The Most admired people in 2020

 

In two polls reported for the most admired people, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama were the most consistently regarded.

 

To be precise, Barack Obama came first worldwide, and first or second in the US, depending on the poll. In Australia and the UK, he was beaten by David Attenborough.

Michelle Obama was the most admired woman worldwide, and in both US polls. In the UK, Queen Elizabeth II ranked ahead of her; in Australia, both the Queen and Jacinta Ardern ranked ahead. Ardern was top in New Zealand, unsurprisingly, followed by the Queen and Obama.

Donald Trump beat Obama in one of the US polls - but that’s because it was taken at a highly politicised time, and the Democrat vote was split, with Obama coming in second, and Joe Biden third. Trump was supported by 18%, Obama by 15%, Biden by 6% and, interestingly enough Bernie Sanders by 1% (7^th most admired). It’s quite salient to find that Obama outperformed Trump in every country surveyed - except Russia. They have a friend in Trump!

 

In Australia, only two Australians made each list: the prime minister, an athlete, an actor... and a previous prime minister, Julia Gillard.

 

Of the top 20 men globally, 35% (7 men) were leaders/politicians, 20% were athletes, 20% actors, 15% capitalists and 10% spiritual leaders. I might have expected a more eclectic mix, but that gives some idea who people look up to the most: leaders and achievers that are in the public eye. People admire their power, admire them physically, or admire their wealth. There’s a 12.5% exception for their humanism, if you count Bill Gates as half philanthropist.

 

The Australian list was similar, but we admire leaders less (25% instead of 35%) and sports people more (25% instead of 20%) - which suggests we have the same regard for each! David Attenborough was an addition and exception. Is he admired as a scientist or a humanist? Possibly more of the latter.

 

The methodologies for the surveys need to be mentioned. In the US, Gallup surveyed in December, and asked an open-ended question, which meant people could choose personal acquaintances.. For the rest (including the other US survey), 42 countries were included (which included Turkey - so Erdogan got to the global top 20, although two Turkish figures were ahead of him within Turkey, both singers). YouGov did some preliminary polling earlier in the year, then asked the survey questions from a closed list of people.

My List? Off the top of my head, I’d include

 Jacinta Ardern

 Julia Gillard

 Barack Obama

 Bernie Sanders

 David Attenborough

If I wanted to include entertainment, I might include Neil Young (for his enormous. varied musical career and great guitar work), George Clooney (for his humanitarian as well as screen presence) and Patrick Mahomes (US quarterback for the KC Chiefs, for his ability and leadership). If pressed, I might come up with more names from science, literature, music and American Football.

 

And what is admired? The list of qualities seems to differ, depending on whether the involvement is personal, work-related, or those with no direct connection.

The following list appeared in Forbes, which might speak to leadership as much as anything:

 

1. Humility

2. The ability to learn

3. Integrity 

4. Responsibility

5. Resilience

6. Compassion for others

7. Respect for others

8. Big vision

9. Inspiring others

10. Reinvent ourselves

 

Citizen Band: unabashed rock

How's your day been my love
How's your day been today
How's your day been darling
Hope you've been good while I've been away...



More than thirty years before I first met my friend Derek, I saw his brother on tv.  It was in 1973 on New Faces, a sort of talent contest, and they came across as something between vaudeville, Noel Coward, and Salvador Dali.  They were called Split Ends, doing the above Sweet Talking Spoon Song.

They didn't do too well.  The clear favourite was the rollicking Bulldogs Allstar Goodtime Band, and their two slices of glorious pop (Miss September and Everyone Knows) each shot up the New Zealand charts rapidly, leaving the Spoon Song literally for dead.

Fast forward seven years.  The Bulldogs lasted little more than a year; Split Enz, as they were now known, were still taking the long, slow road to fame and fortune, and Geoff and Mike Chunn, both having served time in Split Ends (where Mike was known as Jonathan Chunn) were now in Citizen Band, and released a great live album called CB Bootleg.  I already knew them (albeit not their pedigree) from their earlier singles, and earned my respect for a driving, riff-based song called Rust In My Car.

