When is an argonaut not an argonaut? When it is a nautilus. Very interesting find nonetheless.

http://www.gisborneherald.co.nz/article.asp?aid=4581&iid=387&sud=27

spin the shell with pincers???? somebody hit me with some argonaut knowledge quick..................................

Related to a deep sea squirt? What?

Global warming making shellfish bigger? Isn't the rising acidity supposed to be destroying shellfish? What? What's a nadosa?

"They are related to the deep sea squirt which no man has seen and they are just about as mysterious," he said.


No one has ever seen a deep sea squirt? Then how do we know they exist? Oh wait, no man - maybe a woman has seen them? Maybe Neil knows...

Ok. I've read the story and it's mostly ignorant rubbish. The picture looks like Argonauta argo, though it could be A. nodosa. Both species are known from NZ waters.

As for the whole 'giant tuatua' part, it's bollocks. He most likely found an example of another related (and larger) species. The tuatua (Paphies subtriangulata) is an abundant bivalve from exposed sandy beaches and gets to about 80mm (3 inches) in length. What this ignoramous probably found was a Toheroa (Paphies ventricosa which is morphologically very similar, but bigger, ~120-160mm (~6 inch) bivalve. It could also have been Paphies donacina, but that's not really that important.

What pisses me off here is lay-people pretending to be experts when they essentially know squat...

"It was possible that global warming was making our shellfish bigger, he said."

It's also possible that you are a cheese burger... :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

What pisses me off here is lay-people pretending to be experts when they essentially know squat...


Well, it's possible that the reporter also applied a stupidity filter to what the guy said. I am of two minds on this, since I am something of a lay-person pretending to be knowledgable on marine biology, where I know "more than squat but with vast gaping holes." On the other hand, I try to learn enough where I can talk in forums like this, where there are smart people to thwack me upside the head :tomato: if I say something stupid, and get competent enough that I don't get thwacked too often. I really disrespect people who learn (or make up) just enough so that they can appear really smart to people who don't know anything, but who don't actually care about getting their facts right. And it does seem like the beachcomber may be in that camp (although, in fairness, there are some really smart people who aren't plugged into the academic "peer review" or even "information dissemination" worlds who run open-loop without feedback, and adopt crackpot theories because they just don't interact with people who would be able to point out the obvious flaws.)

Set them straight! http://www.gisborneherald.co.nz/contactus.asp

It just hit me, if argonauts are related to sea squirts wouldn't that make them chordates. YAY, we're even closer related to cephs. J/K