Acclaimed author John Jeremiah Sullivan has recently written an article for Lapham’s Quarterly (Spring 2013), arguing that human beings stand in a psychological continuum with other animals. Sullivan’s article, which is appropriately titled, One of us, reverently concludes that the human mind is but one of a multitude of minds on the animal spectrum: “The animal kingdom is symphonic with mental activity, and of its millions of wavelengths, we’re born able to understand the minutest sliver… This is what the study of animal consciousness can teach us, finally – that we possess an animal consciousness.” The publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species is depicted in the article as the watershed event in history that opened our eyes to this Read More ›

Palaeontologists have been developing some highly sophisticated tools for analysing fossil specimens. Of particular interest are techniques that probe the details of soft tissue preservation. In the research considered here, the 30 mm specimen was found at the Chengjiang lagerstatte locality in southwest China. It had large, claw-like appendages on its head and many jointed legs. It is assigned to the arthropods and thought to be a probable extinct chelicerate. It is referred to as one of the megacherian (meaning “great hand”) species with the genus name Alalcomenaeus. To analyse the soft tissues, a 3-D model of the specimen was produced using a CT-scanner and, at the same time, an X-ray microscope documented the distribution of selected chemical elements. In Read More ›