Review: A Superb New History of Sharks

The Secret History of Sharks: The Rise of the Ocean’s Most Fearsome Predators

467 pp., Ballantine, 2024

John Long

Dr. John Long, an Australian paleontologist, has gifted us with the most complete and up to date book on shark evolution for non-specialists. Written in an informal but precise style, the book is information-packed, clear, and an enjoyable read if you’re into this ancient lineage of apex predators.

Long explains the origin of sharks is still a little fuzzy, but by 400 MYA the sharks had established a lineage that continues today: older than reptiles, mammals, flowers, or trees. While he tells many interesting stories of fieldwork, nothing tops the way Chinese scientists found the oldest near-complete shark, Sehnacanthus. They were relaxing, “play-fighting,” and one “kung-fu kicked another into a roadside cliff face.” A rock fell down, split open, and there it was.

As a placoderm enthusiast, I especially enjoyed the chapter dedicated to the competition of the Devonian era. Hundreds of species of armored fish, most famously the awesome “dark lord” Dunkleosteus terrelli, ruled the Age of Fishes, but Long shows the sharks were doing more than staying small and keeping a low profile. Long before the twin extinctions that ended the era and the placoderms, they were growing and diversifying, with the 20-foot Ctenacanthus rivaling Dunkleosteus itself in size. (Long notes the traditional sizing of the Dunk at up to 29 feet and the recent Engelman estimate of closer to 14 feet.)

After the Devonian, the sharks flourished, using what Long calls its superpowers. These include the development of electroreception and the evolutionary flexibility to develop new types of scales, teeth, and other features. Sharks also invaded freshwater: there are few freshwater sharks today, but at one time they were numerous and varied. The bizarre tooth-whorl Heliocoprion arose some 270 MYA. Long includes the story of how a superb whorl was stolen from a Russian museum, identified by an American fossil dealer when put up for sale, and in a tale out of a spy novel was retrieved, clandestinely brought back into Russia and handed over.

The larger marine reptiles of the Mesozoic were the next direct challenge. Some were bigger than any shark, but the air-breathers couldn’t invade the deeps. The first lamniform, of the group including the modern great white, appeared in this era. The sharks even developed some very large species and spun off the rays as a new type. When the mosasaurs vanished after the K-Pg impact, the adaptive sharks wriggled through yet another extinction event and diversified again, producing the wobbegongs and hammerheads. They also grew bigger, culminating in “the Meg.” Otodus megalodon was the all-time shark king from 23-3.6 MYA. (When offering a vignette of a Meg attack, Long commits what I assume is a wording error, where he credits early baleen whales with echolocation), The world moves on, though, and the Meg was ill-adapted to a cooling of the oceans and/or and the move of the baleen whales to polar regions. It was in hunting Meg teeth as a boy that Long first caught the paleontology bug, so I suppose you can thank the Meg for this excellent book.

Long traces the rise of “the most sharky shark,” the great white, and spends a chapter on what we do and don’t know about this awesome creature. He rejects some of the upper claims (the famed Deep Blue may be closer to 17 feet than the claimed 21) but accepts an older 21-foot measurement. He explores the diversity of the modern sharks, over 500 species (not counting skates and rays), not overlooking the most numerous but often-ignored group, the deep-water catsharks.

Long covers in the last chapters the clash – and cooperation -of sharks and humans, the threats to sharks, and the many things we learn from them. He concludes, “If we can save the oceans and save the sharks, we can save the world.” He finishes off the book in exemplary fashion with detailed chapter references, a list of scientific names, a glossary, and an index. The accessibility of Long’s prose, his deep knowledge of, and love for, his topic, and the well-chosen black and white photos and drawings illustrations combine to make this the apex predator of modern shark books. Bravo!

Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Read Matt's Latest book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction.

Review: Dr. Space Junk vs the Universe

 Dr Space Junk vs The Universe: Archaeology and the Future

Dr. Alice Gorman is one of the pioneers of space archaeology, a field even many space exploration buffs have never heard of. We think of archaeology as the study of ancient civilizations, but archaeologists work right up to the present day, and anywhere humans have gone is a potential archeological site.

Gorman comes at this from an interesting perspective thanks to growing up in Australia, a nation that isn’t a major space power but has always been a player. Australia has hosted tests and launches and, most famously, has served as the home for tracking and telemetry stations throughout the Space Age. The most famous station, at Woomera, supported the Apollo flights to the moon.

Gorman grew up on a farm. Like most farms, it had a dump site and a field for rusting, abandoned machinery the children liked to explore. These are the kinds of places archaeologists use as treasure troves of information about the past.

Gorman cites a document called the Burra Charterdeveloped by the Australian chapter of the International Council on Monuments and Sites that establishes the principle “do as much as necessary and as little as possible” to save the past. It was not written with the idea of applying to things in space, but it could. She notes discarded technology tells us about the society that discarded it as well as that which built it.

While an archaeologist named James Deetz was apparently the first to write about it, space archeology didn’t establish itself until publications around the turn of the century.  Gorman presented her first papers on the topic in 2003. [Arthur C. Clarke may have predated all these with his suggestion that Vanguard 1 would be collected for a museum.]

