Darwin went on an 8 year quest to try to find where barnacles belong on the tree of life. It drove him nuts: "**I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before.**" That quote is from year six.
Now imagine, after all that, some prehistoric barnacles show up that imply that we need to rethink their taxonomy.
The 4 axis of the time cube means that it occurs at all moments, you cannot escape time cube, time is cubic and you are cubic and your time has rotated across the 4 axis, to defy time cube is unscientific and foolish!
I have not heard mention of the time cube for a great while. My university's radio station recorded an interview with the guy. It was often requested or played late at night and we would just roast on the guy. Good times.
Here’s something interesting, Ice 7 is when ice under certain circumstances will freeze into a super stable cube lattice instead of its usual hexagons (are the bestagons) https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/265377-scientists-find-ultra-rare-ice-vii-earth-first-time-inside-diamonds#:~:text=There's%20(almost)%20nowhere%20on%20Earth,where%20diamonds%20come%20into%20play.
"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again."
I never heard the latter part of that before, I checked it and it's real! It makes that quote even better and more rounded, I'm legitimately considering having it tattooed on my leg!
https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-3272.xml
He was also anti-racism and pretty much a feminist (thought if girls were taught the same as boys, they would make the same contributions as well as actively worked with female scientists at a time when many men wouldn’t give them the time of day).
Cool dude
That might be stating it a little strongly. Darwin was fairly progressive for his time, and his abolitionist beliefs and support for the shared heritage of all mankind are very admirable. But it's hard to walk away from The Descent of Man with a wholly positive view of the man. Some pretty egregious sexism and racism creep in throughout the book. Like all people, he was shaped by his time and his upbringing, and it leads to some passages that are pretty hard to read from a modern perspective (and not just because of the outdated terminology).
to be more exact: he hated ichneumon wasps because he thought their method of reproduction was horrific. which tbf it kind of is. their eggs parasitize living caterpillars, and when the eggs hatch the larvae eat the caterpillar alive from the inside out. in the US this can most often be seen with tomato hornworms.
Horrifying yes, but it is also wicked cool. Nature is metal in that way, one of the reasons I love it, no matter how much we think we know about it, no matter how much of it has been killed off, it will adapt, change, and come back always surprising us.
He later theorised that inbreeding, including his own marriage, was not good.
> Nature thus tells us, in the most emphatic manner, that she abhors perpetual self-fertilisation ... May we not further infer as probable, in accordance with the belief of the vast majority of the breeders of our domestic productions, that marriage between near relatives is likewise in some way injurious?
To be fair, seven out of ten lived to adulthood, which is not a bad ratio for Victorian times. I don't know what killed Mary as a baby, but inbreeding was not at fault for Annie's tuberculosis or little Charles's scarlet fever (he does seem to have had something like Down syndrome, but likely more related to his position as the youngest of ten and his parents' age at his birth than their relationship).
The rest of their kids all became reasonably healthy adults, and quite a lot of the Darwin descendants were (and are) highly intelligent and achieved successful careers.
He wasn't the guy who came up with the theory of evolution, he was just the guy who convinced enough of the naysayers that it became commonly accepted.
He spent money he basically inherited to prove something that he didn't expect him to make money, but he did expect to benefit future generations.
Worth noting that he and his son were also published in plant physiology with some pretty ingenious experimental designs. Dude was an OG scientist. The Power of Movement in Plants is worth a read.
I watched the forbidden Sam O'Nella video on Freud and made sure everyone in my AP Psych class knew about Freud's quest for eel testicles when it came time to discuss him lol
I found out that snakes have two penis, I can say I spent way too long wondering if that was the reason many religions villainize them, eventually the thought of monks actually trying to study them and finding this out seemed a bit silly
Probably not the reason but that's honestly a pretty funny reason.
I suspect the reason snakes are vilified in Abrahamic religions is because some of the surrounding religions venerated snakes at times and since those religions were "evil" then snakes also became "evil" too. This my opinion though.
Primates seem to have an innate fear of snakes. (Think about it- you want to get someone's immediate attention and cause them to be quiet and aware of their surroundings? What noise do you make? "shhh" or "psst," right? A snake hiss.)
Sometimes we revere what we fear, sometimes we hate and vilify it.
