Uncovered in south west China last year, Odontochelys semistestacea seems to be the oldest known turtle fossil – believed to date 220 million years back. More important it was used to put back the pieces regarding the evolution of the turtle shell.

Since long, paleontologists have been debating over the course of how the turtle developed its shell as some claimed that it evolved from underneath the body, while the other talked about it having been an extension of the scaly skin on top. And now we have the answer.

The uncovered fossil definitively supported the theory that the shell would have formed from below as extensions of the backbone and ribs, rather than as bony plates from the skin as others have theorized.

The fossil with its half formed lower shell and an absent upper shell proved the fact that it was the lower shell that first came into existence as a defensive mechanism of marine animals to protect themselves from attacks coming from the depths of the sea. As they started evolving as land creatures, the upper shell became an equally important form of defense and continued the evolution into its next step.

This also suggested to the team of scientists from Canada, China and the US who undertook this extensive research that the earliest turtles were indeed marine creatures and later moved onto land.

Source: DailyMail

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Is it possible that a gas station, gas pump, filling station, service station (take your pick) be green? GP hardly thinks so. But, Treehugger proves us wrong. Sure enough, if a station, this one looks like a Shell station (we can really read the hell out of it), is left alone long enough it will turn green.

Is that kind of like when we die and our bodies return to ashes?

Electric cars like the i-MIEV, G-Wiz and Vectrix are where it’s at for several reasons.

1. 1% of all car journeys are over 100 miles.
2. Less than 1% of all cars on the road at any one time need a filling station
3. Just 10,000 filling stations are catering to the world’s 27 million cars rolling about
4. Electric cars can be refueled at home
5. Electric cars are sufficient for 70% of the people 99% of the time.

These figures may be good for Europe but I am not as confident that they would apply to the gas hog America. One hundred miles of driving a day has to be more than 1%. One hundred miles at a time? That’s different.

And, who pays the electric bill when these things are recharging anyway? I get the part where the cars are less polluting, but somebody somewhere is producing electricity, from coal maybe? Isn’t there a trade off here? Has anyone done the calculating?

In any event, I’m for not letting the gasoline stations turn green. Let’s rip them out if they aren’t in use instead of becoming eyesores. But then again, maybe in 20 years my little girl will point at one of these moldy old service stations and ask “Papa, what’s that?”

“Sweetie, when I was a kid we used to….”