A Natural History

We went to the Natural History Museum this morning, Dave and I, and saw "Wild Ocean" at the Dynamax Theater and looked at the exhibits. Because it was Easter morning, it was quiet. Just us and a bunch of white-haired dinosaurs rattling around the museum.

I love ammonites. (I took this picture because I want to try to carve this in clay.) This one was a few inches across, but some ammonite fossils are more than seven feet in diameter. They look like modern nautiluses (or nautili), but they're not closely related. Ammonites are more closely related to Coleoidea like octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish. Ammonites went extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs (at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 65 million years ago) but nautiluses didn't. Can you guess why?

Ammonites probably went extinct because they lived primarily in warm, shallow waters. Nautiluses probably survived because they lived mainly in colder, deeper waters. Benthic sea creatures which could rely on detritus food sources seem to have fared well compared to those creatures that lived in shallower water and were dependent on plankton as a food source early in their life-cycles. (Plankton populations took a hit during that extinction period.)

The more you know, right?

After the museum, Dave and I went to lunch with LuAnn and Chris. We had Vietnamese food because Vietnamese food is yummy.

Then we came home and I crashed (the result of too little sleep and a supposedly non-drowsy antihistamine). The rest of the afternoon was not as productive as the morning.

Last Weekend

Last weekend Kelly First and Kevin had out-of-town guests. One of those guests was a very sharp, very charming six-month old baby with his own blog. You can see it if you click here (link). There are pictures there of a very happy and charming little baby--and of Kelly First and Kevin. (I usually don't put people's pics on my blog because I'm old and askeered of the internet and its many stalking possibilities, but this generation of kids coming up today doesn't feel the same sense of trepidation about the whole thing.) Anyway, the little baby calls Kelly First "Aunt Sparkle" and Kevin "Uncle Guitar" and I find that to be fitting and hilarious in equal measure.

So go already!