Sandy ‘reef stars’ help bring life back to coral reefs

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Coral reefs are extremely diverse underwater ecosystems.They are made of the coral themselves growing on rock, plus the many species of sea life surrounding them. About 25% of all marine life lives in, on, or around coral reefs. The reefs provide a source of money for tourism and fishing, as well as protection from shoreline against erosion and flooding. But some of these ecosystems are in danger of dying out because of a destructive fishing method. Restoring the reefs can be time-consuming, but recent efforts by a candy company have contributed to shortening that time.

Example of a coral reef (Francesco Ungaro, Unsplash.com)

There are several types of coral reefs. Coral itself is an animal, specifically an invertebrate that grows under the sea in temperate or tropical waters usually in compact clusters called colonies. Hard coral (stony coral) forms reefs; soft coral does not.

Coral reef locations around the world (Wikipedia)

Coral colonies are made of soft tubular animals called polyps, all genetically identical. They attach to rock and secrete a type of calcium carbonate to surround their base. As the carbonate increases, the base of the polyp appears to sit inside a cup depression called a corallite, which is less than 3 mm (0.12 inches) in diameter. This carbonate base builds around the soft coral body and increases the size of a reef roughly at 0.3-2 cm (0.1-0.8 inches) per year. In the diagrams of various coral reef types above, the light brown color represents a combination of the living coral colonies on the surface of centuries of carbonate deposits.

Stony coral polyp (modified from Wikipedia)

Coral reefs create an ecosystem for growth of coral colonies, fish, sponges, starfish, mollusks, and crustaceans. Even though they represent only 0.1% of the land area under the seas, they provide environments for about 25% of marine life. 

Fishermen on the coasts of Southeast Asia, the Aegean Sea, South America, Europe, and Africa destroy coral reefs illegally through a process called blast fishing (or dynamite fishing). This stuns fish and ruptures their swim bladders by exploding commercial or handmade bombs underwater, after which they scoop them up from the surface as they float helplessly. More than 275 million people live within 30 km (19 miles) of coral reefs, and the majority of these people come from developing countries where reefs provide food and income. It is estimated that there are 6 million coral reef fishers in the world.

Explosion from blast fishing in Indonesia and a typical bomb (ICLARM Quarterly, 2024)

The map below shows worldwide locations where blast fishing has been reported in the past two decades, and the intensity of the bomb explosions is provided.

1997-2018 reporting of blast fishing (Biological Conservation, 2021)

Blast fishing results from growing populations and the need for greater exports. Fishermen claim it is easier than traditional fishing methods and results in higher yields. Most blast fishers in Indonesia feel this is the most efficient means to survive, despite governmental fines. Some of these fishers have never used other methods of fishing and "showed no inclination to learn more traditional techniques or invest in other gear types" (ICLARM Quarterly, 2024).

Depending on the depth of the reef, the explosive power of the bomb, and the type of fish that are targeted (deep or shallow), blast fishing can create craters in coral reefs 2-3 meters (6-10 feet) in diameter. About 70% of the live coral was killed in the affected area as it becomes uprooted and smothered in the blast rubble (blocking the coral polyps' ability to kill prey and preventing symbiont cells from getting sunlight). The habitat for predator-prey fish and various sea bottom-dwelling creatures is also severely disrupted.

Single blast crater, two years old,  Sulawesi, Indonesia (Fox & Caldwell, 2006)

Coral growth (and, therefore, the local ecosystem) may recover in 5-10 years from a single explosion, but with multiple fishermen constantly performing blast fishing in concentrated areas (sometimes up to 40 sticks of dynamite per day in Indonesia), the damage is often unrecoverable for decades or centuries. 

Extensive damage to coral reef in Sulawesi, Indonesia (Popular Science, 2024)

The Mars, Inc. candy company is working to repair this damage. Famous for its Snickers, Milky Way, and Three Musketeers candy bars and M&Ms, Mars has been involved for the past decade in efforts to recover coral reef habitats in Indonesia. (Here's a link to the Mars company history.)

The MARRS (Mars Assisted Reef Restoration System) began in 2011. It involves installing steel structures called reef stars in the area of damaged coral. The hexagonal steel stars are coated with resin and coral sand to provide a suitable base for coral to grow. Small bits of living coral are strapped on as seeds. Larvae released as the coral grows will settle on the frames, attach, and repopulate on the frames.