I wore out that album.  They were a great band, with a good repertoire of mostly originals.  It was not so fashionable in 1980, but they really rocked.  And even in their quieter moments, songs such as Acrobats and SOS (no, not the bloody Abba song) were solid, friendly, and tuneful.  The record completed with a strong cover of Graham Parker's Protection, blending well with their sound.

A few decades later, thanks to Derek and his brother, I have for the first time a Citizen Band CD.  And again I find out why that music was simply so enjoyable.

Mike Chunn (who played bass as Jonathan Chunn in Split Ends) was later a music industry exec, and now apparently runs a music mentoring foundation through New Zealand schools.  Geoff Chunn, also in Split Ends, did guitar, vocals, and most songwriting for CB.  Drummer Brent Eccles was in Space Waltz before (as was CB's other guitarist Greg Clark), and subsequently in the Angels.  There's a bio of Citizen Band, and a comprehensive early history of early Split Enz on Sergent's, the most encyclopaedic site there is of 1960s and 70s New Zealand music.  And you can see and hear these original (looking so young!) and unplugged versions of Rust In My Car on YouTube. (Space Waltz' Out On The Streets here.)


A warm appreciation to all those Chunns out there for the CD, and facilitating these memories.


Discography

Date	type	title	label	tracks	NZ Charts
1977	S	In A Lifetime	Mandrill	In A Lifetime/Good Morning Citizen	-
1978	S	I Feel Good	Mandrill	I Feel Good/My Pohutukawa	-
1978	S	The Ladder Song	Mandrill	The Ladder Song/Martian Spaceman	-
1978	LP	Citizen Band	Mandrill	Good Morning Citizen/The Ladder Song/The Office Come Alive/Dig That Tex/I Feel Good/Blue Lagoon/Julia/My Pohutukawa/Heroes Roll/Out In The World/Counting The Regiments/Tex Goes To The Tinema	27
1978	S	Somebody Else	Mandrill	Somebody Else/Holy Felule	-
1979	S	Julia	CBS	Julia/Blue Lagoon	-
1979	LP	Just Drove Thru Town	CBS	We're The Boys/Rust In My Car/S.O.S./Protection/City Slitz/Another Night/A Night At The Brit/Acrobats/Snarl/Just Drove Thru Town	18
1979	S	Rust In My Car	CBS	Rust In My Car/Dig That Tex	-
1979	S	No Stereo /SOS	CBS	No Stereo/SOS	-
1980	S	Home Tonight	CBS	Home Tonight/Pyjamas	-
1980	live LP	CB Bootleg	CBS	City Slitz/Another Night/The Ladder Song/I Feel Good/Rust In My Car/Julia/S. O. S./The Office Come Alive/Acrobats/Protection	48
1993	comp	Rust In My Car	Sony	Rust In My Car/I Feel Good/The Ladder Song/The Office Come Alive/Julia/SOS/Acrobats/Heroes Roll / Out In The World/Another Night (Live)/Dig That Tex/The Man's A Wonder/Tex Goes To The Tinema/Blue Lagoon	-

Toy Love - yeehah!

With a sufficiently large CD collection, it's easy to stumble across something that hasn't been aired in some time.

Such was the case with the Toy Love album, and it's a real treasure.

Toy Love was a New Zealand "punk/new wave" band from the late 1970s. Short-lived but positively revered, their music had been long out of print. When they were finally (lovingly) consigned to CD just four years ago, it was a double called Cuts, and assembles their various singles, B-sides, and the eponymous album on the first disk, followed by demos and unreleased stuff on the second.

A great collection of all their releases - bar a single track with the ostensible titled The Second To Last Song Toy Love Wrote With Ad Lib Lyrics, which was released on a B-FM album called Goats Milk Soap.

And yes, it does have greats like The Amputee Song (Bride Of Frankenstein's B-side), the glorious Pull Down The Shades and the poppy Don't Ask Me - which made a surprise appearance in the Top 20 in Wellington in 1980.

A really rollicking listen at times (especially the aforementioned Bride!), the music is energetic and surprisingly fresh after all this time.

There's a live clip of them on YouTube - from memory, it includes Shades, Frogs, and Fast Ostrich. There's also a brief clip of them doing Shades in an earlier incarnation, the Enemy. Knox looks decidedly punk in that clip (a friend of mine once went out with him around that time; she thought he was a bit too strange, but ten years on he had definitely mellowed well). But wait - there's more! I found an actual music video of the wonderful Squeeze - never seen that one before. I know there was also a promo video for the Bride single, but it doesn't seem to be around.

