[HN Gopher] When Armor Met Lips
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       When Armor Met Lips
        
       Author : akkartik
       Score  : 196 points
       Date   : 2024-03-17 16:44 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (crookedtimber.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (crookedtimber.org)
        
       | jimkleiber wrote:
       | I thoroughly enjoyed the author's writing style. Anyone know
       | where I can find more by him, Doug Muir?
        
         | HankB99 wrote:
         | Google knows: https://crookedtimber.org/2024/01/03/welcome-to-
         | doug-muir/
        
           | jimkleiber wrote:
           | Normally a blog just lets me click the author's name and see
           | more by them, and even the link you posted doesn't really
           | show more essays.
           | 
           | This one did though: https://crookedtimber.org/author/doug-
           | muir/
        
             | daemonologist wrote:
             | Thanks for the link, that's a worthwhile click - their
             | previous article is great too:
             | https://crookedtimber.org/2024/03/08/occasional-paper-the-
             | ir...
        
       | HankB99 wrote:
       | > geology nerd
       | 
       | Shouldn't that be "paleontology nerd?"
        
         | skavi wrote:
         | See footnote 1
        
           | HankB99 wrote:
           | Where is footnote 1?
           | 
           | I just looked up the authors of the article from their links
           | at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363885520_Seals_w
           | ha... and none mentions geology, though they did mention
           | paleobiology, paleontology and fossils.
           | 
           | What did I miss?
        
             | nearbuy wrote:
             | The footnotes for the article are in the first comment. The
             | author put a humorous footnote about being pedantic.
        
       | mannykannot wrote:
       | "Pinnipeds evolved about thirty million years ago. They showed up
       | first in the colder parts of the northern hemisphere, _then in
       | the Antarctic_ , then in temperate zones."
       | 
       | That's an interesting sequence, given that the continents then
       | were about where they are now.
        
         | ricardobeat wrote:
         | Maybe they evolved in both places independently, or maybe it
         | took a couple million years for a pod of seals to make the
         | journey from north to south, and then start dominating the
         | local ecosystem.
        
         | nateb2022 wrote:
         | It is possible that they fed on extremophiles which thrived in
         | really cold regions and later evolved to feed on other food
         | sources.
        
         | thriftwy wrote:
         | It takes one volcanic winter for them to cross the oceans and
         | emerge on the other side, without being fit for the warm
         | waters.
        
       | pfdietz wrote:
       | "So, you're saying the nautiloids did okay until the pinnipeds
       | sealed their fate?"
        
         | Terr_ wrote:
         | I'm nautiloid to say more about their spiral into the depths.
        
       | B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
       | Also: https://crookedtimber.org/2024/02/19/death-lonely-
       | death/#com...
       | 
       | about Voyager 1, recently in the news
        
       | vitiral wrote:
       | I really enjoyed this article, but I was really disappointed. For
       | some reason I thought it was going to evolve into a Lovecraftian
       | epic of how the grand and horrifying civilization of the ancient
       | cephalopods and their relatives was thwarted by another species,
       | one who paved the way for our own ignorant and doomed
       | civilization to thrive.
       | 
       | I kept this feeling until the very end [spoiler] even when it was
       | revealed to be seals I held out hope they could be a Lovecraftian
       | player in a grand epic saga.
        
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       (page generated 2024-03-17 23:00 UTC)