Latest news with #Tiktaalik
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Science
- The Guardian
The Genius of Trees by Harriet Rix review – how trees rule the world
When was the last time you stopped to say thank you to a tree? Perhaps it's something we should do more often. After all, we owe them everything, from the air we breathe to the soil beneath our feet, and far less obvious things too. We have trees to thank for the swirl of our fingerprints, our posture, and possibly even our dreams. In her new book, British tree science consultant Harriet Rix presents trees as an awesome force of nature, a force that has, over time, 'woven the world into a place of great beauty and extraordinary variety'. How have trees done this? And can they really be said to possess 'genius'? If you think of life first emerging from the sea, hundreds of millions of years ago, you might picture something like the Tiktaalik, a human-sized floppy-footed fish that hauled itself out of the shallows some time in the Late Devonian. But the evolutionary eureka moment arguably came long before that, when one lucky green alga washed up on the Cambrian shore and managed to survive the deadly UV light on land. 'Plants learning to survive and use UV light was a thunderbolt,' writes Rix. It 'allowed a whole new chemistry to emerge, root and branch, in a whole new place: dry land … Safe from predators, who for the moment were left in the sea behind them, these photosynthesising cells started on a path that led to the amazing complexity of trees.' Viewed on cosmic fast forward, as part of 'a strange, apparently accelerated world, in which continents drift around like rubber ducks, bumping into one another', trees seem almost godlike, using their biochemical wizardry to transform the Earth from a stony, storm-ravaged wasteland into a place where life could thrive. They broke barren rock into soil, canalised flood waters into rivers, pumped oxygen into the atmosphere, and turned the desert green. Element by element, trees have learned to control water, air, fire and the ground beneath us, as well as fungi, plants, animals, and even people, shaping them according to their own 'tree-ish' agenda. Some fairly knotty chunks of biochemistry and evolutionary history are smoothed by lush descriptions of contemporary habitats as Rix travels the world, from the cloud forests of La Gomera to the junipers of Balochistan. She is an intrepid and erudite guide. Despite the title, this is not a book that gives much weight to questions of tree consciousness or intelligence. It doesn't stop to consider whether our leafy friends have feelings. Rix acknowledges that the early work of Suzanne Simard – whose research into resource exchange between trees via underground mycelial networks gave rise to the concept of the wood wide web – was 'beautiful field science' and 'immensely compelling', but she gives short shrift to subsequent anthropomorphic claims that trees 'talk' or 'love' or 'mother' one another. 'Putting a nurturing mammalian face on to the giants of the forest was also a massive betrayal of the complexities of an organism that could be thousands of years old,' she writes. 'Thinking of the 5,000 years in which Methuselah [a storied bristlecone pine] has had to negotiate existence makes simple narratives about the gentle exchange of nourishing sugars seem astoundingly trite.' What, then, is the genius of trees? Rix locates it in the elegant solutions they have devised to the constantly changing riddle of life. It's a genius you can smell in the rich terpenes given off by trees to seed clouds, generating rain and expanding their own habitats. It's a genius you can taste in the sweet fruit that makes animals do trees' bidding, and arguably gave our simian ancestors their brains. It's a vast, generative genius that has nurtured our own. Our clever fingers – and fingerprints – evolved to grip their branches. Our dreams were born in the safe, fragrant nests we built in their canopies. This is why, Rix argues, we find the smell of wood so comforting, and why we like to press our noses between the pages of books. Genius is too small a word for all of this. The Genius of Trees by Harriet Rix is published by Vintage (£25). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Science
- The Guardian
The Genius of Trees by Harriet Rix review – how trees rule the world
When was the last time you stopped to say thank you to a tree? Perhaps it's something we should do more often. After all, we owe them everything, from the air we breathe to the soil beneath our feet, and far less obvious things too. We have trees to thank for the swirl of our fingerprints, our posture, and possibly even our dreams. In her new book, British tree science consultant Harriet Rix presents trees as an awesome force of nature, a force that has, over time, 'woven the world into a place of great beauty and extraordinary variety'. How have trees done this? And can they really be said to possess 'genius'? If you think of life first emerging from the sea, hundreds of millions of years ago, you might picture something like the Tiktaalik, a human-sized floppy-footed fish that hauled itself out of the shallows some time in the Late Devonian. But the evolutionary eureka moment arguably came long before that, when one lucky green alga washed up on the Cambrian shore and managed to survive the deadly UV light on land. 