Sun with spots, 1.5.2026. Image by @xipteras

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shark vs the universe
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2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year

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AnasAbdin
NASA
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open

#extradirty

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@pipuisci
Sun with spots, 1.5.2026. Image by @xipteras
It’s Fossil Friday! Take a bite out of the weekend with Dilophosaurus wetherilli, a carnivorous dinosaur that lived some 194 million years ago during the Early Jurassic. This dino acquired its name, which means “double-crested reptile,” from the paired crests on its skull. They were possibly used for display. This specimen was found in 1942 at the Kayenta Formation in Tuba City, Arizona. You can see it in the Museum’s Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs! To spot Dilophosaurus and other dinos, plan your visit. Photo: © AMNH
HiPOD: A Layered Mesa near Flammarion Crater
The objective of this observation is to examine layers in an eroded mesa. Some of the layers are well formed. The layers in this image may be matched with other ones we see in Arabia Terra. HiRISE can reveal many more details than what is visible in Context Camera data of the same area.
Grayscale cutout is less than 5 km across; enhanced color is less than 1 km. For full image including scale bars, visit the source link.
ID: ESP_076946_2050 date: 25 December 2022 altitude: 282 km
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Ok, lets have a look at this: Over the last few days a new paper in Science has led to MANY discussions in the paleo community and it appears to have breached containment into the wider world, judging by headlines and google results.
"Earliest octopuses were giant top predators in Cretaceous oceans" by Ikegami et. al describes a new beak of the basal octopus genus Nanaimoteuthis. And yeah, it's a whopper! Just look at the specimen next to a giant squid beak in this figure! They also note that...
...beak shows some intense, asymmetrical wear, indicating a lot of hard objects being processed by this beak. On top of that they assign the genus to the group Cirrata (finned octopuses and relatives) instead of Vampyromorpha as it was in past papers. This is were the hard facts end though.
Don't get me wrong: This must have been a huge animal, but I also think that anything beyond this is purely speculative. The authors give a total length of 7 to 19 meters, an enormous range, with an estimated mantle length of max 4.4 m. They base this on the proportions of finned octopuses and other close relatives but I would argue that is just math for the sake of math. We know VERY little about early octopuses. Their beaks are often the only thing preserved and their diversity in the Cretaceous remains murky.
That's the size part, what I have an actual problem with though is the way they deduce behavior, died and even cognition from this fossil. Based on the size, wear and asymmetry they propose that this animal would compete, maybe even hunt large marine reptiles, in a smart way.
That's plain bullshitting in my eyes. Intense wear on a beak suggests this animal would be durophagous, going after armored or hard shelled prey. cracking the bones of marines reptiles feels very contrived and modern day octopuses (that often eat crabs) don't look much different.
The asymmetry of the beaks is an interesting detail but I would NEVER derive an argument for higher cognition from that. Cognitive abilities are next to impossible to grasp from the fossil record even IF you have the brain. Which leaves the question what was this guy doing?
Short answer is: we don't know. As I hopefully illustrated here we have simply too few data points to make any concrete arguments for this animals appearance or lifestyle. HOWEVER
As people pointed out on Discord: crushing shells in an pelagic habitat is something that was a breeze in the Mesozoic. Ammonites in the cretaceous come in many different shapes but also sizes. 50 cm plus species are not rare.
We also know from the Jurassic there were likely other cephalopods that went after ammonites. So if the ammonites grew in the Cretaceous why shouldn't their predators as well? Beyond ammonites the Late Cretaceous also gave rise to a large to gigantic bivales like many inoceramids
This abundance of durophagous prey is also reflected in the predators, large sharks, mosasaurs and even giant chimeras took advantage of this plentiful food source. I therefore think a large ammonite predator is a much more likely niche for Nanaimoteuthis.
In my interpretation I pair the octopus with the giant ammonite Parapuzosia, these animals aren't known from the same localities but their time ranges overlap which makes it plausible to me that these guys, or close relatives, could have met.
