My ancestry

My family tree has been traced back quite a ways, much farther than some people admit. I didn't do the genealogy work myself though. I had thousands of scientists working the past hundred fifty years or so do it all for me. Much has been learned especially the past twenty years about the cladistic relationships of my ancestors. Some of the old descriptions about my family history still often quoted (fish to amphibians, amphibians to reptiles, reptiles to mammals, etc.) are actually wrong.

I don't know too much from before my ancestors became vertebrates, but about 375 million years ago, maybe as long as 400 million years ago, some of my fishy ancestors evolved to "fishapods", perfectly intermediate between fish and tetrapods. Others of my fishy ancestors remained fish. Many died out but some evolved to become the fish of today. Relatively soon after tetrapods made their way onto land, some of them evolved to become amphibians, while others became amniotes.

Some of the amniotes became synapsids and some became sauropsids (leading to reptiles and birds). Some of the synapsids evolved to become mammals. Some of those mammals eventually became monkeys. Some of the monkeys became apes; many died out, others evolved to become the monkeys of today. Some apes became hominids, many died out, some evolved to become the modern apes other than the great apes. Most hominids died out, but some of them evolved to become the great apes of today (Orangutans, Gorillas, Chimpanzees, and Humans). Modern humans are a species of ape but still a highly-derived fish if you go back far enough.

Two of my most famous ancestors are Tiktaalik, one of those "fishapods" from the late Devonian period, and Australopithecus afarensis, much much much more recent (only about 3.5 million years ago). Now it may be that neither of these are actually my direct ancestors. They could have been side branches of my ancestral family tree that died out without leaving any descendants. However, they are most definitely family.

My quotation had changed!

I just discovered that for some of my site's web pages and multimedia files I had accidentally written "When you run over sharps, you get flats!" instead of "When you ride over sharps, you get flats!" One little word difference. Now I can't decide if I like the changed version better. I suppose the original "ride over sharps" makes more sense to emphasize that I play guitar while riding a bicycle, instead of "run over sharps" as if one were in a car or something.

Even the title in the html code of the new album's web page had the name wrong. I changed all instances back to the original form to be consistent, but I may have missed a few places on the internet besides my web site. Oops.