at this point I think I have to just accept that my health isn't going to play ball with me, so I'm going to publish this forever-draft and hope that someone else picks up the pieces. the pieces to the puzzle of "fuck you Meig, I detest how you are seen as the face of dinosaur tumblr"
let's talk about a-dinosaur-a-day
meig's other blogs
so ey runs a-dinosaur-a-day, jewish-kulindadromeus, and zygodactylus
what does meig think of guilt by association?
let's play by eir rules then
underneath the cut is stuff I gathered from the people in that post's blogs. tw for anti arabism and islamophobia and other stuff I don't remember
let's look at another post reblogged by Meig
you can't preach about "nazis at your table" while having fucking david-goldrock on your blog like it's nothing. tw again for islamophobia and anti-arabism
Meig hates being called a zionist, and has many posts going on about "why do people always call me a zionist, don't they know I'm super wishy washy centrist 'both sides bad' on this issue??"
like I didn't even go into the fact that ey is mutuals with shofarsogood, who in turn is mutuals with prismatic-bell
this isn’t a callout and there isn’t anything wrong with this post in and of itself, let me gripe
ID: screenshot of a post reblogged by @jewish-kulindadromeus
@sinothetimes: “while l'm on a roll of no longer giving a shit, I also think it's stupid to pretend that the rise in antisemitism, while terrifying, is a bigger issue than the active genocide being perpetrated in Gaza. like, the hate and the potential for things to get worse in the future is incredibly horrible. the fact that most like well over 100,000 gazans have been murdered in the last year is inherently worse because those people are dying right now. this is not saying stop talking about antisemitism but that is me saying if you use leftist antisemitism as an excuse to turn your back on the ACTIVE GENOCIDE youre kind of a shitstain.
End ID
what really grinds my gears is when someone like a-dinosaur-a-day/jewish-kulindadromeus/zygodactylus has the gall to act like eir’s not part of the problem.
EDIT I FORGOT TO ADD A CUT
ID: a set of screenshots showing @jewish-kulindadromeus reblogging from @shofarsogood, @starlightomatic, @notyourgoodjew, @tributary, @jewishlivesmatter, @yidpunk. End ID
(eventually i will have posts about all those blogs, but these take a long time to make because of the image descriptions but i will not skimp on accessibility. but if you know these blogs you know)
it’s good to have issues with how people use talking about antisemitism as a reason to ignore the genocide, but clearly ey doesn’t care too much about people doing that type of shit. a post here and there about how ey doesn’t believe in violence and reblogging a couple gazan donation posts doesn’t cancel out the much much more frequent posts reblogged from people who would like everyone to stop talking about the genocide pretty please
like it rings so fucking hollow when a few days later ey goes and reblogs this (on eir other blog)
ID: a screenshot of a post that @zygodactylus reblogged from @jewish-rock
@anshelsgendercrisis:
an image of the meme of two spider-men pointing at each other. one of them has the text “ppl who use "zio" as a slur for jews” and the other one has “ppl who use "pali" as a slur for palestinians”. the text of the post says “get it bc ur both extremist assholes who are making things worse.”
literally their entire ideology other than whose side they happen to be on”
End ID.
again it’s not the post itself (stupid as it fucking is), it’s the poster or rather who ey reblogged it from. this is @jewish-rock on the same day that @jewish-kulindadromeus/zygodactylus reblogged a posts which ends with “if you use leftist antisemitism as an excuse to turn your back on the ACTIVE GENOCIDE youre kind of a shitstain.”
ID: two screenshots of a post reblogged by @jewish-rock
@jewish-mccoi: “Can we talk about how fucked up it is that Jews and Israelis have no safe spaces online? And if we dare complain, we're told we're whining and other groups have it worse.
And no one seems to either notice or care. The pro Palestine movement is infested with antisemitism. Leftist spaces are infested with antisemitism. It's impossible to engage with the pro Palestinian movement because to do so, they demand you denounce Israel's existence and make you be their token Jew. Like no? The fuck gives you the audacity?
I'm tired of walking on eggshells around leftists for fear of being called a colonizer or a genocide apologist because guess what??? It doesn't fucking matter what I say, you're gonna do it anyway, because I'm an evil Jew!