Gorman gives a quick sociological sketch of the Space Age to set the conversation. She makes one common error, saying the U.S. government picked the Vanguard satellite over the proposal that became Explorer to keep it as civilian as possible: I and many other historians have failed to find evidence of this. She examines the importance of Vanguard 1, noting the Vanguard program spurred the global MiniTrack system, and she speculates on the current condition of Vanguard 1 in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

She discusses some satellites generally overlooked but culturally significant. These include the first amateur satellites and LAGEOS 1 and 2,  smallsats covered with reflectors which are still used every day by ground lasers to inform us of their distance and provide data on the Earth’s rotation and magnetic field. She examines the Soviet Venus probe Venera 14 (noting it looks like a Dalek from Dr, Who) and suggesting it had the mass of “six standard Daleks.” The ESA Rosetta mission left a lander and the main spacecraft’s crash site on a comet. To Gorman, the location of an artifact, whether on a landing site, an orbit, or a trajectory, is part of its significance, and one of the considerations in deciding how to study it and whether to retrieve it.

One of Gorman’s recurring themes is that spacecraft, born of high-visibility projects, have great cultural and political significance. I don’t think anyone can dispute that, although she perhaps overreaches in finding the launch of Elon Musk’s Tesla not just a brilliant PR stunt but conspicuous consumption, in addition to a red sports car being a symbol of masculinity. She wonders if there was a selection committee that might have pondered this, or if Musk did: I doubt both. But there’ s no doubt everyone will remember this as a tipping point in the awareness of space privatization.

Gorman probes a central question – how do you do archaeology on things you can’t touch or often even visit? One answer is that much of the archaeology work is done on Earth, in launch sites and other locations and by telescope and telemetry reception. Reactions to space events like the short-lived fad of Sputnik-inspired food and the creation of playgrounds with rocket shapes, is also archeological information. She explores the sites in Australia left from the nation’s early space age, which she laments is almost forgotten.

There are, she calculates whimsically, the masses of 1,000 African elephants of human stuff in space. The stakes in managing all this are high and can include human lives. It’s not all important, but what of this qualifies as space junk, “junk” being a cultural term that different people apply to different objects? Much of it much be removed for safety. “Empty” space is not a pristine nothingness, but a dynamic and endless region: archeology basically goes from the Earth up and unites us with space through our objects. We have to consider risk, environmental impact, and other things when we launch and when we destroy or remove. An intriguing question I’d never thought about is, “When is a satellite dead?” When it stops being used? When it no longer generates power? When does it become junk?

Then there is the Moon. She traces the history of our fascination, which essentially made it a human cultural landscape before we physically touched it. It was the scene of the first physical archaeology done in space, when Apollo 12 took parts of the Surveyor 3 lander home. She notes the complexity of ownership: the US owns the lunar launders, but the sites they are on? The tracks of boots and rovers? Gorman notes that even the most insubstantial things mattered. We created new shadows, which are starker, more dramatic things than on Earth. There are many open questions about landing habitation, and exploitation of the moon, like mining.

You’ve grasped by now that Gorman is not sticking strictly to archeology as the lay reader normally conceives of it. There’s a great deal of philosophy and sociology and political science in here. Archeology does not take place in a vacuum (even in space, where it sort of does), Along the way we learn things about archaeology itself, I never knew there was a standard book by which archeologists classify colors of objects and images. The author describes how even the smallest, most common objects are part of an endeavor or culture, using cable ties as her example for space. Gorman writes in a personal, welcoming style, as if she were sitting in the reader’s living room and talking about her topics.

Space exploration carries with it two clashing narratives, that of colonialism and that of “shared human global endeavor.” This connects us all, some more strongly than others: Gorman remembers feeling disconnected when Voyager 2’s messages to Earth went temporarily silent. Gorman talks about how regions defined by dust and shadows and temperatures and solar winds become part of our “ocean” when we reach out and visit and measure them. She discusses the development of the Voyager Golden Records and the long debate about what sounds to include. Music from Australian Aboriginal artists is included. It reminds us that the cultures on Earth we sometimes think of as vanished or vanishing are not only with us, but immortal when we carry them to the stars.

Into this comes the question, “Who owns space?” The Outer Space Treaty declares space is our “common heritage,” but Gorman wonder if even that is too narrow. It’s still Earth-centric. Space is a cultural landscape as well as a place: we change it everywhere we touch it. Naming things is just the first step. Archaeologists always want to know what names cultures give to places. The IAU now tries to include all human cultures in naming conventions. A few features are named with Aboriginal words, and Gorman traces them back to their origins with a people who were in some cases affected or displaced by a rocket range.

We also become part of where we die. Humans haven’t died in orbit or on other bodies, but we will. The first remains in space are on the Moon and in orbit.

Gorman closes with a vignette of a future archaeological mission going toward Earth, finding more and more evidence of life – current or past - as it encounters probes and landing sites. She asks us to imagine reversing the journey we are now taking and consider what it would be like.

Gorman does not devote many pages to the methods of physical space archeology. Tools and techniques will need to be developed as we go. Her focus instead is placing space exploration in an archaeological context and vice versa. This is a pioneering work that will be part of the canon as this field matures and grows.

Matt Bille is a space historian, science writer, and novelist living in Colorado Springs.  His book The First Space Race is a groundbreaking account of the first satellite programs in the 1950s.  See www.mattbilleauthor.com or contact him at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com 

Reentry, Eric Berger's New Book on SpaceX

 

Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age

Eric Berger

BenBella, 2024  

In this second book on SpaceX, Berger continues his role as outside historian of the company: that is, he does not work for SpaceX but has official inside access. (I once suggested to SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell that SpaceX should make that arrangement with me: I didn’t know they were already talking to Berger.) Berger mentions Musk’s very controversial public image at the beginning but does not return to it until the last chapter: his focus is on how the launch company developed and succeeded, with a great deal of emphasis on its relationship with NASA.

