#//and it's because it's a world that never came out of its cretaceous period

[mando-of-esverr]

Darius's Modified Galactic Map

[know-o-princess]

On the nature of the setting

The world of Know, O Princess doesn't have a name. Well it has lots of names, but it doesn't have one snappy setting name to refer to it out of universe, like "Middle Earth" or "Narnia" or "Earthsea" or "Racist Wizard Transphobe School World" or whatever Jowling Kowling Rowling calls the setting in her books, I never got into Harry Potter so I don't know. Every now and then I think I should try to come up with one, but the last time I tried I just inadvertently came up with the German word for Earth. And this world has no Germany analogue.

Anyway, the setting is based geographically on a mix of modern and Late Cretaceous Earth, with some familiar continents being broken up and others being joined together. For example, this world's version of Africa is split into two landmasses separated by a shallow seaway, and much of its version of western Europe is broken up into a network of large islands.

Culturally, the peoples of the world are largely based on real-world ancient civilizations. Note that I said based on, meaning they are not intended to be and should not be taken as historically accurate representations of the real-world cultures from which they draw inspiration.

Also, aside from humans and other primates this world is populated almost exclusively by fauna from the Middle and Late Cretaceous, with things from earlier (sometimes much earlier) time periods inhabiting the oceans. Also I'm basing what lives where on their real-world counterparts, which I have to say pains me somewhat because it means I can't use a lot of tyrannosaurs in the story.

[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

Real Dinosaurs Versus Reel Dinosaurs: Film’s Fictionalization of the Prehistoric World

by Shelby Wyzykowski

What better way can you spend a quiet evening at home than by having a good old-fashioned movie night? You dim the lights, cozily snuggle up on your sofa with a bowl of hot, buttery popcorn, and pick out a movie that you’ve always wanted to see: the 1948 classic Unknown Island. Mindlessly munching away on your snacks, your eyes are glued to the screen as the story unfolds. You reach a key scene in the movie: a towering, T. rex-sized Ceratosaurus and an equally enormous Megatherium ground sloth are locked in mortal combat. And you think to yourself, “I’m pretty sure something like this never actually happened.” And you know what? Your prehistorically inclined instincts are correct.

From the time that the first dinosaur fossils were identified in the early 1800s, society has been fascinated by these “terrible lizards.” When, where, and how did they live? And why did they (except for their modern descendants, birds) die out so suddenly? We’ve always been hungry to find out more about the mysteries behind the dinosaurs’ existence. The public’s hunger for answers was first satisfied by newspapers, books, and scientific journals. But then a whole new, sensational medium was invented: motion pictures. And with its creation came a new, exciting way to explore the primeval world of these ancient creatures. But cinema is art, not science. And from the very beginning, scientific inaccuracies abounded. You might be surprised to learn that these filmic faux pas not only exist in movies from the early days of cinema. They pervade essentially every dinosaur movie that has ever been made.

One Million Years B.C.

Another film that can easily be identified as more fiction than fact is 1966’s One Million Years B.C. It tells the story of conflicts between members of two tribes of cave people as well as their dangerous dealings with a host of hostile dinosaurs (such as Allosaurus, Triceratops, and Ceratosaurus). However, neither modern-looking humans nor dinosaurs (again, except birds) existed one million years ago. In the case of dinosaurs, the movie was about 65 million years too late. Non-avian dinosaurs disappeared 66 million years ago during a mass extinction known as the K/Pg (which stands for “Cretaceous/Paleogene”) event. An asteroid measuring around six miles in diameter and traveling at an estimated speed of ten miles per second slammed into the Earth at what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The effects of this giant impact were so devastating that over 75% of the world’s species became extinct. But the dinosaurs’ misfortunes were a lucky break for Cretaceous Period mammals. They were able to gain a stronger foothold and flourish in the challenging and inhospitable post-impact environment.

Cut to approximately 65 million, 700 thousand years later, when modern-looking humans finally arrived on the chronological scene. Until recently, the oldest known fossils of our species, Homo sapiens, dated back to just 195,000 years ago (which is, in geological terms, akin to the blink of an eye). And for many years, these fossils have been widely accepted to be the oldest members of our species. But this theory was challenged in June of 2017 when paleoanthropologists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology reported that they had discovered what they thought may be the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens on a desert hillside at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco. The 315,000-year-old fossils included skull bones that, when pieced together, indicated that these humans had faces that looked very much like ours, but their brains did differ. Being long and low, their brains did not have the distinctively round shape of those of present-day humans. This noticeable difference in brain shape has led some scientists to wonder: perhaps these people were just close relatives of Homo sapiens. On the other hand, maybe they could be near the root of the Homo sapien lineage, a sort of protomodern Homo sapien as opposed to the modern Homo sapien. One thing is for certain, the discovery at Jebel Irhoud reminds us that the story of human evolution is long and complex with many questions that are yet to be answered.

The Land Before Time

Another movie that misplaces its characters in the prehistoric timeline is 1988’s The Land Before Time. The stars of this animated motion picture are Littlefoot the Apatosaurus, Cera the Triceratops, Ducky the Saurolophus, Petrie the Pteranodon, and Spike the Stegosaurus. As their world is ravaged by constant earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the hungry and scared young dinosaurs make a perilous journey to the lush and green Great Valley where they’ll reunite with their families and never want for food again. In their on-screen imagined story, these five make a great team. But, assuming that the movie is set at the very end of the Cretaceous (intense volcanic activity was a characteristic of this time), the quintet’s trip would have actually been just a solo trek. Ducky and Petrie’s species had become extinct several million years earlier, and Littlefoot and Spike would have lived way back in the Jurassic Period (201– 145 million years ago). Cera alone would have had to experience several harrowing encounters with the movie’s other latest Cretaceous creature, the ferocious and relentless Sharptooth, a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Speaking of Sharptooth, The Land Before Time’s animators made a scientifically accurate choice when they decided to draw him with a two-fingered hand, as opposed to the three fingers traditionally embraced by other movie makers. For 1933’s King Kong, the creators mistakenly modeled their T. rex after a scientifically outdated 1906 museum painting. Many other directors knowingly dismissed the science-backed evidence and used three digits because they thought this type of hand was more aesthetically pleasing. By the 1920s, paleontologists had already hypothesized that these predators were two-fingered because an earlier relative of Tyrannosaurus, Gorgosaurus, was known to have had only two functional digits. Scientists had to make an educated guess because the first T. rex (and many subsequent specimens) to be found had no hands preserved. It wasn’t until 1988 that it was officially confirmed that T. rex was two-fingered when the first specimen with an intact hand was discovered. Then, in 1997, Peck’s Rex, the first T. rex specimen with hands preserving a third metacarpal (hand bone), was unearthed. Paleontologists agree that, in life, the third metacarpal of Peck’s Rex would not have been part of a distinct, externally visible third finger, but instead would have been embedded in the flesh of the rest of the hand. But still, was this third hand segment vestigial, no longer serving any apparent purpose? Or could it have possibly been used as a buttressing structure, helping the two fully formed fingers to withstand forces and stresses on the hand? Peck’s Rex’s bones do display evidence that strongly supports arm use. You can ponder this paleo-puzzle yourself when you visit Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibition, where you can see a life-sized cast of Peck’s Rex facing off with the holotype (= name-bearing) T. rex, which was the first specimen of the species to be recognized (by definition, the world’s first fossil of the world’s most famous dinosaur!).

T. rex in Dinosaurs in Their Time. Image credit: Joshua Franzos, Treehouse Media

Jurassic Park

One motion picture that did take artistic liberties with T. rex for the sake of suspense was 1993’s Jurassic Park. In one memorable, hair-raising scene, several of the movie’s stars are saved from becoming this dinosaur’s savory snack by standing completely still. According to the film’s paleontological protagonist, Dr. Alan Grant, the theropod can’t see humans if they don’t move. Does this theory have any credence, or was it just a clever plot device that made for a great movie moment? In 2006, the results of ongoing research at the University of Oregon were published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, providing a surprising answer. The study involved using perimetry (an ophthalmic technique used for measuring and assessing visual fields) and a scale model T. rex head to determine the creature’s binocular range (the area that could be viewed at the same time by both eyes). Generally speaking, the wider an animal’s binocular range, the better its depth perception and overall vision. It was determined that the binocular range of T. rex was 55 degrees, which is greater than that of a modern-day hawk! This theropod may have even had visual clarity up to 13 times greater than a person. That’s extremely impressive, considering an eagle only has up to 3.6 times the clarity of a human! Another study that examined the senses of T. rex determined that the dinosaur had unusually large olfactory bulbs (the areas of the brain dedicated to scent) that would have given it the ability to smell as well as a present-day vulture! So, in Jurassic Park, even if the eyes of T. rex had been blurred by the raindrops in this dark and stormy scene, its nose would have still homed-in on Dr. Grant and the others, providing the predator with some tasty midnight treats.

