Howdy fellas!

I wish I had some damn coffee

[amnhnyc]

Happy Birthday to Mary Anning, the “Mother of Paleontology!” Born on this day in 1799, she hailed from Lyme Regis on the coast of Dorset, England, and grew up collecting fossils. At age 13, she unearthed a skeleton of a giant marine reptile, one of the first ichthyosaurs. In her late twenties, she discovered Dimorphodon, the first pterosaur found outside continental Europe, on the beach cliffs at Lyme Regis. At the time, headlines celebrated Anning and her “flying dragon.” Her discovery proved that these flying reptiles were varied and had a wide range.

Image: Library of Congress

[coffepoweredwriter]

Just a reminder that the relationship between your characters doesn't have to sound coherent to be appealing. The narrative will tie it all together. Trust yourself. Remember: The Emperor's New Groove is a movie about a spoiled young monarch turned into a farm animal and the peasant whose house he fully plans on leveling to build a private vacation home going on a two-man journey against an evil sorceress with delusions of power and her overachieving henchman, who she barely tolerates because the single task he doesn't exceed at is carrying out her evil deeds, which is the single job he is given. And it is a brilliant piece of media.

[psalidodont]

i think i fucked up

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

This might sound a bit random, but how do you go about reconstructing the ears of extinct mammals, along with other stuff that doesn't really fossilize?

Oh boy, that's always tricky, and I am by no means an expert in it.

I usually look at the closest living relatives, past that the skull can tell you some stuff, like the ear opening tells you where it should sit, but when it comes to the shape there is usually not much to use for reference.

Climate and ecology can play somewhat of a role. Like how mammoth ears are quite small, while extinct proboscideans in hotter climates must have had larger ones, but the further you go back in time the less certain it gets. Digging mammals might also have large, directional ears to pinpoint prey under the earth, but the more fossorial they get the more large ears can become a hindrance.

When it comes to reconstructing the snout there are a few more things to go off. The family a mammal is in usually already gives you some pointers. Marsupials usually have not that much soft tissue beyond the bone while for example, manatees are the exact opposite. The size, position and direction of the nasal opening are another factor as is the size and position the infraorbital canal, that somewhat informs you about size and shape of the snout or how prominent whiskers might be. That is actually one of the major pointers for us in the moment when hair appears in synapsids, as this canal directly feeds them.

There are many more things one could talk about. When the skull is well enough preserved one can reconstruct it really forensic style, muscle by muscle, but I usually lack the knowledge for that, I leave that to the mammal experts.

The good thing with mammals is that we do know a lot about them, it's just a matter of learning all about it :P

[levshany]

ahhhh!! this is where 2 months of my life went lmao. worth it

audio from: Bee and Puppycat

programs used: TVPaint Animation and CapCut (Im so tough, I know) for filters and editing

you can watch full speedpaint/process video on my Boosty

[collemblogging]

everyone loves a classic! (vitronura giselae)

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

On tonight's Walking With Flocking #paleostream we covered Ornithocheirus, Brontoscorpio, Liopleurodon and Koolasuchus.

It was a stream in memory of Benjamin Bartlett you passed away the other day, among other things he composed the soundtrack for Walking With Dinosaurs, Beasts and Monsters.

[aplpaca]

big fan of when animals creche. Love to see so many fucking babies in one place

[aplpaca]

So a creche in ecology is a group of animals that take care of their offspring as a group. Grouping together like this can help with protection against predators, finding food, enduring the weather, and gives the parents time to "rest", as sometimes the parents will alternate who's being the primary watchers while others get to hunt by themselves for a bit, like a baby animal daycare.

But ye lions do this once cubs each a certain age. A decent amount of birds do it (for example: flamingos and a lot of penguin, duck, and goose species). Gharials (a type of South Asian crocodilian) form creches with hundreds of babies from multiple nests (they lay under 100 eggs each and sometimes as few as 20). Feral hogs tend to form groups of mothers and young like this, and I saw 3 sows and like 15+ tiny babies the other day and they were so cute

But ye that's how you get pictures like these

[tumorhead]

Rattlesnakes will creche!! In some species mature adult females will hang out together (they're friends!) in shared dens and even birth their clutches together. Then one will babysit while the others go get food. Adult females have been seeing caring for their young like shooing young back into the den when a predator approaches. You can watch LIVE rattlesnake den mothers and all their babies on Project Rattlecam!!!!

[every-day-creechur]

Painted Tree Rat Callistomys pictus

A rodent from the state of Bahia, Brazil. The painted tree-rat is found in the Atlantic forest. It also occurs in cocoa plantations where some native trees remain. As far as known, it is nocturnal.