Bare, coated, and seeded reef star frames (Mars website)

As an incentive to fishermen, local people are enlisted to help strap coral to the frames.

Attaching coral to reef stars (Mars website)

They may also help in transporting the reef stars to the target sites.

Local storage and transportation of reef stars

Divers then transplant the seeded frames to the damaged section of coral reefs.

Installing reef stars in Australia (BusinessGreen.com)

The rate of growth of new coral can be seen in just a few months, but overall replacement takes a few years (3 years for 60% recovery). Still, this is far better than allowing a damaged area to repair itself, which is not always possible.

Here's a link showing how to avoid classic mistakes when installing reef stars

The world is losing coral reefs to more than just bomb fishing. Climate change raises the temperature of the water, which kills coral. Solutions are needed for that type of harm coral (and ocean life) faces.

MARRS Coral Reef Project (a huge website)

A short video on the MARRS project.

 Injured? Maybe Antlers Could Help

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Some animals are known to regrow parts of their bodies. This includes limbs (starfish), or tails (salamanders), or heart tissue (tetra fish), or even intestines (sea cucumbers, related to starfish). Humans can regrow part of a liver, and of course we regrow on a small scale various tissues from cuts and scrapes (skin, nails, hair). Deer, on the other hand, shed whole antlers during their life and regrow  them completely again and again. This is the regeneration of an entire organ. Chinese scientists have recently investigated how this ability might be used to help healing of bone and skin tissue in humans. 

Adapted from Stem Cell Research & Therapy, 2023

First of all, what are the differences between antlers and horns? Horns are permanent unbranched attachments  to an animal's skull. They are essentially two parts: living bone surrounded by a tough layer of keratin (the stuff that makes nails and hair). These are typically found on cattle, buffaloes, goats, sheep, and antelopes. Horns of rhinoceroses, however, are solid keratin with a core of melanin and calcium unattached to the skull. The short horns on giraffes are called ossicones, made of bone covered by cartilage and fur. On the other hand, antlers are not permanent, and they are branched projections from the skull. Unlike horns, antlers are one structure made entirely of bone, cartilage, fibrous tissue, skin, nerves, and blood vessels. They are found on deer, caribou, elk, moose, and reindeer.

Examples of animals with horns (top) and antlers (bottom) (from animldiversity.com and Wikipedia)

In the spring, deer antlers begin to grow. The growing tip begins from a special upraised point on the skull called a pedicle. This forms around 4-5 months after the male deer is born. The pedicle itself is not antler material but a starting point. 

Pedicle under mature antlers, and pedicles beginning to form on young male deer

The growing antlers are covered by a furry velvet skin and another layer of cells underneath. Early in the growth stage, that layer (perichondrium) is made of cartilage, and later it becomes a layer (periosteum) to provide bone-growing cells. Both also supply antler cells with blood.

Cross section of growing antler from pedicle (World Journal of Stem Cells, 2021)

During summer months, the main beam of an antler can grow from the tip by as much as 3.8-5 centimeters (1.5-2 inches) per week (2 cm/0.75 inches for yearlings). The outer part of a growing antler bone will change from soft and spongy to hard compact mineralized tissue. In late winter, antlers are shed, and the cycle restarts. Many factors influence the overall size of antlers before they fall off, including age (older deer have larger antlers), genetics, health, nutrition, hormone levels, and the environment. Deer  (and their related species) are the only mammals that can regenerate such a whole organ.

After the breeding season in winter, hormones direct certain cells called osteoclasts to travel to the base of an antler. They dissolve the bone minerals there with various enzymes, loosening the antler. When the antler is shed, a wound remains for about 2 weeks as it is covered by normal scabbing from clotted tissue. The scab eventually falls off, leaving the exposed base of the antler where a new one will begin to grow. A ring of velvet-like skin around the scab location marks the beginning of a new antler's growth.

Head of a deer (eye at the bottom) showing location of shed antler during healing (Mississippi State University)

So, how does this process operate, and what cells are involved? To answer the second question, Chinese investigators in 2023 examined the growing tip of antlers to identify what types of cells were there. They found 8 types. A major one was a type of stem cell called a PMC.

