by Ken Springer
Science in Small Bites
Prologue: In November of 2020, I wrote an article for The Pocahontas Times on anachronistic fruit, also known as nonsense fruit and ghosts of evolution. This pertains to fruit-bearing trees that still survive but were the sole food for many now-extinct animals, including mastodons, giant ground sloths, mammoths, and other mega-fauna, that died off from rapid climate change from 50,000 to 10,000 years ago.
The relationship between animals and trees is exemplified by the mastodon and giant ground sloths, who preferred dining on the pods of honey locusts, which are rich in sugars. Today, these pods fall to the ground in the early fall and are only consumed by some small mammals, beetles and livestock.
The same is true for the fruits of the avocado and the Osage orange trees, which were popular with the mammoths. Extinct giant herbivores, such as the giant sloths, were fond of consuming pawpaws.
So, what did the trees get out of this relationship? Was it all give and no take?
Consider the avocado for a moment; if you are fond of avocado dishes, guacamole for example, you surely have noticed that it is nearly impossible to hold its large, slippery seed between two fingers; they slip right out of your hands and onto the kitchen counter.
That slipperiness causes the hard-shelled seed to avoid most of the digestion, rapidly moving through the alimentary canal. As such, mammals become efficient seed-dispersal agents for the tree.
The megafauna of times past are gone, but we know about their lives through fossils. The same is true with vegetation; we learn from the fossil record imprinted in sedimentary rock. Our own intrepid fossil hunter, Eddie Fletcher, finds many unusual and striking fossils in this part of Appalachia, often diving into the Greenbrier River, where he finds extraordinary fossils.
He finds evidence of marine life many millions of years ago, but it is unlikely that he will ever run across a living specimen of any of these fossils.
However, finding living specimens of any plant or animal considered extinct today rarely happens. Yet, in 1938, a sea creature called a Coelacanth, thought to be extinct for 66 million years, was caught by a fisherman off the coast of Indonesia.
So, imagine what a thrill it would be to discover a copse of trees that were only known to the scientific community from 90 million-year-old fossils – please read on!
Segment One: Fossil trees are alive and photosynthesizing
David Noble, a field officer with the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service in Australia, was off duty one fine September day in 1994. He decided to explore a deep, narrow canyon about 150 km northwest of Sydney.
Mr. Noble set up a rope on the rim of the precipice and rappelled down to the base of the cliff. After a short walk, and much to his surprise, he stumbled onto a thicket of Wollemi Pine (Wollemia noblis), thought to have been extinct since the Jurassic period some 200 million years ago.
At first, Mr. Noble was unfamiliar with the Wollemi Pine; he describes it as “having a fern-like foliage with dark, bubbling bark resembling bubbling chocolate.
It is truly a miracle (Not a scientific term, I know, but appropriate in this case) that this species of tree could have survived a major extinction event 66 million years ago when a giant asteroid slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, wiping out all of the non-avian dinosaurs and many other lifeforms.
It is also unimaginable that the Wollemi Pine survived the devastating bushfires of 2019-2020. The only reason the Wollemi Pine escaped the fires was the moist nature of the isolated canyon, considered a microclimate.
To this day, the location of the canyon is kept secret for fear of the effects of human visitors and the potential for introducing diseases that the Wollemi Pine may be vulnerable to, such as root rot.
The Wollemi Pine has been successfully propagated, thanks to the efforts of the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney. You can get your own Wollemi Pine at Woll emiPine.com and be the first on your block to sit under a 200-million-year-old fossil species.
Segment Two: The accidental dog – Westies
Twenty-five years ago, I was looking out my kitchen window in suburban New Albany, Ohio, when I saw a woman walking a pure white medium-sized dog, a species I had never seen or noticed before. My wife, when asked, told me that this handsome dog was called a Westie, a West Highland White Terrier. I knew right there, and then I was going to have one of these splendid dogs.
And, indeed, I have had six Westies in the intervening years. Those years have been some of the happiest of my life, because one cannot help but fall in love with these intelligent and loving creatures.
However, a bit over a hundred years ago, there was no such animal. The Westie came about in Scotland in the late 1800s as a result of a hunting accident. A Scottish Laird by the name of Edward Donald Malcolm was hunting with his red-colored terrier and shot it, thinking it was a fox, or, at least, this is the legend.
At this time in Scotland, white dogs were considered undesirable and often killed as puppies. But Colonel Malcolm realized a white dog could be a benefit when night-hunting for vermin, such as badgers, foxes and even rats.
Having unusually strong tails and large lungs, Westies will go after their prey even if it resorts to going underground. As such, they can squeeze into tight holes and still have plenty of air, and if they do get stuck, can be pulled out by their tail.
So, Laird Malcolm began a breeding program primarily using Cairn and Scottish Terriers, which would occasionally have white pups. Over time, the modern West Highland Terrier was developed, but not without several name changes, such as the Poltalloch Terrier, the Roseneath Terrier, and finally just plain old Westie.
The West Highland White Terrier was introduced to dog shows in the UK in 1904. The U.S. followed suit in 1908 when the Westie gained American Kennel Club recognition. Their fame is well deserved, and many recognize the Westie from the Cesar and Royal Canin brands of dog food.
If you’re searching for a dog that’s friendly, smart, easily trainable, funny, and a loving member of your family, you cannot go wrong with a Westie, the dog that arose from an accident.
Ken Springer
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