Of course, singer Chris Knox, the grandaddy of modern New Zealand music, has an illustrious body of later work, both solo and with Toy Love guitarist Alec Bathgate as Tall Dwarfs. When I was briefly living in Auckland in 1986, I went up the road to buy from him a copy of a comic he had put together, Jesus On A Stick, which featured contributions from a variety of musicians. A very friendly guy (and a great comic, it was). Knox's most famous solo track is Not Given Lightly, once voted the thirteenth best New Zealand song of all time; Tall Dwarfs' first three releases are assembled on Hello Cruel World - thoroughly recommended, particularly the tracks from the original ep Louis Likes His Daily Dip.


Sadly, as Derek told me last night, Knox suffered a stroke recently. There's a blog site that contains updates on his condition.


More discussion on 1970s New Zealand Music: Citizen Band's connection to Split Enz, and a strange collaboration between Dragon and Mark Williams.

The most comprehensive web site on New Zealand music of the 1970's is Sergent's New Zealand Music.

Discography

Date	type	title	label	tracks	NZ Charts
1979	comp tracks	Squeeze/Toy Love Song		on AK79 compiliation (earlier recordings than those released on the single and album)
1979	S	Rebel/Squeeze	Elektra	Rebel/Squeeze	29
1980	S	Don't Ask Me	Deluxe	Don't Ask Me/Sheep	20
1980	LP	Toy Love	Deluxe	I Don't Mind/Swimming Pool/ Death Rehearsal/Bride Of Frankenstein/Toy Love Song/ Photographs Of Naked Ladies/ Bedroom/The Crunch/Ain't It Nice/Cold Meat/Don't Catch Fire/Green Walls/Pull Down The Shades/Frogs/Fast Ostrich	4
1980	S	Bride Of Frankenstein	Deluxe	Bride Of Frankenstein/The Amputee Song/Good Old Joe	22
1980	comp track	The Second To Last Song Toy Love Wrote With Ad Lib Lyrics		on Goats Milk Soap compilation
2005	CD	Cuts	Flying Nun	First disc comprises all single and album tracks; second disc comprises demos, etc: Squeeze/Sheep/I Don't Mind/ Swimming Pool/Death Rehearsal/ Unscrewed Up/Toy Love Song/Photographs Of Naked Ladies/Lust/I'm Not Bored/1978/15/Cold Meat/ Wanna Die With You/Don't Catch Fire/Green Walls/Pull Down The Shades/Frogs/Fast Ostrich	18

Early extinctions in New Zealand

New Zealand had a special environment. From the time it split from Antarctica about 80 million years ago, it was one of the larger, more isolated land masses in the world*. The fact that it was mostly free of terrestrian mammalian predators** eems to have, of itself, fostered a unique panoply of ground-based wildlife.

A recent article in American Scientist (The Rat's Tale) paints a picture of ecological destruction that followed the first wave of predatory mammals - although the second wave (Europeans) would ultimately have been more destructive.

The article details the laborious scientific process - and debate - in establishing the date for that first wave, which last year was settled with a period range of 1290 to 1380AD for the arrival of the Maori and the Polynesian rat, kiore or Rattus exulans.

The rats ate "plants, fruits, seeds, insects, lizards, snails, eggs, and the nestlings of ground-breeding birds".

Maoris were apparently responsible for the extinction of the largely predator-free [ostrich-like] moa, and the reduction in forestation of New Zealand from about 85-90% to 25-27% (according to the article). Good evidence suggests this latter was due to significant burn-offs - for various reasons, including living space, ease of travel, and fostering food sources, specifically the bracken root, a starchy staple.

From that first wave, human and rat between them precipitated a 50% decline in bird species and the extinction of bat, frog, and numerous lizard species.

The oldest verified archeological site in NZ is Wairau Bar in the South Island, dating to 1285 to 1300. Amongst many artifacts are the bones of 8000-odd moas and 2000 moa eggs - suggestive of the ease with which they were killed.