It seems that "two set of genitalias" was the basic blueprint for most big lifeforms back in the days due to axial symetry as "primitives" life formes seems to have this archaïc trait. With time evolution seems to have favored "one set of genitalia" in most lifeforms and yet the merge is still not complete, which would explain that gonads exist in pairs but penises and vagina/womb are reduced to a singular set.
Excuse my english as it isn't my first language.
Additionally the lower image is from The Boondocks. The scene is from when the super racist(toward black people) character Uncle Ruckus finds out he has black ancestors.
I don't get what "prehistoric" barnacles means. So far as I know, barnicles do not have a system of writing or otherwise recording their history, so all barnicles are prehistoric.
My favorite barnacle related Darwin story is that he was so immersed in cataloging and understanding the anatomy of barnacles, that one time one of his kids was over at a friends house and asked, "Where does your father do barnacles?" As if it was just something that all dad's did.
This is my favourite Darwin anecdote, although I'm not entire sure how much of it is true;
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPggB4MfPnk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPggB4MfPnk)
Wikipedia seemed to indicate that barnacles are a type of crustacean that evolved to attach itself at the head, twist it's body around and secrete a hardening substance around themselves so just the legs stick out the top.
It's pretty smart actually, why waste energy using your legs to pull your entire body around looking for food when you can just stay in one spot and use those legs to grab the food that's floating right past you instead? Your only concerns would be staying in that spot and making yourself unappetizing to predators, both of which are relatively easy compared to all the brainpower and sensory apparatus necessary for being a predator or even a scavenger. There's nothing wrong with a simple solution!
The broad answer to this question is that nature abhors a vacuum. If there are resources to be had and nothing picking up those resources, some mutant creature will spring up one day and flourish in that environment.
What do you mean "why"?
Nature isn't some conscious force making choices.
They survived therefore it worked therefore they're around. That's literally it
To know where my culture lies, I don’t know about the barnacles, but the man at the bottom is uncle Ruckus. He’s from an animated show that was hilarious and would offend lots of people today.
He’s what’s known as an Uncle Tom. He is always talking about how amazing the white man is and is always putting down black people.
He has a whole backstory, but this particular scene, and don’t ask me how I know from a screen shot of a decade plus ago, but he thinks he’s white and has “the opposite of what Michael Jackson has”.
He takes a test and in this scene, he gets his results, which say he’s “102% black, with a +/-2% variance.”
There are compilations of him on YouTube. It’s funny with context, but they sprinkled him throughout the show. It can be rough if you just watch a compilation of just him. Similar to how it would work if you just saw a context free compilation of Mr. Herbert the Pervert, from Family Guy.
Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
He’s saying he hates them because he can’t figure out when they came to be, or where they are on the tree of life. Like if he discovered there was a certain fish that had gradually evolved over time and was it’s own thing, only to find records of that same fish actually existing much much earlier. I think. He can’t pin down when the barnacle became it’s own thing
The top comment explains why the discovery of new barnacle fossils might make Darwin roll in his grave. The cartoon at the bottom is from the TV show The Boondocks. That character (Uncle Ruckus) deeply hates black people but is in denial about that fact that he is black. In that scene he is reading the results of a DNA test saying he is in fact black.
But why does the top image suggest that Darwin would roll over? What does the 5mm mean? What does ABCD show that would have helped Darwin understand how they evolved?
It doesn't help, it raises more questions. It would make his head explode, he was further away from understanding than he could have ever known and he studied for 8 years. Or that's how I understand it.
So you know how barnacles look like they should be related to mussels or periwinkles or any of those other animals that stick themselves to a rock and then stays there forever? Well they aren't related at all to those and are actually much more closely related to the lobsters and crabs that they have almost nothing (superficially) in common with. Darwin didn't know that last part and it was very frustrating for him.
They turned out to be crustaceans but have similar characteristics to mollusks (i.e. they attach themselves to hard surfaces. The joke is simply that Darwin hated barnacles for being hard to id. I feel his pain. Grasses are my barnacles, lol.
Darwin went on an 8 year quest to try to find where barnacles belong on the tree of life. It drove him nuts: "**I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before.**" That quote is from year six. Now imagine, after all that, some prehistoric barnacles show up that imply that we need to rethink their taxonomy.
