While hunting for some old images of moeritherium, I came across this:
Everything on it is wrong. Admittedly, the order Proboscidea has a big bushy family tree and many of the lineages and connections are the subjects of active controversies. But this goes beyond valid controversy; it's just wrong.
Starting at the bottom.
The genus Moeritherium is not the ancestor of any later proboscidean species. Though it had a nice long run of its own (almost twenty million years) and produced about a half dozen species, it was a side branch that ultimately left no descendants. When Charles W. Andrews unearthed the first Moeritherium at Fayum, Egypt in 1901, the oldest known proboscidean fossils were gomphotheres from the early Miocene. His discovery pushed the history of the order back to the earliest Oligocene--ten million years, but they didn't know that yet. It was an easy jump to make from earliest elephant to ancestor of elephants and Andrews announced his discovery that way. However, additional discoveries by him and by others soon raised questions about that conclusion and most Twentieth Century paleontologists were content to call it a cousin.
Trilophodon isn't a recognised genus or species at all. The word was coined in 1857 by Hugh Falconer to describe a sub-genus of mastodons that included the American mastodon and about half of the family that later came to be called gomphotheres. The other half, he called Tetralophodons (the terms describe an element of tooth architecture). The words are used today as adjectives, not as formal names, for different types of gomphotheres. The illustration is probably supposed to be Gomphotherium angustidens, the most common and best known Old World gomphothere.
Depending which species the Britannica artist had in mind, they might have managed to get the relationship somewhat right with Platybelodon. It is a trilopodont gomphothere. It produced the final species of the sub-family Amebelodontinae.
As far as mammoths being descended from platybelodons, no, just no. Mammoths are not descended from trilopodont gomphotheres or from tetralopodont gomphotheres or any kind of gomphothere. Their last common ancestor existed about 23 million years ago before the various prodoscidean genera left Africa.
Mammuthus primigenius, the woolly mammoth, is not the ancestor of modern elephants. In fact, it didn't evolve until long after the three surviving elephant species had reached their current forms. The idea that it is an ancestor originated in the earliest days of paleontology, before evolution or the ice ages were understood or accepted. Johann Blumenbach, who first recognized that mammoths were different enough from modern elephants to need a unique scientific, name thought of them as a less refined local breed of elephant and named them Elephas primigenius - the primal or original elephant. It didn't take long for naturalists figure out that the mammoth was different enough to need its own genus - Mammuthus. Outside of creationist literature, I'm not sure where you would find a source that claims mammoths are ancestral to elephants written since the 1880s at the latest. Plus woolly mammoths weren't that large. While they weighed as much African savanna elephants, they were much more compact, shorter and thicker.
African and Mammoth/Asian elephants diverged from each other about seven million years ago. Each of those lines produced several species before the modern ones appeared, coincidentally around the same time, 2.5 million years ago. Mammoths separated from Asian elephants while their common ancestor still lived in Africa.
To sum up: four relationships that are wrong, one species that never existed, one in the wrong chronological order, one visually incorrect (in size), and Asian elephants aren't blue. A correct illustration should look something like this:
When did Britannica become so sloppy?
UPDATE: An editor at Britannica just tweeted me to thank me for bringing the problem to their attention and to say they'll get right on fixing it. My faith is restored.
Showing posts with label evolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evolution. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Saturday, May 17, 2014
The Periodic Table of the Elephants
Last January, Brian Switek, a rising star in the dinosaur firmament (his latest book), made an offhand comment about the need for a periodic table of the elephants. I don't know if he meant it seriously or if he was just going for the pun. However, I had just been reading about proboscidean evolution and the name set off a whole marquee of light bulbs over my head. Let's make a periodic table of proboscidean evolution.
I Googled the idea and found several "Periodic Tables of the Elephants" but all of them were normal periodic tables using cartoon elephants as illustrations. None of them were really about elephants. I let the idea bubble for a while, bounced it off my Facebook friends, and, last week, decided to go for it.
So, what is the plan? Simply put, it's an educational poster of proboscidean evolution using the familiar theme of the periodic table to illustrate the diversity of the proboscidean family tree. It's a very bushy tree. The definitive work in the late 1930s listed 350 species. It took sixty years for someone to become brave enough to prune that tree, getting rid of unnecessary duplications, and adding recent discoveries. By my count, there are currently 177 species recognized in the order Proboscidea. This can't all be explained in a poster. No one wants a poster of mostly words. The poster needs an accompanying booklet. This book and poster set is not unusual for educational posters.
Alrighty. What's the plan? For the periodic table itself, I intend to organize a representative subgroup of the recognized species (about a third of them) in the order that their genera first appeared in the fossil record and use these for the table. For each square in the table, I'll make a drawing of the species with a size bar, give it a two letter symbol, provide its Linnean binomial (scientific name), and the namer and year it was named (these are also part of the full scientific name). In the center of the poster I'll provide a key to the squares and on one side I'll provide a general family tree of to show how they fit together.
