“Original art by Vesalius, the founder of modern anatomy. Taken from Carl Sagan’s The Dragons of Eden. As student of social science, I find the concept of man studying himself awesome.”
Carl: A skeleton gazes at a skull, its hand draped lazily over the cranial vault. This image signifies more than just an anatomy lesson. Andreas Vesalius, the anatomist who drew it and many others, created a visual fault line that divided the ancient and the modern. Medieval European anatomists looked back to ancient authorities such as Galen for enlightenment. Anything they saw for themselves that did not seem to fit into the ancient systems must be their own errors, to be resolved by more careful reading of the Greeks and Romans. After all, God had given Adam perfect knowledge of nature, and human understanding had declined ever since his fall. Galen and the other classical writers were closer to creation, and thus further uphill on the downward slope of knowing.
Galen certainly was a brilliant anatomist, but his limitations were forgotten during the Dark Ages. He never even dissected a human cadaver, for example, contenting himself with pigs and other animals. It was not until the sixteenth century that someone noticed these shortcomings for what they were. Vesalius created an original anatomical guide, filled with drawings of his own, made from his own observations. He also helped spur a new approach to the human body (and the bodies of other animals): to challenge old beliefs and to learn with one’s own eyes.
Some may see this image as a morbid reminder of death, a skinned “Alas poor Yorick.” But I see it more as an embodiment of science, of one skull (and its resident brain) learning from another.
Original flickr source
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Claire d’Alberto of the University of Melbourne writes:
“I would like to share what my friends call my ‘science nerd’ tattoo with you! I am currently doing my PhD in Zoology and have been fascinated by the biological world for as long I can remember, so when I decided to get a tattoo it seemed logical that I look within my field for inspiration….It took 4.5 hours, and certainly didn’t tickle, but I love that I have such a beautiful representation of evolution and the natural world with me all the time.” [Tattooist's site: http://www.eternalinstinct.com/]
Carl: The tree of life has changed shape over the years. On another tattoo, you can see a nineteenth century version, its branches reaching upward through time. Today, scientists use DNA to draw the branches of thousands of species at a time. To make space for them all, the scientists must stretch the tree out into a wheel. Claire modeled her tree after a 3,000-species tree created by David Hillis at the University of Texas. She did not have all 3,000 species tattooed on her, obviously, but this simplified version captures the overall shape of the tree. The pictures around the tree represent the five kingdoms–Monera (bacteria), Protista (amoebae and other single-celled organisms), Plantae (plants), Fungi (illustrated here by yeast and the penicillin mold), and animals (a comb jelly, a mollusc, a starfish, and a seadragon fish). Of course, even 3,000 species is only a tiny fraction of the full diversity of life–1.8 million known species, and perhaps 10 or 20 million more to be discovered. If the current trends of discovery hold up, most of that diversity will be made up of bacteria. So future tattoos will need more microbes, and fewer seadragons.
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Jeremiah Drewel, a geology student at the University of Alaska writes, “This is my personal favorite Deinonychus!”
Carl: Deinonychus holds a special place in the history of paleontology. Its remains were first discovered in 1931 in Montana, but for decades they languished, unstudied, at the American Museum of Natural History. In the 1960s Yale paleontologist John Ostrom discovered a wealth of new fossils from the same species and began to contemplate what the animal was like in real life. At the time, dinosaurs were still widely considered to be sluggish scaly lumps. But Ostrom argued that Deinonychus was for more active, able to keep its stiffened tail straight out behind its body. He argued that they may have even been warm-blooded. Ostrom also noticed a number of similarities in Deinonychus’s skeleton and those of birds. He revived an old theory that birds are dinosaurs, and argued they were closely related to Deinonychus. It’s a connection now almost universally accepted by paleontologists.Deinonychus changed the way we see birds, but birds have also changed the way we see Deinonychus. Many relatives of Deinonychus–non-flying dinosaurs–show evidence of primitive feathers. Velociraptor, a close relative of Deinonychus, had what look like quill knobs on its bones. It’s plausible that Deinonychus itself was covered in feathers of some sort as well, which it might have used to attract mates. Depending on what paleontologists discover in years to come, Jeremiah may need to get re-inked.
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“I thought I would send you mine : Paranthropus (Australopithecus depending on your school of thought) boisei.”–Gabrielle Russo, Hunter Colllege.
Carl: Paranthropus boisei existed from 2.3 million to 1 million years ago–a good run. It stood upright like us, but had a small brain and powerful jaws for biting tough food like seeds and roots. Paranthropus boisei is not our ancestor, not even a close cousin. Instead, it belonged to a separate branch of hominid evolution–one that may have been wiped out by a changing climate. Now it is remembered in museums and on at least one tattooed arm.
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Kim writes:
“This is my tattoo of Darwin. It’s from a political cartoon published in the late 1800′s. As I’m an anthropologist studying human evolution, it felt appropriate.” The original cartoon appeared in Hornet magazine in 1871, in the wake of Darwin’s publication of The Descent of Man. Here is the magazine editor’s note; if you then press “next” you can see the original. Wikipedia has a cleaner copy of the original.
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“A tattoo of human evolution on my leg. I think that explanation is pretty…. well, self-explanatory” –Krisko
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“i send you my biohazard tattoo. obviously it’s not about the band ^^ i’m a biology student and it represents my choice….” –Alesita
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“This neuron tattoo was done a few months ago. When I was 18, my dad passed away from Lou Gehrig’s, which is a disease of motor neurons that innervate muscles. His battle with neurodegeneration helped me decide on a career in medical research, and I am currently pursuing my PhD in Neuroscience.”–Lindsay
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“This is another Haeckel- a brittle star. I am a physical chemist, but I’ve always admired Haeckel’s obsessive use of visual and design analogy to bolster his (useful, but not entirely correct) ideas about evolution. ” -Aurelia Honerkamp-Smith, PhD student, University of Washington.
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“here is a pic of my tattoo based on the golden spiral and a nautilus shell. i’ve wanted to get this done since high school and finally got up the courage to take the plunge earlier this year. it is now a constant reminder that mathematics is the language of nature.”–Thom
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“I am a biochemist, studying to be a molecular biologist, and the tattoo I am sending is the entry for carbon on the periodic table of elements. Since all living things on this planet at least are carbon based, from a chemical standpoint, it doesn’t get much more basic than carbon. Hence the tattoo.” –Erin
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