Now, it may seem that this blog post might be a bit critical of dinosaur movies. But, truly, I appreciate them just as much as the next filmophile. They do a magnificent job of providing all of us with some pretty thrilling, edge-of-your-seat entertainment. But, somewhere along the way, their purpose has serendipitously become twofold. They have also inspired some of us to pursue paleontology as a lifelong career. So, in a way, dinosaur movies have been of immense benefit to both the cinematic and scientific worlds. And for that great service, they all deserve a huge round of applause.

Shelby Wyzykowski is a Gallery Experience Presenter in CMNH’s Life Long Learning Department. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

[lizardkingeliot]

So, do those of you currently reading time cast a spell on you (but you won’t forget me) remember that scene in chapter 4 where Quentin shows up for his tutoring session and Eliot says he wants to go to the edge of the campus and manipulate the magic of the wards so they can fly? You know... this one:

Only they never end up making it there because they start bickering the second they leave the library? Well, in the rough draft of this chapter I initially had this scene... ending very differently. And they also weren’t going to fly, they were going to... well. I think I’ll just let y’all read it for yourselves lmao. I think I talked about this a bit on twitter when I was working on the chapter so if it sounds familiar that’s probably why. ANYWAY. I have a ton of deleted scenes from this fic, most of which will never see the light of day, but I woke up this morning with the urge to share at least part of this one so... I guess that’s what I’m going to do.

This is super rough and unedited and honestly not up to my usual standards, but... you know. Rough drafts tend to be that way. It’s also all over the place in terms of tone and where they were at this point in the fic lmao. This might be bordering on crack honestly. Which is why I just scrapped the whole thing and went a different route in the final draft. Anyway. Shutting up now. This is about 2k words so I’m putting most of it under a cut...

—

Trudging across campus two paces behind Eliot, Quentin was stricken by the overwhelming feeling that he was trapped inside a dream. The eerie, quiet campus, lit only by the waning moon and a few dots of light spilling from the various student houses. He looked back over his shoulder, spotting the Cottage in the distance, the dim orange glow of the front bay window swimming in his vision like a boat lost at sea. 

As they approached the outer edge of the grounds, Quentin could feel the magic of the wards, buzzing on the air like insects. Bone-deep reverberations, strains of music swelling from within. He’d never been out this far before. The line where Brakebills ended and the real world began. Where there was nothing but the boat house and the wind. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He breathed in deep, the scent of the Hudson rushing nearby filling his senses as Eliot came to a sudden halt in the dark.

“Here,” Eliot said. Quentin could only just barely make out the shape of his elegant fingers pointing just ahead. “Can you feel the energy? I guess the Naturalists come out here sometimes and use it to light their bongs.” He laughed, a sound that warmed Quentin underneath his jacket at once. “And occasionally singe their own eyebrows off in the process.”

Quentin looked back. They’d come out to a place that the light from the Cottage couldn’t reach. Eliot formed an orb between his hands and pinned it overhead, a grapefruit sized pendant of magic swaying gently in the breeze. He stepped into Quentin’s personal space, giving him the once over. Head-to-toe and back again, settling at last on Quentin’s eyes.

“So,” he said with a smirk. “Cavaleri Animation. My memory of the First Year curriculum is a little hazy, but they’ve dazzled you all with that one already, yes? Turning your marbles into little glass animals, you know the one.”

Quentin nodded. “Yeah, um… but Alice was the only one who could actually get hers to work.”

Swift and warm as a pulse, Eliot’s hand curled around the nape of Quentin’s neck. Heat spreading down the column of his spine like a flame catching a wick. Thumb teasing over burning flesh. Eliot’s lips ghosted over his ear, not quite touching. Still, Quentin swore he could feel his smile. “Well,” he said, soft and dark, “I’m here now. And you’re going to do it. And it’s going to work.”

Quentin’s hand was bunching up the back of Eliot’s cardigan. He didn’t know when that had happened. The hum of the magic was making him dizzy. For a moment, it was impossible to breathe. His body a tight line of tension and desire. Eliot pulled away and Quentin released his hold, staggering a little as he tried to regain some semblance of control.

“Um, okay…” Quentin ran a hand through his hair in a half-hearted attempt at centering himself. “Why, uh—why do we have to do that here? We could have just done that spell in the library.”

“Because,” Eliot said with a tip of his head, “I have a theory.”

“A theory?” Quentin frowned. “You brought me out here for a theory?”

“More of a hypothesis really,” Eliot said with a wave of his hand. “But I think it’s going to work.”

“Great,” Quentin said with an exasperated sigh. “Dicking around with unstable magic in the middle of the night. What could possibly go wrong.”

“Look, it’s going to be fun,” Eliot said with that casual little air of his. “And we probably won’t explode even if I’m wrong. So we really don’t have very much to lose.”

“Okay, I’m—” Quentin threw his hands up. “For fuck’s sake, El, can you just tell me what we’re actually doing out here?”

“We,” Eliot said very slowly, reaching inside his cardigan, pulling a sliver of magenta colored glass out of the pocket of his vest, and looking through it, “are going to tap into all that crazy energy and make your little glass marble friend into a very big animal friend and take it for a spin.” He passed the sliver of glass over to Quentin. “Take a look.”

Quentin stared at Eliot for a very long time before relenting. “You’re actually a crazy person, you know that?”

“I think you mean certified sorcerer genius, but I’ll take it.” He gestured with a nod of his head. “Go on. It’s balls to the wall out here. So much energy we could power a fucking nuclear reactor and I doubt Henry would notice.”

Quentin looked through the glass, moving it from one eye over to the other. At first, it was impossible to make sense of what he was actually seeing. A latticework of stars. Billions of them it seemed, all bumping up against one another in a wild, cosmic dance. A galaxy of intersecting lines and patchwork patterns shimmering like the wings of a dragonfly. And every now and then, a spark. Popping off into the dark like fingers desperate for the night. Quentin handed the glass back to Eliot with a shake of his head.

“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Don’t be boring, Quentin,” Eliot said. It made Quentin’s chest ache with its normalcy. Like their past couldn’t touch them out here. Like out here with their bad ideas and their wild magic, maybe they could have some hope to start again. “But maybe… maybe don’t make anything that wants to bite our heads off.”

“Okay, so…” Quentin sighed with his whole chest. “To recap: you want to steal unstable magic from the wards of the school where we’re both currently students to make a giant glass animal that hopefully doesn’t swallow us whole so we can… take it for a ride?”

“Yes,” Eliot said, like it was the most obviously brilliant thing in the world. “Don’t make that face with your face. Tell me you’ve never wanted to ride a rhinoceros.”

“We are not riding a rhinoceros, Eliot. Absolutely not.” 

“Well, okay…” Eliot’s hand on his nape again. Heat, fire, a five alarm blaze encircling his neck like a collar. “If you could ride on any animal, real or imaginary—”

“The Cozy Horse,” Quentin said without thinking, heart pounding like hoofbeats trapped inside his chest. “Um… it’s from the Fillory books, uh…”

Eliot laughed softly. “Okay.” His hand slid down to Quentin’s shoulder, gripping it possessively. “Tell me about... the Cozy Horse.”

“Um…” Quentin squeezed his eyes shut, took a breath, shook his head. Eliot’s hand was stroking up and down the expanse of his upper arm and shoulder, making everything go all fuzzy in his brain. “It’s just, uh… it’s this horse that Jane rode on. It’s, uh… really tall. Like a hundred feet. Like a clydesdale on steroids.”

“You won’t ride a rhinoceros but you’re perfectly fine with a horse that’s a hundred feet tall?”

Quentin turned his face upward, trapping himself in Eliot’s gaze. Sinking, flying, falling. Close enough to kiss if he only went up on his toes a little. Tucked inside the safety of his warmth. Quentin wanted to burn, to melt into a puddle at Eliot’s feet and slosh around like muck. “I…” Quentin swallowed. “I don’t think the Cozy Horse would hurt us. It’s basically a giant stuffed animal.”

Eliot grinned, gazing down at Quentin for a long beat before pulling away. “Okay then,” he said, taking a few steps down the path under their feet. “Show me Cozy Horse.”

