Atomic Surgery

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Life On Other Worlds: Pluto By Murphy Anderson (1946)

Art by Murphy Anderson
Planet Comics #45 (Nov. 1946) © Fiction House

Thursday, January 28, 2010

The Black Terror in "The Serpent Lady Returns" by Jerry Robinson & Mort Meskin (1948)

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The Black Terror #24 (Sept. 1948) published by Standard
© the current copyright holders
Story: Jerry Robinson; Art: Mort Meskin

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Origin of Aqualad!

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Story: Robert Bernstein; Art: Ramona Fradon
Taken from Showcase #76 (1968), reprinted from Adventure #269 (1960)

Monday, January 25, 2010

Coevolution of Bat & Dolphin Echolocation

Echolocation in dolphins and bats evolved separately, but through the same genetic changes.

Click to enlarge

Dolphins and bats have both evolved the same specialized form of inner-ear hair cells that allow them to use sophisticated echolocation: detecting unseen obstacles or tracking down prey by making a high frequency noise and listening for the echo that bounces back.

"The natural world is full of examples of species that have evolved similar characteristics independently" said Stephen Rossiter. "However, it is generally assumed that most of these so-called 'convergent traits' have arisen by different changes in the animal's DNA. Our study shows that this very complex ability - echolocation - has in fact evolved by identical genetic changes in bats and dolphins."

Kamandi © DC Comics

According to Rossiter, the discovery represents an "unprecedented" example of convergence between two very different animals, and suggests that further studies might unearth more genetic similarities between species than scientists would have suspected. link