Growing tips were examined (blue area in dashed boxes) (Qin et al., Science)

Stem cells in mammals are found in embryos, umbilical cord, bone marrow, and gonads. They can be considered the earliest state of mature cells, and for that reason they have the ability to develop into a variety of cell types. Finding them at the base of antlers, too, where antlers grow repeatedly every year, is no surprise. Developing into the multiple cell types of an antler is under complex control by many chemicals in the body. To investigate if those chemicals are in the surrounding skin, Chinese researcher Chunyi Li transplanted PMCs into special mice in 2021. He chose cells from a pedicle 5 days after antler shedding because they were developing rapidly and in large numbers. However, he produced only pedicle-like bumps, not antlers.

Bumps resembling pedicles grown on mice (C. Li, 2020)

But, when he transferred the cells plus deer skin, the results were better. Within 45 days, true antlers had begun to grow, including hair and then velvet on the bumps. 

Mini antlers (no branching) grown on mice using deer antler stem cells and deer skin (C. Li, 2020)

To answer the earlier question of how these stem cells work, there are two studies to summarize. The first was by yet another Chinese team in 2019. Instead of looking at bone growth, they investigated how well the stem cells could repair skin wounds.

They transferred cells from the antler pedicle to Petri dishes and grew them there. The cells released various chemicals into the liquid media, generating "conditioned media (CM)". They then tested whether the chemicals in the CM had any effects. In Petri dishes, they exposed two types of cells that are involved in wound healing with PMC-CM, and they saw that the stem cell CM stimulated both cell types more than other common cell growth factors. This same CM was also applied to rats which had circular cuts 8 mm (0.3 inches) in diameter made on their skin. 

Experiments with antler stem cell (PMC) conditioned media (Stem Cell Research & Therapy, 2019)

Again, the CM from deer antler stem cells was successful more than other conditions by shortening the healing time by 9 days (16 days vs. 25 days).

Wound healing in rat skin (Rong et al., 2019)

The CM contains biochemicals made by the stem cells which promote this healing. Chemicals are released into the growth medium like they are in the surrounding tissues to have their effects. But a new phenomenon has also been discovered recently for many types of cells. A cell may fold its membrane in on itself and pinch off inside the cell to form a bubble. That traps certain chemicals inside more protective bubbles within the bigger one, which are then released back into the environment when the main bubble fuses with the membrane. These small bubbles, only 40-160 nm in diameter are called exosomes. 

Formation of exosomes (Science, 2020)

In 2022, a fourth group of Chinese researchers injected exosomes from deer antler stem cell culture into rat knee joints after they conducted surgery to tear the ligaments. The exosome treatment was expected to stimulate growth of blood vessels and ligament material. After 9 weeks, it met with partial success.

Deer stem cell exosome repair of osteoarthritis in mice (Protein & Cell, 2022)

In a deeper study of deer PMCs, the 2023 investigators repeated Li's 2021 study of making antlers on mice, but they examined the stem cells more thoroughly. It seems there are four subtypes of stem cells in the pedicle periosteum. Each has a different function:

• one (PMC1) makes connective tissue
• another (PMC2) continues making more stem cells for self-renewal
• another (PMC3) can develop into cells required for bone development and remodeling of the bone
• another (PMC4) are the most important because they make cartilage in the antler

They monitored when all 8 cell types (including each of the stem cell subtypes) were present and what they did during antler growth. One cell type was used to repair rabbit bone tissue, a potentially important find since it worked especially well on bulges in bone like knees, elbows, jaws, and knuckles. All of their work will be useful in human studies later.

They also found that the antler stem cells shared many genes that mouse cells have in their limb development. Humans and mice are both mammals, but mice have been used extensively in research on immunity because there are some similarities in cell functions. So, this might extend to any tests of deer antler cells on mice and benefit humans in years to come. With cell culture techniques providing growth of deer antler stem cells for such animal studies, it will be easier to perform research than on live deer. And this research has shown a new source of stem cells that are not as controversial as those taken from humans or embryos.

Overall, antler stem cell research has shown promise in the following medical areas:

• wound healing
• bone repair
• osteoarthritis
• corneal injury
• liver fibrosis
• post-operative cognitive impairment

The remarkable entomologist Charles Henry Turner

When people think about scientists, especially those who have made major accomplishments in their fields, they subconsciously assume those people had tremendous academic credentials. They must, it is often assumed, have worked and performed research in higher institutions of learning. Charles Turner is an exception and has quietly made significant contributions to behavioral studies of insects and spiders.