Quentin reached into his pocket, knelt down, set the marble on the path. “I don’t understand how I’m supposed to… harness the magic of the wards.”

Eliot made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, peering through it with one eye. “Just leave that part to me,” he said absently. “Go on. Make your horse. And don’t say you can’t do it. We both know that you can.”

Quentin gazed up the long line of Eliot’s body. Eliot was fully focused on the wards. The sound of night, the crackle of magic. Quentin shivered under his jacket. His hands hovered over the marble, focusing his energy on prepping the glass for transformation with Dempsey's Silent Thermogenesis. Once molten, the marble could be manipulated into almost any shape he could imagine. For the Cozy Horse, Quentin didn’t have much to go on but the memory of a single illustration, and a few lines from The Wandering Dune, but he figured it would probably be simple enough. How hard could it be to imagine a draft horse the size of something straight out of the Cretaceous period?

Quentin twisted the glass under his fingers, so fully focused on his task he almost didn’t notice when Eliot began to move. When, suddenly, through the loop of Eliot’s fingers, a beam of sharp, frenzied magic began to focus on the animal he had half-formed with laser precision.

“You might wanna hurry,” Eliot said. “I don’t know how long I can hold this here.”

Quentin scowled in his direction, looping a bit of the molten glass into the shape of a tail. “You’re shit at communicating, you know that,” he spit, letting the gentle rage rising in his belly fuel his magic. “I thought cooperative magic was supposed to be, I don’t know… cooperative?”

Legs, hooves, the gentle slope of a hulking animal’s back. The wispy tendrils of a mane. Eliot was saying something that might have been a warning. Quentin was too focused on his creation to parse a single one of his words. The magic of the wards cracked like lightning. He could feel it in his hands. Quickly, almost as an afterthought, Quentin gave the beast that had come to life beneath his fingers a shimmering loop around the back of the neck that might have passed for reins if he squinted.

A single hoofbeat on the soft ground. The beam of magic stuttering through Eliot’s fingers died away, and he let out a tremendous sigh.

“Okay so... “ Quentin frowned, eyes flitting from the tiny glass horse up to Eliot’s face. “I don’t think this is going to—”

A flash, a pop, a tremendous wave of heat knocking the air from his lungs. Quentin shoved his body backward off the path and into the grass just as Eliot was running over. Kneeling down, using himself as a makeshift shield as he pushed Quentin further back away from the molten monstrosity shifting and morphing and doubling, tripling, quadrupling in size. A deep rumble, the tinkling of glass. Quentin peered over Eliot’s shoulder, his eyes moving up, up, up, trying to take in what it was he was actually seeing.

The glass horse shook out its mane, rearing up on its hind legs and down again with an earth-trembling thud. The distance from the ground to its shoulder must have been twenty feet. It had no eyes and no mouth, but Quentin swore he could feel its glassy stare boring into him. The light of the orb dangling overhead passed right through the center of its body. For a long moment, everything went perfectly still.

And then Eliot started to laugh. “Holy shit,” he said, his eyes wide as dinner plates when he turned his face to Quentin. “That is a big fucking horse.”

A laugh sputtered out from between Quentin’s lips. “Yeah, um… yeah. Fuck. It really is.”

Eliot’s body pressed right up against Quentin’s body when he turned, and leaned in, so close they were almost kissing. A pulse of heat passed between them. Quentin felt it in his chest like a second heart. “So,” Eliot said, a hand curling around Quentin’s cheek for a fleeting moment before pulling away. “You wanna take her for a spin?”

Quentin felt absolutely out of his mind. Hazy, his body a liminal space. “Yeah,” he said with a short, stuttering burst of laughter. “Yeah, why the fuck not.”

Unreality set in hard as they stood and cautiously approached. Up close, they might as well have been gazing upward at the hulking glass back of a dinosaur. The haphazard reins Quentin had created looped around the beast’s neck like a string of fairy lights. 

“Um…” Quentin laughed, tucking a tuft of hair behind his ear. “How the fuck are we even going to get on this thing?”

Eliot took his hand suddenly, threading their blood-warm fingers together. “Oh, Q,” he said with a full-faced grin, “we’re gonna fucking fly.”

[perish-the-creator]

Extinction Headcanon

So I’ve recently watched a documentary on YouTube highlighting the final days of the dinosaurs following the asteroid collision, and of course, it got me thinking about Godzilla. So I’ve formed this conclusion that makes sense (in my opinion).

Every on the Titans we see was the smallest of their kind.

Here’s my explanation. Aside from the mammal based Titans, we can safely assume than those who are reptilian-like were present sometime around the  Cretaceous period, which was when most of the iconic dinosaurs were around. Using fictional science we can estimate that the atmosphere's high oxygen count at the time help contribute to their large sizes, as well as the diverse amount of food for them since it’s safe to assume most are carnivores. Once again, bullshit science and we can say that Mothra was already around at this time.

Anywho, seeing as the extinction even is the used explanation as to why these titans are the only ones left means that somehow these ones, in particular, had managed to brave the chaos. As of now, I am still unaware of ALL the titans so my headcanon will only be based upon the ones I know. 

Rodan:

I would like to say that in comparison to the other dinosaur-like creatures, he is, in fact, the youngest. Granted, this means nothing in the vast span of millions of years. Anywho, I’d like to advocate while also paying tribute to the original Rodan film that his parents and his kind died a fiery death. Now, that doesn’t make sense because his species appears to thrive off of literal lava. But here’s what I mean. Their lungs burned up. The powerful blast and the dust that came after were composed of different particles than what would be in their familiar habitat. We can also add that perhaps the fact that it came in such a high dose that their bodies could not handle it, thus leading to them suffocating and their dead bodies starting to sircome to the effects of heat exposure as they start to decompose. Basically, Roan was born an orphan and born in a harsh landscape. He had no true recollection of life before that. He has vague memories of hearing others like him, but he hatched into a wasteland with no one who looks like him. This also explains his overly aggressive attitude. He had to fend for himself since day one and was always cautious of other titans around him. He was also small and if the chaos had never ended the world he probably would’ve either been eaten by his parents or kicked out to go his own. So, as far as keeping himself feed wasn’t an issue since his small size didn’t need much to stay energized.

Godzilla: 

Godzilla was born to a small clutch of four and was the smallest of his siblings. His kind would be social but solitary at the same time. Like alligators who swarm swamps and such. Most sea bearing creatures would’ve bested the end of the world for the most part but I want to make this tragic as hell. So, we can say that he was born to a breeding pair but both died from venturing up on land at the time and, like Rodan’s folks, had their lungs burned. That would leave Godzilla with his siblings who eventually die of either by picking fights or starving because they couldn’t live off a small diet like Godzilla could. In fact, we can add in that Godzilla was born with a minor defect that had him be drawn towards those toxic little volcanos near the bottom of the ocean. But he truly survives by, waits for it, eating his siblings' corpses. Yes, you read that right, Godzilla was a cannibal. But I’d imagine this isn’t a taboo practice for their species at all. 

Mothra:

Mothra was already apart of a vanishing species long before the asteroid hit the earth. Despite their size, they were often the target of ambushes and found it difficult to combat the other flying individuals that evolved. (Rodan and Mothra’s species were actually enemies and would kill young on both sides. As to why his kind began evolving to handle the heat while Mothra’s started to grow sharper and more poisonous stingers.). We will assume only about 40 were around when the comet hit the earth. Mostly, they died together as a swarm in the blink of an eye. Mothra, however, was an outcast for her size and the fact she lacked the correct social status of her swarm to be included. Her exclusion was what ultimately kept her alive as when the asteroid hit she was already deep within a cavern drinking on stalagmites and underground rivers. 

Anguirus:

Anguirus is plain and simple. He was a runt who was cut off by his clan. He had already sheltered up in a deep cavern and ate on minerals and the soil after the disaster happened. He is also an omnivore and ate on a few small mammals here and there along with whatever vegetation he could find. 

So why did they live for so long? What’s their secret to basically being immortal? (Aside from Anguirus rest in peace bby). Well, let’s just say they age very slowly and know how to balance out life. The more active they are the faster the body has to keep producing new cells and whatnot. Basic laws of existence. Therefore, as if they all had the same idea, it was soon known that if one slept, they could technically live forever as their bodies momentarily pause its function and or slows them down. Now this isn’t a perfect headcanon, and I’m sure there are soooo many loopholes that are involved, but it was just fun to try and write it out and actually see what I was thinking. If you have anything to add, please do, because honestly, this stuff is fun to talk about. (I’m a biology nerd. Fiction or not I love explaining how lifeforms work.)