The Polynesian rats apparently took less than 80 years to spread throughout the North and South Islands - about the same time as it took the European rat, Rattus norvegicus, once introduced.


This is not a tale of Maori destruction - rather, it's the familiar one of human destruction: "The first duty of colonisers is to survive. That requires rapid population growth sustained by consuming the richest resources" (Atholl Anderson, Australian National University).


The main reference for the article is: Wilmshurst, J. M., A. J. Anderson, T. F. G. Higham and T. H. Worthy. 2008. Dating the late prehistoric dispersal of Polynesians to New Zealand using the commensal Pacific rat. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105:7676–7680.



*Albeit some theories (discussed earlier, here) posit complete submergence of the land mass for a period of time. I'm not convinced of this, particularly given the continued existence of the flightless ratite moa, discussed here.
**The recently discovered 'waddling mouse'/'sb mammal' -see here and here - notwithstanding. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that it impacted the significant and burgeoning terrestrial habiting bird population.

Flight Of The Conchords

Belatedly due to a pointer from my New Zealand sister, I have become addicted to a duo of annoying New Zealand musicians and comics, Flight Of The Conchords.

The premise for this Emmy-nominated no-budget sitcom is a pair of New Zealanders trying to hit it big in New York.

Buried within a costume of weak humour is a truly engaging, dry wit, and a surprising depth of musicianship that could score all the points on its own.

I find it particularly funny that they see all Australians as their natural enemies.

Aggrevating and engaging, deceptively talented.

Birds, ratites, moas, kiwis, predators

This is a story about native New Zealand birds and animals, one that gets more interesting as it goes.

First, I'll start by drilling down through the origin of birds.

Birds are members of the taxonomical class Aves, and are the only living descendants of dinosaurs.  The earliest recognised Ave is the archaeopteryx, dates from the Jurassic period, about 250 million years ago (mya). As a result of the dinosaur-killing KT meteor 65 mya, most near relatives are gone: apart from birds (as descendants), the closest remaining relatives to dinosaurs are the crocodilians. In fact, what we now know as birds are the Avian sub-class Neornithes, and are not direct descendants of the archaeopteryx.

The earliest division of modern birds is between the two superorders Palaeognathae - nearly all are ratites - and Neognathae - the rest. Ratites (properly, the order Struthioniformes) are effectively one of the oldest surviving avian lineages - and they're all flightless, descending from a flying ancestor but at some point no longer needing to fly.

Not all flightless birds are ratites. Many different bird families have evolved flightlessness on islands, where they have found themselves with no predators. Richard Dawkins notes that rails in particular "lend themselves to island-hopping followed by flightlessness".

Why lose flight? Colin Tudge: "flight ... exacts an enormous price. It requires commitment from the entire anatomy, and a huge input of energy".

Ratites are the most well-known of the flightless birds, encompassing the ostrich, emu, cassowary, rhea, kiwi, moa, and extinct elephant bird. Between them, they represent pretty well all the current pieces of the old southern land mass Gondwana. That suggests survivability of this grouping, even when exposed to predators. Some were pretty large, though, but perhaps ironically the largest ones, Madagascar's elephant bird and New Zealand's moa, survived only until the last millenium - finally a victim of the greatest predators, humans. The elephant bird was the heaviest bird ever, at up to 500kg and three metres tall.

cassowary

The ostrich is hard to place, but Dawkins reckons it was with the elephant bird when India and Madagascar became isolated from the rest of Gondwana then, like other species, took the fast "Indian ferry to Asia", later to take a slow way back to Africa.

Moas diverged from the rest only about 80 mya - when New Zealand split from Gondwana. A couple of notes about their traditional representation in New Zealand: first, they did not tend to hold their heads fully erect, as you see in the museums. Rather, the head was closely level with the body, for browsing. Second, one of their predators was something called Haast's Eagle, the largest eagle that ever lived. This extinct giant eagle is something I certainly never heard about growing up in New Zealand. Intriguing.

