Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Wednesday Search Challenge (October 27, 2010): When did octopi come to be?

Now THIS is an odd and interesting question... When does, evolutionarily speaking, a species come to be?

In particular, when did an octopus come to be recognizably a different species than its predecessor?



And, from the perspective of SearchResearch, how would you search for such an event?

Once again, I haven't really solved this myself (yet), but will take notes as I work on this tomorrow morning.

(Thanks to my friend Alexis for the suggestion of this research challenge.)

Search on!
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4 comments:

  1. PhotoInspirationsOctober 28, 2010 at 7:18 AM

    A fascinating question which lead me to learn more about the species (I think that's the plural of species).

    http://tinyurl.com/2be3ojs
    (scroll down to where it lists species)

    I decided to approach this one as a "challenge" problem and see whether I could get to a result that I trusted by starting at Wikipedia and I was able to get to the above destination quite quickly from there.

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  2. GeneGOctober 28, 2010 at 9:15 AM

    From: http://www.thecephalopodpage.org/evolution.php:

    Octopuses diverged from the vampyromorphs during the Late Jurassic (about 140 million years ago) as far as we can tell—but the fossil record is too patchy to make this estimate anything more than provisional.

    Here's the search history (part 1)
    8:41 AM A Broad Brush History of the Cephalopoda - The Cephalopod Page
    8:37 AM Mollusca - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    8:36 AM Mollusca - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    8:36 AM Invertebrate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    8:33 AM Geologic time scale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    8:31 AM Mesozoic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    8:31 AM Mesozoic era species - Google Search
    8:30 AM In which era did dinosaurs exist or begin to exist? - Yahoo! Answers
    8:30 AM when did dinosaurs appear - Google Search
    8:29 AM Answers.com - When did dinosaurs first appear
    8:28 AM when did species emerge? - Google Search
    8:28 AM Tree of Life Web Project - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    8:27 AM Biological classification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    ReplyDelete
  3. GeneGOctober 28, 2010 at 9:16 AM

    rest of history:

    8:27 AM All Species Foundation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    8:26 AM Phylogenetic tree - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    8:25 AM Biological kingdom chart - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    8:23 AM taxonomy of plants and animals - Google Search
    8:20 AM Speciation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    8:19 AM speciation over time - Google Search
    8:18 AM cephalopod speciation - Google Search
    8:07 AM http://www.geo.fu-berlin.de/geol/fachrichtungen/pal/eigenproduktion/Band_03/19.pdf
    8:05 AM octopus speciation - Google Search
    8:05 AM News to Note, December 19, 2009 - Answers in Genesis
    8:04 AM Comparative Analysis of Gene Expression for Convergent Evolution of Camera Eye Between Octopus and Human — Genome Research
    8:03 AM emergence of new species - Google Search
    8:02 AM octopus species - Google Search

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dan RussellOctober 29, 2010 at 7:15 AM

    Thanks, everyone, for your search histories! This was a tough problem and I really appreciate your perseverance!

    ReplyDelete

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