I could talk till I'm blue in the face about cease fires or how Hamas is purposefully putting civilians in harms way, but the second I do, people are like "oh you mean Israel. Israel is the problem." Actually, you fucking black and white thinker, ISRAEL IS NOT ALWAYS THE PROBLEM. Israel has done fucked up things. So has every fucking country on earth. But the news is dominated by "Israel is awful" and "wipe Israel off the map." Why do you think that is.
IT'S ANTISEMITISM. It's just that simple. Really fucking is.
And because the movement keeps flooding Jewish tags on tumblr with antisemitism, I am gonna tag this so the "river to the sea" people ACTUALLY ADVOCATING GENOCIDE can have their safe spaces (Jew free spaces) interrupted. I'm tired of taking the high road.
You all would rather side with terrorists than Jews. That's how bad the leftist problem with antisemitism is. Terrorists who admit to using rape and murder and torture ON CIVILIANS as tactics. That's how much you fucking hate us.
Well, tough fucking luck. We're here and we're not going anywhere. Am yisrael chai, fuckers.”
End ID.
at most mildly perturbed by people using leftist antisemitism as an excuse to turn their back on an active genocide, not enough to unfollow them though
i find it so fucking spineless. be mutuals with & follow a shitload of zionists who have spent the last 11 months downplaying and trying to distract from the endless massacres in gaza, who try to discredit any and all efforts to help people who are fenced in & bombed. but claim moral righteousness by every now & then going “war is bad you guys, can’t we all be friends, i don’t support either side i support peace”, thinking that absolves you for supporting those people
Referred Species: Z. grivensis, Z. ignotus, Z. luberonensis, Z. grandei, Z. ochlurus
Status: Extinct
Time and Place: Between 52 to 17 million years ago, from the Ypresian of the Eocene through the Burdigalian of the Miocene
Zygodactylus is known from the Fossil Butte Member of the Green River Formation, the Renova Formation, the Revest-des-Brousses Formation, and the Wintershof-West Formation, a range extending over both North America and Europe
Physical Description: Zygodactylus was a small tree-dwelling bird, about the size of living tyrant-flycatchers (so no more than 12 or so centimeters long, probably usually smaller than this). It resembled living songbirds in most ways - it had a round body, small head, long and very skinny legs, and round wings. However, Zygodactylus differed from extinct songbirds in one very notable and important way: instead of having three toes pointed forward and one toe pointed backward, Zygodactylus had two toes pointed forward and two backward. This is important for evolutionary biology related reasons - which I’ll get into in the “other” section. They also had long, pointed beaks, like many kinds of living passerines. Any potential color of Zygodactylus has not been studied, but it stands to reason that it would have some distinct patterning to stand out during mating displays and in its forested habitats.
Diet: Based on the shape of the beak, it seems likely that Zygodactylus fed mainly on invertebrates and insects, using the sharp beak to spear slimy food or dig into bark for hidden grubs.
By Ripley Cook
Behavior: Zygodactylus would have been a primarily tree-dwelling bird, spending most of its time walking among the branches and searching for food. It would have used its specialized foot structure to hold onto tree branches and even trunks, though its toes were small and skinny and not the most adapted for trunk-grabbing. It would have probably spent a good amount of its time hopping from tree to tree on its quest, and possibly dug into wood to find food. This was a common bird, and as such it stands to reason that Zygodactylus would have been at least somewhat social - though whether that took the form of small family flocks or large flocks is uncertain. It would have taken care of its young, though beyond that we know little of its behavior.
Ecosystem: Zygodactylus lived for an extremely long period of time in Earth’s history, going from the origins of many modern groups of birds in the Eocene until the diversification of these groups into their specific families in the Miocene. In general, Zygoadctylus kept to forested environments, even as the global rainforest of the Eocene depleted and was replaced by more varied habitats, including vast arid shrubland and the first grasslands. Zygodactylus is known from such varying environments from the rainforest-lake of the Green River Formation, to a coastal mangrove forest, to a shoreline wood.
