GK-PID -- June 20, 2024

I just got back from Portland, OR, with a huge shopping bag full of books: Aristotle, Greek mythology, Robert Graves, JD Salinger. Then The New Yorker, The Atlantic. And now GK-PID. And now, Three Days of the Condor on YouTube. Full movie, free. 

GK-PID: I don't know how I missed this. Where was I in 2016 when this was all over the news, including The New York Times? Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale: the big mystery ... what makes an animal an animal and are sponges animals? What is the genetic marker that "identifies" an animal as an animal? And how did animals come to be?

• UChicagoMedicine, January 7, 2016. A single, billion-year-old mutation nelped make multicellular animals evolve. Link here.
• eLife, January 7, 2016. Evolution of an ancient protein function involved in organized multicellularity in animals. Link here. 
• NYT, January 7, 2016. Genetic flip helped organisms go from one cell to many. Link here.

Researchers:

• Douglas P Anderson: University of Oregon, Eugene;
• Dustin S Whitney: Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee;
• Victor Hanson-Smith: see Anderson; now, University of California, San Francisco;
• Arielle Woznica: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, UC-Berkeley;
• Williams Campodonico-Burnett: see Anderson;
• Brian F Volkman: see Whitney;
• Nicole King: Howard Huges Medical Institute, UC-Berkeley;
• Joseph W. Thornton: University of Chicago, Chicago;
• Kenneth E Prehoda: see Anderson

So:

• Oregon: team of four
• Milwaukee: two
• UC-Berkeley: two
• Chicago: one

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The Gulf: The Making Of An American Sea

The Gulf: The Making Of An American Sea -- Jack E. Davis, c. 2017.

The book fails. "Advertised" as a history of the Gulf, from the Pleistocene to the present. In fact, very little about pre-history and most about American history. In big scheme of things, a boring book. A reference book. 

Prologue

Winslow Homer
Fernand Braudel -- innovative Annales School
the book is said to cover the time period from the Pleistocene to the present (very little on the Pleistocene; mostly the present)

again, President Thomas Jefferson, brilliant
fifteen colonies -- not 13
the Gulf colonies of East Florida and West Florida
an angler discovered oil in the Gulf -- p. 7
** estuaries
T.S. Eliot: "Dry Salvages" -- p. 9
much emphasis on Fernand Braudel

Introduction
Birth

Gulf of Mexico's loop currents
150 mya:
sole landmass: Pangaea
one ocean: Panthalassa

so easy to remember:
150 mya
sole landmass; Pangaea, breaking up
sole ocean: Panthalassa

Volcanic surge
--> the GREAT DYING -- most severe extinction in Earth's history
nearly all marine life and most vertebrate land species lost!!

Pangaea --> starts breaking up about 200 mya

• Laurasia: northern hemisphere --> N/A and Europe
• Gondwana: southern hemisphere --> S/A and Africa

Meanwhile:

• water from the Atlantic rushed into the Gulf
• a rift to the west of Georgia
• then closed
• only source of water for the Gulf was through a strait ... east of Yucatán

Yucatán joins with Mexico -- an earthen dam; separates the Gulf from the Pacific?

So, Pangaea breaks in half -- the "rift" is longitudinal, parallel with equator

• so we still have one ocean
• [I'm still not sure about that "rift" west of Georgia that pours "Atlantic" water what became the gulf]
• but then, Yucatán moves north and connects with Mexico -- causes an earthen dam and separates the west ocean from the east ocean

Three super-continents:

• Columbia (Nuna): 1.7 to 1.45 billion years ago
• Rodinia: 1 billion to 700 million years ago; unicelluluar to multicellular, about 800 mya (GK-PID)
• Pangaea
• Cambrian: 538 mya to 485 mya; note, again, began in/on Pangaea
• Cambrian-Triassic, the Great Dying, coincides with breaking up of Pangaea
• first dinosaurs: about 231 mya 
• Pangaea begins to break up about 200 mya