and am sitting in my recliner drinking water, wanting to take a nap. I'd actually kill for a cup of coffee or tea right now, but I'm sadly out and don't have the energy to go to the store.

I'm pretty sure he took a bite out of one of them....

I had brought along my trex, who has been officially named Skepasaurus because of his judging sideways glance, to help me make the dinosaur fossil cookies. Those cute little therapod tracks you see in those cookies are non other that him. He was kind of the mascot last night during most of our antics, but eventually found and made friends with Jess's tardigrade, or "waterbear".

Thus this adorable picture happened.

Trex and his tardi-bear

LOOK HOW HAPPY HE IS. I CAN'T DEAL.

While the entire night was a blast, that picture is definitely the highlight of the evening. We've set the bar yet again for my expectations for future Darwin Day events!

Next year, I think I am going to try and put together a big celebration. It really bums me out that there aren't big Darwin Day events happening in the DFW area, considering that Dallas has one of the best natural history museums. Despite this being Texas and part of a the "Bible Belt", DFW is not an overly Godly or anti-science area from what I can tell.
Which makes me feel like putting together an event like this wouldn't be too terrible hard. I thin if Austin can have some cool Darwin Day stuff, we should be able to make on happen too.
Next year goals...let's see if they happen like I'd like. A lot can happen in a year, so lets put a pin it it, shall we?

If you'd like some good links to videos to watch and/or book recommendations for Darwin Day, you can get both from my previous Darwin Day post which has all of those.

Happy Darwin Day, guys!

-M

Happy almost Darwin Day: Prepping for fun

Happy Darwin Day! (almost)

Darwin Day has become a tradition of food, friends, drinks and science for about 3 years now. It started as a small gathering of a couple close friends eating a store bought cake with the Darwin Fish drawn out in icing on top.

Well, the size is still about the same with the same core group, only about 3-4 of us, but our activities and menu has changed quite a bit. Last year me and Jess made up a drink called Primordial Booze, a mixture of vodka, blue curacao, orange juice, and redbull. The drink comes out a wonderful green color and is extremely yummy. Since Jess is an amazing cook, she typically is in charge of the food and I tag along for simple stuff that’s easily tossed together.

For those of you who may not know what I’m talking about, Darwin Day is the celebration of Charles Darwin’s birthday, February 12th, and a celebration of the theory of Evolution. The reason this is so important is because evolution is still not completely accepted and very often is vastly misunderstood.

As a big fan of the theory of evolution and science in general, I love participating in this awesome day of science appreciation and literacy. To find out more about Darwin Day, you can check out the official website to get more information.

Last year really set the bar for festivities and had to have been my favorite Darwin Day so far. I spent the better part of a month putting together a long playlist on YouTube of any evolution education videos I could find. Turns out there are a LOT of them and a good chunk are very well done. Videos from SciShow, It’s Okay to be Smart, PBS studios, and a ton of others made up the list of about 20+ short videos, each about 2-10 minutes long.

I’ll put a link to my playlist at the bottom with all the other things I want to include in this rambling of science admiration.

The best part was that Jess had set up her nifty projector in the backyard, and we all huddled together in the slightly chilly February weather to watch every single one.

Awesome night of nerdy fun.

This year we’re doing something pretty similar since we had so much fun, but instead of YouTube videos we’re going to watch one of the videos that comes recommended from the Darwin Day website. I’m torn between a documentary starring Sir David Attenborough talking about Charles Darwin’s life, or the BBC drama about Darwin’s inner struggle with his findings verses his religious beliefs.

Edgy stuff, man.

I’m also going to be making “fossil cookies”, which is something I’ve seen online that’s staggeringly simply to make. It’s cookies with dinosaur footprints in them, and since you can buy dough already made and I have all kinds of different dinosaur toys...well...that’s about as easy and it can be. Boom. Done. Dinosaur fossil cookies.

I’ll post pictures, but yeah...it’s not rocket surgery.

Since I found out about DD in 2012, there have been a lot more celebrations and activities popping up all over during this time. It used to be a handful of celebrations across the US, but not there are tons all over the world, which is really inspiring. There’s a big event happening in Austin Texas this coming up weekend that I really wish I could go to. Austin is usually the only area in Texas having these kind of events, which isn’t shocking.

One of these days I’m going to put something bigger together, but I just don’t have the manpower to do something like that.

That’s a lie. I think I could actually make something amazing happen in the DFW area, but it’s more the time/funding that trips me up each year. Maybe that can be my 2017 goal for next year is to do something amazing and big for Darwin Day. For now though, it’s just another amazing gathering of friends I’m looking forward to.

Are you guys going to be doing anything to celebrate? You should totally let me know! I’d love to have some great ideas for next year. I'll do another post and actually take some damn pictures this time and do another post-Darwin Day blog about how it went.

Is this your first year celebrating? Your tenth? Share!! I wanna hear all about it.

Here are some pictures from past events, some book recommendations for those who want to read up on evolution, and/or a video playlist if you’d rather get your info that way.

Happy Darwin Day, everyone!!

-M

• Pictures from years past!

I honestly don't know why I don't have more pictures.

First Darwin Day 2012

Last year 2015 with Primordial Booze!!

• Darwin Day links and books

Links and Videos:

Darwin Day Website

Vegoego’s super awesome YouTube Darwin Day Playlist Turbo Ultra Remix

Your Inner Fish series

Book Recommendations:

• Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
• The entire book can be read for free online here!!

• Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne 

• Greatest Show On Earth: Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins

• Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin

• Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation by Bill Nye

I'm not dead!!

I'm having some mild and frustrating computer problems, so I'm a little behind.

I do have a book review and Darwin Day stuff on the horizon, but want to be able to format the posts better than I can through my phone.

So, I haven't forgotten about my sweet little nerdy blog. I just want to make sure it looks fantastic before I share more things. :3

-M