Field of Science

Fun with google

Botanists end up searching the web for some pretty esoteric  items, certainly not the mainstream of web use, so in the totality of their helpfulness, search engines deliver some odd items from time to time.  It's almost as if they were right out of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, where some helpful cybernetics delivers you what it thinks you want.  My first really funny results involved a search for holly just using the common name rather than the genus Ilex.  Now that was just a dumb thing to do.  But today the Phactor was interested in the Devonian fossil plant named Horneophyton.  Now how can this go wrong?  Ah, but maybe your Engrish isn't so good, so the cybernetics decides to try to sort out some character strings.  Ah, you horneo (horny old?), guy?  Maybe you need some help?  But this did come as a complete surprise.  Sort of stands out among the humdrum of regular old paleobotany illustrations.  So the old search engine certainly covered all its bases, giving me everything that could conceivably be found under that heading.  How funny.  Here's two images, you decide which one the Phactor was looking for and which was the surprise.  Ah, both do exhibit some dichotomous axes. 

1 comment:

CelticRose said...

Well, the one on the left certainly looks healthier. The one on the right is just a skeleton with some silicone.