H O P S C O T C H
love
dad
Sunday, July 26, 2026
Saturday, July 25, 2026
Devonian
E X P L O S I O N O F D I V E R S E L I F E
The Age of Fish. And more.
Every animal we see about us today
can trace its ancestry back to an era that began
420 million years ago. For the next 60 million years
the Devonian would churn out one new family of
animals after another.
It was an astonishing time of creation
for both plant and animal. Every land
plant in existence has its roots beginning
with the Devonian. The land became a
living and breathing green.
A G E O F F I S H
Life was entering a time of revolutionary change.
Vertebrates formed skeletons in place of shells.
Bones allowed continuous growth while shells
constrained an animal's size. The animal's
speed weighed down by its armor.
Survival of the fittest generally referred to
competition for food, shelter and breeding.
There isn't enough of anything to go around.
What animal's skillset is best suited for its
surroundings? Those that lose out become
a genetic dead-end. Its personal DNA lost.
The gene pool of each generation is created
from this process of determining the species
characteristics most likely to succeed given
the environment's current challenges.
F O R E S T S
The marine environment often provides for
habitats that stack one atop another.
Fish make their living at different depths
while the crab looks after the ground floor.
The development of trees enabled for
layered habitats on land. The fox patrols
the ground while trees provide squirrels
with nuts and limbs for nesting birds.
The idea of a tree first required a number of
revolutionary innovations to turn plant life
into something more than the smelly green
muck that lined the shore. Wood would be
needed for strength if we're talking trees.
They would also need a deep root system
for mining the ground's nutrients and to
keep the tree upright, even if it is fifty feet tall
and facing into a stiff, surge of wind.
You're going to need a world class
vascular system to transport nutrients
from the roots to the leaves fifty feet
straight up. It's a tough problem but
you will have a few million years to
work it out.
A M P H I B I A N S
Four legged land animals had their likely origin with
freshwater fish, struggling to survive periodic drought
by using meaty lobed fins for walking, and their
swim bladder capable of breathing like a lung
until they reached the next water hole.
In time, the land became lush with vegetation.
Here was a land guaranteeing a free lunch for all -
no competition and no predators. Water here
is available only for drinking. Bladders replace gills
and genetic innovations slowly transform meaty
fins used for paddling into jointed legs designed
to have the animal walk upright. An entirely
new genetic path was being pioneered from scratch.
I N S E C T S
The Earth is a greenhouse
rotating in endless summer
with no place for polar ice caps.
A Devonian year was 400 days,
and each day lasted 22 hours.
The planet's two supercontinents,
Gondwana and Euramerica,
were becoming infested with insects,
spiders and centipedes.
C O R A L R E E F S
The Devonian world was one of near endless,
sunlit shallow seas under a placid vacation
sky. Coral reefs sprawled for thousands of miles
in all directions beneath the ocean's surface.
These colorful reefs provided homes for
ancient trilobites, sea scorpions and
animals with coiled shells, among others.
This tropical paradise lasted sixty million
years before the global environment
took a drastic turn for the worse.
Nearly eighty percent of marine life
was lost in the resulting global mass
extinction. The cause remains yet to be
determined as there is little evidence
to support any one particular explanation.
For the moment,
all talk on the matter is mere speculation.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, July 19, 2026
Saturday, July 18, 2026
Cambrian
E X P L O S I O N O F L I F E F O R M S
The explosion lasted ten to twenty million years,
a mere moment in geologic time. The planet's
oceans transitioned from pea soup to a true
marine habitat, populated with numerous
and varied, imaginative life forms.
E A R L Y A R T H R O P O D
Looks like a cartoon animator's daydream.
It's head is an eyespot atop a tentacle.
This line of engineering leads to segmented
body parts, protective hard tissue and jointed
appendages. Their line of body design is
represented today as crabs, spiders
and insects.
T R I L O B I T E
One of the most successful of the creatures that
first appeared in the early Cambrian. Their hard
body parts made for making blue ribbon fossils.
Most every marine habitat on the planet revealed
their diversity and their ability to adapt to changing
circumstance. Their menu options included
anything edible.
After dominating the planet for nearly 300 million
years. this entire category of animal was wiped out
by a catastrophe named the Permian Mass Extinction.
Once again, Nature plays 52 Card Pickup with
the deck.
E A R L Y C A M B R I A N
From the folks that have provided us with crab, lobster
and shrimp dinners comes this most ancient predator,
worthy of portraying a nightmare under a child's bed.