Green River Formation by Julius Cystoni
In the lakeside rainforest of the Green River Formation, Zygodactylus lived amongst sycamore trees along with ferns and palms, affected by the constant change of the Rocky mountains around them - which would periodically dump phosphorus into the lakes. There were a variety of fish such as rays, catfish, suckers, and herrings and sardines. Crocodiles like Borealosuchus were frequent, as well as many early primates, hoofed mammals, bats, and an armadillo-esque mammal. Dinosaurs were some of the most iconic creatures at the Fossil Lake, including the seagull-like Frigatebird Limnafregata, the flighted ratites Pseudocrypturus and calciavis, the flamingo-duck Presbyornis, the pheasant Gallinuloides, the early swift-hummingbird Eocypselus, the frogmouth-esque Fluvioviridavis and Prefica, the mousebird Anneavis, the woodpecker Neanis, the Parrots of Prey Cyrilavis and Tynskya, and Zygodacytlus’ own cousin Eozygodactylus. Of these, Zygodactylus would have had to watch out the most for its own relatives, the Parrots of Prey!
In the Dunbar Creek member of the Renova Formation, Zygodactylus lived in a more transitional environment, as the global rainforests were replaced with plains and other arid habitats. Here there were a variety of pine trees, as well as flowering plants like violets, roses, grapes, maples, and nogals. This was a series of woods surrounding ponds and streams feeding into said ponds, with plenty of habitats for Zygodactylus to hang out in. There were plenty of mammals here, including early dogs and horses, marsupials and rabbits, rodents and brontotheres, as well as rhinos. Other birds are not known from this formation.
By Ashley Patch
In the coastal mangrove of the Rupelian of Southern France, Zygodactylus was joined by a wide variety of mammals - including rodents, horse relatives, ruminants, hedgehogs, and truly weird and giant hoofed mammals like Anthracotherium. As for other dinosaurs, there were early trogon relatives like Primotrogon, early hummingbirds like Eurotrochilus, early cuckoos like Eocuculus, and crane relatives like Parvigrus.
Finally, in the shoreline woodland of the Burdigalian of Germany, Zygodactylus lived among a wide variety of flowering trees, more so than conifers that had been more prevalent in the Eocene. Asterids, buckthorns, grapes, maples, and magnolias were especially common. Here, rodents were the primary mammalian neighbors, though there were some ruminants, bats, and carnivorous mammals like Prosansanosmilus. Snakes were even more common, though, and would have been major predators of Zygodactylus, such as boas and cobras. Birds were rarer here, though the pheasant Paleortyx was present alongside Zygodactylus.
By Jack Wood
Other: Zygodactylus is of fundamental importance because it is a missing link - a fossil that confirms the weird relationships we recover with genetic data. For a long time, genetic studies of the relationships between birds revealed a result literally no one would guess based on their shapes and ecologies: parrots and passerines were sibling groups. This was a major disconnect for researchers, since for a long time it was thought that passerines were more closely related to some of the other large tree-dwelling dinosaur groups with three toes forward and one back - namely, mousebirds and quetzals. So, what was needed was something linking the creatures with two forward and two back - like passerines - and the three forward one back songbirds. Zygodactylus and its relatives were the answer to that question. Being - by and large - almost identical to living passerines, these ancient birds had the legs and bodies of their living relatives, but the feet of their cousins. This showcases that, in terms of evolving for tree-dwelling, songbirds focused on their wing shape and skinny legs before changing up their feet. This makes Zygodactylus - and its relatives - utterly vital transitional fossils for the evolution of the most speciose group of living dinosaurs, the songbirds.
Species Differences: Z. grivensis and Z. grandei are known from the Green River Formation of Wyoming, with Z. grandei having shorter foot bones; Z. ochlurus is known from the Dunbar Creek Member of the Renova Formation; Z. luberornensis is known from the Revest-des-Brousses Formation of France; and Z. ignotus is known from the Wintershof-West of Germany.
~ By Meig Dickson
Sources under the Cut
Grande, L., P. Bucheim. 1994. Palaeontological and Sedimentological Variation in Early Eocene Fossil Lake. Contributions to Geology, University of Wyoming 30: 45.
Hieronymus, T. L., D. A. Waugh, J. A. Clarke. 2019. A new zygodactylid species indicates the persistence of stem passerines into the early Oligocene in North America. BMC Evolutionary Biology 19: 3.
Hutchison, J. H. 2013. New turtles from the Paleogene of North America. In D. B. Brinkman, P. A. Holroyd, J. D. Gardner (eds.), Morphology and Evolution of Turtles 477-497
Mayr, G. 2008. Phylogenetic affinities of the enigmatic avian taxon Zygodactylus based on new material from the early Oligocene of France. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 6(3):333-344
Mayr, G. 2009. Paleogene Fossil Birds. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
Mayr, G. 2017. Avian Evolution: The Fossil Record of Birds and its Paleobiological Significance. Topics in Paleobiology, Wiley Blackwell. West Sussex.
