Oasis To Stop Operations In The Bakken -- April 29, 2020

I was anticipating this: Oasis to stop operations in the Bakken. On another note, their recent wells have not been all that impressive lately. At least that's my opinion, based on very, very anecdotal information. Reuters link here.

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Coincidences

The other day I posted a note regarding the Bay of Fundy. I had been reading a biography of Wyndham Lewis -- it was my second reading of that particular biography -- where the Bay of Fundy is a big part of his very, very young life. I had fun with Fundy and than moved on.

This morning, at breakfast, while continue to read about evolution in Fortey's book on velvet worms and horseshoe crabs, there is was -- page 210 -- a reference to the Bay of Fundy. Wow, what a coincidence.

But there was even more.

For years, I've been saying that reptiles are a "grab bag" of animals, not well defined, and "getting more press" then they may deserve. Like amphibians they were a crucial transitional group and have had their fifteen minutes of fame. To me, reptiles are defined more by what they are not (or do not have) than what they are (or what they have). I've never read anything along that line before.

Until today. In Fortey's book, page 211, he states much more eloquently than I regarding the reptiles.

Many of the skeletal features of more advanced living reptiles [are] lacking in the very first of their kind. These egg-laying animals prospered, and radiated into a range of ecological niches on land eventually in the air; some became "ruling reptiles," while others returned to the sea. Many did not survive the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago.

Fortey refers to these as "egg-laying animals because:

My more rigorous colleagues would expect me at this point to note that reptiles are not a natural group in modern zoological understanding One group of reptiles gave rise to mammals, and another to birds, which are both natural groups descended from common ancestors. This means that reptiles are a set of branches in the tree of life from which some derived branches have been "lopped off"; so they are not the complete ticket.

Reptiles are united by retaining the general characteristics of laying amniote eggs and having neither fur nor feathers nor hot blood (but that may be no longer true, either). So if we were being persnickety, we might always refer to "reptiles" in quotes; but as Stephen J. Gold pointed out some time ago, nearly everyone has a good idea of what the term means, so let's stick with it!

Portcullis: word of the day. Hint: think of all those old English movies about the "knights of the round table."