Berger’s prose is clear and crisp throughout the book. He knows his stuff, technically, and explains it in terms suitable for smart high schoolers on up. I didn’t see any errors in the technology sections, though I thought there were points that needed elaboration. Berger also describes the personalities well, and dips into the work environment several times. He mentions the work-related controversies even-handedly, if too briefly. He writes that VPs at SpaceX knew they would last only a few years at that level before they were burned out or fired, yet there was no lack of competitors for such jobs or any SpaceX job.

The media narrative of SpaceX’s sometimes-difficult partnership with NASA is, not surprisingly, oversimplified. That’s sometimes because Elon Musk oversimplified it in comments to the press and sometimes because the media lacked expertise or didn’t do the research. NASA contracts, some of them awarded before the space agency could be certain the company could deliver, saved SpaceX from bankruptcy at least twice. When the Air Force and the Department of Defense (DoD) in general balked at the very idea of letting the upstart upset the cozy but costly relationship with its sole launch partner, United Launch Alliance (ULA), NASA money let SpaceX prove itself.

While it’s not something Berger explains in detail, SpaceX’s old-fashioned rapid fly-fail-fix development approach drew some admiration but a great deal of caution from NASA ranks. A famous example, fixing an engine nozzle on a ready-to-launch Falcon 9 by cutting off the bottom ring of metal rather than pulling the engine, investigating the cause, and replacing the nozzle, startled government and old-line company engineers. SpaceX’s view was that there was plenty of time to diagnose the problem later: if the rocket could fly safely, then speed was more important.

There were a lot of times, especially with respect to the Dragon capsule, where SpaceX wanted to move faster than NASA would let them. Berger recounts incidents when SpaceX’s speed-first approach came back to take very expensive bites out of the company’s collective butt, also he also tells the lesser-known story of how accommodating NASA could be.  NASA officials, including ISS program manager Mike Suffredini, flight director Holly Ridings, human spaceflight chief Bill Gerstenmaier (now at SpaceX), and especially Kathy Leuders, did everything possible to meld SpaceX’s way of doing things to NASA’s, maintaining the critical requirements and making re-interpretations or exceptions when warranted. SpaceX’s Gwynne Shotwell sometimes told the Dragon teams to make a change because “we need to do this for Kathy” so Leuders could convince the conservative establishment at JSC that SpaceX was doing things right. SpaceX often gave NASA good reasons for headshaking. I was thoroughly surprised to learn SpaceX didn’t hire someone dedicated to making sure Dragon met all of NASA’s specs until the first capsule was mostly built.

Sometimes NASA applauded the SpaceX approach. When a rocket was lost because a helium pressurization bottle exploded inside the oxidizer tank, SpaceX took 30 of the bottles into the desert and overstressed them in every way imaginable, blowing them up until they replicated the failure. Gerstenmaier applauded the speed with which SpaceX got to work and found the answer, noting it would have taken NASA six months just to get the tests started.

NASA was a cakewalk compared to the DoD, a story Berger should have spent more time on. The Air Force, which purchased DoD launches including those for the intelligence agencies, had a fixed model of giving ULA sole-source contracts, paying very high prices for proven, reliable expendable boosters. ULA, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, was investing almost nothing in improving technology or cutting costs. DoD reasonably demanded new rockets be flight-proven, but it had no interest in looking at such entrants. SpaceX had to combine launch success with lawsuits, lobbying, and Musk’s relentless and successful PR campaign to open up the national security market.

To flesh out what Berger does not, my work at the time gave me a front-row-seat to the military side, and I remember both the excitement of the junior officers and the dismissal by most senior officers, reinforced by constant objections and considerable ridicule from ULA and the in-house tax-funded support contractor Aerospace. To be fair, DoD had seen new rocket companies appear and vanish, including Beal Aerospace, which was better funded and more conventional than SpaceX: to use a military metaphor, Musk and company had to climb over many bodies of previous casualties just to reach the front lines.

SpaceX is most famous for making boosters reusable. This wasn’t part of Musk’s original vision but was added as he and his people wrestled with long-term cost reduction. The investment cost of making a launcher reusable was not something NASA or DoD felt was worth dedicated funding, although some NASA technology development money awarded to SpaceX went into it. NASA had looked at reusability many times in addition to the Space Shuttle and always found it not worth the cost and development risk. NASA felt the same way about densifying propellant by chilling it to supercold temperatures so a tank could hold more, a worthwhile improvement but a very difficult technical feat. Seeing SpaceX develop both technologies impressed the agency.

Berger writes the biggest NASA crisis came when SpaceX’s desire to “load and go” – to load the densified propellants once the astronauts were already in the Dragon to speed the process and lengthen the launch window – drew instant and near-universal negative response from NASA experts. It took dozens of safe uncrewed Falcon 9 flights and a mountain of studies and test results to get NASA to declare the concept safe.

Musk’s greatest strength – his ability to lay out ever-grander visions and inspire people to work insane hours to make them come true – was also a weakness when dealing with NASA. Musk’s vision of a civilization on Mars was one thing: devoting SpaceX to two huge projects, the Starship vehicle to make Mars possible and the Starlink constellation to pay for it, while he had NASA work on contract, led to trouble. NASA leaders pointed out, acidly in a public tweet from Gerstenmaier in 2019, that Commercial Crew was two years behind schedule and Musk needed to get Dragon flying first. Usually, this prodding had the right effect. Musk had (and has) a bad habit of announcing projects with timelines even SpaceX could not approach, but in the end, SpaceX delivered much faster than any other company or agency could, and for less money: when that happened, the troubles were generally forgiven.

