Bah. Very nice presentation of an ancient hypothesis that is so vague it even contains paraphyletic groups. The thickness of the bubbles looks more like “relative dominance” than like any kind of count or inference.
The ID version, though… LOL!
David Marjanović, OMsays
Bah. Very nice presentation of an ancient hypothesis that is so vague it even contains paraphyletic groups. The thickness of the bubbles looks more like “relative dominance” than like any kind of count or inference.
It would be interesting to see where Dr Zoidberg fits in this scheme.
Cthulhusays
I was just a young babe when the IDiots made that diagram. Not as influential as I am now. The Ancient Ones and I have been very busy plotting our return. Feel free to make as many offerings as you can, because we need all the help we can get.
Thanks again for your support!
JasonEsays
“Israelites have enormous battle with ammonites”
Jebus that’s funny.
Billysays
Is it just me, or do the population bubbles in the Nautiloidea section look like squid swimming with their tentacles close together?
Interesting image. It actually seems rather simple compared to the phylogeny of, say, Aves and Dinosauria.
zer0says
What’d the Nautilus say when he looked in the mirror?
Hey, I can see my house from here…
Ichthyicsays
It would be interesting to see where Dr Zoidberg fits in this scheme.
Zoidberg, being a “mostly” crustacean (sheds shell periodically, claws, etc.) would likely be represented as merely a prey item in a food-web diagram, and certainly not in a systematic analysis of cephalopod evolution.
#2: Cthulhu comes from outer space. Also, he possesses some extradimensional qualities, so it’s not clear whether he actually has tentacles (also, batwings and human-like legs), or rather whether this horrifying chimera of octopus, man, and bat is an artifact of the human mind’s inability to correlate its contents (which, as we all know, is the most merciful thing).
#6: Like Cthulhu, Dr. Zoidberg is from outer space. Unlike Cthulhu, though, he seems to come from an actual, physical extrasolar planet occupying standard space-time. Zoidberg of course possesses both arthropodoid (jointed exoskeleton) and cephalapodoid (feeding tentacles, ink) features, so his closest terrestrial analogue would have to be pre-Cambrian, and therefore well off the left-hand side of the chart.
Awesome. Now, one question, are their any out there for the weasel family? I’m thinking of a present to send to our friend Sal…
mothrasays
The ID version sure accepts allot of punctuated macro-evolutionary change.
Will Von Wizzlepigsays
The guys on that website were wanting a poster of that graphic- I think if you convert it to a vector image (try Inkscape, freeware vector editor), you can maybe make it a little bigger and get an OK poster out of it…
BruceJsays
To convert it to a poster, you can use the bitmap image there, coupled with this awesome site, called VectorMagic.
The ID chart is cute, but what really tickles me is that some people are interested enough in all those types of cephalopods to have discussion groups about them, I mean what kind of biogeeks have we here (each category with a working link, from http://www.tonmo.com/forums/):
Cephalopod Species (By Family)
This forum contains sub-forums grouped by cephalopod family for discussion of species.
Sub-Forums: Alloposidae, Amphitretidae, Ancistrocheiridae, Architeuthidae, Bathyteuthidae, Batoteuthidae, Bolitaenidae, Brachioteuthidae, Chiroteuthidae, Chtenopterygidae, Cirroteuthidae, Cranchiidae, Cycloteuthidae, Enoploteuthidae, Gonatidae, Histioteuthidae, Idioctopodidae, Idiosepiidae, Joubiniteuthidae, Lepidoteuthidae, Loliginidae, Lycoteuthidae, Mastigoteuthidae, Nautilidae, Neoteuthidae, Octopodidae, Octopoteuthidae, Ocythoidae, Ommastrephidae, Onychoteuthidae, Opisthoteuthidae, Pholidoteuthidae, Promachoteuthidae, Psychroteuthidae, Pyroteuthidae, Sepiadariidae, Sepiidae, Sepiolidae, Spirulidae, Stauroteuthidae, Thysanoteuthidae, Tremoctopodidae, Vampyroteuthidae, Vitreledonellidae, Walvisteuthidae
Mosessays
A thing of beauty.
craigsays
Wait – there’s an ammonite news magazine? Why wasn’t I told?!?!
Now I have to go downstairs and see if I can find that fossil ammonite I found (only one ever) in the creek not far from here.
I’ve been waiting for the snow to melt so I can go back.
