"Bomb the city and everything in it"
A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly
31–40 of 71 posts
Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly
#32"Bomb the city and everything in it"
Did a fungus write this? That’ll just spread it wider. (cf. The Genius Plague by David Walton)
Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly
#33"Bomb the city and everything in it"
Did a fungus write this? That’ll just spread it wider. (cf. The Genius Plague by David Walton)
Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly
#34When you realize the fungus' primary intent was to convince the fly to land in amber ...
Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds awesome! The oddest trees I have come across had big thorns like roses all over the trunk. Kind of hard to see because the trunk is so big, but you'd very quickly notice leaning against it. That was in a botanical garden in Australia. No idea what they were or how common they are. Blew my mind.
The oddest tree I know of is poplar, which is incredibly common around here and is basically considered junk wood. Turns out, those individual, fast-growing trees are in fact stems of a large underground root system. One of these trees has 47,000 stems: > Most agree [...] that Pando encompasses 42.89 hectares (106 acres), weighs an estimated 6,000 metric tons (6,600 short tons) or 13.2 million pounds, and features an…
Poplar is considered junk wood? This is news to me. I’ve seen plenty of poplar furniture.
Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly
#36These aren't necessarily related to today's Ophiocordyceps fungus. Fungi that take control of arthropods and cause them to climb to disperse spores have convergently evolved more than once, including Arthrophaga myriapodina, which affects millipedes, and is in a different Division (the level above Class) from Ophiocordyceps. Convergent evolution is more common than you might think. Trees, for example, have separately…
I recently visited the national history museum and finally got a sense of the _weirdness_ of prehistoric trees. No bark, a green trunk (utilizing photosynthesis), tall like a palm tree. I'd love to see something like that now.
Closest you can come today is probably a tree fern. I've got a Dicksonia antarctica in my living room under grow lights. It's a neat plant.
Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly
#37Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly
#38These aren't necessarily related to today's Ophiocordyceps fungus. Fungi that take control of arthropods and cause them to climb to disperse spores have convergently evolved more than once, including Arthrophaga myriapodina, which affects millipedes, and is in a different Division (the level above Class) from Ophiocordyceps. Convergent evolution is more common than you might think. Trees, for example, have separately…
> Trees, for example, have separately evolved at least 100 times. Can you explain more? Sounds interesting
One example is oak trees being more closely related to tulips than to pine trees.
(Tulips and oak trees are both angiosperms, flowering plants, and share a common angiosperm ancestor. Pine trees on the other hand are gymnosperms.)
Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The oddest tree I know of is poplar, which is incredibly common around here and is basically considered junk wood. Turns out, those individual, fast-growing trees are in fact stems of a large underground root system. One of these trees has 47,000 stems: > Most agree [...] that Pando encompasses 42.89 hectares (106 acres), weighs an estimated 6,000 metric tons (6,600 short tons) or 13.2 million pounds, and features an…
Poplar is considered junk wood? This is news to me. I’ve seen plenty of poplar furniture.
It’s too soft to be of much use except the odd piece of furniture (for which it is pretty terrible because it dents too easily). As a woodworker finishing it also sucks because the fibers tear too easily. Its grain pattern looks bland at best, it ages poorly, and its color is too inconsistent from tree to tree.
That said, it’s one of the most stable woods so it doesn’t warp much which is why it’s a popular base material for plywood and it’s easy on cutting tools. I usually only use it for the interior parts of drawers.
Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
The oddest tree I know of is poplar, which is incredibly common around here and is basically considered junk wood. Turns out, those individual, fast-growing trees are in fact stems of a large underground root system. One of these trees has 47,000 stems: > Most agree [...] that Pando encompasses 42.89 hectares (106 acres), weighs an estimated 6,000 metric tons (6,600 short tons) or 13.2 million pounds, and features an…
Poplar is considered junk wood? This is news to me. I’ve seen plenty of poplar furniture.
It's often used as trim that's painted over, as many don't consider the wood pretty. I love seeing poplar with a wide variety of colors.