[disneykathy]

DISNEY WORLD

Disney’s Animal Kingdom

This is the other park I get lost in. I’ve been there a dozen times or more but it still feels like the Moving Island in “Lost”: “Wasn’t Africa to the left of Dinoland? How can I be in Asia? Where’s the damn big tree?? I can’t see the tree!!”

Never fear...when you first enter, you have no choice but to walk straight to the first “land” of this park: Discovery island:

Directly in front of you will be the weenie for this park: The Tree Of Life! It’s huge!

No...it’s not real! C’mon, sane up.

The “tree” is a 145 foot high sculpture of an African Baobab tree. Wander around the tree, under passages and through the Discovery Island Trails. Besides seeing some interesting real-life animals, you’ll see that the “Tree of Life” aka the “BFT”, (use your imagination), has 135 detailed animal carvings in its wood. They are amazing. Please take time to explore. You just got here-you can still feel your feet.

Under the BFT, in its roots, is a theater. This is where you will find the attraction: “It’s Tough to be a Bug”.

If you have a fear of bugs, take heed: although no real insects are involved in this production, it does evoke creepy crawly bugginess. The waiting area is an underground lair with the constant sound of chirping and buzzing. And the show does evoke a few fun special effects that make most of us laugh, but, if you are creepa-phobic, these effects may shoot you right through the wall. Just sayin’.

The show is a 3D movie with characters from “A Bugs Life” who will introduce you to the life of bugs and their importance in our little Earth lives. It’s fun. You can sit. It’s air-conditioned (actually TOO air conditioned).

And for those with a phobia, really, you’ll be fine... (spiders, roaches and bees, oh my!!!).

If you stay in the Animal Kingdom until dark, come back to Discovery Island and stand in front of the BFT. Once it’s dark, they do a new projection like show on the tree that is stunning! I had no idea they did this the last time I was there, and just happened to be passing... I was like “what the hell goes on with that tree?? There were all flashy lights coming out of its limbs- I thought I was having a stroke!

Pandora-The World of Avatar:

It’s beautiful! This newest area of Disney’s Animal Kingdom is gorgeous! If you’ve seen the movie Avatar, you’ll be completely amazed at how they captured the topography and flora of Pandora. If you haven’t seen the film, you’ll be confused. Just go with it.

Avatar Flight of Passage

If you didn’t fast pass this ride, enjoy your day standing in line.

I’d love to say “it’s worth it”. It’s not. Nothing is worth waiting in line for 4 hours. Nothing. If Elvis and John Lennon cane back from the dead to jam with Billy Joel, Elton John and Bruce Springsteen, I wouldn’t wait in line 4 hours.

However, it’s a great ride. This is a 3D flight simulator taking you on your Banshee and swooping over landscapes of Pandora. It’s only 5 minutes but it’s a memorable 5 minutes!

Warning: there are warning all along the queue area about thinking twice if you’re not healthy. Hey Disney-none of us are. I actually thought of not riding because of the excessive warnings. But...

The truth is, if you can ride “Soarin’” without getting extremely dizzy, having a coronary or bursting an aneurysm, you’ll be swell. Only dif here is, you are riding on something similar to a Star Wars speeder bike? It doesn’t actually go anywhere, just moves to simulate what’s happening on the screen. You are in a crouched position. So, if you have neck or back issues, you may want to rethink.

Na’vi River Journey

Your boat takes you on a river journey through Pandora at night. Again, if you haven’t seen the film, most if the trees, plants, animals, bugs in pandora are bioluminescent-a fancy word meaning that they light up at night in psychedelic colors. So, this ride is like floating through a college dorm room in 1968.

Rivers of light

Again, if you are going to be in Animal Kingdom after dark, you might want to get a fast pass for the Rivers of Light show. There are multiple viewing areas for this light show-one entrance is by The Voyage of the Little Mermaid theater And the other is by Expedition Everest.

I hear it’s a beautiful attraction. I haven’t seen it. It’s like, late, and my feet hurt and I’ve seen enough cool stuff to last me. But, if your still bright and bushy tailed, by all means, go. And let me know how it was.

Africa:

I love the atmosphere here. It really feels like you are visiting an African Village (I say that like I’ve ever been anywhere near a real African Village...). The village is called “Harambe” which I think means “spend money” in Swahili. There are some really interesting shops and food stops here-linger awhile...

Kilimanjaro Safaris:

You should have a fast pass for this excursion. You should also go first thing in the morning; the animals are much more active and visible before the heat of the day. They, as opposed to us, have common sense.

For this ride you will board large Jeeps and a driver will take you over muddy rut filled roads and over creaky rope bridges through a variety of African ecosystems where you will see indigenous animals. It’s a wonderful experience.

Last time I rode, 2 long horned Bongos blocked our way And we had to sit and wait until the mood hit them to wander off. And a Rhino jogged next to the Jeep, a little closer than my comfort zone approved of.

Lions, giraffes, crocs, gnus ...you’ll see them all with a steady stream of comments from the driver. You’ll love it.

Warning: pee first. The ruts are deep and the ride is long.

Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail/Wild Africa Trek

This section is right next to the Safari. It’s a walk through African nature trail where you can spend some leisure time really experiencing the animals. And you will get a close up view of the gorillas! I have an obsession with Silver Back Gorillas And will spend quite some time in this area photographing them. Unless it’s 90 degrees, then I photograph whatever lurks in the A/C.

Festival of the Lion King

This is a theater production where they re-enact the film with all the songs...it’s full of color and pageantry and people love it but I can sit in my house and watch the movie in the a/c without having to spend a gazillion bucks on a one day pass, so I am not a fan. But what do I know??

Asia: this area is also beautiful and evocative. Lots of photo ops to take advantage of.

Expedition Everest- I hate roller coasters, but I love this one! I love the theming in the queue, I love the speed, the yeti and even the drops. It doesn’t feel as wild as it looks, and it’s a smooth ride. If you can keep your eyes open, there’s lots to see.

Again: there are all the standard warnings. I had no problem and I am a major chicken with a bad stomach...so only you know you. Chose wisely.

Kali River Rapids- the signs read “You will get wet”. They should read “You will get soaked to your undies!”.

Kali River Rapids is a wild rapids ride that takes you down a raging Indian River. The theming revolves around an illegal mining/logging camp that you will come upon, showing the decimation of the forest.

You won’t notice this at all because you’ll be praying that the raft turns in your favor and drowns the guy across from you instead. I have ridden this a few times and have never not gotten soaked.

It’s a fun ride and it feels great to get wet in the heat of the day. However, it doesn’t feel great to still be squishing in your jeans 2 hours later or freezing while eating lunch in the A/C! So... don’t wear denim jeans, or, better yet, wear your poncho!

Maharajah Jungle Trek- this is similar to the wild Africa Trek, but with Asian animals-duh. The tigers are the Star of this walking tour and you’ll see them up close and personal. The theming of this Trek is lovely-you’re in an ancient ruin of a Hindi temple.

Up! A Great Bird Adventure:

This is a wild bird show like any other bird show you’ve ever seen except for two things:

1-it stars characters from the movie “Up”

2- it’s outside in Florida so, even though the partial roof keeps you out if direct sun and there are a few large fans, you will still be hot. Unless you go on a cool day, I’d say you can skip this and not live your life in regret.

Dinoland: -

The theming here is just...weird. When it first opened it had a sort of Paleontological bent with fossil beds and some Dino bone exhibits. Then Disney realized that people on vacation don’t care bout science, so they changed the theming to...

Weirder. Now the idea is: this is one of those tacky roadside attractions you’d find on Route 66 in the 50s or 60s. Run by “Chester and Hester”, this two bit Dino-Rama themed low rent stop over features two old fashioned carnival rides - the Primeval Whirl and the Triceratops Spin. The first ride being a small roller coaster and the second is the Dumbo the Flying Elephant Ride with triceratops (triceratops’? Triceratopses?). There are also carnival games and a tacky roadside shop and restaurant. Unless you are with desperate little ones, I’d walk through to pick up the atmosphere and Keep walking.

The real attraction here is Dinosaur!- the ride. This is a dark ride in an enhanced motion vehicle through the Cretaceous period to capture a Dino...And time is of the essence because you have to find said Dino before the great extinction comet hits!

This is a fun trip with lots of bumps, quick turns and jolts..with a few true honest thrills. It is a not to be missed e-ticket ride.

