Jean-François Cudennec

Can’t resist but to rewatch the storm scene in the movie Océans, shot in the Iroise Sea (home!) during the 2008 gale.

Gifford, Robert Swain — The Wreckers — 1877

4/ Yet historians confirm it was myth, they actually practiced "droit de bris," salvaging from already-wrecked vessels on these naturally dangerous coasts...

Octave Penguilly L'Haridon : Les Pilleurs de la mer (gravure, 1848)

3/ In Northern Finistère where I grew up, locals even had the reputation of being legendary "Naufrageurs," supposedly tying torches to cows' horns to lure ships to wreck on rocks.

Map of shipwrecks around Sein island (France)

Aerial photo of the "chaussée de Sein" in Brittany (France)

2/ If we zoom in the "Chaussée de Sein" and "Raz de Sein", it's even more dense, due to the highly dangerous rocks and ferocious tidal currents occuring there.

Left is an aerial photo I took several years ago (continent in the background), in summer with calm weather. But at night and during storm?

1/ I don't know why but I'm weirdly attracted to shipwrecks maps.

I live in Brittany, so there's quite a few shipwreck around, too. Here's two examples from WWI and WWII only.

Also, real maestria in smiley choice 🤯

Screenshot from Twitter : « I was a Hitler Youth. :( » By Jurgen Habermas, on 24/04/2011

1) Harbermas has a Twitter account
2) He’s still alive (I just checked)
3) he was a Hitler Youth

Quite a lot of information to process from just one tweet

Viking Age woman found buried with scallop shells on her mouth, and archaeologists are mystified A ninth-century grave discovered in Norway held the remains of a Viking Age woman whose mouth was covered with two large scallop shells.

Cool find that makes you wonder what those shells meant.

www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

Highly selective cannibalism in the Late Pleistocene of Northern Europe reveals Neandertals were targeted prey - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Highly selective cannibalism in the Late Pleistocene of Northern Europe reveals Neandertals were targeted prey

What if we simply ate Neandertals into extinction?

A new study shows that female and young Neandertals were consumed by H/ sapiens as food rather than in a ritual context, as suggested by traces similar to those found on other animal bones hunted by humans.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Archaeological fragment of a Pecten maximus shell

Binocular picture of the shell fragment, showing small (daily) growth increments

Running from my family duties straight into the arms of this 4,000-year-old scallop fragment, with beautifully preserved daily growth increments.

A very cool one !

bsky.app/profile/jopa...

This is Calappa, the same crab that I made a pumpkin of (next skeet) and one of bluesky's favorite crabs. Not only does it run funny, it has an adorable face and its claws are specialized like a can opener for snails 🦀🦑

Be ungovernable

“Weird” new species of ancient fossil snake discovered in southern England | Natural History Museum An extinct snake named Paradoxophidion richardoweni has slithered its way out of obscurity.

We’ve uncovered a new species of snake! 🐍

Paradoxophidion richardoweni lived 37 million years ago and has a strange mix of features that suggest it's an early caenophidian, the group containing 80% of living snakes.

Discover what it reveals about snake evolution 👇
www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

We're snailposting, post your snails !

Photo of my bench in my lab : binocular, notebook, scallop shell and cool tweezers

Feeling down today ? Why don’t you just go to the lab and perform some destructive analysis on subfossil scallop from a Neolithic shell midden ?

Cercocebus torquatus - Collared mangabey in a zoo

Collared mangabey, close-up portrait

Canon EOS mkII + RF 100-500mm

#Photography

« The evolution of the Human face », from the early chordate to… the descendant of Homo erectus

You may like it or not, but this is what peak phylogenetic looks like

Lateralized sleeping positions in domestic cats Isparta et al. find that two-thirds of cats prefer to sleep on their left side, indicating asymmetry at the population level. Because the right hemisphere is specialized for threat processing, this as...

🔗 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Figure from the Isparta et al paper : About two-thirds of cats prefer to sleep on their left side. Pictures of cats from unsplash: left cat courtesy of Noah Dustin von Weissenfluh (@noah_dustin), right cat courtesy of Gleb Kuzmenko (@badfantasy).

According to this paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social, two-thirds of cats prefer a leftward sleeping position.

Profound life lesson being taught here.

Pleistocene dude saw the eye of a cat. 5 cyclone and immediatrely felt the urge to invent religions

Close up photo of a Nobel Prize gold medal

1/ It is Nobel week: the giants of world science gather beneath gilded halls of leading global institutions.

But what about those whose approach to knowledge is radically different? Those who base their science on lived experience, fragments from human worlds, often silent or marginal ?

#FossilFriday Not to be outdone by Isaac Newton who is buried beneath a gastropod fossil in Westminster Abbey, the famous geologist Charles Lyell’s gravestone is Carboniferous crinoidal limestone full of columnals of these ‘sea-lilies’.

After a quick search, it appears that "Sally the pet seal" has never been mentioned on here Bluesky, so let me fill in this shocking oversight.

Project | E5 Doctoral Training Partnership | E5 Doctoral Training Partnership The project advertisement

Interested in fossils? Brains? Reptiles?

Want to study how reptile (particularly squamate) brains and senses changed over time?

Want to be part of an international team studying the evolution of cognition?

Then apply for our Univ of Edinburgh PhD project!

e5-dtp.ed.ac.uk/project?item...

I spent an awkwardly absurd amount of time looking at this (small baleen whale from the Late Miocene of the Eastern Parathetys sea)

Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards – in pictures The Wildlife Photographer of the Year is an annual competition hosted by the Natural History Museum in London, which awards top honours in various categories for outstanding photography

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Photo of an egret flying over a fish which is crossing the sea surface trying to catch a smaller fish, halfway in its mouth (maybe I'm not clear but the image is really incredible)

Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards are out !

And like every year, it's just a big "wow".

"The Meiji Emperor 明治5年. Albumen silver print. Uchida Kuichi was the only photographer granted a sitting by the Emperor Meiji and in 1872 Uchida photographed the Emperor and Empress Haruko in full court dress and everyday robes. In 1873, Uchida again photographed the Emperor, who this time wore military dress, and a photograph from this sitting became the official imperial portrait (Ishii and Iizawa). Copies of the official portrait were distributed among foreign heads of state and Japanese regional governmental offices, but their private sale was prohibited. Nevertheless, many copies of the photograph were made and circulated on the market. (Kinoshita). Published in the Japanese book, Meiji Tenno gyoden (Tokyo: Kaneo Bun'endo, 1912)" CREDIT: Uchida Kuichi - Tenno Yondai No Shozo "天皇四代の肖像", published by Mainichi Shinbun Sha 毎日新聞社, 1999.

"A historical photograph of a group of cowboys from the American West, likely from the late 19th century. The photograph appears to be a promotional image for Buffalo Bill's Wild West show" The name "Johnny Baker" is written at the bottom, either as the photographer or labeling a gentleman in fancy hat holding a long rifle.

Referring to global history during the 'Victorian era', but de-centering Europe:
The Meiji era of Japan lasted from 1868 to 1912.

So:
"Cowboys were roaming warrior-gunmen who managed cattle empires for the noble class in early Meiji-era America."

Left : The Apotheosis of War by Vasily Vereshchagin (1871)

Right : pile of buffalo skulls, Michigan Carbon Works, 1892. (Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library)