“This piece was conceived after watching a documentary featuring great white sharks scavenging a whale. I imagined the numerous large carnivores which would be attracted to the corpse of a large marine reptile. In the picture, the floating carcass is dominated by a Cretoxyrhina, and several smaller Squalicorax - crow sharks - and a Tylosaurus. The little fish are Enchodus, the sabre-toothed herring. The gull-like birds flying overhead are Icthyornis, and the bizarre pterosaur, Nyctosaurus, is gliding into view.”
(via scientificillustration)
#animals
#fish
#aquatic life
#animal
#frogfish
#clown
#odd
#weird
#unusual
#interesting
#deep
#sea
#nature
#wild
#wildlife
#cute
#gorgeous
#adorable
#orange
#white
This mudskipper from Japan is a fish that spends much of its time out of the water. It can walk on land and breathe air. (Life - BBC)
(via theanimalblog)
Desk bookshelf in the museum.
We had a meeting with the UM President Royce Engstrom yesterday and were all very pleased with how things went! We look forward to giving him and his cabinet a tour of our museum collections sometime after classes are out this summer. During our short meeting I was able to show him some pictures of our Fish collection, as it’s an important and potentially hazardous situation that we can’t seem to bring enough attention to, not even considering the historical, educational, and cultural value of those specimens!
(Source: thebrainscoop)
Dunkleosteus
By Devonian standards, Dunkleosteus was highly evolved. It was one of the earliest jawed fishes. Instead of actual teeth, Dunkleosteus possessed two long, bony blades that could slice through flesh and snap and crush bones and almost anything else. Dunkleosteus had the most powerful bite of any fish, well ahead of sharks, including the Great White.
There are no modern descendants. Although Placoderms only existed for 50 million years, their mark on the fossil record is quite visible. They were a pioneer in the later scenes of the Paleozoic, and were vital to the success of the vertebrates. The Placoderms died out in the late Devonian for reasons that are still not well understood…
(read more: Dinopedia) (image: Raptor555)
(via scientificillustration)
matthewvonhumboldt: FUCK YEAH, HELICOPRION!!!
This is seriously a shark: Helicoprion. It originated in the Carboniferous and went extinct in the Triassic. It has a crazy whorled serrated jaw like a saw!
(via scientificillustration)
Meet the Alligator Gar. This big fish can reach a length of 14 ft and weigh up to 350lbs. It can breathe both water and air (for up to 2 hours) and has been unchanged for over 100 million years.
(Source: thepredatorblog, via ourcreatures)
Bubble-eyes!
Histoire naturelle des dorades de la Chine. 1780
(via scientificillustration)