Charles Turner, 1921 (Wikipedia)

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA on February 3, 1867, barely two years after the U.S. Civil War, Charles Turner was encouraged by his parents (a church custodian and nurse) to read and learn. But he also collected and catalogues many insects, because book learning alone was not enough. He graduated at the top of his high school class in 1886. A year later, Turner was accepted at the University of Cinncinati, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in biology in 1891. He studied under Clarence Herrick, who had gotten his master's degree shortly beforehand in 1885. Herrick was the chair of biology at the University of Cinncinati and founded the Journal of Comparative Neurology.

Herrick (Wikipedia)

Herrick was interested in neurology of brains of all vertebrates but thought the key was in the lower species. That probably focused Charles Turner to compare the structure of brains of birds to reptiles and humans for his >100-page undergraduate thesis in 1891. He published part of it in his advisor's journal. His thesis work demonstrated skills in dissection, histology, observation, drawing, and analysis which became his hallmark. He even developed a new dissecting tool (felt-tipped pliers) for handling delicate and slippery tissue. By accident, he also improve a tissue staining technique and was honest enough to say so in the paper:

An accident led to the discovery that the substitution of aluminium sulphate for the alum called for in the formula of Czokor’s alum cochineal is a vast improvement. The stain not only becomes more selective, acting almost solely upon the nuclei, but it is more prompt and reliable and the color resulting is more pronounced and agreeable. (Journal of Comparative Neurology, 1, p. 134, 1891)

Turner even suggested that the compact nature of birds' brains in their skulls might be used in taxonomy to categorize them.

Cover & table of contents of Journal of Comparative Neurology, 1891, with Turner's first article

A year later, he published more of the work (A Few Characteristics of the Avian Brain), though barely a page long, in the prestigious journal Science as the first article by an African American. Turner continued to study under Herrick to obtain his master of science degree in 1892. That same year, he also published on the behavior of spiders to create webs. He noted that "an instinctive impulse prompts gallery spiders to weave...webs, but the details of the construction are the products of intelligent action". This he determined after providing spiders with circular or square environments to build webs matching those shapes, and then showed how they used ingenious methods to repair damage to them.

In 1892, the 24-year-old Turner also published a note (again in Science) about a grape vine producing two sets of leaves during the same season. And, in the same year, he published on new species of aquatic invertebrates. From 1892 to 1893, he was assistant instructor in the lab while Herrick took leave to study in Leipzig, and on his return he found he was in poor health and had to move to New Mexico to recover. But Herrick's enthusiasm for research had rubbed off on Turner.

Cover of Science, 1892 with one of Turner's articles

Turner's success in Cinncinati included lively weekly lab meetings free from racial discrimination, which marked him as an "indefatigable worker", as his publication record showed. But after his master's degree, Turner ran into problems finding long-term work for 15 years. Sadly, he was not accepted at the all-Black Tuskegee Institute (1893) where George Washington Carver worked due to its lack of funds. Thereafter, he worked short stints as a professor at Clark University (1893–1905), a high school principal at College Hill High School (1906), a professor at Haynes Normal and Industrial Institute (1907). Finally, in 1908 he became a teacher at Sumner High School in St. Louis.

Sumner High School, 1908 (Missouri Historical Society)

Despite moving around like that, he published 21 more scientific papers plus a book on invertebrates. While working at Clark University, he began a Ph.D. at Denison University (1893-1894) but had to quit when the program was discontinued. It wasn't until summer of 1906 when he started again, this time at the University of Chicago and finished in 1907 graduating magna cum laude with a doctoral degree in zoology, one of the first awarded to Blacks there. His doctoral dissertation was titled "The Homing of Ants. An Experimental Study of Ant Behavior". Ahead of his time, he wrote: "Ants are much more than mere reflext machines; they are self-acting creatures guided by memories of past individual ...experience."

It is said he may have switched from anatomical studies to insect behavior at this time because research tools and housing facilities for specimens were easier to come by than for birds. This aspect of his work is important considering most of his papers were written while he was teaching as a high school teacher.

At the time, people felt insects reacted to their conditions only on instinct and reflex. Turner showed otherwise. Here is a short list of his accomplishments.

Ants.

