I’m back from San Francisco, and there will be more about that when I gather it all together, but here’s a cute photo of some public invert-related art I saw while jogging on the Embarcadero.
Meanwhile, I repeat, life has tough choices. This entire weekend, for example, is the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, a competition in which I’ve been an enthusiastically mediocre contestant over the years. On Sunday, there is also a meeting of the New York Paleontological Society, during which there will be a lecture on early molluscan evolution. The talk is by Jakob Vinther, who also authored some of the very cool papers that came out recently about pigment in dinosaur feathers. He thinks there’s evidence that chitons body plans are actually quite derived, and not primitive as other research suggests. I certainly want to hear more about this.
Plus chitons are just so lovely. Here’s an incredible photo of a faceoff (if you could call it that) between a nudibranch and a chiton.
(photo: ken-ichi)
I’m really going to try to go to both tournament and talk on Sunday. Wish me luck with timing and transit.
The Shell and Mantle 