#23: the “Ammonite News Magazine” logo is just a parody of the TONMO “The Octopus News Magazine Online” logo, although we do yammer about ammonites and ammonite news quite a bit… it’s really “all things ceph and ceph-like” (since there’s some Cthulhu gibbering, and it’s not clear that he’s technically a cephalopod.) That said, cephalopod (past and present) enthusiasts are welcome at http://www.tonmo.com — in fact my secret agenda of more hypothetical biology on TONMO would welcome newcomers to this discussion of possible reasons for the absence of freshwater cephalopods
To convert it to a poster, you can use the bitmap image there, coupled with this awesome site, called VectorMagic.
I love vectormagic but it didn’t do so well on this image, I think the bitmap looks better: http://karmatics.com/stuff/cephalopod.jpeg
It seems to do better on antialiased images, which this isn’t.
Tommotia is NOT a cephalopod (wikipedia articles notwithstanding), but one of a number flat or dome-shaped early Cambrian animals with many different types of sclerites (shell elements) covering the body. The first elements of Tommotia named did resemble minute nautiloid shells, hence their old affiliation with them.
David Marjanović is right on the money in pointing out how simplified this phylogeny is. The Nautiloidea portion of the figure, especially, hides a great deal of divergence and diversity as shown here. For a dinosaurian equivalent, consider a diagram that shows a blob for “non-coelurosaurian theropods”, with a branch coming out and a blob of “non-avian coelurosaurs”, and then a branch coming out with details of the divergences among birds.
Nevertheless, a cool diagram!
Phil Eydensays
Wow! I am the author of the two diagrams and have just found out that you chaps have seen them and think they are worthy of commenting on! Those diagrams are a couple of years old now and I’d rather forgotten about them to be honest
I just thought I would point out that the diagrams are over-simplified but that was deliberate as they were really designed for non-scientific people, such as myself, to understand with a splash of colour thrown in.
Writing the ID version was great fun. Thanks again!
David Marjanović, OM says
Bah. Very nice presentation of an ancient hypothesis that is so vague it even contains paraphyletic groups. The thickness of the bubbles looks more like “relative dominance” than like any kind of count or inference.
The ID version, though… LOL!
David Marjanović, OM says
Bah. Very nice presentation of an ancient hypothesis that is so vague it even contains paraphyletic groups. The thickness of the bubbles looks more like “relative dominance” than like any kind of count or inference.
The ID version, though… LOL!
Richard Wolford says
Uhm, where is Great Cthulhu?
MAJeff says
which one goes on rice and which one in pasta?
garth says
every time you mock them they’ll post another article like this at DI. Just substitute the appropriate creationist canard.
James Douglass says
That’s great! A picture speaks a thousand words.
I recently tried to capture the evolution / ID “controversy” in pictures on my own blog.
http://jimbodouglass.blogspot.com/2008/01/evolution-and-id-controversy.html
CortxVortx says
It would be interesting to see where Dr Zoidberg fits in this scheme.
Cthulhu says
I was just a young babe when the IDiots made that diagram. Not as influential as I am now. The Ancient Ones and I have been very busy plotting our return. Feel free to make as many offerings as you can, because we need all the help we can get.
Thanks again for your support!
JasonE says
“Israelites have enormous battle with ammonites”
Jebus that’s funny.
Billy says
Is it just me, or do the population bubbles in the Nautiloidea section look like squid swimming with their tentacles close together?
Interesting image. It actually seems rather simple compared to the phylogeny of, say, Aves and Dinosauria.
zer0 says
What’d the Nautilus say when he looked in the mirror?
Hey, I can see my house from here…
Ichthyic says
It would be interesting to see where Dr Zoidberg fits in this scheme.
Zoidberg, being a “mostly” crustacean (sheds shell periodically, claws, etc.) would likely be represented as merely a prey item in a food-web diagram, and certainly not in a systematic analysis of cephalopod evolution.
Stanton says
What about Tommotia?
HP says
#2: Cthulhu comes from outer space. Also, he possesses some extradimensional qualities, so it’s not clear whether he actually has tentacles (also, batwings and human-like legs), or rather whether this horrifying chimera of octopus, man, and bat is an artifact of the human mind’s inability to correlate its contents (which, as we all know, is the most merciful thing).
#6: Like Cthulhu, Dr. Zoidberg is from outer space. Unlike Cthulhu, though, he seems to come from an actual, physical extrasolar planet occupying standard space-time. Zoidberg of course possesses both arthropodoid (jointed exoskeleton) and cephalapodoid (feeding tentacles, ink) features, so his closest terrestrial analogue would have to be pre-Cambrian, and therefore well off the left-hand side of the chart.
AJS says
The ID version cracked me up :D
G says
Awesome. Now, one question, are their any out there for the weasel family? I’m thinking of a present to send to our friend Sal…
mothra says
The ID version sure accepts allot of punctuated macro-evolutionary change.
