Risden

Don’t give him too much credit. After all, he also killed the guy who killed hitler!

Detail from a pencil drawing of Anchiornis, a small feathered paravian dinosaur from late Jurassic China. It is mostly black and white with a red head crest and pins down a small lizard with one of its feet. The drawing is small and very intricate.

Anchiornis. Detail from a drawing from 2019.

A new paper by Kiat et al indicates that Anchiornis probably couldn't fly.

(But I still think it might have been capable of 'falling with style'.)

www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Just saw a guy wearing both a keffiyeh and a Gamecocks dri-fit polo because every combination of personal attributes is possible in Brooklyn. We have one of everybody

Dinosaur extinction can explain continental facies shifts at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary - Communications Earth & Environment Dinosaurs promoted open habitats in the Late Cretaceous, and their extinction could have led to a radical reorganization of the landscape and ecosystem structure at the beginning of the Paleogene, acc...

Dinosaurs were ecosystem engineers! Like modern elephants, Dinosaurs knocked down trees, creating open floodplain landscapes with meandering rivers. After their extinction, Paleocene landscapes became dense forests with coal swamps. 🧪
www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Daughter was inspired by Georgia O’Keefe’s work from Ghost Ranch, which is also the home of many coelophysis fossils

@dragonsofwales.bsky.social

A trio of Plateosaurus in a dry rocky landscape. One is right up against the camera with its mouth open, while the other two walk away.

A trio of Plateosaurus wander the ancient Trossingen at the height of the dry season.

#sciart #paleoart

Study translates fragmentary ancient Sumerian myth around 4,400 years old A recent study by Dr. Jana Matuszak, published in the academic journal Iraq, examines the mythical narrative contained in a tablet (Ni 12501) dating to the Early Dynastic IIIb period (ca. 2540–2350 BC...

HOLD THE PRESSES

We (as a species) just discovered a brand new Sumerian myth!

Never before seen, recently (partially translated)

phys.org/news/2025-07...

This is a myth of a clever fox rescuing a storm god from hell...and given that the rescue from hell is usually lovers

A Zhejiangopterus standing on a mountaintop, reaching out its broken wing towards the mountains, hills and clouds below. An inscription in Chinese says “My First Visit to the Western Hill” and the date for June 15th, 2025 in the lunar calendar.

Visit to the mountain

A Zhejiangopterus climbs to the mountaintop, where the view is higher than any it had ever seen on its own wings.

Inspired by the Tang dynasty travelogue “My First Visit to the Western Hill” by Liu Zongyuan (始得西山宴遊記 柳宗元)
#paleoart #sciart

So beautiful! Thinking about how the colors of flowers are often geared towards pollinators in ways the human eye can’t see it feels oddly poetic that your original watercolor has subtleties that get lost in translation with the scan

The untimely death of Stephen Jay Gould, and his singular ability to ridicule this shit for the general public, is one of the great unacknowledged tragedies of this century.

Watercolour and pencil sketch showing a Cretaceous landscape as understood in 1833. A lizard-like Iguanodon is shown at left alongside a large palm tree, its tail whirling over rolling hills in the distance. A meandering river bisects the scene, with other animals along its banks. These are, from the top down, a swimming plesiosaur in the stream, a monitor lizard-like Megalosaurus, stork-like birds, the spiky Hylaeosaurus, another swimming plesiosaur, a somewhat dog-like crocodile, and two turtles. The right side of the image shows fern-like plants, reeds and more palm trees.

Iguanodon was named 200 years ago today, so here's (AFAIK) the first time it appeared in #paleoart: an 1833 watercolour/pencil study "Reptiles Restored, the Remains of Which Are To Be Found in a Fossil State in Tilgate Forest, Sussex" by George Scharf. That's Iguanodon on the left. #Sciart thread...

A black metal rod that divided into two curved arms with a meshed box containing suet and partially covered with snow hung from its right arm. From the far side of the box the head and upper body of a Downy Woodpecker is visible. The background is covered with newly fallen snow with azalea bushes and the bases of three pine trees off in the distance. The early morning sun is casting shadows and golden light on the snowy yard.

