A couple of weeks ago someone found a "mysterious container" by the road in Atascosa County, Texas.
Authorities in Atascosa County said the container appeared to contain hair and bones. They were concerned that the materials might be human in nature.
After testing in a medical examiner's office, the report came back: the material in the container was from an octopus or squid. Whew, what a relief! But, my interest is piqued. The "tests" remain unspecified. I can imagine two scenarios:
1. Somebody who knows a thing or two about anatomy and zoology pokes around in the container for a couple of minutes and says, "Guys? Hey guys! The 'hair' is just eight arms. What'd you think they were, dreadlocks? The 'bone' is a beak--looks like a parrot's. I think we've got ourselves a cephalopod."
2. Nobody in Atascosa has the faintest idea what's in that container. So they extract DNA, amplify with some universal primers, type the sequence into GenBank, and voila--it comes back matched with several octopus and squid sequences.
The amazing thing to me is that this second scenario is totally plausible. Such is the current availability of technology and information that it wouldn't surprise me at all.