Anyway, given the robust ratite's story, you'd expect the kiwi to be closely related to the moa. Well, it's not. It's closer to the emu and cassowary, both from Australia and New Guinea. Dawkins suggests the kiwi arrived in New Zealand via New Caledonia.

kiwi

It's worth considering the effects of predation over time.  For the elephant bird and moa, size was a boon, but ultimately the source of their demise as they became relatively fearless. For the kiwi, nocturnalism may have been a recent survival mechanism; yet Wikipedia notes that in predator-free sanctuaries, the notoriously nocturnal kiwi is often seen in the daytime. For others, speed has been on their side.

I mention all this to help give context to the unusual 19myo mouse-size SB mammal fossil (discussed here and here) recently found in NZ. Predation has to be a significant issue in the story. How did it survive 60 million years in NZ? What size changes might have happened to avoid predation in a land of bird seeking small morsels? Why did they ultimately disappear? This species doesn't seem to have had any impact on the NZ story as it is known so far...



Reference
Dawkins, Richard (2004): An Ancestor's Tale. Phoenix, London.
Tudge, Colin (2000): The Variety of Life. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

SB Mammal: notes for a review, pt 1

Further notes to an earlier discussion on the discovery of a unique New Zealand mammal.  To recap:

The SB mammal (or "waddling mouse") is represented by a set of fossils found in New Zealand in December 2006. Found were two partial jawbones (mandibles) and a partial femur, dated to 19mya. Quite small - the bar on the photo represents 2mm. By the looks of the front incisors (picture C), it would have been quite mean - if it was bigger.

(jawbone views from the paper, referenced below.)

The reason the femur and mandible are linked is simply one of parsimony - nothing else like them has been found. A fair assumption, although it remains falsifiable.

Some of why it intrigues me so much:
- the proliferation of unique NZ bird life (including several flightless birds) had been suggested to be due to the lack of native terrestrial mammals
- it's a "ghost lineage" - no links to living mammals, yet it survived until very recently (19mya)
- how did it get there? - NZ split from Antarctica about 85 mya
- in particular, it has been characterised as non-therian, suggesting it was an egg-layer, unrelated to any other mammalian species extant in the Miocene epoch. Archaic, out of time.


Links:
The paper itself: Miocene mammal reveals a Mesozoic ghost lineage on insular New Zealand, southwest Pacific

APP (Acta Palaeontologica Polonica), a Polish publication in English, has a particularly significant reference from the paper: In quest for phylogeny of Mesozoic mammals - this links to the abstract and full 78 page text by three very significant names in the field: Luo, Kielan-Jaworowska, and Cifelli.

Also recommended: An Early Cretaceous Tribosphenic Mammal and Metatherian Evolution (Luo, Ji, Wible, Yuan), available from Science magazine with free registration.

The only vaguely useful blog discussions I've found on this mammal are at Tet Zoo, and one at WebWeaver's World.

News reports mainly rehash, but perhaps the one at New Scientist is best.

Evolution: NZ prehistory: another narrative

The University of Waikato has an interesting and detailed narrative on New Zealand's natural history, based on its geological and fossil record. I'll summarise some of the main points here. (A reminder that this whole exercise is aimed at better understanding the circumstances surrounding the appearance of a non-therian mammal fossil in the south of NZ.)



Speaking specifically about the parts of New Zealand that are above water now, parts of NZ first rose from the sea in the Mesozoic era (dinosaur times), in the Triassic period (250 million years ago to 201 mya). Fossils are found in this period of early forms of kauri, rimu, and kahikatea trees; no terrestrial vertebrates.



In the Jurassic period (145mya to 201 mya), NZ was uplifted as part of a larger land mass ("Tasmantis"); the narrative strongly implies it was connected to Gondwana. In any case, it says that due to NZ's subsequent isolation, it is likely that this point saw the arrival of "archaic frogs, large land snails, tuatara, and peripatus".



Under the Cretaceous (65mya to 145 mya) heading, it mentions a single vertebra of an upright carniverous land dinosaur. It also mentions waterways developing around 120mya between Gondwana and the land mass that included NZ. A consensus from other sources is that that split was final by about 82mya. The dinosaur extinction event was 65mya; the iridium boundary marker has been noted in NZ.



Other points of note:

- Oligicene epoch (23-37mya): two thirds of NZ was submerged (it notes the continued survival of frogs, tuatara, snails, peripatus and ratites (flightless Gondwanan birds);

- Miocene (5-23mya): bat, gecko and takahe ancestor appeared from Australia...