The idea of the Commercial Crew program to let companies take astronauts to the ISS never sat well with NASA’s Apollo- and Shuttle-era veterans, even innovators like Administrator Mike Griffin. It was first funded in 2009, but the contracts were not awarded until 2014. NASA Commercial Crew head Phil McAlister just barely convinced a skeptical committee that wanted to rely on Boeing that funding only Boeing when SpaceX was 60 percent cheaper was not only bad policy but was going to create massive lawsuits. The resulting dual awards served NASA very well, as SpaceX missed the original timeline but delivered the capability much faster and cheaper than its rival. SpaceX won another round with NASA when it received permission to lease launch pads at Cape Canaveral over Boeing’s vociferous objections.

Musk’s idea that Dragon should land using only thrusters was part of the delay. His team simply couldn’t make it happen reliably. It became clear NASA was never going to sign off on the contract waiver needed to use such a risky option, and let SpaceX know it. SpaceX had to give it up and go to parachutes and water landings after a great deal of wasted investment. Then Crew Dragon parachute failures cost most time and money. SpaceX did convince NASA to buy off on a capsule controlled mainly by touchscreens, something veteran astronauts were initially very leery of. 

Once Crew Dragon was flying, Musk had to sell NASA and DoD on his next vehicle, the Falcon Heavy. NASA declined to put a payload on the first flight of such a massive, innovative rocket, even for free, so Musk’s Tesla roadster went up instead. NASA was convinced, moving its Europa probe from SLS to FH at what Berger estimates was $2B in savings. DoD came on board as the alternative, the Delta IV Heavy, was being phased out.

SpaceX’s unprecedented launch cadence has made NASA and DoD drastically overhaul range operations. So far, it’s worked out. The success of the NASA-SpaceX partnership helped the latter win the 2021 Artemis contract for the lunar lander. SpaceX’s radical mission architecture and lander design would never have passed NASA reviews a decade earlier. Now, Berger points out, NASA can only afford Artemis and other exploration programs because of the cost savings SpaceX provides for its non-SLS launches.

NASA is tied ever more closely to SpaceX and has no real alternatives until and unless ULA, Rocket Lab, and/or Blue Origin can provide similar capabilities in the same price range. Both pragmatic and political concerns will likely drive NASA and DoD to diversify their launch options. The ever-dominant issue of cost, however, may keep SpaceX in the lead for a long time.

Berger closes by musing on SpaceX’s indispensable strength and its biggest weakness – Musk. Musk is, to some American politicians, radioactive, and having the more diplomatic Gwynne Shotwell run SpaceX only goes so far. Musk’s image as a man singularly focused on moving humanity into the technological future and taking us to Mars was gone once he bought Twitter/X, which does none of those things and is enmeshed in a storm of controversy about everything from allowing hate speech to organizational turmoil.

As Berger explains, a conventional workforce can’t be managed like SpaceX, whose employees all sign up knowing the pace will be murderous, and Musk never took this into account with Twitter. Berger describes an interview with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson where he asked about Musk’s behavior: Nelson changed the subject to praise Shotwell. Berger wonders what will happen when Shotwell eventually retires (she is 60) and whether Musk’s future activities will make working with his companies even more fraught for government and private partners.

The one thing that disappointed me about this book is that Berger does not go into any of the details about how NASA/DoD and SpaceX work together on the front lines: he keeps it to the major players. The day-to-day workings of the partnership in the many locations they take place, between workers at low and mid levels, could at least have a chapter or two here. But it’s clear NASA and DoD have succeeded in making things work with a company whose culture is radically different from their traditional contractors.

In summary, the story Berger tells about Space X and the government is one of sometimes-fractious partners who made it work. There’s no question the partnership will continue, for decades at least. It may even take us to Mars. Berger’s first-rate book is indispensable to anyone who wants to understand how that partnership was born and nurtured along with the technology to make it worth pursuing. A good photo section and an index round out the book.

Matt Bille is a historian and writer in Colorado Springs. His 2004 book The First Space Race chronicled the Sputnik-Explorer-Vanguard competition of the 1950s See www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Review: The Bear Almanac

The Bear Almanac: A Comprehensive Guide to the Bears of the World

Gary Brown

Lyons Press, 2024 reprint of 2009 text, 341pp.

This just-reprinted guide to the bears covers every aspect of bruins and their lives. The text is highly readable and the illustrations, charts, and lists are copious and helpful. Brown, a retired NPS ranger who wrote two other bear books and who died in 2022, was a field expert on the topic with few peers. I received a free review copy of this reissued book.

The reader does have to get used to the unusual structure of the book. Most bear books take the eight species and assorted subspecies in order, describing everything about each and moving on to the next. Brown did it the other way. There are sections on bear anatomy, bear behavior, and so on, and for each of the subtopics within these (e.g., teeth, hearing). Brown goes through how they apply to the different species, with asides on things like examples of known navigational feats. This fact-packed but oddly organized section fills half the book. The second half is titled "Bears and the Human World." Brown offers information on bears and human culture, such as Indigenous and modern bear-related ceremonies and festivals, hunting, the bear “medicine” trade, conservation, and how humans can avoid confrontation. Tons of bear trivia make this section enjoyable as well as informative.

On my personal favorite topics, Brown notes the confusion of subspecies but doesn't consider odd reports that may indicate uncatalogued types. (Granted, this is a topic most bear experts don't seem to think worth examination: bear cryptozoology is a matter of very scattered evidence.) On the possible survival of the Colorado grizzly, the book provides a list of sightings and indicates Brown was definitely open to the possibility. 