Lastly I want to quickly talk about the promotion and reception of this publication. While I don't completely fault the authors for their writing - after all LOOK AT THE MODERN ACADEMIC CLIMATE - I do think it's troubling that the editor's note, the journal itself, immediately evokes the image of the Kraken, a mythological creature, to sell it's new paper. This in combination with Science being a high profile journal makes it feel as if the claims in this publication are standing on more solid ground than they do. This is just my personal opinion but I think this is just bad science communication. It is something that will echo through the online sphere for years to come and does not in any way promote the caution that I would expect when claims like these are presented. Subsequently the ideas and evocative speech of the paper have already spawned a large amount of paleoart that goes for the largest and most speculative sides of it. Again: I think the size estimates in the paper are certainly possible, but I also think a more critical examination of the text is warranted when presented with such incredible claims. I am not here to kill your fun. But I also think that we are maybe looking at something even more interesting that the (at this point) already rather old trope of the mosasaur eating squid. At least to me a giant mollusk eats mollusk world is cooler.
AS ALWAYS, these are simply my opinions on these matters, but I thought there was enough uncritical yay and nay saying about this paper that I felt like it should warrant a reaction. I think the paper describes fascinating material and I eagerly await more!
I'll be honest, (still) giant (but not overestimated *cough*Leedsichthys*cough*) octopus which eats giant ammonites is at least as cool as what was theorised in the paper.
Minor addendum: I heard about this from The Deep Sea Podcast and found it really interesting. Their latest episode went over this with a cephalopod expert, who pointed out a lot of issues, including some of the same ones that Knuppitalism did, such as:
while beak size is broadly indicative of overall size, a great way to realize how much variation there is is to compare the beaks of a Giants vs Colossal squid and then compare mantle shapes and sizes.
The differing wear on the beaks could be related to any number of things, up to and including mating habits.
“Handedness” as a correlative of intelligence doesn’t have a super strong support for it
Also, from the episode but not related to the paper: Apparently there are people in this world who can look at a modern squid beak and defuse the species, sex, and coital status of certain squid
ASTRONOMY PICTURE OF THE DAY April 26, 2026 at 05:00PM Can you find the comet? Somewhere through this web of satellite trails is Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS), a bright visitor passing through the inner Solar System. Now, the orbiting satellites themselves only appear as streaks because of the long camera exposure, over 10 minutes in this case. On the contrary, to the eye, satellites appear as points that drift slowly across the night sky and shine by reflecting sunlight -- primarily just after sunset and before sunrise. The featured image was taken just before sunrise two weeks ago from Bavaria, Germany. Presently, Comet R3 PanSTARRS is hard to see for even another reason -- because it is so (angularly) close to the Sun. As the comet rounds the Sun, it will be best seen in coming weeks from southern hemispheree skies, although then it will be heading out to interstellar space and fading. If you haven't yet found the comet, don't despair; please take a closer look just above the image center. Image: https://ift.tt/cHsZL9f via NASA https://ift.tt/7gUzR8n APOD --> https://ift.tt/EJWA1Bv
Beryl var. Aquamarine with Schorl, Feldspar and Hyalite Erongo Mountains, Erongo Region, Namibia, Africa
Star-field in Canis Minor. Modern Cosmologies. 1929.
Internet Archive
deberque
M104, The Sombrero Galaxy
ASTRONOMY PICTURE OF THE DAY April 23, 2026 at 05:00PM Sunlit arms of a crescent moon seem to embrace the faint lunar night side in this dramatic celestial scene from planet Earth. The single telephoto exposure tracking the sky was captured on the night of April 19, when a two day old Moon was near perigee in its elliptical orbit. On that date, the young Moon was also close on the sky to the lovely Pleiades Star Cluster. With the moonlight dimmed by clouds the Pleiades sister stars gather below the Moon's bright crescent, seen through a faint but colorful lunar corona. The lunar night side is illuminated by earthshine, sunlight reflected from the Earth itself. The Moon's ashen glow, also known as the "old moon in the young moon's arms", tends to be brighter in the northern hemisphere spring. And for now, the Moon's orbit takes it near the Pleiades stars each month in planet Earth's sky, though their close conjunctions are easiest to see when the Moon is near a crescent phase. Image: https://ift.tt/u7UWqZH via NASA https://ift.tt/SuWVGA4 APOD --> https://ift.tt/SPKlNp1
Astronomy Picture of the Day
2006 June 23
East of Antares
Credit & Copyright: Johannes Schedler (Panther Observatory)
Explanation: East of Antares, dark markings seem to sprawl through the crowded star fields toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Cataloged in the early 20th century by astronomer E. E. Barnard, the obscuring interstellar dust clouds include B72, B77, B78, and B59, seen in silhouette against the starry background. Here, their combined shape suggests smoke rising from a pipe, and so the dark nebula's popular name is the Pipe Nebula. This gorgeous and expansive view was recorded in very dark skies over Hakos, Namibia. It covers a full 10 by 7 degree field in the pronounceable constellation Ophiuchus.
Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
A service of: EUD at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.