And we're back where we started: the SB mammal from around 19mya: Miocene, but non-therian. Appearing from Australia relatively recently (despite no equivalent fossil found there), or surviving from Gondwanan days.

Evolution: Gondwana vs New Zealand

Gondwana* was a large land mass that tended to reside in the southern hemisphere from Cambrian times to mid-Jurassic times (c.500 million years ago to c.160mya). It consisted, in the main, of Antarctica, Africa, South America, India, Australia, and New Zealand. For part of its existence, it was united with its northern equivalent into the supercontinent Pangea.

Through this time, Gondwana experienced a number of climate changes, due in part to the movement of Earth's techtonic plates which formed then ultimately broke up the continent.
Africa moved away first, followed by South America and India (the latter has been a particularly fast mover, crashing spectacularly into Asia to form the Himalayas).



Of course, disintegration took many millions of years, so the dates are approximate. The dispersal (and later speciation) of fauna is not entirely stopped by such splits. For some time after complete separation, islands are typically scattered between the land masses. This more or less allows for some island hopping from one land mass to another, typically through "rafting" - the carriage of fauna across on masses of vegetation, often after storms. Richard Dawkins treats this well in The Ancestor's Tale, and makes the point that even if such an event sounds unlikely, given the time scales involved - millions of years - it's unlikely that it wouldn't happen. And all it takes for a population to be established is one pregnant female.


I always thought that New Zealand broke away from Australia, because they seem to be such a neat fit. However, New Zealand is usually cited as splitting from Antarctica/Australia earlier. Ultimate separation was achieved around 82mya. Dawkins says Australia was finally sufficiently free of Antarctica to obviate island hopping around 55mya, although estimates vary a fair bit; Wikipedia suggests it was still freeing itself at 40mya.
The point about this is that New Zealand was isolated for substantially longer than Australia. At the time of the dinosaur-extinction K-T meteor - 65mya - New Zealand was already isolated, and Australia probably was not.

Various sources suggest New Zealand eroded since isolation, by up to 80% - some claim it disappeared below the waves altogether for a time, although this seems unlikely. The question is around the sustainability of populations in isolation. This is mainly relevant for large terrestrial tetrapods. Conventional wisdom is that the number of unique flightless birds in New Zealand reflects the absence of terrestrial predatory species until human introduction in the past thousand years.

There remains a few species in New Zealand's islands that are "anomalous" to the global narrative, including:

• the living Tuatara - only lizard-like - actually a distant lizard relative called a sphenodont.
  
• fossil dinosaurs and crocodilia from well before NZ's isolation
  
• and the newly-discovered sb mammal or "waddling mouse" from NZ's very recent evolutionary past, c.16 million years ago (main discussions here and here), interpreted as non-therian, ie egg-laying.

These need to be drawn into the narrative one way or another.


Related discussions:

• The evolution of moas, kiwis and other ratites;
• More detail on New Zealand's evolution as a land mass;
• Extinctions in New Zealand at early human arrival;
  
• The emergence and survival of early mammal forms, here and here.
  

*Gondwana means "land of the Gonds"; the term Gondwanaland is both redundant and obsolete.


Reference

Dawkins, R (2004): The Ancestor's Tale. Phoenix, London.

The SB mammal: New Zealand's non-therian mammal

The traditional view of New Zealand fauna is that its wide range of unique bird life flourished due to the absence of mammals to prey on or compete against them. That is, until the arrival of humans (who also brought rats and dogs) around a thousand years ago.

In fact, there are at least three species of native mammals - but they are excluded in the above narrative - bats, seals and sealions.

taking a long step back, New Zealand was once part of the great southern land, Gondwana, finally separating around 85 million years ago (see Wikipedia and University of Waikato) - the former indicates New Zealand separated specifically from the Antarctic land mass before Australia did; however, it's not clear whether Australia was at the time counted as Antarctica. It seems to me most likely that Australia was its last port of call, since the coastlines match so neatly.


In 2006, a mouse-sized mammalian fossil 16 to 19 million years old was discovered in New Zealand's St Bathans fossil bed, in the south of the South Island. This has been written up in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [of the USA], available here.  Interestingly, in the paper it is said to be "nontherian". That is, it split from the mammal lineage before marsupials: therians are defined as non-egglaying mammals: thus this one (the 'SB mammal') would be defined as an egglayer.