• In 1907, he observed ants guarding and defending entrances to glass chambers in interconnected artificial Janet boxes, and enclosing a nest chamber with available debris. Because only a few ants at a time would repair the debris barrier, Turner felt they made conscious decisions who would do the work.

The nest box design (Turner, 1907, Do Ants Form Practical Judgments?)

• He also trained them to take advantage of his own help. When an ant fell off a platform in his experiment, he would use either a forceps or lab spatula to bring them back to the point where they had fallen. After doing this a few times, ants would purposefully approach either tool when it got close.
• He also found they could build partial bridges across water with paper and bread crumbs, with a clear goal in mind.
• He showed they didn't return to their nests after foraging simply by intuition. They learned in their exploration with various cues. French scientist Victor Cornetz called the loops “Tournoiements de Turner” (Turner circling).

Two examples of tournoiements de Turner (The Psychic Life of Insects, 1922)

Bees and wasps.

• In 1908, he observed how male and female Melissodes bees court in flight.
• When other scientists felt that bees navigate using wind and the sun, In 1908, Turner proved that instead they use landmarks. He observed how mud-dauber wasps entered a room to seek out a nest (item a in the picture below). Then, after manipulating the shades to adjust the source and amount of light in 17 patterns, he concluded: "This series of experiments warrants the induction that, in the wasp's memory, that nest is located in a certain direction and at about a definite distance from a bright patch which is situated at a known elevation in a peculiar environment."

Wasp test room for a sense of landmarks (Turner, 1908)

• His work on recogizing landmarks was not confined to the indoors. Turner was also known for the earliest studies on how bees see color and patterns in flowers. These are important factors to help them find pollen. About 14 km (8.5 miles) NE of Sumner High School was O'Fallon Park, where Turner used an abandoned garden to study bees. He recorded changes in their flight patterns to and from their burrow nests after he changed major landmarks, and he concluded these caused them to search in the wrong place for home. “By a process of elimination, the most consistent explanation of the above behavior is the assumption that burrowing bees utilize memory in finding the way home, and that they examine carefully the neighborhood of the nest for the purpose of forming pictures of the topographical environment of the burrow.” Twenty and seventy-five years later, others would repeat his work not knowing what he had already found.
• From 1838 to 1910, a few researchers thought that bees could see in color, but nobody could show any actual evidence. Karl von Frisch won the Nobel Prize for his 1914 work on honeybee dance behavior, but he was 4 years too late to be first to work on color vision. von Frisch also showed that bees use a sense of smell to find and choose flowers. Turner conducted 32 experiments in a week with cardboard discs, cones, and boxes of different shapes all baited with honey. Not knowing that bees can't see red, his work with red, blue, and green traps was flawed, but his data still demonstrated visual and olfactory cues were used in the bees' behavior: “whether this is a true color vision or simply a greyness discrimination is no easy question to answer.”

Modern bee catchers and Turner's 1910 designs to make them

• His work with bees also showed that they could distinguish patterns on the honey traps, and they could learn when Turner had changed the source of honey from one trap to another.

Designs of honey traps with different patterns (Turner, 1910)

Cockroaches.

• In 1912, he improved on another researcher's test to examine cockroaches' memories. He would shock them in one dark box and noticed they wouldn't reenter it, even with prodding. To confirm that it involved memory of that specific location, he moved the cockroaches to a new box, and it immediately ran into the dark section. So, it remembered something about the first box and avoided its shock penalty.
• In another experiment, he taught cockroaches to run a maze of copper strips suspended over water (punishment if they fell off). Turner observed how they would examine their previous path until they figured out how to reach the goal down a ramp.

Elevated strip maze for cockroaches (Turner, 1913)

Moths.

• He confirmed that moths respond like Pavlov's dogs to the specific sound of a whistle. Their container was shaken at the same time as the whistle tweet, and their wings moved as if they were preparing to escape. After learning this, they fluttered their wings just to the sound without any rough shaking. Pavlov wouldn't publish his own similar work and theory for 14 more years.

Charles Turner about age 35 (Wikipedia)

At 41, starting a new job at Sumner High School with a new wife must have seemed extraordinarily challenging to him. He had a heavy teaching load in biology, chemistry, and psychology, plus the pay was low (half that of a white teacher). Research facilities and funding were nothing compared to universities, too. Turner had no access to any research library, either, nor was he able to train graduate or undergraduate students, so he had to make use with high school students. Regardless, Turner managed to conduct research and produce over 40 scientific papers, which was two per year, a rather high number even for university standards.

