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Ep 148: Learning the most from the least

Ep 148: Learning the most from the least

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Learning the most from the least

Not all fossils are large bones of things like dinosaurs or mammoths. Some of them are small enough to require a microscope in order to identify them. Called microfossils, these tiny fragments, and even remains of single-celled organisms, can tell us a good deal about things like the climate, the vegetation, the temperature, and chemical composition of the water and air when a given layer or strata of rock was laid down.

Here’s a link to an article about using microfossils to solve the mystery of what killed the last of the mammoths.

The last woolly mammoths in North America didn’t starve – they died of thirst

Here’s an article that talks about the use of microfossils for finding oil deposits.

USING MICROFOSSILS IN PETROLEUM EXPLORATION

And here are some articles about a few different types of microfossils.

Microfossils

Diatoms

Calcareous Nannofossils

Foraminifera

Ep 147: Digging up the past

Ep 147: Digging up the past

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Digging up the past

When I was a child, my family visit a dig site. They were excavating fossils of mammoths. Before we get back to examining natural history, we’ll spend a few episodes finding out where the evidence for the story comes from.

Here is a link to the hot springs mammoth site.

Mammoth Site & Museum

Here are some other sites that were discovered accidentally.

A 130,000-Year-Old Mastodon Threatens to Upend Human History

Mammoth Discovery Could Revise Earliest Date of Humans in the Americas

Ep 146: Trees eyes and antlers

Ep 146: Trees eyes and antlers

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Trees eyes and antlers

Sometimes, very different organisms can end up having traits in common, even though they didn’t share those traits with an ancestor. Instead, different systems, solving similar problems, can come up with similar answers.

Here’s a link to the episode on eyes.

Ep 78: Eyes

Here’s a link to an article about the similarities between human and squid eyes.

How Humans And Squid Evolved To Have The Same Eyes

Here’s a link to an episode about a large single-celled creature that came up with leaf like structures.

Ep 141: The largest of the small

Here are the best links I could find about the antlered fly. There was surprisingly little information about them on the internet.

The amazing flies of the genus Richardia

Archives – Feisty Fruit Flies

Debugging death

Debugging death

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In episode 144, I oh so casually mentioned that I was getting some runtime errors. They don’t happen in every run, but the fact that they happen at all is a problem. My artificial life system will eventually be running for days at a time as I do different experiments, and I can’t have these errors causing my system to halt.

What does one do when one sees output like the following?
…

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Ep 145: Does a long life really inhibit evolution?

Ep 145: Does a long life really inhibit evolution?

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Does a long life really inhibit evolution?

In episode 139 and 142, I talked about some results I’ve been getting with my experiment with artificial life and digital organisms. I had to rework the death object to make sure that one of the little critters would die and make room for others. But does an unusually long-lived creature really inhibit evolution? I found a counter example—Pando, an 80,000-year old quaking aspen clonal colony. Though it was established during the last ice age, the plant and animal life around it has definitely changed and evolved since then, suggesting that in nature, long lived creatures do not keep evolution from happening.

Here’s a link to a 4-minute and 42-second long video about Pando.

Pando, One of the Oldest and Largest Organisms

Here are links to a couple of articles about this venerable organism.

Pando, the Trembling Giant – Richfield, Utah – Atlas Obscura

The Trembling Giant

And here are some links to information about the last ice age, called the “Pleistocene.”

Ice Age Animals of Utah

Pleistocene Epoch: Facts About the Last Ice Age

Ep 144: Emergent self-replicating software from my experiments

Ep 144: Emergent self-replicating software from my experiments

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Emergent self-replicating software from my experiments

In the previous episode, I provided a description of “Amoeba.” In this episode I use “Figures,” which is my own experiment with digital organisms and artificial life, to repeat the results of Andy Pargellis’s Amoeba experiment, with a few differences. I also give the most detailed explanation of my subleq based system to date, as I compare and contrast it with Tierra and Amoeba.

Here are links to episodes relevant to today’s episode

Ep 143: Emergent self-replication with Amoeba

Ep 103: Tierra, bits bytes and life

Here’s a blog post that describes what subleq is and how it works.

The prime, and only, directive.

Here’s a video that provides a decent introduction to artificial life and digital organisms.

Artificial Life

Ep 143: Emergent self-replication with Amoeba

Ep 143: Emergent self-replication with Amoeba

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Emergent self-replication with Amoeba

Did life come from chaos? If it did, could you get artificial life to do the same thing? As I’m repeating the experiment, with some difference, I thought I’d talk about Amoeba—an artificial life simulation that caused self-replicating bits of software to emerge from randomly generated code. I provide a general overview, and then talk a little bit about how it relates to my project.

Here are links to the previous episodes that relate to today’s episode.

Ep 82: DNA that does nothing?

Ep 103: Tierra, bits bytes and life

Here’s a link to an article about Amoeba.

Artificial life with Amoeba

Ep 142: A closer look at results from ep 139

Ep 142: A closer look at results from ep 139

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A closer look at results from ep 139

In episode 139, I talked about unexpected results from my experiment with artificial life and digital organisms. There was a tiny bit of evolution happening with a very tiny population. Today, we take a closer look at what the system was doing.

Here are links to previous episodes relevant to this one.

Ep 103: Tierra, bits bytes and life

Ep 139: de facto fitness functions and unexpected early evolution

Here’s a roughly 28-minute-long video that is a decent introduction to artificial life.

Artificial Life

Ep 141: The largest of the small

Ep 141: The largest of the small

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The largest of the small

Not every single-celled life form is microscopic. Some of them can be seen with the naked eye. Some of them are, at least compared to other single-celled creatures, downright gigantic.

Here’s an article about the large amoeba that was found on the bottom of the ocean.

Giant single celled organisms lurk on ocean’s deepest point

Here’s an article about a single celled bit of seaweed that looks like a tiny fern.

Structure of world’s largest single cell is reflected at the molecular level

And here’s a video about why single celled organisms don’t get much larger than the examples in today’s episode.

What is the biggest single-celled organism?

Ep 140: An exception to the rules of biology

Ep 140: An exception to the rules of biology

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An exception to the rules of biology

As soon as you’ve defined something like Eukaryotes, some exception crops up, and you have to redefine a classification of life. Today, we look at one or two such exceptions, including an animal that doesn’t use oxygen.

Here are links to the episodes referenced in today’s “exciting” episode.

Ep 68: An environmental catastrophe

Ep 77: The Cambrian explosion

Here are a couple of articles about the single-celled Eukaryote that has no mitochondria.

Surprise! This eukaryote completely lacks mitochondria

First eukaryotes found without a normal cellular power supply

And here are some articles on the animal that doesn’t use oxygen.

There is one animal that seems to survive without oxygen

Oxygen-Free Animals Discovered—A First