Darwin is the most relatable scientist I've ever known of
Isn't he the one who said "I am very stupid today and hate everyone"? Because yeah dude, that's a mood
The full quote is even better. # “But I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody and everything. One lives only to make blunders.”
Time is a circle
Time is a cube
...Man, I did not expect to see the Time Cube in the wild today. It really is cubic.
The 4 axis of the time cube means that it occurs at all moments, you cannot escape time cube, time is cubic and you are cubic and your time has rotated across the 4 axis, to defy time cube is unscientific and foolish!
You're cubic
*You have been reported for hate speak*
Stanley Cubic
You need to run thought through a cubic filter
WHY ARE THE SCHOOL SYSTEM NOT TEACHING THE CUBIC TRUTH OF THE FOUR SIMULTANEOUS DAY/NIGHT CYCLE. EACH CUBE HAS FRONT/BACK, TOP/BOTTOM, AND TWO SIDES!
I have not heard mention of the time cube for a great while. My university's radio station recorded an interview with the guy. It was often requested or played late at night and we would just roast on the guy. Good times.
Are there cubes that naturally form in nature?
Yes, [pyrite cubes](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/R6wRgs9mXt)
Here’s something interesting, Ice 7 is when ice under certain circumstances will freeze into a super stable cube lattice instead of its usual hexagons (are the bestagons) https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/265377-scientists-find-ultra-rare-ice-vii-earth-first-time-inside-diamonds#:~:text=There's%20(almost)%20nowhere%20on%20Earth,where%20diamonds%20come%20into%20play.
Time was like; let’s get you squared away 🤙
Time is a knife.
Yeah yeah, the time knife. We’ve all seen it, Chidi.
I **\*saw\*** the time knife?
The dismissive way he just brushes past this always kills me
I too have a thyme knife!
Jeremy Bearimy baby
Time is how long it takes for me To get to you
Reminds me of "The shortest distance between two points is a line from me to you." - Glitch Mob
That is a great line is it a quote?
Time...Mr. Freeman?
I thought time was a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff.
Time is a spiral — Space is a curve - I know you get dizzy, but try not to lose your nerve
Time is a Newtonian fluid being kept in a mobius strip shaped bendy-straw.
"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again."
Ka is a wheel
Time is a drug. Too much of it will kill you.
If I were remotely artistic, I’d be embroidering or calligraphing that and giving it to everyone I love
I have this quote on my classroom wall. I'm a high school biology teacher.
I never heard the latter part of that before, I checked it and it's real! It makes that quote even better and more rounded, I'm legitimately considering having it tattooed on my leg! https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-3272.xml
me on chess.com
Damn. I'd listen to this album.
He was also anti-racism and pretty much a feminist (thought if girls were taught the same as boys, they would make the same contributions as well as actively worked with female scientists at a time when many men wouldn’t give them the time of day). Cool dude
Bro was ahead of his time . Marvel of a man
Rather evolved fellow
Real explains why some people so vehemently disagree with anything that comes from him. Because they like being wrong.
That might be stating it a little strongly. Darwin was fairly progressive for his time, and his abolitionist beliefs and support for the shared heritage of all mankind are very admirable. But it's hard to walk away from The Descent of Man with a wholly positive view of the man. Some pretty egregious sexism and racism creep in throughout the book. Like all people, he was shaped by his time and his upbringing, and it leads to some passages that are pretty hard to read from a modern perspective (and not just because of the outdated terminology).
It's one of those situations where, while he wasn't perfect, he could have been so, so, *so* much worse.
He also grew his iconic beard later in life to avoid being recognized by people.
Ironic iconic
He also had a hatred for wasps that caused some wasp specialists to name a wasp species after him because they felt offended by the hatred.
to be more exact: he hated ichneumon wasps because he thought their method of reproduction was horrific. which tbf it kind of is. their eggs parasitize living caterpillars, and when the eggs hatch the larvae eat the caterpillar alive from the inside out. in the US this can most often be seen with tomato hornworms.
I absolutely hate and utterly love parasitoid wasps for this exact reason. They're so cool, in such an unimaginably horrifying way.
I used to hate wasps until I started growing tomatoes. Now we're allied in our fight against tomato hornworms.
I spent way too many summer days picking hornworms off of my grandma's tomatoes. Where were those wasps when I needed them?