Charles Turner died on Valentines's Day in 1923 of acute myocarditis at 56 only one year after retiring from Sumner High School. Some say it was due to his immense workload and determination to perform research despite the harsh conditions. The epitaph on his tombstone in Lincoln Cemetery in Chicago reads only “Scientist.” It is quite an understatement.

Here is a six-minute video showing Turner's influence today on youths and modern science.

Megalosaurus, the fossil that introduced dinosaurs to the world

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Two hundred years ago, on February 20, 1824, the description of a dinosaur was first published. William Buckland, the first professor of geology at Oxford University, presented his paper describing it to the Geological Society. Was it the famous Tyrannosaurus rex? Or the movie-made-popular velociraptor? No on both counts. But the name "dinosaur" wasn't given until two decades later, and the actual discovery of the dinosaur fossils that Buckland talked about had been made 125 years earlier! Let's see what the story is behind Megalosaurus.

Statue of Megalosaurus in Crystal Palace Park, London (Wikipedia)

People around the world have been looking at tracks, fossilized bones, teeth, and plants for hundreds of years. Some of the finds were mistakenly thought to be dragons, unicorns, giant humans, or simply the incorrect living animals of the day. Some felt that the plant or seashell imprints in stone were just crystallized minerals or stone itself and not relics of living things from the past. However, mineral analysis by Fabio Colonna in 1606-1616 demonstrated that were organic origins.

Here and there in England, largely from a limestone quarry in Stonesfield, England, a few bones and fragments were discovered in the 17th and 18th centuries which may have been from Megalosaurus. Naturalist Robert Plot was the first curator of the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Anthropology in Oxford, England. In 1676, he collected a bone fragment from the local area and at first thought it was from a Roman military elephant and then a giant human. Later, physician Richard Brookes redrew Plot's illustration in the 1763 issue of A System of Natural History and labeled it with the Latin name Scrotum humanum (using the newly created scientific naming system from Linnaeus in 1758). Some people think this may have been the first Megalosaurus fossil.

Brookes' illustration of thigh bone of Megalosaurus (Wikipedia)

A few years earlier in 1755, James Platt, a collector of oddities and artefacts, found three vertebrae from the same English quarry as Plot's bone fragment. He sent them to a botanist that never examined them but instead lost them. Three years later, Platt found a thigh bone 74 cm (2 ft. 5 inches) long with a shaft 10 cm (4 inches) thick. This, too, has been lost.

At this period of time, the idea of life changing or completely dying off was unknown. People simply thought animals stayed the same, and newly found ones including fossils were simply animals that had not been discovered living elsewhere. The concept of animals going extinct wasn't even proposed until 1813 when Georges Cuvier recognized bones in North America were from a mastodon, and a skeleton in Argentina was a creature called Megatherium, a previously unknown giant sloth 2.1 m (6 ft 11 in) tall and 6 m (20 ft) long. But these are not dinosaurs. Another scientific concept unknown at the time was evolution. This was put forth by Charles Darwin in 1858.

Megatherium skeleton and illustration (Wikipedia)

From the 1500s to the 1800s, the prevalent thought about the age of the Earth was taken from the Bible, and that implied 6,000-10,000 years old. There was no radiometric dating of any kind until the 1940s-1960s. In the late 1800s, however, when dinosaur fossils were found, people began questioning how old the planet was. Danish scientist and Catholic bishop Nicolas Steno developed basic geologic principles in 1669. These were almost all that was known in geology related to dating the planet:

• as materials are laid down, the older layers are on the bottom tiers
• things are generally deposited horizontally
• when any given layer of rock was being formed, it was either surrounded by another solid substance, or it covered the entire surface of the earth

Steno also recognized that a triangular stone called "tongue stones" was actually an ancient shark tooth whose organic material had been replaced slowly by minerals. 

Steno's drawing of shark teeth (left); a "tongue stone" (right) (Berkeley)

As curator of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, English theologian, geologist, and paleontologist William Buckland (mentioned in the title article for this blog report) acquired several bones from collectors in the area of British slate nines from 1814 to 1824. He had collected a tooth, 3 vertebrae from different locations on the spine, 2 ribs, a pelvis, a pubic bone, a lower hip bone, a thigh bone, and a bone from the food (all from different specimens, not one Megalosaurus). His was the first detailed study of a non-avian (non-bird-like) dinosaur.