Will Von Wizzlepig says
The guys on that website were wanting a poster of that graphic- I think if you convert it to a vector image (try Inkscape, freeware vector editor), you can maybe make it a little bigger and get an OK poster out of it…
BruceJ says
To convert it to a poster, you can use the bitmap image there, coupled with this awesome site, called VectorMagic.
Milo Johnson says
Ammonites and Israelites, Legionnaires and Neanderthals, Velikovsky, the Devil’s Naughty Acid, I haven’t laughed so hard for a while!
David Marjanović, OM says
That’s just because cephalopod phylogeny is less well known, and because what is known is partly hidden in the paraphyletic groups in this figure.
David Marjanović, OM says
That’s just because cephalopod phylogeny is less well known, and because what is known is partly hidden in the paraphyletic groups in this figure.
Neil B. says
The ID chart is cute, but what really tickles me is that some people are interested enough in all those types of cephalopods to have discussion groups about them, I mean what kind of biogeeks have we here (each category with a working link, from http://www.tonmo.com/forums/):
Cephalopod Species (By Family)
This forum contains sub-forums grouped by cephalopod family for discussion of species.
Sub-Forums: Alloposidae, Amphitretidae, Ancistrocheiridae, Architeuthidae, Bathyteuthidae, Batoteuthidae, Bolitaenidae, Brachioteuthidae, Chiroteuthidae, Chtenopterygidae, Cirroteuthidae, Cranchiidae, Cycloteuthidae, Enoploteuthidae, Gonatidae, Histioteuthidae, Idioctopodidae, Idiosepiidae, Joubiniteuthidae, Lepidoteuthidae, Loliginidae, Lycoteuthidae, Mastigoteuthidae, Nautilidae, Neoteuthidae, Octopodidae, Octopoteuthidae, Ocythoidae, Ommastrephidae, Onychoteuthidae, Opisthoteuthidae, Pholidoteuthidae, Promachoteuthidae, Psychroteuthidae, Pyroteuthidae, Sepiadariidae, Sepiidae, Sepiolidae, Spirulidae, Stauroteuthidae, Thysanoteuthidae, Tremoctopodidae, Vampyroteuthidae, Vitreledonellidae, Walvisteuthidae
Moses says
A thing of beauty.
craig says
Wait – there’s an ammonite news magazine? Why wasn’t I told?!?!
Now I have to go downstairs and see if I can find that fossil ammonite I found (only one ever) in the creek not far from here.
I’ve been waiting for the snow to melt so I can go back.
Mark (Monty) Montague says
#23: the “Ammonite News Magazine” logo is just a parody of the TONMO “The Octopus News Magazine Online” logo, although we do yammer about ammonites and ammonite news quite a bit… it’s really “all things ceph and ceph-like” (since there’s some Cthulhu gibbering, and it’s not clear that he’s technically a cephalopod.) That said, cephalopod (past and present) enthusiasts are welcome at http://www.tonmo.com — in fact my secret agenda of more hypothetical biology on TONMO would welcome newcomers to this discussion of possible reasons for the absence of freshwater cephalopods
robbrown says
I love vectormagic but it didn’t do so well on this image, I think the bitmap looks better: http://karmatics.com/stuff/cephalopod.jpeg
It seems to do better on antialiased images, which this isn’t.
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. says
Stanton,
Tommotia is NOT a cephalopod (wikipedia articles notwithstanding), but one of a number flat or dome-shaped early Cambrian animals with many different types of sclerites (shell elements) covering the body. The first elements of Tommotia named did resemble minute nautiloid shells, hence their old affiliation with them.
David Marjanović is right on the money in pointing out how simplified this phylogeny is. The Nautiloidea portion of the figure, especially, hides a great deal of divergence and diversity as shown here. For a dinosaurian equivalent, consider a diagram that shows a blob for “non-coelurosaurian theropods”, with a branch coming out and a blob of “non-avian coelurosaurs”, and then a branch coming out with details of the divergences among birds.
Nevertheless, a cool diagram!
Phil Eyden says
Wow! I am the author of the two diagrams and have just found out that you chaps have seen them and think they are worthy of commenting on! Those diagrams are a couple of years old now and I’d rather forgotten about them to be honest
I just thought I would point out that the diagrams are over-simplified but that was deliberate as they were really designed for non-scientific people, such as myself, to understand with a splash of colour thrown in.
Writing the ID version was great fun. Thanks again!
Keith Douglas says
CortxVortx: Isn’t Zoidberg more of a crustacean?