It didn't take long before a dispassionate genetic code
solved the dietary problem by providing a pair of arms
with long, nasty spikes to hold you in place while
Gladys here nibbles you to death.
M O L L U S K
Ancestors to squid and octopus - the wizards of
the invertebrate world. They sport a couple of
primitive eyes and up to ten tentacles to nab
their prey. There is an advanced nervous system
to coordinate all the state of the art biological
technologies this nautilus carries to rule the roost
400,000,000 million years ago.
C U T T L E F I S H
This curious contrivance is not a fish but a mollusk,
related to squids and octopus. It is one of a kind,
having three hearts and a copper-based blood system.
Cuttlefish have the ability to change their color pattern
to match that of the surrounding landscape in a
matter of seconds. They disappear from view
in this most amazing display of camouflage.
It appears almost gentle, like a homely
old man sitting on a park bench feeding
the squirrels. But this is a cunning carnivore
with a murderous heart, its predatory tentacles
discretely tucked from view.
You best keep moving.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, July 12, 2026
Saturday, July 11, 2026
Arid
S A H A R A
Imagine a desert stretching from Los Angeles to
New York City, from Seattle to Miami, a desert
covering the lower 48 states of the United States.
That is about the size of the Sahara Desert in
current North Africa. The sand dunes that cover
nearly a fourth of this desert are all that remains
of an ancient ocean, populated with prehistoric
crocodiles and the earliest marine whales.
There are no fossil records of these animal remains
to be discovered among these dunes. A million years
of bone abraded by sand would leave nothing for
scientists to research. Dunes are the sea now, its
waves driven by the wind.
D U N E
A decent dune can travel anywhere from one to over
one hundred and fifty feet a year. It all has to do with
wind, weather and what kind of shape your dune is in.
You don't want to bet on a star-shaped dune to win a
race because conflicting forces forms the sand into a
mountain going nowhere.
Your fastest dune is the Barchan Dune. The secret
lies in its sleek, aerodynamic crescent shape that
rushes the sand over the dune's crest in short order.
With any luck at all you should see it cross the finish
line in about ten thousand years.
S H R I M P
Imagine your desert picnic being disrupted by shrimp
swarming the hot dog relish. Ancestors of the Tadpole
Shrimp, shown above, were undoubtedly marine dwellers.
Time played them false and their world eventually dried up.
Weather patterns shift with the millennia. The rains go
north. Oceans become isolated and die, its many
life forms now extinct. Evidence of their very
existence mostly lost.
Every once in a great while a freak genetic path
reveals itself, and we discover mermaids can
live out of water. This shrimp species spends
most of its existence in suspended animation.
Pooling rainwater revives this animal long enough
to propagate another generation before
returning to the rapidly drying mud and slumber.
C A R A V A N
These merchants transport bundles of salt
across 400 kilometers of the harsh Tenere desert
of Niger. Here temperatures are often above
one hundred and water barely exists.
The land is unable to support plant life.
If you know what you're doing
you can make enough money hauling salt
to support you and your camels.
Benefits include stars at night,
no traffic and few regulations.
No doctors. No retirement.
You are dirt poor.
Somehow, however, you own a smart phone.
And you have your dignity.
I R R I G A T I O N
Parched desert lands bloom with agriculture once water
is reliably supplied to farmers. The soil's rich nutrients
are made available to cash crop vegetables such as
lettuce, Brussel Sprouts and asparagus. And the
growing season is year round. What could go wrong?
Salt.
Water evaporates in the desert sun, leaving
behind trace amounts of salt that accumulates
with each watering. In time, the fields harvest
only cheap hay because the land has become
too salty for growing finicky vegetables.
This isn't smart farming and irrigation methods
have become less wasteful, especially with the
rising costs of water.
M A R S
Columbus stepping into the unknown.
Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock.
At least they could breath the air,
drink from streams and hunt for food.
The first humans to step onto Martian soil
are confronted with having to survive
a lethal landscape.
Of course, you must first survive the travel
to Mars which will take six to nine months.
You should set aside three years
if you plan to make this venture a round trip.
The greatest effort has been made to ensure
your comfort and safety. Nonetheless,
keep in mind you are pioneers, the pathfinders
of civilization. There are no lifeboats, no parachutes,
no spare-parts and no do-overs available
on this voyage.
Thoughts and prayers.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Friday, July 10, 2026
Happy Birthday Jacob
I s l e o f S o d o r
H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y
J A C O B !
H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y 🎂 T O Y O U !
love
dad
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)