The same scene with a bright red male Cardinal hanging from the left side of the feeder.

The same scene with a Brown Thrasher perched atop the right arm and with bits of my reflection visible (the poor image quality here was a consequence of both the light conditions at the moment and how easily spooked this particular bird is when I move)

The same scene from a slightly different angle with two Titmouses, one hung from the bottom of the feeder and one perched atop the left arm.

A nice perk of this snow day has been spending the morning watching visitors to the suet feeder. Plenty of backyard favorites got a nice breakfast to stave off the cold. Pictured: Downy Woodpecker, Northern Cardinal, Brown Thrasher, Tufted Titmouse

I know this sentiment is well shared, but every once in a while I think about how beautifully powerful and inspiring these paintings are.

A page of sheet music for ‘away in a manger’. Here the subtitle notes that it’s a German folk song and dubiously attributes authorship to Martin Luther. The top of the page features an illustration of a red headed boy putting a red bow on a black sheep and a paragraph of text that reads: “This simple hymn, beloved by children everywhere, is often called ‘Luther’s Cradle Hymn’. Some say Luther did not write it, but that some artist imagined he would choose this type of song to sing his own child to sleep. Regardless of origin, it is one of our favorite Christmas songs.”

With Away in a Manger we are treated to this gem: There’s no evidence that Martin Luther wrote this song but there’s no evidence he DIDN’T write it either!

A page of sheet music for ‘The twelve days of Christmas’. The subtitle notes that it’s a traditional English carol and is arranged by Norman Lloyd. The top of the page features an illustration of two songbirds in some foliage and a paragraph of text that reads: “The twelve days of Christmas lie between December 25 and Epiphany, January 6. It was on January 6 that the Three Magi brought gifts to the Christ Child in the manger - the first Christmas gifts! It was a common folk belief that on the eve of January 6 animals were given the power of speech.”

I really love how this old timey book of Christmas carols at my parents’ house casually drops incredible bits of lore. Everyone be on the lookout for talking animals come January I guess

I read Light From Uncommon Stars with friends earlier this year for a book club and we all really enjoyed it! I liked the way it made the most of its wonderfully strange premise and played with tropes from different genres

Labour in Irish history : Connolly, James, 1870-1916 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive xvi, 216 p. ; 17 cm

It was written in 1910, well before the Troubles or even Independence, but James Connolly’s Labour in Irish History still provides a good introduction to centuries worth of anticolonial struggle

archive.org/details/labo...

A dinosaur bellows to the sky; behind it, a plesiosaur paddles in a pool, while a tapir grazes nearby; a pterosaur flies unaerodynamically overhead

The mighty iguanodon BELLOWS to the sky in what's likely the first dinosaur pictured in an American magazine for children; Robert Merry's Museum, 1842; engraved by Hammatt Billings #fossilfriday

Are there any unusual conditions or environments that are conducive to this mode of replacement or is it just contingent on the fossil forming in an area with beryl deposits like with opalized fossils?

Post a picture you took (no description) to bring some zen to the timeline

If you see this, post a photo taken in the mountains.

Some of this is just imitation; Bolívar like Washington intentionally styled himself as a virtuous republican statesman, but it is kinda eerie how the original plan to bury Washington in the crypt beneath the Capitol rotunda prefigured Lenin’s mausoleum

Also, each of them ended up becoming the father of their respective countries even though they never had any children of their own!

I’ve always found it interesting how, in spite of their ideological differences, Washington, Bolívar, Lenin, and the Atatürk all inspired similar cults of personality

ʎpnʇs ɹoʇdɐɹ

A large pterosaur Bogolubovia stands on the beach, framed by the dim light of the sun due to a solar eclipse. The sky feels high and is heavily covered with clouds. A solar halo can be seen - it's getting quite cold, and it might just be this pterosaur's last winter.

ancient sun cast your light
cause there’s no hope in endless winter

Bogolubovia

#paleoart #sciart

Thanks!

Tufted Titmouse

A small green and white hummingbird perched atop a string of hanging lights with grass and foliage in the background

This Ruby-throated Hummingbird has taken to just chilling on the patio between trips to our feeder.
Such a lovely visitor!