The book closes with a very good bibliography.

There’s not much the average bear aficionado will have to look elsewhere for, except for discoveries after 2009. While the structure doesn’t lend itself to a casual reading from beginning to end, this is a comprehensive book on bears and the world we share with them. It will occupy a permanent place on my reference shelf. 

New Book on Paleontology's Frontier: Microfossils and chemicals

 Dake W. Greenwalt

Remnants of Ancient Life: The New Science of Old Fossils

Princeton, 2022. 278pp.

Like DNA, this book folds a great deal of information into a compact space (228 pages of text plus a good reference section). Greenwalt is a scientist at the Smithsonian, specializing in fossil insects, and here he covers the highlights of the new frontier of paleontology: retrieving chemical signatures, proteins, and biomolecules from fossils. There are chapters on pigments, biometals, and the indicators of fibers and feathers on our friends the dinosaurs.

Greenwalt became famous for a paper reporting the presence of hemoglobin in a mosquito 46 million years old. What animal it fed on can’t be determined, though Greenwalt suspects it was a bird. Greenwalt takes us back to the beginnings of life: a claim of isotopic evidence 4.2 billion years (BY) old, stromatolites 3.7 BY, and then the great leap to the first known multicellular animals at 1.6BY. A singular moment in detecting biomolecules came later: Dr, Kliti Grice isolated molecules including a “cholesterol-like” one in a crustacean 380 million years old. Chlorophyll? Found in still-green fossil leaves in the stomach of a German mammal fossil 46MY old.

Greenwalt explains the function of individual molecules and why we find them in the creatures we do. Melanin is not just a skin pigment: it evolved as an antioxidant and is used in many places in nature, including serving as a clotting factor for an injured insect. It   turns up in a dizzying array of creatures up to 300 MY old. Phosphorus molecules are markers showing the presence of bones that rotted away before fossilization. Copper can help us determine the color of an ancient creature.

Greenwalt examines the use of molecular clocks, a useful if imperfect way of using changes in the genes of a protein tracing relationships and estimates the time a group emerged. He offers an example everyone has heard of, the enormous ape Gigantopithecus. He describes the work of Chinese anthropologist Wei Wang in excavating wonderfully preserved Giganto molars 1.9 MY old, whose enamel yielded partial sequences from six proteins. This was matched with other evidence to prove the theory Giganto was a hominid closely related to the orangutan (sorry, Bigfoot fans.)

He celebrates the countless recent discoveries, including thought-impossible finds like collagen sequences from a T. rex, which some scientists argue are impossible: other labs reported they could not replicate it and there must have been contamination. We revisit the iceman, Otzi, and learn what we know so far of prehistoric humans and our close relations. Greenwalt explores the mechanics and limits of preservation in amber and goes into the oft-overlooked topic of molecular clues in plants.

It’s all clearly explained: I’ve no chemistry background, but I understood everything.

Greenwalt tackles two side topics. He sees no chance for bringing back dinosaurs, On the mammals, he asks whether the effort to create something resembling a mammoth, if possible, would be the best use of the enormous resources involved. He also takes a look at the quest for biosignatures on Mars. Based on the finds at the time of publication, he doesn’t think we have the evidence but offers hope we may yet find it. He mixes in stories of discoveries and fieldwork that make the topic about scientists as well as science. Onne section walks us through the exhaustive efforts needed in a laboratory to isolate the desired clues while avoiding contamination. The illustrations (photographs and drawings, like phylogenetic trees) are good, but I wanted more diagrams of the structures and molecules he was writing about.

An interesting idea I’d never read elsewhere is using extant creatures including “living fossils” to gain some insight into elements of a long-vanished common ancestor’s genome. As an aficionado of Dunkleosteus terrelli, I wondered if we could “triangulate” genetic information bony fishes (the placoderms’ descendants), and coelacanths: that’s likely a step too far, but it shows the kind of imagination this book sparks in readers taking a new look at a lost world.

Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Read Matt's Latest book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction.

Impressive Orca Exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science

On the 18th, with my daughter Corey and her girlfriend Samantha as company and support staff, I visited the Orca exhibit currently showing at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  I love orcas, and it was sort of Orca Week, with my friend Dr. Mithriel MacKay appearing with humpbacks and orcas on the new Nat Geo series OceanXplorer.  (Another post on that will follow).'

Orcas: Our Shared Future was created by the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, Canada and MuseumsPartner in Austria. It fills a huge exhibit space, nicely set off with curtain screens to create an immersive space divided into several large rooms. The initial attention-grabbers are three Southern Resident Killer Whales (J pod, to be exact), sculpted life size.  There's an outstanding section on the science of orcas: evolution, ecotypes, the growth of our knowledge, instruments created to study them, and so much more. The ecotypes and populations are presented on screens in illustrations and text: the recent paper naming a second species is not mentioned, but otherwise it's very up-to-date. There's an interactive light-table exhibit (I'm not sure if that's the right term) where visitors can move through views of the orca's body systems and anatomy. There's even a display of models of inner-ear bones of whales and their ancestors, although it needed more labeling about how important these are to scientists.  Static screens and video also depict the complex, long-lasting family bonds of orcas. 

While the range of the species (if it is one species) is vast, orcas are especially deeply entwined with the Indigenous cultures of Northwestern North America. That link is explored in carvings, objects like a canoe-sized cedar gift-serving dish for a potlatch ceremony, dance, paintings, and oral history. There are dozens of such objects all tolled in this room and throughout the exhibit.

