Please bring your bird feeders inside. Right now they’re just hubs for bird flu transmission, and the safety of the birds we love is more important than the pleasure we take from seeing them.

John Brosio (American, 1967) - Two Earthlings (2003)

A large nothronychus hen enjoying some delicious ferns.

A 2.4-billion-year-old basalt from the Palaeoproterozoic Ongeluk Formation in South Africa contains filamentous fossils in vesicles and fractures. The filaments form mycelium-like structures growing from a basal film attached to the internal rock surfaces. Filaments branch and anastomose, touch and entangle each other. They are indistinguishable from mycelial fossils found in similar deep-biosphere habitats in the Phanerozoic, where they are attributed to fungi on the basis of chemical and morphological similarities to living fungi. The Ongeluk fossils, however, are two to three times older than current age estimates of the fungal clade. Unless they represent an unknown branch of fungus-like organisms, the fossils imply that the fungal clade is considerably older than previously thought, and that fungal origin and early evolution may lie in the oceanic deep biosphere rather than on land.

This is so

I'm already love this series😍

#PrehistoricPlanet

CLADISTICS ruined my life

Man spinosaurus sure is my favourite dinosaur. It's only been about a year since the paper describing it as a 'giant flightless stork' got published. Surely nothing will have majorly changed since then!

Full video: Montezuma Oropendola in Costa Rica, Birdfun (sound on!)

“i grew out of my dinosaur phase” shut up. your dinosaur phase isn’t something you “grow out” of. real adults know that dinosaurs are cool as fuck.

So, I've been thinking about the tully monster a lot. And just general paleontology mysteries.

If you're unaware, this is the tully monster

And like, we have over 1200 fossils of this thing, they're very well preserved, and you'd think we'd know a lot about it with that many fossils in that good of detail.

No, not even close.

We have no ides what this thing is, we can't even tell if it's a vertebrate or not. Its description on wikipedia is literally "an extinct genus of soft-bodied bilaterian that lived in shallow tropical coastal waters of muddy estuaries during the Pennsylvanian geological period" All we can say for certain is it's soft-bodied, no armour, it has a weird jointed arm with a crustacean-like claw on the end, it has weird eye stalks that jut out from the side, and it had bilateral symmetry.

For decades, there's been debates going back and forth and back and forth about what on earth this thing is. It seems like every other week there's a new study that claims to have solved the case, only to get struck down by critics or other studies soon after. Like, see that line through the middle of the body on the fossil? People claim that's a nodacord, a sort-of primitive spine, other people say it can't be possibly be a nodacord because it goes past the eyes. It keeps going like this, back and forth over and over because honest to the gods we do not know what this thing is.

For me, the tully monster and others are like a glimpse into the past we'll never know.

There are currently 1.5 million recognized species alive on earth, with estimates saying there's likely around 10 million total species, that's 8.5 million unique animal species we have yet to classify, just in the life alive around us today. There have probably been around 4 billion species that have ever lived on this planet, and of that, 99% of it is extinct. There are, as of writing this, just over 280,000 fossil species known and classified. That's a lot, sure, but that is only a very small percent of everything that's lived on earth. There's definitely a lot more to be discovered and classified, like think of all the fossils that are sitting unclassified in museum drawers are in the collections of fossil collectors, all the fossils still buried in the dirt, and so much more. But, no matter how much we look, what we can know is finite, it is only a small part of the wonder that is the full picture of life on our planet. The past is like a vast murky ocean, and we're just playing in the shallows. Unless we can learn how to dive below the surface, what we can know will forever be limited to the upper reaches of the water. The tully monster and other strange fossils are like a brief break in the waves, a small tantalizing glimpse into what we will never know.

This is the tip of the iceberg, a tiny glimpse into what we can only imagine, into the sheer diversity and wonder of life, evolution's masterpiece. This is a past we cannot return to, and I find it incredibly fascinating.

CLADISTICS ruined my life

So, I recently saw on Twitter post about paleoartist Hank Sharpe being criticized (if that's even the word to use) by Andrea Cau. Normally, from the very little I've seen, paleoart is usually criticized for minor details, like the amount of feathering on a dino like T. Rex; however, this isn't what Cau does. He acts like a gatekeeping asshole.

This is the artwork itself on Cau's blog. Cau criticizes the head being 10% too small and the hip position being odd. So, typically the usual criticisms, but then he decides to bully the artist.

Yep, he compares this 19 year old artist to DAVE FUCKING PETERS, the most infamous paleoartist currently. Just to show how disgustingly wrong this is, here's art by Sharpe.

And this is Peters's depiction of pterosaurs.

Yeah, pretty big fucking difference in actual accuracy and outlandishness, don't you think?

Cau decides to get even worse by saying paleoart should become an academic study to basically get rid o what he doesn't like.

So, why did I write this?

The first reason is that this is an amazing example of how not to criticize a work. When you say shit like this:

You aren't giving feedback. You aren't trying to help a young adult fix some mistakes for future art. You're being a gatekeeping asshole that's hiding bullying as "it's just about the work."

The second part is the idea that paleoart is full of these wild and crazily innacurate and speculatory depictions that should be shut down and substituted. From what I've seen, paleoart is always going to have speculation and is an experiment on speculation- we don't know how fleshy they were, nor how they 100% behaved, so artists are allowed to take inspiration from modern nature and current understanding to experiment.

Also, some paleoart is just for fun. Sometimes you want to draw a dinosaur for your own entertainment and others for the sake of fun. These artists aren't being a Dave Peters, either. Art's also for fun.

So, apologies for the long post and odd writing (maybe I shouldn't have written this right after I woke up). But please don't pull what Dr. Cau did if you see paleoart.

Fantasia (1940)

Puppet Pals That Save Birds

Prepare for bird puppet spamming! These puppets are used in rehabilitation and captive breeding programs to prevent human imprinting in young birds.

San Diego Zoo & Safari park’s well known California Condor puppet that aids in the California Condor Recovery Program.

African Raptor’s Centre’s hyper realistic Bearded Vulture puppet used for propagation.

Saint Louis Zoo’s King Vulture puppet used for captive rearing of a King vulture chick.

Denver Zoo’s vulture puppet used for captive rearing of a Cinereous vulture chick. “Mmmmmmmmmm…” Sorry, just a Dark Crystal reference..

Liberty’s Owl, Raptor & Reptile Centre’s Falcon & Turkey Vulture puppets used for captive rearing.

Raptor head puppet used at Beijing’s Raptor Rescue Center for rehabilitation. *Extends Xenomorph baby feeding tongue.*

A childhood favorite! A sock puppet! Used at the Jersey Zoo for captive rearing Javan Green Magpies. (Cue Lamb Chop’s song!)

Last but not least, Philippine Eagle Foundation’s hyper realistic Philippine Eagle puppet used for propagation. This amazing puppet was made by Nambroth who makes spectacular bird related fursuit/cosplay pieces.

Just a heads up, if you are Asian don’t support Candid Sculpts’s racist ass

He is also known as @AntediluvianAnimals on Instagram or @ContriteLexicon on Twitter (not to be confused with Antediluvian Miniatures)

He also collaborates and cross promotes with Kayakasaurus who has been openly transphobic in the past and not shown any signs of change since and AKRex who is anti Black Lives Matter and against anti fascism

The Lost World, James Gilleard

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