Azurite with Malachite from Arizona
by Dan Weinrich
Wind Eroded Cave, Blackheath, NSW
This fantastic mineral here is Hawaiiite. Pure igneous gorgeousness! Seen here under crossed polars.
(Source: cambriangirl1)
Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, Whitmore Canyon Overlook (Explored) by darthjenni on Flickr.
(Source: therainretreat)
Mt. Monolith Viewed From Tombstone Valley by Marc Shandro on Flickr.
(Source: therainretreat)
Treveropyge Trilobite keychain. This was a request I was working on for an Etsy customer. Treveropyge Trilobites are known for their very large convex eyes. This is the first time I’ve used wire and beads on a plush, but I think it conveys the general compoundy-ness I was going for. :) And they look angry. Not quite the usual ‘adorable’ end result for me, but maybe that’s because I went a little bit more realistic (probably not color-wise, though hehe).
I feel like I almost have made enough of these to make a Brady Bunch type photo square of just the Anomalocaris (Anomalocarises? Anomalocari? Pluralizing creatures has never been my strong suit). These are often the creations I’ve made that I get the most search hits on and within the last few months the most requests for. Anomalocaris are fascinating and awesome at the same time so I can completely understand :)
I usually end up working on them while I’m work (I have a lot of down time and it’s more productive for me than staring at the wall). It’s always an interesting situation to try to explain to people what the heck it is that I’m making. Most of my creations are like that, but Anomalocaris in particular. Inevitably “Wait, so it’s NOT a dinosaur?” comes up haha. I guess that sort of confusion is more acceptable than my mom when she occasionally asks “How are your aliens selling?”
do want.
Konkordiaplatz (by kenyai)
can I just say that glaciers, basal sliding, and glacial plucking are all really fucking interesting? can I also add that I secretly wish I were a geologist?
Over the last few weeks, a number of disparate items converged in my mind. First, in my Petrology and Volcanology class here at Denison, we spent a week talking about what geologists know about triggers for volcanic eruptions. Secondly, I was asked some questions about Richard Branson’s April Fools’ jokeregarding the supposed Virgin Volcanic that would send a manned submersible into a volcano. Put these two ideas together, and you get to wondering about that age-old question: Could we trigger a volcano to erupt on purpose? This has been the realm of science fiction and conspiracy theorists for decades (centuries?), the idea that humans could figure out a way to get a volcano that isn’t erupting to start erupting.
Castorocauda
Art by Mark Klingler
When: Middle Jurassic (~164 million years ago)
Where: China
What: Castorocauda is an aquatic mesozoic mammal. It is known from a very well preserved slab specimen, which shows a suite of features indicating an adaptation to aquatic life. Its limbs were powerful, and easily capable of strong swimming or digging. Its tail was flattened, shown both by the soft tissues preserved on the slab, but also by its flattened caudal vertebrae, which are very simular to that of living swimming mammals, such as the beaver, otter, or platypus. This tail is what gives this Jurassic animal its name: Castorocauda translates to ‘beaver tail’. Its teeth were also specalized for aquatic life; they have primary cusps which curve backwards, which is seen in fish eating animals today, such as the seals. Castorocauda was about 17 inches (~43 cm) long, making it one of the larget Jurassic mammals.
Castorocauda would have looked somewhat like a platypus lacking a bill, but its diet was more like that of a seal. In the mammal family tree Castorocauda is far far removed from any living taxa. It is a member of a group called the Docodonta, just a few branches removed from one of the first Mammaliforms: Morganucodon. As Castorocauda clearly had fur in life, this puts fur extremely far down on the mammalian lineage. It has been hypothesized previously that even more basal taxa had fur, but there has been no conclusive evidence. As Castorocauda was completely coated in fur, except for much of its tail, it is extremely likely fur originated much deeper in the mammalian lineage, possibly in the non-mammalian synapsids.
The discovery of Castorocauda also shows that mesozoic mammals were much more ecologically diverse than has been previously proposed. Our ancient kin were not only small rat like insectivorous creatures that ran in the shadows of the dinosaurs; they swam, preyed upon dinosaurs themselves, and even flew (more on that one later)!
Livyatan melvillei
When: Miocene (~12 - 13 million years ago)
Where: Peru
What: Livyatan is a gigantic toothed whale. It is fairly closely related to the living sperm whale, and is thought to have been about the same size, at 45 feet (~14 meters) long. This is an estimate as the whole body was not found, but its head was fairly well preserved, and its skull alone is 10 feet (~3 meters long) Unlike the modern sperm whales, it had a full set of teeth in both its upper and lower jaws, and its lower jaw was not reduced compared to its skull. Inside these giant jaws were giant teeth, the largest of which are 1.2 feet (~36 cm) long. What did they eat with these massive jaws and gigantic teeth? Well, living sperm whales eat very large prey, such as giant squids and megamouth sharks with their comparatively small jaws and teeth. It has been suggested that Livyatan was feeding upon other whales at the time! Such as the reconstruction above where a Livyatan dramatically ruins the day of a Cetotherium (an extinct baleen whale).
The name ‘Livyatan melvillei’ is meant to bring to mind Melville and his famous white sperm whale Moby Dick. Originally the name published was Leviathan melvillei, but it had to be changed, as the genus name of Leviathan was already taken! It belongs to a poorly known species of mastodon named by a researcher in the mid 1800s. Thus, the spelling of this giant whale’s name had to be altered, as once a name is applied to something it is there forever! Let this be a lesson to carefully check your species names before you publish them, as there are a few cases of something like this happening. Mostly it seems species of theropod dinosaurs are accidentally given names that have already been applied to beetles. Whoops!
The area of Peru where Livyatan was found is today a harsh desert, but geologists think that during the Miocene this area was an ocean paradise; a warm shallow lagoon. Dozens of marine species have been found in this desert, not only a variety of toothed and baleen whales, but also sharks and pinnipeds.
Reconstruction by C. Letenneur, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France
Mei
When: Early Cretaceous (~125 million years)
Where: Liaoning, China
What: Mei is a paravian dinosaur. Paraves is the clade comprised of birds and two families of non-avian dinsaurs; Troodontidae and Dromaeosauridae. As Mei is a fairly basal member of the troodontids, it is not very far removed from the common ancestor of all paravians. Its bird-like heritage can be easily seen in this extraordinary articulated fossil shown above. This specimen was found in a sleeping pose, which is very much like the resting posture of many modern birds, with the legs folded underneath the body and the head folded back and resting on the shoulder. It is this pose that gives the taxon its full name: Mei long, which translates to ‘sleeping dragon’. This animal is a sub-adult, determined via the ends of its bones not yet being fused, and would be roughly 21 inches (~53 cm) long, if it was not curled up as it is.
The find of a basal troodontid in this pose gives us far more information than just when the sleeping posture was adapted by this clade. It has been determined that modern birds commonly sleep like this to preserve their body heat, covering up the areas that are most prone to radiating heat. If Mei long and its kin were not ‘warm blooded’ than there would be no benefit to sleeping in this pose. Thus, this provides another compelling bit of evidence that the ‘warm bloodedness’ of modern birds was present in their mesozoic non-avian relatives.
(via scientificillustration)