The exhibit lays out how humans have viewed and learned about orcas through the ages.

The recent history of orcas and humans, again focused on North America, fills two rooms, one on captivity and one mainly on conservation. We "met" the celebrity orcas like Namu, Shamu (a name applied to many captive orcas), and Keiko. I explained how I'd seen Lolita (Tokitae) in the Miami Seaquarium when I was a kid in the 1970s, when I didn't realize how small and miserable her tank must be to her and tankmate Hugo.  I'd been startled to learn some 30 years later she was still there.  I wonder if she was sane when she died in 2023: Hugo had basically killed himself in 1980. 

Corey Bille and Samantha Weiss explore marine hotspots.

Tilikum and Blackfish are covered, as is the case of Morgan, rescued for rehab and supposed release but kept as a new bloodline for the captive market. Scientist Lori Marino, who I know slightly, is featured in a video arguing for Morgan's personhood, a complex matter on which not much has been decided. Objects like marine debris, maps, and a game table explore the threats to orcas and marine life in general. There's another interactive spot where visitors can see how thew sounds of different ships affect the whales' world. That's an item of special interest to me: I made a presentation on satellite tracking to the  Conference on Small Satellites in 2018 where we used new software to display sound clouds around vessels.  There's a poll where visitors can express ideas on matters like the most important steps to take to safeguard the species.

It's a memorable exhibit. The level of the text and other information is nicely chosen for a broad audience without talking down to anyone. The detail is thorough but won't overwhelm any but the youngest schoolchildren. Everyone will leave with newly-acquired knowledge, and very few will leave unchanged.

Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Read Matt's Latest book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction.

New Ocean Exploration Series Looks Awesome

 I’ve always been fascinated by marine life, and we have so much still to learn about the ocean realm. National Geographic is presenting a new series, OceanExplorers. My friend Dr. Mithriel MacKay of the Florida-based Marine and Coastal Ecology Research Center has an important role concerning one of my favorite topics, cetaceans, in the premiere episode on August 18. 

The show’s Instagram page says, “OCEANXPLORERS premieres Aug. 18 on @natgeotv and streams Aug. 19 on @disneyplus and @hulu. This thrilling six-part adventure takes viewers on board the OceanXplorer, OceanX’s cutting-edge scientific research and exploration vessel, to explore the farthest reaches of the world’s oceans.” James Cameron is one of the executive producers, and the BBC joins OceanX for this endeavor. The trailer features sharks, cephalopods, polar bears, and other creatures along with the whales and dolphins. For us tech fans, the ship comes with its own helicopter, submersible, and holographic visualization lab. For more on the show, see the home page. 

Dr. MacKay (PhD, Marine Biology) founded and runs the MCERC, a nonprofit focused on research, education, and outreach on marine and coastal biodiversity. It includes degreed scientists, educators, interns, citizen scientists, and students. 

MCERC's Humpback Whale study team (copyright MCERC)

On the first episode of the Nat Geo show, MacKay, as the marine mammal behaviorist, and acoustic specialist Dr Kerri Seger study humpback whales and their unwanted (by the humpbacks) companions, the killer whales.

Each expedition followed on the show includes two guest scientists in addition to a crew made up of three teams – operations, science, and media. MacKay says of the crew, “They are great guys. The people made the expedition.”

What did they learn? Tune in to find out!

Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Read Matt's Latest book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction.

New Squid Species

 We have no idea how many species of squid there are. The giant and colossal squids top 13 meters (allegedly a lot more - unproven, but fun to imagine), and more are discovered all the time. This one drew attention because, according to cephalopod author extraordinaire Danna Staaf, the eggs are twice the size of those in known species.   

THE classic giant squid drawing by Prof. A. E. Verrill.  

Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Read Matt's Latest book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction.

Shark Movies Good and Bad

 It's Shark Week!

Most of the stuff on TV this week isn't much more realistic than shark movies tend to be. Especially when you get to Megalodon, which of course they immediately do.  SPOILER: It's extinct.

A couple of movies I saw lately:

One of the better entries (or entrees?) is The Shallows. I don't know how realistic the shark's persistence is (it has a decaying whale carcass to munch on, why stalk Blake Lively?) and the final battle is REALLY silly. 

That out of the way, it's a terrific movie, with unrelenting tension and a superb performance by Lively. The director did something unusual in Hollywood but very smart here by keeping it to 80 minutes: he knew he couldn't stretch the confrontation out forever. 

One critic called it a Sports Illustrated photo shoot with a shark, but she did Lively a disservice. Sure the camera spends a lot of time focused on a lovely woman in a swimsuit, but she gets less sexy as the film goes on: unlike some stars who don't look convincing when they are "dirtied up" for a role, Lively (with help from the makeup artist) sells it: she's miserable and beat up and bloodied and sunburned and at one point near despair. 

Also, once she decides to fight, her McGuyvering with the few objects she can reach is fun to watch. It's not Jaws, but it ain't bad.

Then we have Under Paris. Another shark B movie, but you can't hate it, because it commits 100% to its idiotic premise, tossing off science-y explanations for everything in a relentless drive toward a furious feeding frenzy of an over the top finale. Everyone plays it straight and earnest and you root for both sides. This probably is not original with me, but why not call it "Chomps-Elysees?"

Just keep swimming...

Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Read Matt's Latest book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction.