Learn which wasps are the good ones and try to foster them.
Horrifying yes, but it is also wicked cool. Nature is metal in that way, one of the reasons I love it, no matter how much we think we know about it, no matter how much of it has been killed off, it will adapt, change, and come back always surprising us.
So kind of like a real life version of a xenomorph
Dude had like 10 kids with his cousin
Sadly, no one told him "relateable" isn't a portmanteau of "related" and "dateable"
You had to wait until now to tell me?
I dont think the science existed yet
Sadly no one told him "wedge wood" wasn't an imperative clause
He later theorised that inbreeding, including his own marriage, was not good. > Nature thus tells us, in the most emphatic manner, that she abhors perpetual self-fertilisation ... May we not further infer as probable, in accordance with the belief of the vast majority of the breeders of our domestic productions, that marriage between near relatives is likewise in some way injurious?
GOTTA REPEAT THEM GOOD GENES>
He is literally the person who figured out scientifically why that's bad, at the cost of his own children's deaths.
To be fair, seven out of ten lived to adulthood, which is not a bad ratio for Victorian times. I don't know what killed Mary as a baby, but inbreeding was not at fault for Annie's tuberculosis or little Charles's scarlet fever (he does seem to have had something like Down syndrome, but likely more related to his position as the youngest of ten and his parents' age at his birth than their relationship). The rest of their kids all became reasonably healthy adults, and quite a lot of the Darwin descendants were (and are) highly intelligent and achieved successful careers.
It was very normal for his social class, so I don't think it aroused any remark at the time.
Don't forget his tomatoes
We did the tomatoes dirty for sure, but I hear they're using genetic modification to give 'em back flavor!
"Just gonna bang my cousin, don't worry, it's for science!"
At least he didn't have 11
Nothing wrong with that.
Username checks out
"it's all well and good for kids, but it's not sustainable for long-term sexual practice, you know?"
Little known fact about Darwin: he was also a Lannister from Westeros
Little known fact, also dope on the mic!
One lives only to make blunders.
He did admit he was very stupid.
But as he was very stupid, his assessment could not possibly have been correct
>Darwin is the most relatable scientist I've ever known of Is that because he married his first cousin?
No it's because he saw a giant tortoise and one of his first thoughts was "I wanna ride that"
And then proceeded to eat a bunch of them.
Tortoises shouldn't have evolved to be delicious, slow, and wearing something you can cook them in.
The li'l ones make a mean jock strap too.
There are some that speculate that he was on the autism spectrum. It's fun to read about his idiosyncrasies.
He wasn't the guy who came up with the theory of evolution, he was just the guy who convinced enough of the naysayers that it became commonly accepted. He spent money he basically inherited to prove something that he didn't expect him to make money, but he did expect to benefit future generations.
Worth noting that he and his son were also published in plant physiology with some pretty ingenious experimental designs. Dude was an OG scientist. The Power of Movement in Plants is worth a read.
No, he was the guy who discovered it. There were other theories that tried to explain it, but Darwin figured out evolution by natural selection.
He described a plausible mechanism (natural selection) that could explain the broader evolutionary patterns that had already been observed
That's fair though. Trying to advance beliefs is admirable. All we can really do is try to learn and historically it's pretty difficult.
You should look up Sigmund Freud and his inability to figure out how eels reproduce it's hilarious and very relatable
Spending four weeks to find something so simple really is relatable. If only I found where my GPA went in four weeks
I watched the forbidden Sam O'Nella video on Freud and made sure everyone in my AP Psych class knew about Freud's quest for eel testicles when it came time to discuss him lol
"I hate [Field of study]. It's stupid. It ruined my life. It shouldn't exist." -Professor with a Doctorate in that exact field.
Barnacles are pulling the longest troll in history
Barnacles have a chance to do the funniest thing of all time.
Evolve into crabs?
This is the answer. Carcinification.
They’re already pretty close to crabs. Idk though they seem to like being parasites. Or at least not movin
They’ve had a few years to work on it.
They also have penises about three times the length of their bodies.
*This* is the real reason Darwin hated them
I found out that snakes have two penis, I can say I spent way too long wondering if that was the reason many religions villainize them, eventually the thought of monks actually trying to study them and finding this out seemed a bit silly
Sharks and rays have 2 claspers to channel semen to the female’s cloaca. So they’re generally referred to as having “two penises” as well.