But wait, that's not all. The booklet expands on this. In the booklet I'll provide a specific description of each species, with an enlarged illustration, explaining it's evolutionary significance and stories about it's discovery, lifestyle, and appearance. The whole thing will be prefaced with an illustrated article on proboscidean evolution that gives perspective to each of the individual genera and species. Aside from its educational value, the booklet will allow the owner to assume an air of superiority while explaining the poster to their students/nerdy friends. Who doesn't like that?
I've decided to pitch this on Kickstarter (or Indiegogo, I'm open to recommendations). I'm broke and I need some income to keep going. I have tons of research that doesn't fit into the book, and I would like to monetize it. This also gives me something to put on my resume to convince potential publishers that I know my stuff. There are some great stories that I had to greatly abridge or cut from the book. These will make great e-books, but these are things that will be useful for marketing the mammoth book after it's done. I need something that I can do right away that will pay up front. The evolutionary data fits the ticket perfectly.
To do this, I'll need to produce around eighty professional quality illustrations. I can do that, but, since the last time I did any serious illustration, I've developed a serious hand tremor. Retraining myself will take some work, but not a lot. I would show you my current artistic ability, but my scanner died not long before I moved. Getting a new one will bee my first expense. I need to pay myself for my research time, my art, layout, color, and the production of the first batch of the posters, booklets, associated mailing costs, and anything I might have missed. Based on what I've already done, I think three months for the project is a realistic goal.
This leads me to some questions: 1) Is this a good idea? 2) Would you buy the poster or do you know anyone who would? 3) If I go ahead with this, what should be my financial goal? I think at least $4000 for the art and at least $2000 for the rest. Could I get more? 4) I need to offer threshold gifts. Any ideas? Signed prints? The poster? 5) What am I forgetting?
I'll keep working on the book during this time, just not as fast. If anyone has experience with Kickstarter projects, I'd love to hear about it. What do you think?
I Googled the idea and found several "Periodic Tables of the Elephants" but all of them were normal periodic tables using cartoon elephants as illustrations. None of them were really about elephants. I let the idea bubble for a while, bounced it off my Facebook friends, and, last week, decided to go for it.
So, what is the plan? Simply put, it's an educational poster of proboscidean evolution using the familiar theme of the periodic table to illustrate the diversity of the proboscidean family tree. It's a very bushy tree. The definitive work in the late 1930s listed 350 species. It took sixty years for someone to become brave enough to prune that tree, getting rid of unnecessary duplications, and adding recent discoveries. By my count, there are currently 177 species recognized in the order Proboscidea. This can't all be explained in a poster. No one wants a poster of mostly words. The poster needs an accompanying booklet. This book and poster set is not unusual for educational posters.
Alrighty. What's the plan? For the periodic table itself, I intend to organize a representative subgroup of the recognized species (about a third of them) in the order that their genera first appeared in the fossil record and use these for the table. For each square in the table, I'll make a drawing of the species with a size bar, give it a two letter symbol, provide its Linnean binomial (scientific name), and the namer and year it was named (these are also part of the full scientific name). In the center of the poster I'll provide a key to the squares and on one side I'll provide a general family tree of to show how they fit together.
But wait, that's not all. The booklet expands on this. In the booklet I'll provide a specific description of each species, with an enlarged illustration, explaining it's evolutionary significance and stories about it's discovery, lifestyle, and appearance. The whole thing will be prefaced with an illustrated article on proboscidean evolution that gives perspective to each of the individual genera and species. Aside from its educational value, the booklet will allow the owner to assume an air of superiority while explaining the poster to their students/nerdy friends. Who doesn't like that?
I've decided to pitch this on Kickstarter (or Indiegogo, I'm open to recommendations). I'm broke and I need some income to keep going. I have tons of research that doesn't fit into the book, and I would like to monetize it. This also gives me something to put on my resume to convince potential publishers that I know my stuff. There are some great stories that I had to greatly abridge or cut from the book. These will make great e-books, but these are things that will be useful for marketing the mammoth book after it's done. I need something that I can do right away that will pay up front. The evolutionary data fits the ticket perfectly.
To do this, I'll need to produce around eighty professional quality illustrations. I can do that, but, since the last time I did any serious illustration, I've developed a serious hand tremor. Retraining myself will take some work, but not a lot. I would show you my current artistic ability, but my scanner died not long before I moved. Getting a new one will bee my first expense. I need to pay myself for my research time, my art, layout, color, and the production of the first batch of the posters, booklets, associated mailing costs, and anything I might have missed. Based on what I've already done, I think three months for the project is a realistic goal.
This leads me to some questions: 1) Is this a good idea? 2) Would you buy the poster or do you know anyone who would? 3) If I go ahead with this, what should be my financial goal? I think at least $4000 for the art and at least $2000 for the rest. Could I get more? 4) I need to offer threshold gifts. Any ideas? Signed prints? The poster? 5) What am I forgetting?
I'll keep working on the book during this time, just not as fast. If anyone has experience with Kickstarter projects, I'd love to hear about it. What do you think?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)