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mrjefftheallosaures

SOMEBODY GET ME THROUGH THIS NIGHTMARE!!!!!

I CAN'T CONTROL MYSELF!!!!!

mitchipedia

#wonder how the people in the Megalania and Thylacoleo area of the park fared...

slasheru

i'm really hyped for you all to play Act 2 and one of the major reasons is: you'll finally know who the hell I'm talking about when I gush over my Act 2 hotties

nerdloves

Fingers crossed we get to smooch, shag, and go out with Ivan and Neil, I'm already having a blast with them on night one of the ball

ironychan

It's weird how geological time works. Eras start and end bit by bit over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. That sounds like a big uncertainty but that sort of timescale, on which the climate can overhaul itself completely and entire species rise and fall, is instantaneous compared to the age of the earth. Any hypothetical sentient creature would have no idea it was living through a major turning point. The Silurian slid into the Devonian as land plants became A Thing and insects started to wonder if 'pilot' might be a good career path, but there was no one moment when one thing ended and another began. That's not how that works...

... except for the Cretaceous. The Cretaceous had a Last Day and it was probably in April, and then the next day it was the Paleogene.

jurassicsunsets

So, fun fact: The Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary is defined, specifically, as the layer of the iridium anomaly. In other words, the roughly geologically synchronous event where the space dust rained out of the atmosphere.

Only....that's not the instant the asteroid hits. When the asteroid hits, the Earth's crust melts and freezes to glass, tidal waves flood continents, wildfires rage, and vaporised bits of Earth and the Chicxulub impactor are thrown into the air. This condenses and freezes to dust, which circulates in the atmosphere.

How long does that dust circulate before officially ringing in the Cenozoic by raining down onto the sediments of Earth? A few days. What's more amazing? On top of the fused glass of the crater, but below the iridium anomaly, are fossils of bacteria. Nothing is truly barren for long. Life's recovery begins instantly.

[Source]

nerdloves

That's not quite right regarding how the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary is defined, strictly speaking. In a very technical sense, the single criterion one looks for to separate the Cretaceous from the Paleogene is the presence of the Boundary Clay (the dark stripe you see in most pictures showing the extinction event), not the iridium anomaly, though the iridium spike was also voted on as the possible single definition criterion.

That said, the iridium spike is also one of the changes one sees right at the extinction boundary (among other things, like shocked quartz - essentially quartz that's undergone such intense pressure that it alters the lattice structure of the crystal - around the impact zone as well as other geochemical phenomena and the extinction of different plankton), and is indeed found within the sediments of the Boundary Clay layer.

Another fun factoid is that the iridium spike played a major role in us learning that there was an asteroid impact at this time, as it's an element that is incredibly rare on Earth but is relatively common in asteroids. The actual impact crater was found after the iridium anomaly, which is pretty cool!

Source: Molina, E., Alegret, L., Arenillas, I., Arz, J. A., Gallala, N., Hardenbol, J., von Salis, K., Steurbaut, E., Vandenberghe, N. & Zaghbib-Turki, D. (2006). The Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point for the base of the Danian Stage (Paleocene, Paleogene. Episodes Journal of International Geoscience, 29(4), 263-273.

uncharismatic-fauna

Uncharismatic Fact of the Day

Most sea snakes live in the sea, but the Lake Taal sea snake sure doesn't! This species is found only in Lake Taal, a freshwater lake on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. In fact, the lake was originally saltwater, but was closed off from the sea by a volcanic eruption in the 16th century, and the Lake Taal sea snake has since adapted to the drastic decrease in salinity.

(Image: A Lake Taal sea snake (Hydrophis semperi) by Chris Hay)

If you like what I do, consider buying me a ko-fi!

#i love lake snakes

uncharismatic-fauna

Uncharismatic Fact of the Day

What's the name of the world's biggest slug? 'Biggest slug', of course! The scientific name for the leopard slug is Limax maximus which literally means 'biggest slug' in latin. And it earns that name too, reaching lengths of 10–20 cm (4–8 in)!

You can read more about this species here.

(Image: A leopard slug (Limax maximus) by PJ Bernauer)

If you like what I do, consider buying me a ko-fi!

problematickuroboxes

[This user already ships Undertaker/Cloudia.]

#i have for so long #this better be canon

nevver

The lost world, Michael Kerbow

uncharismatic-fauna

Uncharismatic Fact of the Day

Most people fear going to the dentist, but dentists themselves bow down to the mighty chiton! These slug-like marine invertebrates have some of the strongest teeth in the world-- at least three times harder than human enamal-- and are lined with hard minerals like iron and silicate compounds which enable them to scrape minute bits of algae off of bare rock.

(Image: A gumboot chiton (Cryptochiton stelleri) by Sara Wickam)

If you like what I do, consider buying me a ko-fi!

#i want to be reincarnated as a chiton #among many other creatures

uncharismatic-fauna

Uncharismatic Fact of the Day

Can you do a backstroke? The horseshoe crab can! These creatures spend most of their time crawling along the ocean floor, but when they need to they can turn over and swim on their backs at a breakneck 0.54 kph (0.34 mph), using all six of their legs and the thick gills along their bellies-- called book gills-- to generate momentum.