Writing Homogenizes Us

We do not, we writers, represent mankind adequately. We do not think well of ourselves. We do not think amply about what we are. Essay after essay, book after book, maintain the usual thing about mass society, dehumanization, and the rest. How weary we are of them. How poorly they represent us. The pictures they offer no more resemble us than we resemble the reconstructed reptiles and other monsters in a museum of paleontology. We are much more limber, versatile, better articulated; there is ...

 Plesiosaurs Sucked

There were no real sea serpents in the Mesozoic Era, but the plesiosaurs were the next thing to it. The plesiosaurs were reptiles who had gone back to the water because it seemed like a good idea at the time. As they knew little or nothing about swimming, they rowed themselves around in the water with their four paddles, instead of using their tails for propulsion like the brighter marine animals. (Such as the ichthyosaurs, who used their paddles for balancing and steering. The plesiosaurs di...

 The Species Missing from Islands

Native Missing Plants Land mammals Birds Reptiles Insects and other Amphibians arthropods (e.g., spiders)    Freshwater fish [...] Further, when you look at the type of insects and plants native to oceanic islands, they are from groups that are the best colonizers. Most of the insects are small, precisely those that would be easily picked up by wind. Compared to weedy plants, trees are relatively rare on oceanic islands, almost certainly because many trees have heavy seeds that neither fl...

 Species Divisions are Complicated

Zoologists have traditionally divided the vertebrates into classes: major divisions with names like mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians. Some zoologists, called 'cladists',* insist that a proper class must consist of animals all of whom share a common ancestor which belonged to that class and which has no descendants outside that group. The birds would be an example of a good class. All birds are descended from a single ancestor that would also have been called a bird and would have sha...