'Plants learning to survive and use UV light was a thunderbolt,' writes Rix. It 'allowed a whole new chemistry to emerge, root and branch, in a whole new place: dry land … Safe from predators, who for the moment were left in the sea behind them, these photosynthesising cells started on a path that led to the amazing complexity of trees.' Viewed on cosmic fast forward, as part of 'a strange, apparently accelerated world, in which continents drift around like rubber ducks, bumping into one another', trees seem almost godlike, using their biochemical wizardry to transform the Earth from a stony, storm-ravaged wasteland into a place where life could thrive. They broke barren rock into soil, canalised flood waters into rivers, pumped oxygen into the atmosphere, and turned the desert green. Element by element, trees have learned to control water, air, fire and the ground beneath us, as well as fungi, plants, animals, and even people, shaping them according to their own 'tree-ish' agenda. Some fairly knotty chunks of biochemistry and evolutionary history are smoothed by lush descriptions of contemporary habitats as Rix travels the world, from the cloud forests of La Gomera to the junipers of Balochistan. She is an intrepid and erudite guide. Despite the title, this is not a book that gives much weight to questions of tree consciousness or intelligence. It doesn't stop to consider whether our leafy friends have feelings. Rix acknowledges that the early work of Suzanne Simard – whose research into resource exchange between trees via underground mycelial networks gave rise to the concept of the wood wide web – was 'beautiful field science' and 'immensely compelling', but she gives short shrift to subsequent anthropomorphic claims that trees 'talk' or 'love' or 'mother' one another. 'Putting a nurturing mammalian face on to the giants of the forest was also a massive betrayal of the complexities of an organism that could be thousands of years old,' she writes. 'Thinking of the 5,000 years in which Methuselah [a storied bristlecone pine] has had to negotiate existence makes simple narratives about the gentle exchange of nourishing sugars seem astoundingly trite.' What, then, is the genius of trees? Rix locates it in the elegant solutions they have devised to the constantly changing riddle of life. It's a genius you can smell in the rich terpenes given off by trees to seed clouds, generating rain and expanding their own habitats. It's a genius you can taste in the sweet fruit that makes animals do trees' bidding, and arguably gave our simian ancestors their brains. It's a vast, generative genius that has nurtured our own. Our clever fingers – and fingerprints – evolved to grip their branches. Our dreams were born in the safe, fragrant nests we built in their canopies. This is why, Rix argues, we find the smell of wood so comforting, and why we like to press our noses between the pages of books. Genius is too small a word for all of this. The Genius of Trees by Harriet Rix is published by Vintage (£25). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Business Mayor
15-05-2025
- Science
- Business Mayor
Bombshell discovery of 'earliest footprints ever' completely rewrites theory of evolution
The sandstone slab from the earliest Carboniferous of Australia (Image: Grzegorz Niedźwiedzk / SWNS) Scientists are hailing the discovery of the earliest reptile footprints, dating back a staggering 355 million years, as a potential game-changer for our understanding of evolution. Unearthed by two keen amateur palaeontologists in Australia, the sandstone slab bears impressively preserved footprints featuring long-toed feet complete with 'distinct' claw impressions at the tips. These footprints mark the oldest known evidence of clawed feet, as highlighted in a groundbreaking study recently published in the esteemed journal Nature. Uppsala University's Professor Per Ahlberg, leading the study, expressed his astonishment: 'I'm stunned.' He further explained the significant implications of the find: 'A single track-bearing slab, which one person can lift, calls into question everything we thought we knew about when modern tetrapods evolved.' The fascinating evolutionary journey from fish venturing out of water to their descendants branching into ancestors of today's amphibians and amniotes—a group including reptiles, birds, and mammals—has seemingly been thrown into disarray. Previously it was understood that the first tetrapods came about during the Devonian period, with their modern descendents emerging later in the following Carboniferous period. A reconstruction of the reptile. (Image: Marcin Ambrozik / SWNS) Considering that the earliest fossils of amniotes were dated to the late Carboniferous, approximately 320 million years ago, this new find could significantly push back the timeline for the emergence of modern tetrapod groups. Scientists have been left gobsmacked by a groundbreaking discovery down under, which suggests that the evolutionary split between amphibians and amniotes – the 'tetrapod crown-group node' – occurred much earlier than previously thought, around 355 million years ago in the earliest Carboniferous period. Previously, the Devonian period was considered the era of primitive fish-like tetrapods and intermediary 'fishapods' like Tiktaalik. However, an ancient sandstone slab unearthed in Australia has turned scientific understanding on its head. Co-author Dr Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki from Uppsala University expressed his astonishment: 'When I saw this specimen for the first time, I was very surprised, after just a few seconds I noticed that there were clearly preserved claw marks.' Prof Ahlberg added: 'Claws are present in all early amniotes, but almost never in other groups of tetrapods.' He further explained: 'The combination of the claw scratches and the shape of the feet suggests that the track maker was a primitive reptile.' This revelation could mean that reptiles, and therefore all amniotes, originated a staggering 35 million years earlier than the current consensus indicates. The study also cites additional evidence from newly discovered fossil reptile footprints in Poland, which, while not as ancient as the Australian find, are still significantly older than any known before. This adjustment in the timeline of reptile origins is set to revolutionise our understanding of the entire evolutionary history of tetrapods. The research team, delving into the origins of tetrapods, suggests that these four-limbed vertebrates predate the earliest amniotes, with their study pointing to a much older lineage than previously thought. Prof Ahlberg remarked: 'It's all about the relative length of different branches in the tree. 'In a family tree based on DNA data from living animals, branches will have different lengths reflecting the number of genetic changes along each branch segment.