Jaw bone and tooth (drawing by Buckland)

After consulting with Cuvier on the bones, he decided they had come from an enormous unknown lizard-like creature which he named Megalosaurus (mega = great in size, saurus = lizard) and presented his findings in 1824. However, he made two mistakes.

• He judged that it walked on all four legs. It was later shown to walk on the hind legs only. In fact, the stone statue at Crystal Palace Park (top of this blog report) is not really Megalosaurus! The shoulder hump of spinal bones identifies it as a different animal, Altispinax.
• He estimated his collection to be from something 12 meters (40 feet) long if pieced together, based on a lecture by someone studying a bigger thigh bone that they both thought (incorrectly) was from Megalosaurus. He later amended the size to 18-21 meters (60-70 feet) after calculating spinal vertebrae lengths. Currently, scientists feel its true length is 6 meters (20 feet).

Altispinax with its hump (Wikipedia)

Buckland also felt that because of the teeth shape, Megalosaurus was a carnivore. This went against the current thoughts from the Bible, where animals before Adam and Eve's original sin were vegetarians. He had collected a lot of bones in his studies, but not all were from Megalosaurus, which led to a lot of confusion of the day.

Reconstruction of Megalosaurus with known bones (Wikipedia)

Richard Owen was another renowned paleontologist of the day. He took information from Megalosaurus and two other creatures known then--Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus--which were all very similar in body structure. Based on the sacrum (bone at the end of the spine before the tailbone, and connecting to the pelvis), legs, trunk, ribs, and overall size of these three animals, Owen declared a new group of animals called Dinosauria (dinosaurs) in 1841. The "dino" in the name was Owen's interpretation as "fearfully great", but which has since morphed into "terrible". 

So, many bones discovered around the same time made their way to various collectors and researchers. Although they were initially thought to be all from Megalosaurus, later studies showed otherwise. Instead of many species of Megalosaurus, there appears to be just the one named after Buckland, who studied them the most: Megalosaurus bucklandii. 

Megalosaurus and other dinosaurs found their way onto commemorative stamps in the UK in 2013 to celebrate the 200-year history of paleontology in Britain and one year after the centenary of the publication of The Lost World, a dinosaur-containing novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

From Collect GB Stamps

Megalosaurus (and Iguanodon ad Hylaeosaurus) were all honored in 2020 on a set of 50-pence coins.

Coins of the first British dinosaurs (Natural History Museum)

Oddly enough, Charles Dickens published a short story about Megalosaurus. In Dickens' 1851 journal Household Words, English literature professor Henry Morley wrote a sort of time-traveling tale called "Our Phantom Ship on an Antideluvian Cruise" (pp. 166-176). Here is the excerpt.

We land in a warm, moist country, covered with a strange vegetation, in which fern-like palms, or palm-like ferns, Cycadaea, predominate. We have seen vegetation not unlike this when we were among men in New Zealand. There are plenty of ferns, and pines, and a few palms. Here is a land reptile, before which we take the liberty of running. His teeth look too decidedly carnivorous. A sort of crocodile, thirty feet long, with a big body, mounted on high thick l egs, is not likely to be friendly with our legs and bodies. Megalosaurus is his name, and, doubtless, greedy is his nature. Mercy upon us!

If you are interested in reading more about dinosaurs and fossil hunting, you can see six of the 44 chapters in The Complete Dinosaur book online here.

A 2019 book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of Their Lost World will provide far more current information. 

Finally, here is a timeline of dinosaur history.

A weird upside-down world lurks beneath Antarctica’s ice

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Antarctica is about as large as Alaska and is home to penguins and over 29 countries with 70 permanent scientific research stations. They conduct non-military investigations into glaciology, astronomy, meteorology, marine biology, engineering, and medicine. Researchers study the air, snow and ice as well as resident and migratory animal populations, plus the surrounding waters. Its largest plants are mosses, and the largest non-migratory animals are a few species of insects such as midges. The soil contains various microscopic life, too. Recently, one group of researchers looked under the ice with a new exploration tool and discovered new life.

