Has anyone ever done a Speculative Evolution book or work on Carcinisation?
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25237011
About Carcinisation
About Speculative Evolution
Just imagine... Crablike humans, crablike dogs, crablike birds!
Heart cockle shells transmit sunlight to photosymbiotic algae using bundled fiber optic cables and condensing lenses - Nature Communications
Many animals convergently evolved photosynthetic symbioses. In bivalves, giant clams (Cardiidae: Tridacninae) gape open to irradiate their symbionts, but heart cockles (Cardiidae: Fraginae) stay closed because sunlight passes through transparent windows in their shells. Here, we show that heart cock...
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/33597552
Summary from the 404 media newsletter
Heart cockles, a group of marine molluscs, contain little communities of algae in their shells as part of a symbiotic relationship; the algae get shelter and protection, and the cockles get algae-processed nutrients.
Now, scientists have discovered that cockle shells have a host of mind-boggling adaptations to keep these algae happy, including windows that offer “the first example of fiber optic cable bundles in a living creature.”
“We show that the fibrous prismatic crystals act like parallel bundles of fiber optic cables in the shell windows, not just transmitting light but projecting high-resolution images through the window,” that have “a resolution of >100 lines/mm,” said researchers led by Dakota McCoy of the University of Chicago.
From the article in the link above:
 survived, with one long-term survivor going on to become the sole ancestor of modern life.
(If you don't have institutional credentials, there is a pirate website by the name of "sci-hub", with the dash. No endorsement but it's not like you were ever going to pay 40 bucks to read this)
There's a live about Dougal Dixon's Book on alternative dinosaur evolution (in spanish)
A couple of paleo fans are talkin in spanish about this interesting topic
Banner Idea
Could somebody make a cave painting of an intelligent "woolly mammoth" attacking a troop of apes? I think that would be really cool for this community. Stable Diffusion Online didn't seem to get it, at least not with my prompt.
Edit: I'm picturing a hunting scene a bit like this. Pottery art would also work.
Neolithic Electricity and Marine Aliens
Originally posted on Reddit. I'm wondering if I should write a discussion on creatures living in the interior of a planet discovering space and the wider universe, too.
Neolithic civilizations existed on Earth. The Polynesians until European contact and the Cucuteni–Trypillians in 4000 BC Romania are good examples. The Easter Island Polynesians even invented writing. It's hard to build an underwater blast furnace, though, which has been claimed to prevent aquatic creatures from progressing further.
Well, if we also assume that these creatures are electroceptive like rays, I think it's likely their equivalent to alchemists (people with the leisure and interest to mess with chemical reactions who manage to form a community) would find solid materials that "look" like seawater. If they aren't electroceptive they would either need conductive natural solids or building their first circuits would be much more of a freak event.
If they have access to hot temperatures,