I just rode it and came away unbroken. But, if you have back or neck issues I’d think about skipping it. And, again, use the facilities first.

The Boneyard, which you should save til the end of the visit, is a play area for the kiddies: there are bones to dig up, slides, ropes and climbs and all kinds of stuff to work out any energy they’ve stored up. (You want them to sleep tonight, right?). There are only a few sitting spots for parents/grandparents though. I guess Disney thought we’d be running around sharing joy with our precious darlings. They guessed wrong. They need more seats. And wine.

Well, if you followed my order... and there’s no reason you needed to... you’re done with Disney World!!! Now go back to your room and relax...cuz tomorrow you’re probably spending the day at Universal Studios! ThenThe World of Harry Potter...then Sea World...And Legoland...then of course you’ll have to take the fam to the beach... maybe Clearwater... then you might as well spend a day at Busch Gardens...wait!

You didn’t tour Kennedy Space Center??

[liliannorman]

A rainforest once grew near the South Pole

Once upon a time, a rainforest grew near the bottom of the world.

To find remnants of it, researchers explored the seafloor near Antarctica. In buried sediment there, they found ancient pollen. They also turned up fossilized roots and chemical evidence of a diverse forest. These woods flourished less than a thousand kilometers from the South Pole. That’s only a little more than 600 miles. It’s roughly the distance from New York City to Knoxville, Tenn.

The sediment offers a glimpse of what Earth was like in the distant past. It shows just how warm the planet was during the mid-Cretaceous Period. That was between 92 million and 83 million years ago. From buried traces of vegetation, the scientists reconstructed what the climate must have been like back then.

Average annual temperatures in the forest would have been about 13° Celsius, or 55° Fahrenheit. Summertime temperatures could have reached 25 °C (77 °F). That’s quite warm compared to how frigid Antarctica is now.

The team described its findings April 2 in Nature.

The temperatures aren’t that big a surprise. The mid-Cretaceous was one of the warmest on Earth in the past 140 million years. That estimate is based on studying fossils and seafloor sediments collected closer to the equator. Carbon-dioxide levels in air back then were high. They were at least 1,000 parts per million. (Today’s levels are lower average around 407 ppm. That’s the highest they’ve been at any time in the past 800,000 years.)

Explainer: Global warming and the greenhouse effect

But ancient Antarctica wasn’t just warm. It was a forested. And for trees to thrive so far south, something else had to be going on. There had to be even more potent greenhouse-gas conditions. The air would have held more gases, such as carbon dioxide — far more than previously thought. Carbon-dioxide levels could have been between 1,120 and 1,680 ppm, says Johann Klages. He is a marine geologist who works at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany.

Just like now, he explains, the South Pole millions of years ago got little light — almost none for four months a year. Even so, Antarctica back then “could still have a temperate climate,” Klages says. “It shows us the extreme potency of carbon dioxide — what carbon dioxide can really do.” The gas made it possible for a forest to grow.

Johann Klages (right) and a colleague analyze seafloor sediment. It came from off the coast of West Antarctica. Studying one sediment core revealed a dense network of roots. Pollen, spores and other chemical traces of freshwater plants also showed up in it.Thomas Ronge/Alfred Wegener Institute

Looking back in time

Klages was part of the team that figured out Antarctica had a forest. The group retrieved a core of soil-like material. It was 30 meters (98 feet) long. The researchers took the core from within the Amundsen Sea. That’s near where water melting off of Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers drain into the sea. The researchers knew the core was special before they even studied it closely, Klages says. It was what they saw in the bottom three meters of sediment. It comes from a time in the mid-Cretaceous. And it showed traces of roots.

“We’ve seen many cores from Antarctica,” Klages says, “but we’ve never seen anything like that.”

The core had pollen, too. All this suggested that Antarctica was once a forest full of conifers, ferns and flowering shrubs. There were also mats of bacteria. But the sediment showed no traces of salt. That means it would have been a freshwater swamp.

The forest data also suggest something else. They offer a clue that Antarctica was largely ice-free during the mid-Cretaceous, Klages says. High carbon dioxide in the atmosphere alone wouldn’t have been enough to keep the region balmy so close to the pole. And if it would have had an ice sheet, all that whiteness would have reflected much of the incoming sunlight back into space. That would keep the land cold.

Explainer: Ice sheets and glaciers

Plant cover would have had the opposite effect. It absorbs and holds the sun’s heat. And that would have boosted greenhouse warming. With more plants and no ice, the atmosphere would have been warmer. That would have allowed trees to flourish.

Julia Wellner is a geologist at the University of Houston, in Texas, who was not involved in the study. The findings offer “an unambiguous record of not just warmer conditions,” she says. They also point to “a diverse forest flora” at the South Pole, she says.

“This paper is a great reminder that, just because there [is] a continent sitting at the South Pole, [that] doesn’t mean it necessarily has to have ice everywhere,” she says. It doesn’t even need to have been particularly cold, she adds.

Past climate, present climate

What lessons might those ancient data tell about modern climate change, such as rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and melting glaciers? That’s hard to know.

Explainer: Understanding plate tectonics

It is difficult to make direct parallels between then and now, Wellner points out. Carbon dioxide levels in today’s air are well below mid-Cretaceous levels. Still, they are climbing. And continental landmasses have moved over millions of years. They’ve been pushed and pulled along with the tectonic plates beneath them. Those plates are pieces of Earth’s crust that move. Their movements led, in part, to changes in the flow of ocean waters and air.

The study does highlight several features that are important to overall climate. Ice cover is one of them. Whether there’s a lot of ice or a little matters, Wellner says. What role such features might play in the future is not yet clear. Antarctica’s existing ice sheets, for example, could theoretically limit runaway greenhouse warming. And that could happen even as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue to rise.

Klages agrees. “Ice present on the planet is a big gift,” he says. “And [we] should do everything we can to keep it.”

A rainforest once grew near the South Pole published first on https://triviaqaweb.tumblr.com/

[archivesofcreation]

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC WILLING TO LIE TO ADVANCE EVOLUTION

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SCIENCE - IN A FIRST, FOSSIL DINOSAUR FEATHERS FOUND NEAR THE SOUTH POLE Separating fact from fiction in a farcical story! Were fossil dinosaur feathers really found near the South Pole?

Dino-bird evolution frequently causes excitement on social media platforms so my attention was grabbed by a picture of a fully feathered dinosaur with a sensationalist National Geographic headline that read, “In a first, fossil dinosaur feathers found near the South Pole”.1 However, what had actually been found differed so significantly from the headline that words such as overreaching speculation and grandiose story-telling immediately came to mind. In what follows, I have broken down the article’s salient points to highlight the highly misleading nature of National Geographic’s claims.

What was actually found?

Fact – The research team described ten exquisitely preserved 10–30 mm long fossil feathers, found from 1962 onwards over multiple digs in the Koonwarra Fossil Bed, south-eastern Australia.2 The feathers include downy feathers, contour body feathers, a complex juvenile flight feather “like those on the wings of modern birds”, and one that they refer to as a ‘protofeather’. Speculation – They allege that the feathers are 118 million years old, some of which belonged to ground-dwelling carnivorous dinosaurs. Conventionally, this ‘dates’ from the early Cretaceous period when they believe that the landmass of Australia was joined with Antarctica, before drifting north to its current location. This is why they have fossil feathers coming from near the ‘South Pole’ in their article title, rather than Australia, to make the story even more sensational. Although they think Antarctica would not have been as cold as it is today, they speculate that, “feathers may have been important for insulation, allowing small carnivorous dinosaurs to survive the difficult winter months.” “None of the feathers are currently associated with distinct dinosaur or bird bones”—National Geographic.With what type of dinosaur did they find the feathers? – “None of the feathers are currently associated with distinct dinosaur or bird bones. Instead, they were probably lost during molting or preening and drifted on the wind onto the surface of an ancient lake, where they sank to the bottom and were preserved in the fine mud.” What they would like to find in the future? – “To actually find the skeleton of a feathered dinosaur here in Australia would be amazing,” said Dr Stephen Poropat, a paleontologist at Swinburne University, Melbourne. It appears that we can agree on something: amazing it would be! Imposed Ideology – The National Geographic article tries to reinforce the current evolutionary idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs. This is done by use of a spurious picture of a fully-feathered dinosaur (which is simply made up) and the misleading headline. The details in the actual article do not begin to support the idea that dinosaurs evolved into birds, nor even that dinosaurs had feathers (although the creation model does not necessarily rule this out). This kind of blatant propaganda occurs on an all too regular basis; for another example, see: Sorry, how many feathers did you find? The reality is this is simply one more case of paying homage to the altar of naturalistic evolution. Geological context – The research team presented no direct evidence whatsoever that the feathers did not belong to birds. And they must have been rapidly covered in sediment to preserve them. They have been found in a sedimentary rock layer laid down by water in Australia. The fossil bed also contained numerous other animals: freshwater ray-finned fish, lungfish, various insects, arachnids and other terrestrial invertebrates, aquatic insect larvae, hydrophilid beetles, and horseshoe crabs. Plant fossils were found as well: mosses, liverworts, fern-like plants, Ginkgo, and conifers. A better explanation – The reality is that these fossil feathers and their geological context fit much better with biblical history. The fossilised feathers provide yet another example of swiftly-lithified fossils. These, along the range of other creatures and plants mentioned above would have been fossilised during the conditions provided by the Noahic Flood some 4,500 years ago, itself a successive burial of pre-Flood ecosystems. Finding feathers at an alleged 118 million years old adds nothing to the evolutionary story anyway; there are ‘older’ birds with feathers in the fossil record, such as Confuciusornis, an alleged 153 million years old. Genesis 1 clearly teaches that animals were created to reproduce within their own kinds. This is exactly what the fossil record shows, and we observe today. Gondwana Research, 2019.

