Thursday, September 12, 2013
The North American Cordillera has at least four important insect fossil sites, Simon Fraser University entomologist Bruce Archibald told a group of 20 people last in Williams Lake on September 11.
Archibald used these sites to link beetles and temperature 50 million years ago.
HOMAGE
Archibald began by paying homage to Buffon and Von Humboldt, Enlightenment thinkers whose probing of nature enhanced human reason, progress, and, I would argue, freedom. He also noted his current research, on lacewings, whose intricate wing patterns are beautiful as well as useful, as the Ancient Roman writer Horace advised our lives and work to be. English zoologist Richard Dawkins argues that the natural world is more beautiful and inspiring than any religion, with its anti-intellectual strictures and anthropomorphic hereafter.
SITES
From south to north, these sites are Republic, in Oregon, United States, and Quilchena, McAbee, and Driftwood Canyon in British Columbia, Canada.
I saw one site, McAbee. In 1999, when I was teaching at the nearby indigenous community of Skeetchestn, I brought a group of children to McAbee. We looked but we did not touch. The children marveled at fossilized sea creatures on what they knew as a desert hilltop. Psychologists note that such mental challenges enhance reasoning.
ANTI-SCIENTIFIC GOVERNMENT
A few years later, a new, reactionary provincial government removed protection from the site. Anyone could then go there and chip away, which one paleontologist called equivalent to letting people with chisels and hammers into the Sistine Chapel. Happily, scientists and a local opposition member of the provincial legislature have since convinced the government to restrict access again.
Beetles were Archibald's focus. His cameras focused finely enough to show fossilized insect hairs and encased soft tissue 50 million years old. At the end of the talk, I cited the science fiction film Jurassic Park about dinosaurs recreated in our era using fossilized DNA. Extract soft-tissue DNA and reproduce these insects. The soft tissue was sex cells, which contain only half the chromosomes, however, as the movie contained only half-baked science; but ancient soft tissues might tell us how much the insects changed over millions of years, which relates to the accuracy of Archibald's theory.
Alas, Archibald lacks the funding to do what he does now, let alone explore other under-researched areas: other scientists, who study bats and leaves, among other things, subsidize his work because it relates to theirs. Bats, for example, use echolocation to hunt. Some of Archibald's beetles have an organ that detects bats' echolocation signals, thereby enhancing the beetles' survival against predation by bats. Richard Dawkins writes fascinatingly on echolocation evolution. An equation using the ratio between jagged and smooth-edged leaves, for example, reveals past temperature and even predicts future temperature. This commendable collaboration among scientists arises from government indifference or hostility toward science as well as from scientists' intentions.
"If you want to research how to move oil, the government will give you a grant. Anything else, good luck," Archibald quipped. Archibald rejoiced that Parks Canada paid for his gas to come from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby to Williams Lake, 500 kilometres north. He uses the cameras at Parks Canada's Vancouver research facility,but better resolution would help his research. A person in the audience noted the University of Victoria's new electron microscope, news to Archibald; but he and Archibald agreed that the queue is long and the access is expensive. "Insects become oil," the person joked. "Tell the government that."
BEETLE AND TEMPERATURE LINK
Archibald's theory proposes a link between a particular beetle, the palm beetle, and temperature. This beetle only eats palm leaves. Palm trees do not grow where the winter temperature falls below five degrees celsius, or below eight degrees in climates of increased carbon dioxide, such as humans have made.
This summer, measurement at Hawaii's Mauna Kea Telescope found atmospheric carbon dioxide above 400 parts per million. Climate change activist Bill McKibbon cites a sea of evidence that predicts irreversible global warming at carbon dioxide levels above 350 parts per million.
Archibald noted 50 million year old fossilized palm seeds in Antarctica, still linked to Australia but then separating from South America. The climate has warmed before, but never as fast as it has warmed since humanity's massive burning of fossil fuels.
Archibald's team found fossilized palm beetles, 50 million years old, in three of the four sites. They found none in Driftwood Canyon, at 54 degrees north latitude the most northerly site. They therefore concluded that, 50 million years ago, palms grew in these places. These sites are between two and three thousand kilometres north of where palms grow today.
REASON, PROGRESS, AND FREEDOM
As I type this story, I remember another beetle story I encountered, years ago in Vancouver. I also think about reason, progress, and freedom.
Beetles proliferate on Earth, luckily for Earth, and for us, I learned years ago at Science World, a science education centre in Vancouver. Archibald's mention of the hundreds of species of beetles was not news to me: Charles Darwin wrote extensively about beetles. A Vancouver presentation about dung beetles was, however, news that I long remembered; but there, as in Archibald's work, I found a reasoned link between different parts of the natural world. Dung beetles, of which there are many species, eat dead organic matter. Without such decomposition, life as we know it, including human life, could not long continue. Dead matter would overwhelm living matter, a veritable biospheric zombie cataclysm.
Zombie Cataclysm, a good name for a musical group?
Reason helps us connect such natural phenomenon as palm beetles, palms, and temperature, to connect dung beetles, decomposition, and life. Genesis, like many of the books of the Bible, like most religious people, uncritical, pushy, slavish servants, long dissuaded people from reasoning, from opposing dominant views, from progress.
Thanks to critical thinkers such as Carolus Linneaus, his Latinized name a taxonomical testimony to his inquiring mind, our species fell from its muddling metaphysical perch into the natural world. The dung beetles welcomed us, especially after we died. Aristotle before him and scientists after him have hypothesized about nature, and used observation and experiment to prove or disprove those hypotheses.
The monk Gregor Mendel left his Bible to cross pea plants, happily for humanity, to whom hybridization is more useful and beautiful than Bibles. Mendel's work explained species divergence, a puzzle to Charles Darwin, whose titanic work on evolution was a few decades before Mendel. A few decades after Mendel, Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, and Francis Crick detailed the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule, the elegant code of genetic transmission.
Genetic Transmission, another musical group name?
Genetics is only one branch of science that has brought progress, both material and intellectual. A scientist might not know where her research will lead, to a better battery or to a better bomb. The scientific method, however, has led us from the captivity of cults, both religious and scientific. We have a widespread, durable freedom to question, to challenge accepted wisdom, to err, and to correct our errors; but sometimes to wallow in our errors when complacency, gain, or authority defeat reason.
Curiosity and freedom led me to listen to Bruce Archibald talk about beetles.
Curiosity and Freedom, another musical group name?
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