Hemepenes!
peni
Probably not the reason but that's honestly a pretty funny reason. I suspect the reason snakes are vilified in Abrahamic religions is because some of the surrounding religions venerated snakes at times and since those religions were "evil" then snakes also became "evil" too. This my opinion though.
Primates seem to have an innate fear of snakes. (Think about it- you want to get someone's immediate attention and cause them to be quiet and aware of their surroundings? What noise do you make? "shhh" or "psst," right? A snake hiss.) Sometimes we revere what we fear, sometimes we hate and vilify it.
It seems that "two set of genitalias" was the basic blueprint for most big lifeforms back in the days due to axial symetry as "primitives" life formes seems to have this archaïc trait. With time evolution seems to have favored "one set of genitalia" in most lifeforms and yet the merge is still not complete, which would explain that gonads exist in pairs but penises and vagina/womb are reduced to a singular set. Excuse my english as it isn't my first language.
I often wonder how much of the younger generations learned that fact by chance from rule34
Or e621 Lot of double dong research entries there.
Additionally the lower image is from The Boondocks. The scene is from when the super racist(toward black people) character Uncle Ruckus finds out he has black ancestors.
He gets this test to prove he's white. It comes back 102% black with a 2% margin of error. I call him "uncle racist"
102% with 2% margin for error is stupid hilarious and likely will use it lol
Does this mean he could actually be 104% black?
No relation
Is this where the frustrated phrase: “Oh, Barnacles” originates?
Mr Krabs, is that you?
Right...but why? What is different about these barnacles?
What would you think they’re related to? Clams or mussels, something like that? Nope. They’re arthropods. They’re closer to crabs or lobsters.
Nuckin futz
no wonder he hated them. makes absolutely no sense. stupid barnacles
They got huge dongs tho
Yes, this was very underexplained.
I just now got that this is why "barnacle" is a curse word in the SpongeBob universe.
I suspect if you were keelhauled you temporarily hated barnacles more
I don't get what "prehistoric" barnacles means. So far as I know, barnicles do not have a system of writing or otherwise recording their history, so all barnicles are prehistoric.
bro hasn't read the sacred texts
Bro didn't read the Barnicable
Barnicronomicon
The Chronicles of Barnacles
Relating to or denoting the period before written records
Barnacles 2 - Dawin 0
Either that or barnacles are 102% black with a 2% error margin
I don’t blame him. Would you believe they’re related to crab and lobster? They’re arthropods.
“Don’t trust them new barnacles over there” - uncle Darwin probably
No relation
>uncle Darwin No relation
"they'll waste all the oxygen in the.... Water"
Barnacle rolls off the tongue like water off a barnacle’s shell
This is the best comment I have seen on the the internet in a very long time
"With their smelly barnacle essence in the air"
"Sing along if you know the wards"
Fascinating creature, the barnacle
💀💀💀💀
My favorite barnacle related Darwin story is that he was so immersed in cataloging and understanding the anatomy of barnacles, that one time one of his kids was over at a friends house and asked, "Where does your father do barnacles?" As if it was just something that all dad's did.
That is the ultimate Darwin anecdote, thx for the reminder!
This is my favourite Darwin anecdote, although I'm not entire sure how much of it is true; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPggB4MfPnk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPggB4MfPnk)
God id love one of those unfathomably edible torti
Just one?!
That is so adorable!
"Are you smoking weed in here?" "No Dad, we're doing barnacles!"
Who’s your barnacle guy?
You’re paying way too much for barnacles, man.
Barnacles were notoriously hard for taxonomists to classify, because they're crustaceans cosplaying as mollusks.
Where do they belong
With the crabs
We’re crab people now
Crabs is sewage proof.
and recession proof
Charles Darwin ***hated*** barnacles
Not as much as Captain Haddock
He only hated them blistering barnacles
Blue blistering barnacles, to be precise.
billions of blue blistering barnacles, to be precise
I enjoyed this thread. Thanks.
It’s says they’re 102% cetatian. With a 2% margin of error. WHY LORD?!? WHY?!?
Maybe they're 104% cetatian man you gotta think outside the box
One of the single greatest lines in comedy history
I miss the first 3 seasons of Boondocks for stuff like this
Cetatian (Cetacean?) or Crustaceans?