The 10 feathers described by the research team.

Lessons to learn that should have been learnt

Social media is used to share news stories quickly and widely. In doing so, organisations often use unique punchy headlines to get people’s attention, hoping that they visit their websites, and read their material. Creation Ministries International also use social media (why not give us a like if you have not already?). However, we are very careful to ensure that our article headlines images and captionsare factually accurate and not misleading. Unfortunately, organisations that zealously promote big-picture evolution, such as National Geographic in this bold and fanciful instance, frequently do not take the same care when titling their articles or matching the content to real facts and verifiable history. This is not the first time that National Geographic has blatantly promoted the false idea of dinosaur to bird evolution.This is not the first time that National Geographic has blatantly promoted the false idea of dinosaur to bird evolution. After the notable Archaeoraptor hoax scandal, a phony dino-feathered fossil that they published and promoted, but then had to recant, one might hope they had learnt their lesson. Leading paleornithologist Alan Feduccia was scathing in denouncing the debacle over Archaeoraptor: In his open letter to Peter Raven, Storrs Olson asserted that National Geographic had “reached an all-time low for engaging in sensationalistic, unsubstantiated, tabloid journalism,” and “The idea of feathered dinosaurs . . . is being actively promulgated by a cadre of zealous scientists acting in concert with certain editors at Nature and National Geographic who themselves have become outspoken and highly biased proselytizers of the faith.” Although the scandal was resolved through the self-corrective process of science, it is worth noting that it would not have occurred had a more critical attitude toward dinosaurs and the origin of birds prevailed in the scientific and popular literature. In illustrating the degeneration of scientific discourse with respect to this issue, Olson’s letter clearly illustrated that the highly respected magazine National Geographic and a major scientific journal, Nature, were incapable or unwilling to consider critically the question of the origin of birds.3 Jonathan Chen, Wikipedia.org

The fraudulent archaeoraptor fossil Christians should always adhere to a higher standard of truth, being careful in the information they present to others. In the National Geographic article the intention of the headline is clear, as well as the implications: another ‘helpful’ example of evolution has now been discovered, which adds to the enormous body of evidence that evolution is a fact. Yet many readers likely never clicked on the story, and actually read the details, so this is the message that they would have taken away. However, had they read carefully, with an inquisitive mind, then they should have been left with a very different understanding altogether. In view of the unwarranted imagination promoted to an unsuspecting public as fact (compared to the factual data about these fossil feathers), the whole story is farcical. Our prayer at CMI is that people will come to embrace the alternative and true understanding of the world around them: Humanity was created in the image of God (the day after the birds, and on the same day as dinosaurs; Genesis 1:20–31), but we are separated from Him due to our fallen nature (Romans 3:23). This, we have inherited from Adam, and our own personal sin further condemns us (Romans 5:12; 1 John 1:8, 10). This is bad news: each of us is totally helpless because we cannot make up for our sin towards God (Romans 6:23; Hebrews 9:27). But God, being gracious, sent His son Jesus to live a perfect life, to shed his blood on the cross in payment for sin, and that all those who repent and believe on Him can be saved: This is good news to all people. Amen!   ORIGINAL ARTICLE FROM CREATION.COM Read the full article

[daveywankenobie]

I’ve been quiet.

I know I know.

It’s all good though. Whilst a period of radio silence on my blog usually indicates either a lack of worthwhile content or a pronounced dip in my mood neither could be further from the truth this time.

I’m both really happy and have a lot to write and think about – although not all of it fits in with my strict criteria for blog inclusion, so I’ll gloss over some of what’s been going on for the time being.

I’ve been on a holiday of sorts over the week between Christmas and New Year and have been exploring the wilds of Sussex – which have actually turned out to be rather lovely.

I was told by one of it’s denizens that this is something that I must not talk about publicly however, because if I do then people would soon start flocking to its beauty spots in much greater numbers – and the sense of supreme tranquility that I observed would be ruined.

Instead I was told to say that Sussex is a monstrous carbuncle of concrete covered with traffic and urban decay – but it’s difficult to tell such horrendous fibs – especially when it looks this lovely.

After getting intimate with the beautiful but rather muddy countryside near Cuckfield  on Thursday I went on a rather longer (and seriously picturesque) walk on Friday to explore the South Downs.

They frankly have some pretty wonderful views.

On a clear day (which this thankfully turned out to be after some rather grey clouds disappeared) you can see all the way to Brighton and Hove on the coastline and the North downs (a future destination for  sure) in the opposite direction.

I’m reliably informed by a rather spirited local (who appeared inexplicably to know rather a lot about geology and geography) that the long ridges of the downs used to actually be a giant dome, stretching from the white cliffs of Brighton to the North downs in the distance.

The whole region comprises of a thick band of porous chalk – deposited during the Cretaceous period around sixty million years ago. Movement of the landscape over time caused the top to gradually crack ‘like the chocolate surface of a mars bar being bent in the middle’ (or so they said). Subsequent weathering and erosion during the last ice age then sculpted its landscape into these rather lovely valleys, hilltops and ridges.

They’re really really beautiful.

The endless views of the downs are a major contrast to nearby Brighton though – which I had never visited before.

This well known resort’s plurality seems to be part of its character – and nothing underlined its sometimes contradictory facets better than the rather rustic looking piano near the entrance of its (quite lovely Victorian) train station.

When I disembarked from my short train journey on Saturday this was the very first thing I spotted, standing there like an ambassador for the charms to be found in the nearby streets. It looked like it was simply aching to be played – but simultaneously it was not in the mood to be touched in any way shape or form.

Nothing says ‘don’t you dare fiddle with me’ better than a giant padlock…

I had no idea that Brighton was actually a city until I started exploring – and had always just assumed (underlining my woeful lack of southern geographical knowledge) that it was a seaside town.

On the one side is tradition – with its pier and pleasure beach harking back to a stubbornly bygone era of British holidays and postcards – and on the other there’s modernity.

The rising glass viewing donut of the British Airways i360 is an impressive sight for sure – although I hear that it has something of a reputation for getting stuck at the top, so I resolved not to chance it on this particular occasion…

Despite its occasionally unreliable visitor attractions Brighton is otherwise a bustling metropolis with consumerism standing side by side next to alternative counter culture.

It consequently has interesting and pronounced contrasts between seaside tackiness (it’s practically impossible to avoid the scent of burgers and chips wherever you walk) a very bohemian area, clear problems with homelessness and extremely aspirational retail outlets contained within an extremely well to do shopping mall.

I like the mix though – and not just because there are some particularly well named shops (look closely) in the windswept and interesting parts.

Not only is the more ‘hessian and unshaven’ area of the town a great place for geeks (who seemed to be constantly in evidence as I browsed) but it’s an excellent location to have a mooch around if you like Star Wars.

As well as there being absolutely masses of figures, comics and statuettes in the stores there was some really cool bespoke art to be found in the nearby galleries too.

Sci fi seemed to be a theme that ran throughout the day like letters in Brighton rock – and I couldn’t help but explode in a shower of nerd joy when later on I saw a Millennium Falcon the Lego shop in the exclusive Churchill Square shopping arcade.

In particular I marvelled not only at the detail (look at the little lego Mynock on the hull!) but the frikkin price!!!

