Lets face it Beavers are weird!

Beavers belong to a large diverse group of mammals called the Rodents.
Unlike the other members Rodents (mice and rats), beavers are rather unique and specialized in their habit. First they have those ever growing incisors that they use to cut down trees like an axe. Second, they build dams and create unique ponds in which they swim and live in. Lastly beavers have that characteristic flat tail. So, did all these specialization occur just once in the long fossil record of beavers, or did various beaver lineages specialize for a similar habit has the climate changed in the later half of the Cenozoic. Natalia Rybczynski at the Canadian Museum of Nature, just published a study that suggests that a single beaver lineage (Castorinae) made such a change in habit early in the fossil record. The diverse sister group Palaeocastorinae known only from the fossil record, specialized for a dramatically different environment. Palaeocastorines specialized in "tooth-digging" and lived in burrows. Somewhere in the late Oligocene to early Miocene the two groups split into a terrestrial burrowing group and aquatic swimming group. During the Miocene the burrowing group became extinct, leaving only the castorines with their strange ways.

Rybczynski, N. 2007. Castorid Phylogenetics: Implications for the Evolution of Swimming and Tree-Exploitation in Beavers. Journal of Mammalian Evolution. 10.1007/s10914-006-9017-3.

Can I collect my $25,000,000 now?

The idiosyncratic billionaire Richard Branson has offered a $25 million dollar prize for "any invention that will remove "significant" amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere - perhaps in the order of a billion tonnes a year." Now, as a poor graduate student, whose stomach is rumbling from lack of food, I thought perhaps I should enter into the contest with my invention. I call it - Water!

O.K. here is how it works. Take two hydrogen atoms and stick them onto a oxygen atom, cover large surfaces of the earth with the stuff, say 75% of the earth, then give it a good stir with the moon and watch the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere drop!

The Earth's oceans sink carbon dioxide from the atmosphere forming a very mild carbonated ocean (Soda Pop). However, such a method increases the PH of the ocean making the ocean more acidic overtime, and unfortunately leading to the extinction of marine organisms that thrive in the oceans today. While this may solve our problem with global warming, it leads to a barren ocean.

Alright, alright, here is my second invention. It is a little more complex, but there are "no side effects". I call it - Forest!

O.K. here is how it works. Cover the earth in forests, thick jungles with big trees, little shrubs and vines and all that green stuff! Plants and may other organisms use CO2 from the atmosphere to grow, and give off O2. No genetic modification need! The carbon becomes trapped in the plant material that gets buried through time. No more CO2 in the atmosphere, plus if it gets warmer all those jungles can grow as far as the North and South Poles. Leading to greater amounts of CO2 leaving the atmosphere.

While I am sure that my inventions will work, if we give them a try. The whole subject of Global Warming is somewhat off-track, because we still believe humans can some how reverse the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We can't! However, the Earth can if we let her. We need to quit building subdivisions and endless miles of roads.

Furthermore, instead of worrying about stopping global warming we need to focus technology on how we can better live in a warming world. From looking at changes to rain and snow fall, and its impact on agriculture, to insect pest migration into higher latitudes, and the major effects of rising sea level on coastal cities.

P.S. this is vertebrate paleontology related, since one of the judges to the contest in none other than the writer and vertebrate paleontologist Tim Flannery.