Juan Yu

A freakin' huge griffenfly with a c. 70 cm wingspan, Meganeuropsis, flies vertically in pursuit of the comparatively tiny palaeodictyopteran herbivore Dunbaria fasciipennis. The long, spined legs of Meganeuropsis are reaching forward to trap the smaller insect, while a large wave crashes over rocks behind them. The pattern on Dunbaria is known from fossils, although the colours are not. It's suspected that Meganeuropsis, like other Palaeozoic members of the dragon/damselfly lineage, sported clear wings.

New #paleoart for #FossilFriday: the giant Meganeuropsis hawks Dunbaria in Early Permian Kansas, reaching to trap it with long, spiny legs. This image is set at the coast to reflect the marine occurrences of Meganeuropsis and Dunbaria fossils - not all Carbo-Permian insects lived in swamps! #sciart

The one I've seen is that Tremarctines are "all wrong" because they would supposedly look the same as large Ursines. 🤷‍♂️

I don’t mean to get angry about it but I hate seeing such an obviously colossal labour of intense, high-quality research smeared so wrongly by people that aren’t making arguments in good faith. Again, there are some legitimate criticisms that can be made, but rude dismissiveness is not okay.

An example: I’ve seen four people suggesting the consultants were bad at their job since mammoths are shown in extremes of snow and ice or in dry environments since “they lived on mammoth steppe and wouldn’t risk going elsewhere.”

Because animals NEVER move around or experience weather!?

There are things in Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age that could I could criticise, but I’ve seen a lot of bad faith complaints coming from younger palaeontology enthusiasts who frankly don’t have a clue what they’re talking about and it’s very frustrating. I hope I wasn’t that annoying as a teenager!

Yes, there was a deliberate push to get rid of all scientific names; of course, I think this is a massive mistake. And, indeed, no roaring for sabretooths, their hyoid anatomy indicates that they couldn't do it :) #PrehistoricPlanetIceAge

OK, soooo at some point in the future we'll start talking about the animals and sequences that were considered for #PrehistoricPlanetIceAge but didn't make it over all the hurdles. We're talking giant lemurs, deinotheres, paranthropines, additional cats, zygomaturines and more.

#PrehistoricPlanet #PrehistoricPlanetIceAge

I'm in love with this shot due to that.

A mounted skeleton, as I and others have written before, is as much a sculpture as anything else, and these are bizarrely inert for what are clearly intended to be showpiece specimens

There is not a speck of dynamism or momentum in these mounts. Their legs are sedately planted, their tails at nuetral: one is apparently biting the other's neck, but it's clearly in an offhanded way, because the bitten animal does not appear to be reacting

I understand that the Natural History Museum of Abu Dhabi spent a truly wild amount of money to purchase Stan the T.rex, which makes it all the odder that its mount of two fighting tyrannosaurs is so utterly sauceless

warning: french. in case that's a trigger

Keep his family safe gets so much more impactful when you remember this is the man that gives his weapons people names, you just cant beat that.

No ammount of development and backstory that they try to shove on a singlecharacter will ever defeat the simplicity and goofiness of a bunch of idiots.

And thats why when the goofy idiots get actual development and backstories it hits so much more.

Heavy spending all he earns just to-

Part of it is that TF2 genuinely does a much better job of tying the gameplay directly into the story. TF2's story plays to the strengths of its medium while Overwatch fails to connect the game and the story at all

it just feels weird being some cheerful fake-pixar character laughing and saying cutesy marketable catchphrases as you kill others. this kind of crap doesn't want to embrace the violence and hate of killing, the satisfaction, the humor, and it comes across as phony and lame.

and it just falls completely flat. a scout on the enemy team murders you constantly and tells you that you suck which angers you immensely and that's by design! channeling player aggression to him. tracer isn't mean in personality so when she constantly buzzes you that frustration has nowhere to go.

idk it's hard to explain, yeah. but i know there's something inherently better to scout's writing as an insanely obnoxious loudmouth that fits his role as "frustratingly fast guy that gets in your face" perfectly, whereas tracer, a character with a similar niche, is just generically peppy and cute

i think the best name to call it is *lame*. it's what an out of touch or really boring person would find cool. the violence only ever results in ragdolls, no bloody gibs, some characters are generically sexy in a tame and acceptable way to be appropriate for TV, the humor is extremely tame

A black and white cat sits inside a wooden cat tower, looking up with round eyes that make him look like a kitten.

Sometimes he looks just like a kitten :3

a computer generated image of a planet with the letter e visible ALT: a computer generated image of a planet with the letter e visible

UNI-CRON!

A black-and-white cat is lying on the arm of a light green couch, resting his head and looking sleepy with one front paw placed on the armrest.

I’m bored… maybe I’ll go destroy a planet

A huge paw print from a grizzly bear on a piece of paper in bright colors in a nice frame

Okay, on reflection I am slightly relaxing my rule on "only human-made art".

...Oh, no, I'm still not supporting genAI art, but I *will* be allowing art made by bears

If the democrats ran on full legalization of marijuana, they'd win in a landslide.

But nope, they support the republican war on drugs, violent cops, and asset forfeiture (cops stealing from innocent people because they claim drugs were involved).

Better yet, I'm told Rand Paul put forth an amendment to take this language out of the bill, and almost 30 democratic senators voted to keep this language in the bill.

Democrats support republican policies. They hate you.

A black and white cat lies on a sofa with his tongue slightly out

What is this creature…?

There's even more that we talk about that doesn't fit neatly into this summary. This paper was a long time coming; the project goes back to 2021. Big shout-out to my coauthor @skyemcdavid.com, who shaped the ideas about gigantism and helped make this work as thorough and rigorous as it is

a bird with a long neck is walking across a sandy beach Alt: Clip of two Quetzalcoatlus annoying a Tyrannosaurus on a beach. From Prehistoric Planet ("North America")

Evidently, there was some selective pressure in the Late Cretaceous that encouraged azhdarchids to become huge multiple times. Exactly what, we don't know. Easier to travel long distances by foot or by wing? Protection from theropods? Were mesopredatory niches free real estate? We shall see...

a bird with a long beak is on a beach near the ocean Alt: Clip of a Hatzegopteryx with a colorful head crest dragging a branch along a tropical beach. From Prehistoric Planet ("Islands")

...yet mostly lived at the same time, at the end of the Cretaceous. This suggests that giant azhdarchids may not have been making intercontinental flights on the regular, as has been previously proposed. The giants probably adapted their specific ecosystems - particularly Hatzegopteryx