£650!!!

How on earth can parents justify a Christmas present with a tag that huge?!

I guess the answer is that it’s not just children who are obsessed with Lego these days.

I know this because I overheard a conversation with a seriously crestfallen nearby man. As I passed he was receiving clearly distressing news from a surprisingly earnest store assistant that a certain edition of the Lego Batmobile was now a discontinued item.

Obviously the staff knew the upset such news could cause.

This was no joke.

‘Oh……… Oh………’ Came the response, as the guy processed this unexpected information.

‘Right…. OK….’ He said, clearly trying to deal with what sounded like a sudden bereavement in his family.

The assistant nodded with both hands clasped in front of him as if he were a Lego pall bearer. For a moment I half expected him to place a reassuring hand on his customer’s shoulder – but he stopped short and remained in quiet attendance of the man in front of him.

The guy next to me really wanted that Batmobile.

I can understand it though – because if (like me) you’re a fan both Lego and of something like Marvel films and comics then a massive version of the Mark 44 Hulkbuster Armour from Avengers: Age of Ultron is a huge bucket list item.

Coming in at an infinitely (no pun intended) more reasonable £120 (!) the only reason I didn’t buy this (apart from preferring to eat food rather than Lego bricks and not having endless money to waste) was because my head was turned by the MOOHASSIVE Harry Potter Hogwarts diorama nearby.

I know of at least two regular commenters on this blog that would probably donate organs to own and play with this.

With an asking price of £350 they may well have needed to…

Saddened by the absence of a bottomless wallet in my pocket I moved on from shop to head turning shop – all full of items that I consider both lovely but also way too expensive to buy.

Practically the only thing I could have justified in that whole arcade was the delightful handfulls of Lego sitting in huge bins like cinema pick and mix.

Talking of cinemas – this turned out to be the reason for my second visit to Brighton the following day – when myself and a fellow geek decided to see the seriously cool Into the Spiderverse animated film.

  It’s rare that you can go to a movie that’s classified as ‘Universal’, has kids on booster seats nearby and still have the entire audience so captivated by the subject matter that there’s barely a peep out of anyone in the auditorium until the end credits.

I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone that likes Spider-Man (or indeed animated movies) and not only because it’s a great film with a brilliant storyline, but because it contains a really really poignant little cameo from the late and great Stan Lee (may he rest in peace).

It’s worth te trip for anyone (and their kids) – so make sure you go before it’s no longer showing on a big screen!

I’m quite sentimental so this particular cinema ticket is a keeper.

Sunday was sadly my last evening in Sussex though – and the following day I reluctantly headed back to Warwick – only focused by the fact that on Saturday I’d missed yet another weigh in at Slimming World.

I don’t like doing this – particularly as I’ve now got plans for next Saturday too (if my group are reading – sorry guys!), so I resolved to weigh in at Angie’s Monday group instead.

However – before I could do this I had to cater to another borderline OCD habit. My mildly obsessive side was also in need of a swim – and it had been a few days since I’d enjoyed one.

I do find though that taking a break from exercise for a little while often means a surprisingly effortless performance increase when I do. Both my stamina and endurance seemed to have been recovering/building while I was away, meaning that I managed to shave almost five minutes off my previous time for a two kilometre swim.

What’s more – I did it with a lower average heart rate too!

When I finally arrived at the Monday group’s 4pm New Year’s Eve weigh in session (which unsurprisingly seemed to have a lot of new members joining with resolutions to lose weight in the new year) I already suspected I was a lot lighter than before I’d headed off to Sussex.

I’d been pleasantly diverted the whole time I was there by many different things, and for once my focus had not been food. I’d managed to occupy myself far better than I normally do in the evenings and as a consequence had eaten significantly less than I normally would – whilst still maintaining a good level of activity during the day.

When I stood on the scales therefore I was out of my target range – but for the FIRST TIME EVER this was because I was way below the 13st 11lbs minimum I needed to be rather than way above it.

This is the lightest I have ever been in my adult life!!!

Although I’ll need to put some weight back on (hardly an awful problem to have at this time of year) by some kind of wonderful Christmas miracle I managed to lose a frankly ridiculous six pounds over the festive period.

On top of that I only went and got a TWENTY ONE STONE AWARD!!!!

How wonderful is that?!

Happy flipping New Year!!!

I’m sure you’ll agree internet that my time away has been time well spent!

Over the coming days I have more things planned, and this may also mean a period of radio silence – so stay frosty people.

Just like The Terminator ‘I’ll be back.’

Davey

Sussex and a Twenty One Stone Award! I've been quiet. I know I know. It's all good though. Whilst a period of radio silence on my blog usually indicates either a lack of worthwhile content or a pronounced dip in my mood neither could be further from the truth this time.

[eldorvdo-blog]

seyoon usually knows better than to interrupt other people’s conversations, especially those of people he doesn’t know, but there are times when he just can’t sit around and not put his two cents in. in this case, he finds himself morally obligated to. he’d feel guilty for the rest of his life if he didn’t step in and say something. 

“actually... dinosaurs and humans never lived together at the same time. you’re looking at a period of, like, 65 million years between when the last of the dinosaurs dwindled out and the first of the humans started to spring up, so they definitely did not co-exist, ever. that’s just a myth.” 

the little boy he’s talking to blinks in response. he can’t be any older than eight, but he seems to be pretty set in his beliefs judging by the way he gives seyoon a skeptical look. “but on the flinstones, people lived with dinosaurs!”

“the flinstones don’t know shi- uh, i mean, a-anything about dinosaurs.” it’s a nice save. “trust me on this. that’s just a silly old cartoon that doesn’t have its facts straight. you can’t trust cartoons.”

“well, my mom told me to never trust a stranger.”

seyoon shrugs. “my name’s seyoon. there! now i’m not a stranger anymore.”

the little boy seems to think this over for a second, then shrugs as well. one might find it frightening how quick a child can put all hesitance aside and believe what any adult tells them, but in this case it’s good that seyoon isn’t someone trying to bribe this kid into his van with the promise of candy and puppies. seyoon is just genuinely trying to educate. it’s the only subject he feels he knows enough information about to share and everyone’s gotta make some sort of impact on the world, don’t they? this very well may be his.

“okay! but how do you know that people didn’t live back then if you weren’t even there?”

“you weren’t even there either,” seyoon points out. “and i know this because it’s common knowledge. you can verify this yourself by just opening up a book or searching online. do you know what anthropology is?” when the child shakes his head, seyoon goes on explaining. “there are people in this world whose job it is to actually research where humankind comes from and how long we’ve been around. if we were alive during the time of the dinosaurs, i think we would’ve found that out already - but we haven’t, because we didn’t.”

the kid rubs his chin and narrows his eyes. “hm... alright then. i guess it’s probably a good thing we weren’t alive then because dinosaurs are scary and they’d probably eat us.”

“yeah, probably. some of them, anyway.”

“what do you think would’ve been more scarier to see? a t-rex or a spinosaurus?”

seyoon raises his brows and shrugs, leaning against the railing behind him. he’s come to the museum today to take a stroll and look at some of the fossils. having a full on conversation with a child wasn’t in his plans for today, but he’s glad for the conversation anyway. seyoon loves to talk, but if there’s anything he loves to talk about the most, it’s this kind of shit. “well... they’re both powerful and terrifying in their own ways. i guess i’d say spinosaurus, though, since it was even bigger than the t-rex. that’s one of my favorites.”

“me too! who do you think would win in a fight?”

“neither! spinosaurus lived in middle cretaceous africa like a hundred million years ago. t-rex lived in the late cretaceous north america 65 million years ago. they would never have been able to fight each other. they didn’t co-exist either. that’s another myth.”

the boy seems impressed. “wow, cool! you sure know a lot about dinosaurs!”

seyoon smiles and nods. many years of research have certainly paid off. “yeah, well, i think dinosaurs are cool so i like to learn about them. what about you?”

“yes! but i don’t know a lot of things like you...” the little boy huffs a little, then grabs the arm of another kid nearby. “hey! this guy knows everything about dinosaurs! i’m serious! and you were wrong about the caveman thing! he told me so.”

overhearing the discussion, a woman turns around and offers seyoon a pleasant smile. she’s obviously here with the children as part of a school group. there are a number of them scattered around the room. “do you work here?”

seyoon takes a second to mull the question over. the actual answer should be ‘no’, but he comes around often enough to know the lay of the land. part of him thinks he knows more than the actual people that work here do. he isn’t one to lie, though. at least not about this sort of thing. “well... technically, no, but i do come here to spread information sometimes.”

