Ancient Beer and the Safety of Dry Land

I know I promised the rest of Hatshepsut's story and I am working on it. However, I saw these two articles from The Discovery Channel via MSNBC and I just had to share them.

I DID NOT WRITE THIS!
****
Ancient yeast reborn in modern beer
Scientist brews barrels of pale ale and German wheat beer


By Eric Bland
updated 8:11 p.m. ET, Tues., Sept. 23, 2008

Trapped inside a Lebanese weevil covered in ancient Burmese amber, a tiny colony of bacteria and yeast has lain dormant for up to 45 million years. A decade ago Raul Cano, now a scientist at the California Polytechnic State University, drilled a tiny hole into the amber and extracted more than 2,000 different kinds of microscopic creatures.
Activating the ancient yeast, Cano now brews barrels (not bottles) of pale ale and German wheat beer through the Fossil Fuels Brewing Company.
"You can always buy brewing yeast, and your product will be based on the brewmaster's recipes," said Cano. "Our yeast has a double angle: We have yeast no one else has and our own beer recipes."

The beer has received good reviews at the Russian River Beer Festival and from other reviewers. The Oakland Tribune beer critic, William Brand, says the beer has "a weird spiciness at the finish," and The Washington Post said the beer was "smooth and spicy."
Part of that taste comes from the yeast's unique metabolism. "The ancient yeast is restricted to a narrow band of carbohydrates, unlike more modern yeasts, which can consume just about any kind of sugar," said Cano.

****

Skoal! Kampai! Bottoms up! Or not. Moving on.

This next story is also from The Discovery Channel via MSNBC . I DID NOT WRITE THIS!

####

Fossils tell of mass exodus from sea to land
Creatures moved onto shore for safety, paleontologists believe


By Michael Reilly
updated 3:33 p.m. ET, Wed., Sept. 24, 2008

New fossils of the first land animals reveal that ancient shores were alive with more crawling, slithering creatures than anyone previously thought.
In the late Cambrian era, nearly 500 million years ago, the seas were teeming with life. Food was abundant, but so were predators. Paleontologists believe animals fled the marine environment for the safe confines of tide pools, and ultimately dry land, where they could live without fear of being eaten.
From fossil tracks found in Ontario, Canada, researchers know that a group of insect-like creatures called arthropods were crawling on sand dunes around this time. But how they migrated from the ocean to the dunes — and when — is still a mystery.

"They'd first have to cross an intertidal zone — a tidal flat," said James 'Whitey' Hagadorn of Amherst College in Massachusetts. "So we went exploring, looking for rocks of similar Cambrian age representing coastal sandy settings."
In the fossil-laden rocks of Wisconsin, New York and Missouri, they struck it rich — arthropod tracks, left after the critters crawled through mud flats, were in abundance. Alongside the tracks, fossilized mud cracks and impressions from rain drops proved the mud was dry as they scampered past.
Surprisingly, they also found evidence that slug- or snail-like mollusks and worm-like annelids had slithered through the tidal flats as well.
"We knew arthropods should be there, but didn't know what else," Hagadorn says. "In a way the mollusks are more interesting because they weren't carrying a big shell around, and they had to deal with all of the problems of being on land."
Despite the lack of predators, living on land was a dangerous proposition for creatures used to life at sea. Suddenly they were faced with intense radiation from the sun, an atmosphere that would dry them out in a matter of hours, and no support from buoyancy.
Modern-day arthropods include hermit crabs, horseshoe crabs and insects — all characterized by a hard, protective exoskeleton. Their Cambrian cousins also had hard exteriors, making them well-suited to the rigors of life out of water.
"But how did mollusks deal with this? They weren't carrying around a big shell," which made them vulnerable to drying out, Hagadorn said. "Were they nocturnal? We see evidence of them burrowing beneath the surface, perhaps to avoid desiccation from the heat."

####

All the links are from the original articles. All I did was fix the pop-up.
NEXT: HATSHEPSUT FOUND! I promise.