50 Years Ago

The most recent advances in vertebrate palaeontology have arisen from the discovery of new faunas, together with the use of modern techniques of preparation … The most striking such advance is the new Gogo fauna of Australia, an inter-reef fauna of early Upper Devonian age. It includes arthrodires, antiarchs, palaeoniscids, a few rhipidistians and dipnoans (the occurrence of which in such a marine habitat is particularly interesting). The material is especially valuable, not only because of its early date, but also because it is uncrushed and can be developed with acetic acid … B. G. Gardiner (Queen Elizabeth College, London) described how the Gogo palaeoniscids (earliest actinopterygian fish) show the first evidence of a rhipidistian-like ventral intracranial joint in the Actinopterygii. Study of the Gogo fauna will clearly provide a flood of new evidence on the structure, early evolution and relationships of the bony fishes.

From Nature 4 October 1969

100 Years Ago

Entomologists, it appears, have not yet solved the problem of what becomes of the house-fly in winter-time. The popular idea that when the cold season comes the house-flies, or such of them as do not die off, retire to some quiet nook or cranny in the house and, like dormice, sleep undisturbed through the winter is still entertained in some scientific and other respectable quarters, although no trustworthy evidence has been found to support it … There are flies and flies; and, as Dr. L. O. Howard was … the first to suggest, no evidence relating to the hibernation of the house-fly can be trusted until it has first been submitted to expert examination. Since that suggestion was made, a large amount of evidence has been submitted to experts, and now they are almost unanimously agreed that the hibernating house-fly is a wholly mythical creature. But the house-fly must get through the winter somehow, and if not in its perfect state as a fly, then in some other stage or stages of its life, or else we should not be troubled with the pestilent brood year after year in succession.

From Nature 2 October 1919