Review: "A Hunt for Justice" against wildlife poaching

 A Hunt for Justice: The True Story of an Undercover Wildlife Agent

Lucinda Delaney Schroeder

Lyons Press, 2006, 270pp

 A compelling account from a law enforcement branch most of us know little about. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has its own agents who often go undercover as hunters to bust poachers. This book centers on the author’s time in Alaska, with no way to call for help and an unreliable civilian informant partner, as she gathers evidence on a major poaching operation. The poachers are hunting guides who assure their clients a kill, even from a protected area or species, by any means necessary. That includes illegally exhausting and herding prey with airplanes and even doing the shooting and giving the client the credit.

We know, since she wrote the book, that Lucinda survives, but it’s VERY chancy, and the author’s unadorned but very effective writing keeps the tension up at all times. Lucinda's toughness, hunting skills, and ability to translate for disgruntled Spanish clients get her in the good graces of the ringleader, who she knows will kill her if she's discovered. The danger rises with the arrival of a new client - a man she once fined for poaching and who will recognize her if they meet.  She finally gets enough evidence and gets out of the hunting camp alive, elated: only to learn she has to get statements from Spanish and German clients of the illegal operation. They are back in Europe, with no reason to cooperate except she’s holding their trophies in the US. We get many more tense moments as Lucinda, who seems to exaggerate her authority a good bit to get the job done, wheedles and presses until she obtains the needed statements in Spain (Germany will not cooperate.)

She closes with a list of the jail time, fines, forfeited equipment, and forfeited trophies meted out as she – and the animals – finally get justice. It’s a very good book, still relevant today, by an incredibly courageous woman who gives us a window into the scale of poaching and the underfunded, outnumbered agents who try to police it.

Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Read Matt's Latest book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction.

Watch for Matt's cryptozoological horror novel Death by Legend, coming soon from Hangar 1!

Book Review: Meet the first American spacewomen in THE SIX

Loren Grush

The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts

Scribner, 2023, 422pp.

 There’s a lot of history and intrigue surrounding the first American women to break the space barrier, and Grush’s book provides an outstanding exploration of it all. Grush deftly balances the astronaut’s personal lives and professional achievements, never losing sight of either., I learned more about Sally’s life in particular, both before and after her historic space flight and her nine years at NASA. While there are small errors like calling the T-38 trainer a “fighter,” or women in WWII flying "jets," they are few. Grush covers the astronauts’ selection, their often-surprised reaction to being picked, the sexism they encountered (not as bad as might have been expected from a fraternity made up mostly of fighter pilots, but still existed and had to face down, and encounters with a press corps that sometime asked idiotic questions. Grush follows each woman through her first spaceflight, with little-remembered highlights like surgeon Rhea Seddon “operating” with a bone saw to make the “flyswatter” to trip a switch on a recalcitrant satellite. The women prepared for space in Apollo-era suits that didn’t fit, in a buoyancy lab building with no private changing area, and with a gaggle of press and NASA handlers that swarmed around them like Texas mosquitos. One item I'd not read was the engineer who became so enamored of Judy Resnick that he ran out to chock the wheels of her T-38 after a trip. (That sounds humorous, but it got to the stalking level and official action was needed.) The women were actually aware that they were the pioneers, and the options for women coming after them depended on their performance. They drove themselves hard for perfection and volunteered for duties they thought would advance their progress toward flights.

Then came the Challenger accident, which killed one of the Six, Judy Resnick, and changed all their lives. Especially altered was Sally Ride’s, as she served on the Rogers Commission, helped bring the O-ring problem to light, and was, incredibly, “as a woman,” asked to pick the color for the cover of the final report. She went on to helm the Ride Report about NASA’s future and turn down requests to be NASA Administrator before leaving the agency for good.

As a space historian myself, I also appreciated Grush’s discussion at the end about the primary and secondary sources used in the book.

This is a first-rate book about a critical chapter in the history of space exploration.

Matt Bille is a historian and writer in Colorado Springs. His 2004 book The First Space Race chronicled the Sputnik-Explorer-Vanguard competition of the 1950s.

www.mattbilleauthor.com

Space Exploration: An Epic Week

Even by the standards of an Apollo kid, this was a memorable week. 

We had two groundbreaking missions, the loss of an Apollo hero and an announcement of an upcoming film project. And that’s just the stuff connected to human flight. 

It kicked off with the delayed flight of Boeing’s Starliner on June 5. There was a lot of prelaunch discussion about taking off with a leak of helium (used to pressurize thrusters) but the redundant systems made everyone feel the safety margins were satisfied. Still, it got a bit sticky when more leak and thruster problems developed.  Starliner had to hold outside the ISS’s 200m keep out zone until the system was deemed go for docking. Once in, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams got to work on further troubleshooting the Starliner and running experiments.

Then Thursday brought the second launch of the week was another milestone.  On the fourth launch of SpaceX’s experimental Starship, intended to revolutionize space travel in the next great Earth-to-orbit leap since the Falcon 9 made reusable launchers routine, achieved more of its test objectives than any previous mission, by far: indeed, it orbited, reentered, demonstrated essentially everything except landing on a platform, dropping the booster and spacecraft into the sea at the end of controlled landing sequences that involved flip maneuvers, engine relights, and essentially all the technical steps short of touchdown.  

With a week of triumph came a very hard moment. William “Bill” Anders of Apollo 8 was piloting his T-34A (a vintage trainer) when he crashed into the sea for reasons unknown. 

Anders will forever be remembered for his quick reaction when he saw the stunning 

(Images NASA)

Earthrise over the lunar horizon and grabbed a 35mm camera for one of the iconic photographs of the Space Age, one used ever since to remind humans we are all passengers on Spaceship Earth. He said of the photograph, “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.”

