Rudists aren’t impolite

Things I learned before breakfast this morning:

• I must put coffee grounds into the machine if I want it to produce coffee.
• rudists are not, in fact, rude, and probably never were.

Rudists are an extinct group of large bivalve mollusks that built reefs during the Cretaceous Period. (The photo is of Rudist Bivalves from the Smithsonian collection, taken by Ryan Somma, blog at http://ideonexus.com/.) Rudists are, however, nude — unless you consider their shell as clothing, rather than as a part of them. Then again, rudists predate clothing.

The existence of rudists was brought to me via a rather fascinating book by Stanley, called “Earth Science History”.

Geology and coffee for breakfast!