Icefin ROV (Wired)

Dr. Britney Schmidt is the lead investigator of Cornell University's Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab. She is an associate professor of astronomy, but her interests take her underwater, and specifically under the ice, because she is curious about studying Jupiter's moon Europa. Europa is surrounded by a layer of hard and soft ice 10-30 km (6-20 miles) thick. Under that, however, it is believed to have liquid salty water 100 km (60 miles) deep. It is considered one of the likely places in the solar system where life may be found, other than on Earth. Schmidt's interests in that environment have led her to study beneath the ice in Antarctica.

Proposed Europa cross section (EurekaAlert!)

In 2019, Schmidt and her team joined forces with the UK on the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration to study the Thwaites Glacier on the western side of Antarctica. Almost all glaciers on the 

Location of the Thwaites Glacier (brittanica.com)

continent spill into the ocean and form icebergs. They can stop where the land underneath ends and be "grounded", or they an stick out beyond the land as "tongues" or ice shelves before they calve into bergs. The point where they begin to jut our across the water past their contact with land is called the grounding line. That is where warmer ocean waters (relatively speaking) meet glaciers, and Schmidt said the effect has never really been investigated before. So, she did.

Image from P. Huybrechts' article in Nature, 2009

To investigate under the ice is a serious challenge. First of all, it is 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) away from the U.S. McMurdo Station research facility. Seond, aside from the temperature of the water being around 2ºC (35.6ºF), the glacial ice above it is a quarter of a mile thick (587 meters, or 1,926 feet). Once you are there, a lot of measurements need to be taken at many locations, so a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) was designed and built in Schmidt's earlier lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta). It was tested at McMurdo Station before being shipped to the Thwaites Glacier. The ROV was named Icefin. Finally, the glacial camp consisted of mere tents. So, this was not just a simple field trip. (There is a 6-min video at the end of this article showing an observation capsule a mere 9 feet under the ice.)

Housing conditions at the glacier (from Eos)

Icefin is a 7-module tube 26 cm (10 inches) in diameter, 3 m (9.8 ft) long and 109 kg (240 pounds) in weight. It has five thrusters (two vertical, two horizontal and one rear) for flexible movement, and it is attached to the surface by a 4.3-mm fiber-optic tether to allow for real-time viewing from its cameras and sensors.

Icefin operating under the ice at McMurdo Station (YouTube)

Then, the unexpected discovery occurred. As Dr. Schmidt was watching the views from Icefin's camera under the ice, she saw star-like lights coming from the under-surface of the ice. But they weren't rigid ice structures. They waved tiny tentacles. These were a species of sea anemones clinging to the ice and then scurrying into cracks when approached. 

Anemones seen by Icefin (ScienceNews Explores clip)

Anemones are commonly found on the ocean floor, even around Antarctica. Schmidt wasn't the first to discover these attached to ice, though. Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln found them in 2013 under the ice of Ross Ice Shelf, not far from McMurdo Station. They even stunned them with hot water and returned them to the surface for study. The new species was called Edwardsiella andrillae, after the international ANDRILL (Antarctica Drilling Project) that they were part of.

From News-Antarctica (On the Flip Side)

Other types of Edwardsiella species have been found in coastal waters elsewhere, where the water may be highly salty or highly diluted from rivers feeding into the ocean.

2013 anemone specimen from under the Ross Ice Shelf

Schmidt wasn't even the first to use an ROV. The University of Nebraska team had a much smaller version called SCINI (Submersible Capable of under Ice Navigation and Imaging) ROV, which was 1.4 m long and 15 cm in diameter.

ROV SCINI (from Remote Sensing, 2020)

One difference, other than size, between SCINI and Icefin is that the former was made to survey the ocean floor, while the latter was intended for floor, water, and ice measurements. In both cases, the investigators just happened to look up and saw the unexpected life on the ice.

Dr. Schmidt remarked about the view from Icefin:

"In the background is like all these sparkling stars that are like rocks and sediment and things that were picked up from the glacier, And then the anemones. It's really kind of a wild experience."

So, perhaps looking up even further, all the way to Jupiter, may find even  more wondrous things. Right now, Icefin is run partially under manual control and partially autonomously through programmed routes. But Schmidt is developing a prototype cell counter so that any floating debris can be ignored and life can be identified.

4:33 Video narrated by Dr. Britney Schmidt

From YouTube

A short video of Ariel Waldman who crawled into an observation tube 9 feet under the Antarctic ice.