Anders graduated from the Naval Academy in 1955 and served as a fighter pilot in the Air Force. In 1996 he founded the Heritage Flight Museum. Anders became a major general is n the USAF Reserve, held numerous government aerospace leadership posts, and eventually became chair of General Dynamics, retiring in 1994. 

Anders was 90. (The Beechcraft plane entered service as a USAF trainer in 1950: it was also used by the Navy and internationally.)  There will undoubtedly be criticism about whether he should have been flying the acrobatics recorded on video in the 225hp aircraft, at that age, even on a lovely day off Jones Island in San Juan Washington state, but I think Charles Lindbergh has the last word here:

“Any coward can sit at home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in a fog. But I would rather by far die on a mountainside than in bed. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die?”

A last note of the week was the announcement of an upcoming streaming-service film on Sally Ride. Spielberg’s Amblin Partners will co-produce the Amazon film, and Kristin Stewart will star. The film is based on Meredith E. Bagby’s book The New Guys. It’s a good book, with potential for a great film (and an pic casting challenge, with so many well-known historical figures at NASA and on the Rogers midsession). I do wonder if they will make a serious film or a soap opera. Bagby is involved, not just as seller of the rights but in coproduction, so that's good, but...Fingers crossed. 

Matt Bille is a historian and writer in Colorado Springs. His 2004 book The First Space Race chronicled the Sputnik-Explorer-Vanguard competition of the 1950s.

www.mattbilleauthor.com

Review: Space War epic Alpha Wave

Alpha Wave (The Sleepers War Book 1) 

Blackstone Publishing; 2023. 764pp.

Jonathan Maberry and the late Weston Ochse take the space war epic in new directions - out into the universe and into the heart - in this gripping tale of resistance.   

Some the elements here, like forgotten or cast-aside supersoldiers and a battle that will remind you of the end of Star Wars: A New Hope, are familiar, if very well done. But there are surprise twists every time things start to look familiar, and cutting through it all is the human element that makes this novel something special. When historian Lexie Chow (a historian hero - I'm on board already) and her handful of Resistance fighters steal an old ship and leave occupied Earth on a desperate, longshot effort to find and wake the Sleepers, they know the entire Flock fleet is looking for them. It's not a spoiler to say the cloak of secrecy shrouding their mission is not as seamless as they think, although I guessed wrong about the source of the threat.

The buildup is very solid. In an analogy made explicit later in the book, it's clear from the outset the humans have fallen into a version of the trap Western militaries have faced against Asian enemies. The ability of cultures like the Chinese and Vietnamese to think in multi-generational terms and devalue the individual life has befuddled generals and empires. The Flock is the galactic master of this strategy, and their ability to play the humble and contrite peace-seekers at the right time is one reason countless planets live under the harsh rule of their taloned feet. There's a great deal of history-based wisdom in here about how resistance movements and dominant societies unfold, flavored by Ochese's expertise as a military intelligence expert, but it never slows the storytelling. (I don't know how the author partnership was done, and it's not obvious to me, but it works pretty seamlessly.)  They offer an original, plausibly written version of how FTL travel is done. 

Things really gets going when our heroes find the Sleepers lied to and abandoned long ago. The authors don't just assume the old solders will jump into the new war. They have to deal with the strangeness of their resurrection, the unexpected abilities, the knowledge of their betrayal, and the loss of loved ones, not to mention the mind-blowing (literally) discovery that somehow they've been in unconscious psychic contact with others, inspiring many of the acts of the Resistance. There's a lot of anguish before they decide there really isn't anything else to do except suit up and go back in.

Meanwhile, the Flock are watching, and the only plan with a chance of working is a crazy one requiring even more courage from the human crew of the former historic artifact Tin Man than from the supersoldiers. One of the great ideas here is that the Flock, in studying humans to keep them in line, hasn't come out unchanged. What they have learned from us about emotions has made some Flock leaders MORE dangerous, more capable of strategizing against us, and more willing to take any number of casualties to subjugate, capture, and exploit humans and superhumans. A Flock who takes the charming third name ("battle name") of Hell is especially good at learning from us - and despising us. Lexie and Sleeper leader Jason Horse, long connected in dreams, try to navigate their connection in real life, touchingly so, as Tin Man hurtles toward a destiny that Jason suspects will be very different than a simple space battle. There's another interested party in this war, with the highest, most personal stakes imaginable, and the way Jason interacts with them will rule the fate of all.

The end of this novel sets us up for a future that's more cosmically consequential than even humans vs. the vast Flock Empire.

The characters and technology all work well here, as they do in Maberry's thrillers. The stuff stored for 200 years (except the complex Sleeper capsules, many of which have failed) is a bit too reliable for me sometimes. The Flock is described and developed well even if the translation of their speech feels a little too human. Hearing that humans "can't wipe their own assess" is a bit startling from a homicidal ostrich. A few editing mistakes, like saying "two men" in one scene when one is a woman, slipped through. 

The authors write human interaction, from philosophy to agonizing decisions to unexpected love and sex, in a way that pulls the reader along, not just to see what happens but to see what these people - and near-people - do under unimagined circumstances. 

So sign on to the Tin Man and venture forth on a quest that offers humanity's last hope - and perhaps an undreamed-of future if we live to see it. This is a saga with more greatness ahead.

Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Read Matt's Latest book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction.

Watch for Matt's cryptozoological horror novel Death by Legend, coming soon from Hangar 1!