M is for... Mososaur

Loyal readers who are, like Funes, memorioso, may remember I said something in an earlier blog about returning to discussion of cryptids.

Not yet.

The mososaurs, for any non-paleontologists out there, were large marine lizards - probably snakes are their closest living relatives - that became the dominant marine predator in the late Cretaceous Period. Almost certainly, coelacanths would have formed part of its diet: pretty much everything else did. The mososaurs, as a family, were tremendously large: the smallest species identified grew to be over 3 meters in length, while the largest exceeded 15 meters. Their limbs adapted into flippers, mososaurs had some characteristics in common with fish, and some with crocodiles. There is an interesting story to be traced in the identification of mososaur species, involving one of paleontology's many storied rivalries, which would make a fantastic subject for a blog.

Not yet.

Mososaurs make an interesting subject for paleontological study, for a variety of reasons; it is not surprising that Marcus Ross, a graduate student at the University of Rhode Island, selected them as the subject for his doctoral thesis. As the holder of a Ph.D., it is not surprising that he is recognized as an authority on the evolution, diversity, and extinction of mososaurs some 60 million years ago. You may be suspecting at this point that there is some relatively surprising factoid lying in wait, and if so your suspicion is correct. The surprising aspect of Dr. Ross' career as a paleontologist is that he is also a Young Earth Creationist. As a function of his religious beliefs, Marcus Ross sincerely believes that the Earth, and indeed the entire Universe, is only a few thousand years old. As a function of his professional status, he is an expert on a species that existed millennia before that.

This apparent dichotomy - I say apparent, because that apparition arises only from the assumption of an excluded middle - attracted the attention of New York Times journalist Cornelia Dean, who published an article on Dr. Ross in 2007. As Ross explains it, he is simply "separating the paradigms" between the scientific and religious perspectives of the world. He has been accused of intellectual dishonesty; it has been suggested his "impeccable" doctoral dissertation should have been rejected, since he has used it to argue for creationism as a plausible explanation for the Cambrian Explosion, in defiance of conventional scientific wisdom. The notion that the Earth could simultaneously be only 6,000 years old, and yet host massive predators 60,000,000 years old, is unscientific; in fact, the assumptions supporting that notion are beyond the capacity of science to examine. They have to do with philosophical conceptions of Time; while the question "how long does a second take to pass" may seem alternatively pataphysical and asinine, its implications make it, for this chronicler at least, one meriting consideration.

Rejecting the Aristotelian assumptions underpinning materialist-mechanist empiricism opens one up to a vertiginously uncertain universe; Ross identifies a quintessentially American solution, in pragmatically behaving as if one paradigm or another is "true" in the Aristotelian sense, depending on the situation. Other resolutions to this irrealist situation exist...

C is for ... Coelacanth

Ugly little spud, as Ray Stanz might say; but the Coelacanth - the name is derived from the Greek koilos, hollow, and akantha, spine - is also something of a remarkable creature. Back in 1937, it was known to palaeontologists as a "missing link" between fishes and tetrapods: in other words, between aquatic and terrestrial life. It was also "known" back then to have died out, along with lots of other beasties, back in the Cretaceous Period - approximately 65 million years ago.

So it was a bit of a shock when, two days before Christmas a year later, one Marjorie Courtenay Latimer, of East London, South Africa, discovered in the trawl of her fisherman acquaintance Captain Hendrick Goosen a living breathing example of the genus. A museum curator, Latimer had an arrangement with Capt. Goosen that she could regularly inspect his catch and keep any items of interest - and it is probably fair to say no more interesting item ever turned up in his nets than the coelacanth. There wasn't even a Linnaean name for the coelacanth at the time, there being little call for one, so it became Latimeria chalumnae in honor of the curator who identified it. The fellow who only went and caught it earned no honor, since all he had in his nets was an ugly darn fish that stank: framing makes a big difference. In 1999, a second Latimeria species was discovered, in Indonesia. Both known coelacanth species are deepwater fish; the fossil record shows an abundance of coelacanths that dwelled in shallower waters, although by their nature fossils of deepwater taxa are hard to come across.

Often referred to as a "living fossil," the modern coelacanth is actually discernibly different from its fossil forebears, but still has enough taxonomic oddities that it grossly bears more resemblance to a Cretaceous fish than a modern one. It may yet face a long-delayed extinction, as deep-water trawling threatens its habitat; what might misleadingly be termed the anti-humanist faction among environmentalists may have a legitimate case in decrying the casual eradication of a species that has existed perhaps 20,000 times as long as we have. Of course, it's hard to be sure - relatively few animals become fossilized upon death, so the fossil record is an uncertain guide. Coelacanths are by no means the only "Lazarus taxon" - the reference is to John 11:1-46, notable for containing the shortest verse in the whole bible ("Jesus wept"); another biblical Lazarus is a subject for blogs otherwhen - and this is to be expected. Darwin's anticipation of a "missing link" between Man and Ape was, to put it mildly, optimistic given the patchiness of the fossil record overall; discoveries like Latimer's in 1938 reveal just how imperfect our knowledge is.

One consequence of the coelacanth's discovery was an energizing of a vociferous minority among biologists: the oft-ridiculed fraternity of cryptozoologists, whose focus is on species that don't officially exist. Although a select few of these feel their pulses quicken upon the triumphant verification of the existence of Laotian Rock Rats or Mountain Pygmy Possums, the greater number pursue more tabloid-friendly quarries: Bigfoot, Nessie, Mothman. Derided as pseudoscience, cryptozoology persists as a discipline because of a wealth of anecdotal evidence, a tissue-thin amalgam of ambiguous prints, spoors, and other traces... and finds like the Coelacanth. After all, if it could vanish for 65 million years, is it so hard to believe a Neanderthal clan might dwell in the Rockies and go unnoticed for a mere thirty millennia?

More on cryptids another time...