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

  

 

coldValentine

good morning justin

  

S  A  G  U  A  R  O

love 

   dad

coldValentine

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

 

coldValentine

 

 

 

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

 

coldValentine

good morning jacob

  

F I R E

 

love

   dad

coldValentine

Earth

  

U  N  I  V  E  R  S  E

The beginning of everything was about 14 billion years

ago.  Creation.  The Big Bang.  From inside an infinitely

small speck of existence came forth all that we know

of the universe today.  Conventional wisdom among

scientists fifty years ago was that the universe is infinite

and time has neither a beginning or an end.

That idea was thrown out once we discovered that

the galaxies and stars are not static.  Our Milky Way,

along with the trillion other galaxies of the known 

universe, is rapidly moving away from the theoretical

creation point of existence.  Hmm.  What was the

nature of existence prior to the Big Bang?  Anything?

A previous universe, perhaps, that collapsed from 

its own weight into nothing.  Or was there a timeless

existence of null until there suddenly wasn't.

Mathematics won't solve this equation because

we don't know the variables.  What is it we are

dealing with?  Science or philosophy?

S  O  L  A  R      S  Y  S  T  E  M      C  R  E  A  T  I  O  N

The universe had existed nearly ten billion years

before a galactic cloud of dust began to coalesce

into our sun and its entourage of planets, comets

and asteroids.  The four planets closest to the 

sun's gravitational pull - Mercury, Venus, Earth

and Mars - consist primarily of metals and the 

heavier elements.  The gas giant planets -

Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus - consist

mainly of the lighter elements.

The dust cloud itself contains the particles of stars

that exploded once their nuclear reaction had run

its course.  This is a process of renewal practiced

at the galactic scale.  Stars are born from an accretion

of matter in a vacuum.  A nuclear reaction occurs

giving the star a lifespan of energy.  Depleted stars

may explode.  The matter they release is now 

available for new creations... stars, nebula,

galaxies, black holes, dark matter, and more waiting

to be discovered.

M  O  O  N      C  R  E  A  T  E  D      F  R  O  M      E  A  R  T  H

Early in the formation of our solar system, Theia,

a planet nearly the size of Mars, collided with the

still molten Earth.  The enormous quantity of magma

thrown into space resulted in the formation of 

Earth's moon - itself a planetary object almost

the size of Mercury.  It also rotated twice as close

to the Earth as it now does.  We would be startled

by the size of the moon in the sky when it passes

so near to where we stand.  Luner Phobia would

skyrocket.

 H  A  D  E  A  N      E  R  A    -   H  E  L  L      O  N      E  A  R  T  H

The first half billion years on Earth consisted of 

oceans of molten rock bombarded with asteroids.

Eventually the planet cooled enough to have the

beginnings of a crust form on the surface.

Volcanos were then believed to be prevalent.

This was a time of extreme heat, toxic gases

and planetary turbulence.  Nothing from this 

time has survived this period of constant upheaval.

S  T  R  O  M  A  T  O  C  I  T  E   -   F  I  R  S  T      F  O  S  S  I  L  S

It took a billion years from Earth's creation before

the first evidence of life appeared.  A lot had to happen

before there could be life.  The crust the planet needed

to support life required the surface to cool.  Eventually

the thick vapor atmosphere would condense into rain.

After a few million years of rainfall the Earth's surface

will be covered in oceans.  

Here was nature's nursery for invention.

There is no way of knowing how many failed

molecular attempts at producing life occurred

before something clicked and the enterprise

of life was off and running.  Sort of.

It took another half billion years before life

discovered the performance advantage

displayed by cells with a nucleus.  

Random trial and error over a million generations

is the method of genetics, DNA, the molecular

code providing life.

 C  A  M  B  R  I  A  N      E  X  P  L  O  S  I  O  N      O  F      L  I  F  E

For the next two billion years the Earth's oceans

remained a soup of mostly single cell organisms.

Then multicell life appeared about 560 million 

years ago.  Individual cells organize to create

something greater.  The various cells of the organism

had different specialized tasks.  They become

dependent on the whole.  It was the more efficient 

path for survival.

This development brings about an explosion 

of life forms that radiate out through the

Cambrian Era.  The types of organisms

became increasingly specialized, and became

a part of increasingly sophisticated habitats. 

Most every animal type alive today can trace

their creation back to this Cambrian period.

*   *   *   *   *

©  Tom Taylor

 

OVER   EASY

 

 

coldValentine

Happy Anniversary Marcela/Jeremy

  

T  H  E        F  O  U  R  T  H

H a p p y     A n n i v e r s a r y !

M a r c e l a    a n d    J e r e m y

🎈  💕

l o v e

   K a r e n   a n d   T o m

coldValentine