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Show Friday. September 24, 1999, THE DAILY M R LD. Proo, Ulah Page l3 Tree of life branching out in new, different direction Thieves attempt quarter heist with trash bag By The Associated Press ATLANTA Two thieves didn't realize just how heavy 2,000 quarters would be when they decided to hold up a highway toll plaza. The men got away, but they probably would have fared better if they had brought something a little stronger than a trash bag to carry their loot, police said. The bag tore under the weight of the coins. "After getting as much as they could carry in the trash bag, most of it was dropped on the highway," said Officer W.I. Green. Another $70 worth of change was found in the car the two abandoned early Tuesday about a mile down the highway, police said. By GLENNDA CHUI Knight Ridder Newspapers but it may to the family A rose is a rose not belong Rosaceae forever. In a highly controversial plan that could shake biology to its core, a few maverick biologists are proposing to abandon the traditional way of naming and ranking every living thing on Earth, a system invented 250 years ago by the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus and a staple of textbooks to this day. It was a good system for its time, critics say, invaluable for describing how one organism arose from another and how creatures as big as whales, as tiny as germs and as as people are related. Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species the traditional hierarchy has been memorized by generations of students with the help of phrases such as King Philip Came Only For Gold and Silver. But now, critics argue, the system is swamped by the sheer volume of information pouring in from genetic studies, which are rearranging the branches and twigs of the tree of life at a dizzying rate. They say there are simply not enough ranks in the traditional system to encompass this growth spurt. In place of Linnaeus' creation, they want a family tree without ranks, as and flowing as evolufree-for- tion itself. "I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread," said Michael Donoghue, director of the Harvard University herbaria and aroponent of the new scheme. "It's the beginning wave of something that's probaand peobly going to happen ple aren't going to like it." Which appears, at this point, to be an understatement. "It's moronic!" said William Burger, curator of botany for the Field Museum in Chicago, expressing the sentiment of a great many of his colleagues at recent International Botanical Congress in St. the As more species were discovered, scientists were forced to Louis. "When you've got a system that's worked for 200 years," he said, "who the hell cares about the phylogeny of these plants?" Phylogeny? It's a fancy word for evolu- add more categories to the Linnaean hierarchy, and they changed it to reflect what they knew about evolutionary relationships. So, for instance, in the current version the human lineage goes this way: tionary relationships, and it's the heart and soul of biological classification. When Linnaeus began his ambitious work of classifying everything in the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms in the 1700s, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was still a century away, and each type of living thing was thought to have been separately created. Linnaeus divided the animal and plant kingdoms into classes, and then again into genera and species,' based on the superficial characteristics of say, whether the organisms reproductive organs of a flower were out in the open or hidden. creatures Single-celle- d called eucaryotes gave rise to metazoans, the multiceiled animals. Metazoans begat which have rods of cartilage supporting the nerves that run along their backs. And they in turn spawned animals with anibackbones, mals, mammals, primates, hominids, early humans and chor-date- four-legge- d us. In the language of classification, we belong to the Eukarya, the Metazoa, the phylum Chordata, subphylum Verte-bratsuperclass Tetrapoda, class Mammalia, order Primates, family Hominidae, genus Homo and species Homo a, sapiens. But as the tree of life gets more complicated, researchers continue to discover new and interesting groupings that they want to formally name so they can communicate more easily among themselves. They invent new categories things such as tribes, cohorts and phalanxes, not to mention supertribes, subcohorts and and wedge infraphalanxcs them in among the traditional ones. In theory this can expand the system indefinitely. But in practice it becomes awkward and confusing. The beauty of the new, rank-les- s nomenclature is that "you don't have to spend time mem- orizing whether an infracohort is higher than a subcohort," said Kathleen Kron, a botanist at Wake Forest University. place." Florida: Rules are rules DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (AP) Ninety-year-ol- d Max Gordon and his bride-to-bMollie Levy, got a bit of a shock when they asked for a marriage license. A clerk handed them a book. "So I said, 'What's the book about?"' Mollie recalled. "And she said, 'Parenting,"" "Parenting?" Mollie said. "We don't need to read the book, we can write it." Between them, Gordon and Levy have six children, 14 grandchildren and 17 greate, grandchildren. Still, under Florida law, their union was just another marriage that needed safeguarding by the Marriage Preparation and Preservation Act of 1998, a statute aimed at protecting children from the effects of failed marriages. So, the lovebirds recently Psat down with"the Family Law jEj&andbook. Mollie had to read Max because ot his ataracts. "The only reason I read it jjNvas because I thought we jgjnight get tested on it," she Said- f vXX K)3 l i rl - rJ Sftood deed rewarded 2 KALISPELL, Mont. (AP) lottery winner who left his coat at a McDonald's and got St back with help from a worker is sharing some Df his new wealth with the employee and a McDonald's charity. The owner of the coat, bean Drenzek, won $19.3 million in a Powerball lottery drawing six months ago. He his wife, Kristi, gave managerial assistant Kathy Burden $2,500, jgmd made a $25,000 donation to the Konaia Mcuonaia louse Charities of Montana. Burden works at a McDonald's near Kalispell. "I did nothing special," fiBurden said as she was presented the money. "This just 23low8 my mind. I remember "him being a really nice man." JJJ Drenzek said he and his iEJJvife thought of baking cookies or sending flowers for the favor. When they won the lot-- . tery, the couple decided on a more substantial reward. "It was a random act of ; i kindness and we thought iithat was something that Sthould be rewarded," Drenzek S&aid. YnC-- fast-foo- d ( y ) I 3nd SSrothe! touts Ventura In Minn. (AP) Gov. Jesse his autobiography, "Ventura recounted his visit to jfc Nevada brothel during his ;Navy SEAL days. Butendorse-SSnenthe visit is no I Smart businesses know how to stretch their ad dollars with the Co-O- p money their manufacturers supply. the p materials supplied by their manufacturers and the circulation coverage of THE DAILY HERALD, a business can boost market penetration and brand recognition every day of By combining Co-O- every week. ST. PAUL, appar-JJfcntl- y t. S3 Ventura's lawyers have SSJemanded that the Moonlight SJBunny Ranch remove the SSfeovernor's name from an Htdvertisement that reads, "I E&ad sex at the Moonlight." 2Z The letter tells the brothel SJSiear Carson City, Nev., to 5?im mediately cease any Ask your DAILY HERALD advertising representative how you can expand on your Co-O- p opportunities today. If you want to give us a call, we'd love to hear from you. Call 373-645- 0. THE DAILY HERALD wUVeri'ieiiig men dioivd ui implies his endorsement." vfBm "You can concentrate on evolution and biology and the whole reason we got into this in the first |