Olson, S. L. 1977. A Lower Eocene frigatebird from the Green River Formation of Wyoming (Pelecaniformes: Fregatidae). Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 35:1-33
Olson, S. L., H. Matsuoka. 2005. New specimens of the early Eocene frigatebird Limnofregata (Pelecaniformes: Fregatidae), with the description of a new species. Zootaxa 1046: 1 - 15.
Smith, M. E., B. Singer, A. Carroll. 2003. 40Ar/39Ar Geochronology of the Eocene Green River Formation, Wyoming. Geological Society of America Bulletin 115 (5): 549 - 565. Stidham, T. A. 2014. A new species of Limnofregata (Pelecaniformes: Fregatidae) from the Early Eocene Wasatch Formation of Wyoming: implications for palaeoecology and palaeobiology. Palaeontology: 1 - 11.
Smith, N. A., A. M. DeBee, J. A. Clarke. 2018. Systematics and phylogeny of the Zygodactylidae (Aves, Neognathae) with description of a new species from the early Eocene of Wyoming, USA. PeerJ 6: e4950.
Amazing #Chameleon scan from an illustration project with Sarah Horsley. Anatomically, Chameleons are one of the craziest things out there! The crest of an Oustaletts Chameleon (top left) The #zygodactylus #MittenHands (bottom left) The #PrehensileTail (top right)#ILoveNature I know it's a reptile, but this thing is #AmphibiousAF (at The Amphibian Foundation) https://www.instagram.com/p/BtMpbfaHUja/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=17xlqaldd6eem
Zygodactylus grivensis, Z. ignotus, Z. luberonensis
By Jack Wood on @thewoodparable
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Name: Zygodactylus grivensis, Z. ignotus, Z. luberonensis
Zygodactylus is an extremely important genus of dinosaur because of its corroboration of two important things - fossil phylogenies, and molecular phylogenies. Unfortunately, even though we have living representatives of a lot of dinosaur groups, their relationships to one another are still something of a mystery. The fossil record, based on the various details of the bones, indicates one thing - and oftentimes, the trees generated by their genes (molecules) indicates another.
By Guidy Cook on @iguanodont
So, when fossils can be found to link the two together - scientists across the board rejoice! In this case, it was long thought that passerines - the most diverse clade of dinosaurs, the songbirds - were more closely related to other tree-dwelling birds with anisodactyl feet (three toes forward, one toe back) and similar ecologies, like mousebirds and quetzals; however, molecular analyses found that passerines were actually more closely related to the zygodactylous (two toes forward, two toes back) parrots. This was a shock - how could this be?
By José Carlos Cortés on @quetzalcuetzpalin
Zygodactylus was the answer. A bird with feet like parrots - very similar feet to parrots, in fact - but the rest of its traits were actually more similar to songbirds! With long and slender legs (like those of passerines as opposed to the more stocky legs of parrots), average beaks, and general shape like that of passerines apart from the zygodactyl, parrot like feet, they look shockingly like a “midway step” between the two distinct looking groups. Some members of its group even have leg shapes that are utterly unique to passerines! So what do Zygodactylus and its relatives tell us?
By Ashley Patch on @palaeoshley
They tell us that modern passerines evolved from a similar-to-parrot footed bird, and they re-evolved the three toes forward, one toe back configuration after the fact. And we never would have known that without fossils! What a time to be alive. Zygodactylus specifically lived for a long time, and it and its relatives were some of the most common tree-dwelling birds of the mid-Cenozoic. It lived from 52 to 17 million years ago, in the Ypresian age of the Eocene of the Paleogene to the Burdigalian age of the Miocene of the Neocene, and is known from the Green River Formation of Wyoming, the Revest-des Brousses of France, and the Wintershof-West of Germany.
Sources:
Mayr, G. 2017. Avian Evolution: The Fossil Record of Birds and its Paleobiological Significance. Topics in Paleobiology, Wiley Blackwell. West Sussex.
Mayr, G. 2009. Paleogene Fossil Birds. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