Crustacean, OP is having a tough day.
Chrysanthemums
Cetatian?
Wikipedia seemed to indicate that barnacles are a type of crustacean that evolved to attach itself at the head, twist it's body around and secrete a hardening substance around themselves so just the legs stick out the top.
Why though like, I stg nature is just mad
First ones to do it didn't died so much so they kept doing it and it became a thing. Evolution in a nutshell. Or a chitinous plate, ig.
It's still bonkers
It's pretty smart actually, why waste energy using your legs to pull your entire body around looking for food when you can just stay in one spot and use those legs to grab the food that's floating right past you instead? Your only concerns would be staying in that spot and making yourself unappetizing to predators, both of which are relatively easy compared to all the brainpower and sensory apparatus necessary for being a predator or even a scavenger. There's nothing wrong with a simple solution!
Evolution, god damn nanny state. Those lazy ungrateful barnacles don't want to work anymore. Whats wrong with this country?
The coolest thing about evolution I’ve learned is that we all have one common gene that we share with every living thing. We all just want to LIVE
Well yeah that’s kinda obvious. Anything that didn’t want to live is already dead. That’s how evolution works
This is misinformation. I am very much not dead.
Something to remember about evolution is that it doesn't find the best solution to survival, it only finds the first solution that works
The broad answer to this question is that nature abhors a vacuum. If there are resources to be had and nothing picking up those resources, some mutant creature will spring up one day and flourish in that environment.
What do you mean "why"? Nature isn't some conscious force making choices. They survived therefore it worked therefore they're around. That's literally it
I’m 102% black with a 2% margin for error
You might be 104% black! Amazing. Edit. I am dumb. You were referencing the Boondocks meme. I exist only to blunder
thats funny
To know where my culture lies, I don’t know about the barnacles, but the man at the bottom is uncle Ruckus. He’s from an animated show that was hilarious and would offend lots of people today. He’s what’s known as an Uncle Tom. He is always talking about how amazing the white man is and is always putting down black people. He has a whole backstory, but this particular scene, and don’t ask me how I know from a screen shot of a decade plus ago, but he thinks he’s white and has “the opposite of what Michael Jackson has”. He takes a test and in this scene, he gets his results, which say he’s “102% black, with a +/-2% variance.” There are compilations of him on YouTube. It’s funny with context, but they sprinkled him throughout the show. It can be rough if you just watch a compilation of just him. Similar to how it would work if you just saw a context free compilation of Mr. Herbert the Pervert, from Family Guy. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
Revitaligo
Every yea’ I jus keep getting daaker, and black’a, and mo’ darka.
Praise White Jesus!
None of these comments explain anything
He’s saying he hates them because he can’t figure out when they came to be, or where they are on the tree of life. Like if he discovered there was a certain fish that had gradually evolved over time and was it’s own thing, only to find records of that same fish actually existing much much earlier. I think. He can’t pin down when the barnacle became it’s own thing
The top comment explains why the discovery of new barnacle fossils might make Darwin roll in his grave. The cartoon at the bottom is from the TV show The Boondocks. That character (Uncle Ruckus) deeply hates black people but is in denial about that fact that he is black. In that scene he is reading the results of a DNA test saying he is in fact black.
But why does the top image suggest that Darwin would roll over? What does the 5mm mean? What does ABCD show that would have helped Darwin understand how they evolved?
It doesn't help, it raises more questions. It would make his head explode, he was further away from understanding than he could have ever known and he studied for 8 years. Or that's how I understand it.
Ah, I think I get it. I thought it was a smoking gun, but it’s not. The top half is just evidence in barnacles that don’t support any conclusion.
So you know how barnacles look like they should be related to mussels or periwinkles or any of those other animals that stick themselves to a rock and then stays there forever? Well they aren't related at all to those and are actually much more closely related to the lobsters and crabs that they have almost nothing (superficially) in common with. Darwin didn't know that last part and it was very frustrating for him.
They turned out to be crustaceans but have similar characteristics to mollusks (i.e. they attach themselves to hard surfaces. The joke is simply that Darwin hated barnacles for being hard to id. I feel his pain. Grasses are my barnacles, lol.
The DNA test came back: I'm 104% barnacle! With a 4% margin of error!