Colin Tudge's 2000 book The Variety of Life details the metatherians (marsupials) and eutherians (so-called placentals), then mentions eight groups of nontherians, of which only the monotremes (Australia's platypus and echidna) survive; of the others, only multituberculates and morganucodonts are mentioned. Wikipedia has an entry on Prototherians (aka non-therians), but Tudge doesn't recognise this as a clade, only as a small-p colloquial term for a non-therian mammal. Wikipedia adds to the group Triconodonta and Docodonta; as you can see, the classifications are mainly based on tooth characteristics. Why? Tudge: "Most of the extinct lineages are known only from a few teeth and jaws" - prescient, as this is also the case for the SB mammal, with the addition of a bit of hip. (Braincase is also mentioned as a differentiating characteristic.) I've seen no word on the placement of this creature within non-therians (Wikipedia's entry says the SB mammal is not a monotreme) - probably not an easy task, and the discovery's only about a year old.
I remain curious, too, about the other three of Tudge's non-therian clades; however, Tudge constantly reminds us that at this level of taxonomy, judgment calls are inevitably involved.

Eutherians ('placentals') and marsupials split 100 to 125 million years ago; this specimen dates from 16 to 19 million years (see the entry in New Scientist), suggesting this creature survived for at least 100 million years. Notably, this is the first land mammal fossil found in New Zealand.

The ubiquitous Mike Archer, current UNSW Science Dean, was involved in this study. He suggests it goes against the conventional wisdom that New Zealand temporarily disappeared below the water from 25 to 30 million years ago [due to some combination of rising oceans and/or erosion] after separation from Gondwana, and re-emerged due to its location on the boundary of two techtonic plates pushing against each other. Archer reckons it was too small to succeed at rafting [so it must have remained indigenous since before the split; others disagree.
So, did New Zealand stay above water, or did the SB mammal raft?
I'm currently reading Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale (2004, Phoenix, London), and he is a great believer in the ability of rafting to explain movements. In a nutshell, rafting is the drift of land-based animals on floating vegetation masses, typically due to the effects of storms. Dawkins (p150) details a large-scale eyewitness event (iguanas in the Carribean) and makes the case that, although this may call for highly improbable events, over a long enough period of time these can come to pass.

However, New Zealand's submergence (as well as erosive forces - see the U Waikato link) does explain the lack of landbased fossils.
What then, of the Tuatara? When I was growing up, the Tuatara was represented on the five cent piece, and typified as a rare lizard - preserved due to isolation on several island just off New Zealand's mainlands. They are actually uniquely-surviving lizard-like Sphenodontians, creatures that flourished 200 million years ago. Further, they show unique cold-climate adaptions over the original warm-climate sphenodontians. That's not unexpected in the time that they've been isolated, but it suggests they were in New Zealand when it was in a warmer climate. It seems to me less likely than that they rafted as recently as 25 million years ago, subsequently disappearing in their home location.
Neither explanation is fully satisfactory. On the one hand, New Zealand entirely lost its land-based fauna. On the other hand, two uniquely survived - at least until recently, and certainly after New Zealand's purported submergence.

It remains a puzzle for the moment.

Further discussion of this unusual find includes a number of reference links.

I'm just a singer in a rock'n'roll band??

Back in 1975 in New Zealand, a band released a single called Vermillion Cellars, which flopped. Sort of prog-rock. They eventually wandered over to Australia, where the money is.



Meanwhile, a New Zealand pop singer was doing considerably better, scoring a big hit with a Vanda-Young composition, Yesterday Was Just The Beginning Of My Life. He had a healthy career there for a few years, as successful as you can get in a market as small as New Zealand, before eventually wandering over to Australia.


That band, Dragon, went on to do very well in Australia, becoming rather an institution as a straightforward rock/pop band. That singer Mark Williams, saw considerably less success, eventually forging a living in session work.


So Dragon's singer, Mark Hunter, died about nine years ago.


Everyone's gotta make a living, so the band continued on, eventually as "Dragon Acoustic". With that erstwhile pop singer, Mark Williams.


