Hallucigenia, Corrected

Most people realise that reconstructions of animals from their fossilised remains is a risky business, and that when there are only a few fossil specimens, opportunities for misinterpretation are many. Add to this an investigator who declares `I have a natural temptation to emphasise the unusual', then the probability of error is greatly increased. All these ingredients are present in the case of an organism named Hallucigenia, first described in 1977 by Conway Morris in the journal Palaeontology.

However, new evidence has come to light which suggests that Hallucigenia exists only in our imagination. Lars Ramiskold of the Swedish Museum of Natural History and Hou Xianguang from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology have been studying worm-like fossils from Southern China. They consider that the fossils have a body plan similar to the velvet worms of modern rain forests, but that they were armoured - bearing protective spines. After comparing the characteristics of the Hallucigeniafossils with those of their own, they were able to conclude that the reconstruction was wrong, that Hallucigenia was actually an armoured velvet worm, and that it belongs to the phylum Onychophora.

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Paddington

Ley Lines #1

The concept of "ley lines" is generally thought of in relation to Alfred Watkins, but the stimulus and background for the concept is attributed to the English astronomer Norman Lockyer . [3] [4] [5] On 30 June 1921, Watkins visited Blackwardine in Herefordshire , and went riding a horse near some hills in the vicinity of Bredwardine , when he noted that many of the footpaths there seemed to connect one hilltop to another in a straight line. [6] He was studying a map when he noticed places in alignment. "The whole thing came to me in a flash", he later told his son. [7] It has been suggested that Watkin's experience stemmed from faint memories of an account in September 1870 by William Henry Black given to the British Archaeological Association in Hereford titled Boundaries and Landmarks , in which he speculated that "Monuments exist marking grand geometrical lines which cover the whole of Western Europe". [8] Watkins believed that, in ancie...

Connection #4 - Averroes to Yacoub Almansour

Abū 'l-Walīd Muḥammad bin Aḥmad bin Rushd ( Arabic : أبو الوليد محمد بن احمد بن رشد ‎), better known just as Ibn Rushd ( Arabic : ابن رشد ‎), and in European literature as Averroes (pronounced /əˈvɛroʊ.iːz/ ) (1126 – December 10, 1198), was an Andalusian Muslim polymath ; a master of Aristotelian philosophy, Islamic philosophy , Islamic theology , Maliki law and jurisprudence , logic , psychology , politics , Arabic music theory, and the sciences of medicine , astronomy , geography , mathematics , physics and celestial mechanics . He was born in Córdoba , Al Andalus , modern-day Spain , and died in Marrakech , modern-day Morocco . His school of philosophy is known as Averroism . He has been described by some [1] as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe and "one of the spiritual fathers of Europe ," [2] although other scholars oppose such claims. Wikipedia Averroes (Abonlwalid Mo'hammed ibn Abmed ibn Mo'hnmmed ibu-Roschd) was ...

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