Endangered

image by Oberdan Nunes

[herpsandbirds]

Blue Ridge Two-lined Salamander (Eurycea wilderae), family Plethodontidae, Gatlinburg, TN, USA

photograph by Chad Keates

[milobyte]

she has so much aura (ionizing radiation)

[herpsandbirds]

Desert Spiny Lizard (Sceloporus m. magister), male displaying in breeding colors, family Phrynosomatidae, Arizona, USA

photograph by susan11111fca

[notatzimisce]

"Centipedes don't fuck" is one of my favorite animal facts. There are plenty of sexually reproducing animals that don't fuck per se (like a lot of fish) but centipedes don't even meet. Males just leave sperm packets lying on the fucking ground and females pick them up and take them home. They don't even hang out

[hannahp0calypse]

[necronatron]

I think... I never shared this here. I could be wrong, but I am unsure.

[celebrinienjoyer]

i need to show you all something that made me crylaugh last night. just fucking look at them.

[thesylverlining]

It's fine they just went a little nuts with the character creation face sliders

[ubercharge]

look. look at this beautiful sword meme. i’m going to cry

[literallybyronic]

@petermorwood

[petermorwood]

I saw and reblogged this one a while back, but it’s always worth repeating, and this time I’m adding a bit of background info comparing common fantasy sword features to the Real Thing (with pictures, of course.)

Leaf-bladed swords are a very popular fantasy style and were real, though unlike modern hand-and-a-half longsword versions, the real things were mostly if not always shortswords.

Here are Celtic bronze swords…

…Ancient Greek Xiphoi…

… and a Roman “Mainz-pattern” gladius…

Saw or downright jagged edges, either full-length or as small sections (often where they serve no discernible purpose) are a frequent part of fantasy blades, especially at the more, er, imaginatively unrestrained end of the market.

Real swords also had saw edges, such as these two 19th century shortswords, but not to make them cool or interesting. They’re weapons if necessary…

…but since they were carried by Pioneer Corps who needed them for cutting branches and other construction-type tasks, their principal use was as brush cutters and saws.

This dussack (cutlass) in the Wallace Collection is also a fighting weapon, like the one beside it…

…but may also have had the secondary function of being a saw.

A couple of internet captions say it’s for “cutting ropes” which makes sense - heavy ropes and hawsers on board a ship were so soaked with tar that they were often more like lengths of wood, and a Hollywood-style slice from the Hero’s rapier (!!) wouldn’t be anything like enough to sever them. However swords like this are extremely rare, which suggests they didn’t work as well as intended for any purpose.

I photographed these in Basel, Switzerland, about 20 years ago. Look at the one on the bottom (I prefer the basket-hilt schiavona in the middle).

A lot of “flamberge” (wavy-edge) swords actually started out with conventional blades which then had the edges ground to shape - the dussack, that Basel broadsword and this Zweihander were all made that way.

The giveaway is the centreline: if it’s straight, the entire blade probably started out straight.

Increased use of water power for bellows, hammers and of course grinders made shaping blades easier than when it had to be done by hand. This flamberge Zweihander, however, was forged that way.

Again, the clue is the centre-line.

Incidentally those Parierhaken (parrying hooks - a secondary crossguard) are among the only real-life examples of another common fantasy feature - hooks and spikes sticking out from the blade.

Here are some rapiers and a couple of daggers showing the same difference between forged to shape and ground to shape. The top and bottom rapiers in the first picture started as straights, and only the middle rapier came from the forge with a flamberge blade.

There’s no doubt about this one either.

The reason - though that was a part of it - wasn’t just to look cool and show off what the owner could afford (any and all extra or unusual work added to the price) but may actually have had a function: a parry would have been juddery and unsettling for someone not used to it, and any advantage is worth having.

However, like the saw-edged dussack, flamberge blades are unusual - which suggests the advantage wasn’t that much of an advantage after all.

Here’s a Circassian kindjal, forged wiggly…

…and an Italian parrying dagger forged straight then ground wiggly…

There were also parrying daggers with another fantasy-blade feature, deep notches and serrations which in fantasy versions often resemble fangs or thorns.

These more practical historical versions are usually called “sword-breakers” but I prefer “sword-catcher”, since a steel blade isn’t that easy to break. Taking the opponent’s blade out of play for just long enough to nail him works fine.

NB - the curvature on the top one in this next image is AFAIK because of the book-page it was copied from, not the blade itself.

The missing tooth on that second dagger, and the crack halfway down this next one’s blade, shows what happens when design features cause weak spots.

So there you go: a quick overview of fantasy sword features in real life.

Here’s a real-life weapon that looks like it belongs in a fantasy story or film - and this doesn’t even have an odd-shaped blade…

Just a very flexible one…

If you want more odd blades, Moghul India is a good place to start…

[ubercharge]

i could not ask for a better addition to my meme post than blade education thank you so much

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

It’s not fantasy anatomy, but knowing stuff about the objects you put in your fantasy world is also very important

[zarithial]

@ncat

[martenfangs]

[x]