Furahan Biology and Allied Matters: Yves Gaumetou

The February 2009 issue of the Flemish magazine Eos, focusing on the popularisation of science, has as its cover theme 'De dieren van de toekomst' ('the animals of the future'). Now that is an interesting theme! Anyone with an interest in the subject will immediately think of Dougal Dixon's book 'After man, a zoology of the future' (see my installment on 'Why there's no walking on tentacles' for a glimpse at one of his other works). Eos' story is about a new exhibition in Brussels' natural history museum, in which a new evolution gallery opened on February 12 2009, the 200 anniversary of Darwin's birth. Apparently the museum people decided not to let evolution simply stop right in our age, but to leave the clock ticking for another 50 million years into the future. This period is called the Dixonian, so it's clear the people behind it have done their homework. Congratulations Dougal!

The page of the museum website is in Dutch, French and English (but not in German, which is odd, as it is spoken in Belgium and the main museum page does have a German version). It is frustratingly devoid of images of future lifeforms. A bit of internet searching led to a site promising a video of the animals, but at the time of writing the video did not work; I will include the video link here in the hope that it will work later on. So all I had to give you some more information was the magazine. Pick it up, if you can (and can read Dutch).

Above is an image taken from the cover; it shows five of the to-be-evolved animals with their names.

This is a close up of Neopyghoscelis, a penguin descendant reaching up to 4 meters in length. I wonder whether the image shows a young animal, as the size of the eye seems much too large for a 4-m bird. Eyes don't usually increase in size at the same rate as overall body size.

Anyway, one of its more interesting features is that it redeveloped teeth. Looking at the image I thought that these were pseudoteeth, i.e., bumps developing from the rim of the penguin's beak, but the text suggests that the teeth are the result of the genes for teeth, dormant in present birds, having become active again. I wonder if that event is more likely than reshaping the rim of the beak, but either 'solution' would do the trick, I guess. The text says 'Creative with Darwin' in Dutch.

And this is a Propellonectes (remember that name!). The legend says that is a descendant of a present-day petrel, that has lost its wings and swims with much enlarged feet. It is about 1 metre in length.

Very nice work. I will keep an eye on the museum site to see if more material appears. The magazine story is largely about how evolution works, but also provided some names on the people who thought all this up. It looks like a very interesting set of people. Jean-Sébastien Steyer is a palaeontologist working in Paris, and I guess he's the one responsible for coming up with biologically sound lifeforms. As an aside, I think that that particular activity could with reason be described as 'creationism', to be defined as thinking up animals based on sound biological principles. It's a pity that the word seems to be in use already, in a rather less entertaining setting...

Then two people come in to breathe life into the designs (I think I had better be careful with my metaphors here, but in Darwin week some leeway is allowed). The first is Marc Boulay, who does 3D computer sculpting in Z-brush, and just looking at his page makes me wish I had chosen to go into creative work in my life rather than pursue an academic career; oh well, I admit it, perhaps I am just a tiny bit envious...

The image above should whet your appetite for more. Dixon lovers will recognise this as one of his creations, a Tetraceras. But if that isn't enough, the task force also included Sylvia Lorrain, and her website tipped me from just containable envy after seeing Boulay's work into a feeling of deep inadequacy; they are that good. She combines 3D models with photographs to produce realistic depictions of animals, which is very tricky as it soon becomes tacky. She pulls it off.

This particular bird is something I found on her site. Be certain to visit their sites, as there is more to see there. Obviously, this is a diving bird, and it's called a Calcitriornis. Hang on, that is the same bird shown in Eos as a Propellonectes! What is going on here? Calcitriornis evolving into Propellonectes? I think I will try to find the story behind this matter another day.

Now it's back to Brussels, so to speak. The team so far had everything it took to depicting 3D animals, but in 2D! The museum apparently wanted 3D items to display; ironic, in a way. The sculptor Yves Gaumetou did the final job of putting flesh on the digital bones. It's probably modeling clay or something similar, but the results can be touched and you can walk around them, and that was the point. His site contains excellent sculptures of present day animals in life-like poses.

I definitely think I will have to go to Brussels one of these days.

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Remarks added in December 2010: Seeing that Darren Naish of Tet Zoo directed some traffic to this old post, I looked at it myself, and found that some links no longer worked and that the post is behind the news. Here is an update.

Marc Boulay is now here: http://www.marcboulay.net/
Sylvia Lorrain is still here: http://www.sylvialorrain.net/
Sébastien Steyer's page has moved as well: http://www2.mnhn.fr/hdt203/info/steyer.php

Other newsworthy items may be that Sébastien has written a very nice book on early vertebrate evolution, available in French and Dutch (as far as I know). Marc and Sébastien are working on a book on future evolution on Earth; you can read more about it on Marc's site.

Finally, I later wrote some more on the Brussels expo and on Marc and Sylvia's work. If you want to read it, here is a post that links to the other posts.

Sigmund Nastrazurro

PS. I still haven't seen the Brussels expo myself...

Furahan Biology and Allied Matters

Saturday, 14 February 2009

Future evolution in Brussels

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