Science, Dinosaurs, and Stuff Maddie Likes.

Meet Bentley - he’s a mastiff who also happens to be a...

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:39:41 -0700

Meet Bentley - he’s a mastiff who also happens to be a Philadelphia Phillies fan.

fuckyeahdinoart: Ichthyosaurus by Doreen Edwards

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 19:02:50 -0700

fuckyeahdinoart:

Ichthyosaurus by Doreen Edwards

fat-birds: beyond-cloud9: cardinal (x)

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:24:37 -0700

fat-birds:

beyond-cloud9: cardinal (x)

crownedrose: Tungurahua Erupts Image Credit...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:39:21 -0700

crownedrose:

Tungurahua Erupts
Image Credit & Copyright: Patrick Taschler

Explanation: Volcano Tungurahua sometimes erupts spectacularly. Pictured above, molten rock so hot it glows visibly pours down the sides of the 5,000-meter high Tungurahua, while a cloud of dark ash is seen being ejected toward the left. Wispy white clouds flow around the lava-lit peak, while a star-lit sky shines in the distance. The above image was captured in 2006 as ash fell around the adventurous photographer. Located in Ecuador, Tungurahua has become active roughly every 90 years since for the last 1,300 years.

theanimalblog: (by pattoise)

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:51:56 -0700

theanimalblog:

(by pattoise)

mineralia: Fluorite with Dolomite from Tennessee by Dan...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:18:52 -0700

mineralia:

Fluorite with Dolomite from Tennessee by Dan Weinrich

Photo

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:12:51 -0700

mineralia: Beryl var. Aquamarine from Pakistan by Dan Weinrich

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:28:13 -0700

mineralia:

Beryl var. Aquamarine from Pakistan by Dan Weinrich

gracecar: Composer of the Day: John Williams...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 13:44:53 -0700

gracecar:

Composer of the Day: John Williams (again)

Soundtrack: Jurassic Park

Track: Journey to the Island

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Mon, 02 Apr 2012 13:01:18 -0700

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Mon, 02 Apr 2012 12:11:07 -0700

crownedrose: smokeandsong: thisiscollosal.com: For the past...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 11:25:54 -0700

crownedrose:

smokeandsong:

thisiscollosal.com:

For the past few months Paige Smith of A Common Name has been installing colorful geodes within the gaps of crumbling buildings and other public infrastructure on the streets of L.A. Each piece is site-specific and made from carefully cut and painted paper.

I will never not reblog this.

dailyfossil: Brontosaurus Mounted skeleton was on display at...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:36:06 -0700

dailyfossil:

Brontosaurus

Mounted skeleton was on display at the American Museum of Natural History

Reconstruction by Charles Knight

When: Holocene (1879 to 1903)

Where: Scientific literature and museums on the east coast of the USA. Found even today in public consciousness and outdated dinosaur books.

What: Brontosaurus is perhaps the most well known of the sauropod dinosaurs. Too bad it never really existed! The history of this name and why it became so popularized starts in 1877 when the paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh applied the name Apatosaurus to a sauropod specimen. This specimen was not very complete and mostly represented by vertebrae and a pelvis. Two years later he erected the name Brontosaurus based on an almost complete skeleton that was missing its head. Headless sauropod skeletons are fairly common, but in this case this missing head only served to make the story even more complicated.

This missing head was obviously a problem when the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale wanted to mount its specimen of Brontosaurus for display. There was great debate over which head to use, which some camps wanting to use one that resembled Diplodocus but others rallied behind a Brachiosaurus type skull. This latter skull was what Marsh had envisioned in his publications on Brontosaurus, so after much heated debate a Brachiosaurus type skull was attached to the previously headless skeleton. This skeleton was unveiled to the public in 1905 to great fanfare and soon after the American Museum of Natural History in New York City had its own Brontosaurus on display, with an identical head to the Yale specimen.

So the general public had a firm concept of the dinosaur Brontosaurus! It was an easy to remember and pronounce name, this is what it looked like, and hey look we even have all of these lovely reconstruction showing these great lumbering beasts in prehistoric swamps. Too bad everything was wrong. And even worse, it was KNOWN to be wrong by some workers who were shouted down by others. In 1903, two years before the specimen was mounted at Yale, a paper was published Elmer Riggs at the Field Museum of Chicago that declared that the bones known for Apatosaurus that overlapped with those of Brontosaurus showed that these two animals were the same. He concluded that Brontosaurus was not a valid name as it was two years younger than Apatosaurus. Even worse, remember the great head debate? Totally wrong. Later fossil finds have confirmed that a Diplodocus style head should have been used. These skulls are much more elongated and flatter than the high domed skull that was used for the Brontosaurus mount.

So not only is the name not valid, but the anatomy of the animal isn’t even anything that ever existed in nature! It is a chimera of different species. Also sauropods were not aquatic swamp dwellers, they were 100% terrestrial creatures.

Poor Brontosaurus.

Photo

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 10:47:06 -0700

theanimalblog: (by Cascavel1)

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 20:30:05 -0700

theanimalblog:

(by Cascavel1)

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Thu, 29 Mar 2012 19:45:06 -0700

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Thu, 29 Mar 2012 19:00:05 -0700

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Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:15:06 -0700

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Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:34:15 -0700

rhamphotheca: Microraptor and Flashy Feathers by Sid...

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:45:06 -0700

rhamphotheca:

Microraptor and Flashy Feathers

by Sid Perkins

The pigeon-sized dinosaur Microraptor, which lived about 120 million years ago, probably sported glossy black plumage like today’s crows, a new analysis suggests. Detailed analyses of a fossil (inset) unearthed in northeastern China reveal that the creature’s feathers would have been densely packed with pigment-bearing structures called melanosomes.

The long, narrow shape of those melanosomes, as well as their arrangement in sheetlike arrays, indicates that the feathers would have been black and weakly iridescent, the researchers report in the 9 March issue of Science. Although other pigments could have been present in Microraptor’s feathers, they would have been largely masked by black pigments, rendering the creature crowlike in appearance (main image) except for that long, bony tail and lengthy feathers on its legs.

Previous studies of other Microraptor fossils, citing the presence of a large, bony ring within the creature’s eye, suggested that the species was nocturnal. But the new study hints that the creature was active in the daytime, because no extant birds with glossy black plumage are active at night. Perhaps Microraptor was active during dawn and dusk, the researchers say—a lifestyle that would require large eyes yet also provide opportunity for daytime activity for which iridescent plumage could be used to identify fellow members of its species and signal to potential mates.

(via: Science NOW)

(images: Jason Brougham/Univ. of Texas; Mick Ellison - inset)