Friday, there was a bit of a party at work at the tail end of the day. Something of a celebration/team build/morale boost, everyone having recently relocated to the new workplace in northwest Sydney.

And Dragon played there. With Mark Williams. Strumming an acoustic guitar, not singing. And Todd Hunter was singing, not playing bass guitar.

Funny old world, innit. As I said, everybody has to make a living somehow.


Actually, to close the loop, a look at Dragon's website reveals that Williams has a throat condition at the moment, and would normally sing.

It also shows quite a full booking schedule, so they must be doing reasonably well at that living. One of those bookings was later in the day on that Friday - in Melbourne! It's a hectic life for a jet-setting band...




More discussions on 1970s New Zealand music: Citizen Band; Toy Love.

World: Australia/New Zealand Union: not on

An Australian parliamentary committee has effectively recommended Australia and New Zealand merge.


The idea is not new. In fact, it's older than Australia. We federated as a nation in 1901, with provision in the constitution for New Zealand to become part of the federation at a later time.

There is a certain inevitability about the suggestion. New Zealand is just too small to survive on its own in this modern world.

But it's undoubtedly unpopular in New Zealand, and will remain so. Simply, NZ would be swamped by Australia. And contrary to the cartoon above, it would be simply impractical to locate the capital in New Zealand. Sure, we'd like their water, but I believe they're in something of a drought themselves, if not to the length and depth of Australia's. Still, there are certain synergies. For example, we each have our notorious redneck politician. Our Pauline Hanson is much more vociferous and, well, stupid, but theirs, Winston Peters, is... wait for it... Foreign Minister!

Seriously, there is a lot of room to move, in terms of normalising regulatory regimes - much of which has already been done. And the European Union has demonstrated how political union can be achieved, in a practical sense. Much as the EU is distrusted in the UK, what the union has accomplished has revolutionised the global political landscape both as a trailblazer and in providing a counter to the moral, cultural and financial hegemony of the US.

Perversely, given the relative size of the project, I think it would take a lot longer to achieve something similar here.

World: NZ women lead the world. Again.

It was just an aside in an article on New Zealand's departing Governor-General.

A Governor-General is equivalent to ceremonial head of state - a non-executive president in many countries. That article happened to mention that women filled all the top leadership posts in New Zealand: Prime Minister, Governor-General, and Chief Justice. Well done.

As an afterthought, there's a couple more positions there that are headed by women: Parliamentary Speaker, and CEO of the largest company in NZ.


The new Governor-General was to be Anand Satyanand. Don't know if that's a bloke or a non-bloke, but it's certainly not an anglo name. Yet New Zealand was once a rather homogeneous place...

Film: River Queen (2005, New Zealand)

River Queen is the tale of a woman caught between two cultures in the Maori Wars of 1860s New Zealand. It is a very effective portrayal of the multiple tragedies of war, and despite problems with pacing and plot, it’s impossible not to be affected by this film, which is visually quite impressive.

I have a lot of respect for director Vincent Ward. Yet he’s made a surprisingly small number of films over the past 20 years; they can be counted on one hand: Vigil, Navigator, Map of the Human Heart, What Dreams May Come, and now River Queen. The common strand through all of them is vision: the scope of the films are all large, and the films are visually impressive: they absolutely fill the screen.

All of them rather different from each other – and flawed, for the most part. In all this, Ward is like a more austere version of Terry Gilliam. Like Gilliam, Ward expresses a vision that is often too grand for his abilities; tales from the set are often rather tragic in the extent of their calamities. In this case, Ward was even fired from his own film – before being rehired. Also like Gilliam, you sometimes feel like shaking him, telling him to reduce his vision to something manageable – for both himself and the audience.

Having said that, River Queen is definitely not the disaster that some love to say it is. The vision is sweeping; the intention is epic. The cinematography, the look, is always stunning, and that’s something for which we can rely on Ward.

There are strong parallels with both Lord Of The Rings and The Piano: all were shot in New Zealand to great effect. All are epic films, drawing the viewer into their world. Although River Queen doesn't match those films, it aspires, and it is frequently stirring.

I can picture what Ward intended this film to be. Although it is sad he didn’t quite pull it off, River Queen can definitely be enjoyed for what it is.