I Reblog The Old Stuff @wow-oldaf - Tumblr Blog

frostedmagnolias

Two-Piece Ceremony Dress

c. 1898-1899

Purple silk velvet, chemical lace, silk organza

Pitti Palace

tridentandtales

Greek bust of Tritoness (a minor sea goddess and female counterpart to Triton) or Scylla

Hellenistic period, late 200s BCE

Cleveland Museum of Art 1985.184

the-uss-premise

Console buttons from Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-69)

dark-magician-girl-meets-world

Culturally significant forbidden candy

movedtofailhag2

victorian mourning locket

memories-of-ancients

Gilded silver reliquary casket, England, early 14th century

from The British Museum

wandering-jana

The Ancient Roman House of the Birds, named for its mosaic with 33 different bird species.

Italica, Spain

Dec. 2019

memories-of-ancients

Shell, limestone, and lapis lazuli game board, city of Ur, Sumer, circa 2450 BC

from The Penn Museum

metmuseum

Masked Figure. 7th–9th century. Credit line: Gift of Albert J. Grant and Monique Grant Joint Revocable Trust, 2014 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/318468

memories-of-ancients

Silver buckle, Sweden, 1100-1500 AD

from The Historiska Museum, Sweden

fixyourwritinghabits

Dino people, I am abusing my blogging power to ask a critical question. The image below is a reconstruction of Sue, the T-Rex skeleton at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. This replica is considered to be accurate based on what we know thus far.

My question is this: How do we know this is the correct size of her eyes? Is it based on the size of her skull or something else?

werevampiwolf

They can see how big the eye sockets are from the skull. Also, most dinosaurs had bones called scleral rings, which are bones inside the eyeball. I don't know if we have any examples of T. rex that preserved them, but we do have other therapods.

(The info page is by @alithographica )

werevampiwolf

I'm reblogging again to add that this means that we know how big their pupils are, since the hole in the scleral ring is only a little bigger than the pupil.

It's also how we know that most dinosaurs had round pupils. It's pretty common for people to depict dinosaurs with slit pupils, probably because of Jurassic Park, mostly because it looks really cool, but nope, they were round. There are very few, if any, birds with slit pupils, which is further evidence for round pupils. And most extant animals with slit pupils are on the small side. Many people think of cats having slit pupils, and they do, but it's the little ones. Lions and tigers have round pupils, because slit pupils are most useful closest to the ground and they actually sacrifice some of their visually acuity for the sake of being better at judging distances in low-light conditions, and most animals with them are ambush predators that jump out at their prey. You ever seen a video where someone throws or bounces a ball towards a cat and it bops them on the head and they seem surprised? That's why; they struggle to track where the ball is going, especially horizontally. So for anything over a certain size, slit pupils are a detriment, especially if they chase down prey.

And yeah, if you've ever seen a scientific source say that a certain species of dinosaur hunted at night and wondered how the hell we could possibly know that, this is how. Their eyeball bones.

s-c-r-ee-ch

Apollo with a raven and Artemis with a deer

Roman marble (1st cent. CE) candelabrum base with decorative reliefs and crouching sphinxes at the corners.

memories-of-ancients

Silver buckle, Sweden, 1100-1500 AD

from The Historiska Museum, Sweden

blondebrainpowered

Roman mosaic from the House of the Faun in Pompeii, Italy. In the upper register, a cat clutches a quail. In the lower register, two ducks one of which is holding a lotus flower feed next to an assortment of seafood. ca. 2nd century BCE.

Now housed at National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

didoofcarthage

Onyx cameo of Ariadne, in a modern gold ring. Greek, Hellenistic Period, 3rd-2nd centuries B.C. In the Royal Collection.

Description from the Royal Collection Trust:

Cameo with a head of Ariadne, consort of Dionysos, facing to the right with her gaze slightly lifted. She wears a wreath of ivy leaves and berries. Her hair is gathered in a roll at the back and ringlets cascade down her neck with a stray lock before the neck. A trace of her dress becomes visible along the neckline. The rather fleshy features and short nose recall portraits of Ptolemaic queens and the resemblance may be deliberate since such assimilation to deities was common practice.