1189: #ClasssicScience: Trilobites. Natalie Angier, @NYTimes.
Photo: Trilobites from, The Geological Story briefly told. An introduction to geology ... With numerous illustrations http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules Parler & Twitter: @BatchelorShow #ClasssicScience: Trilobites. Natalie Angier @NYTimes. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/04/science/when-trilobites-ruled-the-world.html Researchers have identified some 20,000 trilobite species, which range in adult size from a quarter-inch to the dimensions of a kitchen tabletop. Some scurried on the sea floor or buried into the sediment and ate detritus. Others swam or floated near the surface and may have hunted small invertebrates. “They can have scoops or shovels, be fantastically spiny or beautifully streamlined,” Dr. Hughes said. “They diverged to really explore their evolutionary space, but they maintain that common body plan” — the three vertical lobes, or trilobes, that give the class its name. Researchers were long at a loss to explain the origins of all the architectural partitioning. They believed that early trilobites lived flatly, like flounders, and only later would take advantage of their longitudinal seams to begin enrolling — curling up into a ball, armadillo-style, to protect their soft underparts….”