“oh, like a volunteer? do you do tours? my kids are here to learn about fossils but i couldn’t seem to find anything online about organizing something like that.”

“i... could. i could do that, yes.” technically. “did you want one?”

the woman seems incredibly relieved to hear this. “yes! we’d love one. are you starting one now?”

seyoon glances around the room and does a quick mental count of how many kids are in the room, then smiles again. he’s not an actual volunteer and he’s definitely not a tour guide either, but he knows a lot of information and this makes him feel confident. not to mention, he’s good at talking - that’s basically all that tour guides do. with a nod, he glances at his watch and notes the time. he’s got about an hour to kill before he’s got to head out anyway. one little lap around the museum wouldn’t hurt. “absolutely. my tour’s departing right now.”

by the time the first tour ends, he’s agreed to take another group around - this time one that consists of families, rather than just schoolchildren on a field trip. seyoon doesn’t mind saying the same thing over again. he finds it incredibly fun to be socializing with so many people and sharing so much information about the fossils in the museum and about where they came from. at the end of the second tour, he goes home. he’s got a late shift tonight so he’s got to go get ready for it. 

on the way out of the museum, a woman with her young daughter stops to speak to the employee at the front desk. “thanks so much! your tour guide was absolutely amazing! we’ll definitely be coming back here.”

the guy at the desk simply furrows his brows at her. “tour guide?”

“yeah! the tall, skinny young man with the black shirt? he had a lot of information. he really knows his stuff - and he was so sweet, too! if i were you guys, i’d give him a raise!”

the guy has to stop and think for a few seconds, trying to remember someone coming in with that description (because, as far as he knows, the museum has no official tour guides at this time), then remembers seyoon. 

“oh, that kid...” another pause. “that kid does NOT work here.”

[amberpalace-blog1]

10 Findings in Amber that shape our view on prehistory

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far... Well, not that far away actually. Prehistoric trees were pouring out resin that would grab anything it touched and encased it in a protective layer. This resin-turned-gemstone is an amazing preservative that allows us to peer into prehistoric times. Everything that gets captured in this world's first “nature camera” gets preserved incredibly well, and allows us to get a better understanding of the past. 

10. Not quite the Jurassic World

Scientists have recently pooled their resources and tried to extract ancient bee DNA from copal (a baby amber). However, after countless of tries and having exhausted all the available technology, it has become certain that we won’t be having miniature brontosauruses running around in our backyards anytime soon. At least not the Jurrasic Park way - from a blood-gorged mosquito in amber.

It has become clear that the problem was that no DNA actually survived within the copal. And no DNA means no dinosaurs. And if it can’t survive in copal - which is between 60 to 10,000 years old - then there's virtually no chance it remains intact in amber, which is millions of years older. 

The lifetime of DNA still remains an unknown variable to scientists. The speed at which DNA decays is still not a precise science. The approximate lifetime of DNA, scientists say, is about a millennium - if frozen perfectly.

9. Bugs Acting Silly

A recently found piece of amber put under a CT scan has shown something quite bizarre. An adult mayfly that was trapped inside the amber had a tiny springtail riding piggyback on the mayfly. The 16-million-year-old, yet somewhat childish pair is the first proof of different species interacting in such a way. 

Putting together nearly 3000 x-rays, scientists managed to create a 3D replica picture of the two animals. This allowed scientists to observe this previously unknown behaviour in better detail. By dissecting the digital version of the picture it has become clear that the springtail was trying to jump away just as the resin engulfed both it and the mayfly. 

While we probably still have springtails riding mayflies today, this phenomenon is difficult to observe as the springtails are so hard to pin down.

8. Lungful of Oxygen

It’s not only animals and flora that get trapped in the amber. The air does too. Bubbles trapped in amber have provided scientists with an interesting piece of trivia. The amber prospects collected from 16 different mines across the world had their bubbles inspected with a quadrupole mass spectrometer, which suggested that the air that the dinosaurs snorted in was much richer in oxygen compared to today’s atmosphere. 

In the Cretaceous period, 67 million years ago, creatures had the chance to enjoy 14% more oxygen in the air than we do. When air was studied in younger amber, the oxygen levels tend to drop from the late Cretaceous to early Tertiary times - almost in the same downward curve that follows the demise of dinosaurs. It is quite possible that in order for dinosaurs to sustain life, an oxygen rich atmosphere was a necessity. Especially for the ones that weighed more than a house. 

7. Drug Grass

Herbivore dinos might have been even more “rad” than we thought. They would often “get high” on a psychotropic fungus, called Palaeoclaviceps parasiticus, which is comparable to today's ergot, which is used to make LSD.

Proof of this scariness (the image of a massive, high-as-a-kite, sauropod, chasing you down some field, thinking you’re a piece of succulent wheat) came from amber mines in Maynman. A piece of 100-million-year-old amber held the earliest grass fossil ever to be found. And on it was the “High Shroom”. It is believed that the prehistoric plant eaters would regularly consume this laced grass. 

Scientists aren’t exactly sure how it affected the massive dinosaurs, but they speculate that consuming this fungus would cause the same symptoms as ergot, to modern animals - hallucinations, gangrene, losing their balance, intense pain, and seizures. During the Middle Ages, hundreds upon hundreds of people dies sometimes, when ergot-infected rye bread was made. This peculiar piece of amber proves that this parasite has been around since the dawn of dinosaurs or even earlier. 

6. Asteroid Survivors

A harvestman found in amber may reveal further information about how the extinction of the dinosaurs affected the arachnids. This relative of arachnids died out about 100 million years ago and is nearly identical to the modern harvestman spider. Scientists are quite fascinated about this discovery from the Mesozoic Era, as it could reveal how many arachnid groups managed to survive the global cataclysm that annihilated the dinosaurs. 

Almost every species on the planet had their fate sealed by what most believe to have been a massive asteroid that collided with earth 65 million years ago. The further, post-apocalyptic harvestmen are very similar to the specimen that was found in amber, so its lineage must have survived the ancient cataclysm. Arachnids appeared to have diced with the asteroid and its fallout and come out the other side relatively unscathed. 

5. Continental History Rewritten

The Indian subcontinent split off from Antarctica around 150 million yeas ago, remaining independent until it embraced Asia around 50 million years back. Geological evidence seems to support this theory, however recent amber findings tend to suggest otherwise. 

When scientists dissolved Indian amber going back to the separation period, they thought they would find species that had evolved in unique ways. Considering that the subcontinent had no outside DNA influence for a 100 million year, that was a reasonable hypothesis. Instead, the 700 insects and spiders found in the amber were closely related to the other fossils found in Europe, Australia, New Guinea and tropical America. 

This stunning discovery has scientists convinced that there is some unseen connection between all these places. India’s fauna didn’t evolve in isolation. Plant findings in the amber suggests that the landscapes closely resembled modern forests and rainforests are believed to be even older than previously believed, most likely dating back to the dinosaur extinction.  

4. New Ant Spieces

Scientists can only construct a picture of prehistoric life with what evidence they have. Some of the evidence came from the fossil ants found in North America and South Asia. Since there were no representatives of this species anywhere else, the assumption grew that either of those places was the birthplace of ants. This, however, was disproved when Ethiopian amber was studied. 

Among the samples, a tiny, nearly 95 millions year old ant was found. This African fossil added a third candidate for the Origin of Ants and provided an excellent opportunity to study how the three ant groups are related.

The amber specimens from Ethiopia held even more wonders. A few insects, a spider, and one mite were the oldest to come from Africa and would have wondered the landscapes along with the Cretaceous dinosaurs. Some ferns, fungi and never-before-seen spores also were found. 

3. Prehistoric Bees and Polen

20 million years ago, a bee on duty had a run in with resin pouring out of a tree while collecting pollen. Unfortunately it perished and fortunately for us ended up in a lab as a chunk of amber in 2005.

Scientists have identified the pollen as being orchids. This finding suggests that orchids are not only older than previously thought but the oldest of all flowering plants. The flower that provided the pollen was 15-20 million years old, but its ancestors could go back as far as 70 million. The grandpa (or is it grandma) orchid, Melioris Caribea, was placed within one of five subfamilies that still exist.

This particular amber specimen is also valuable because it is rare proof that pollination was not a prehistoric accident. The now-extinct stingless bee was covered in pollen - something only specialised flower parts could do. 

2. Bird Wings

A wonderful specimen was found in the amber market in Burma, where trading is dangerously casual. Nearly 30% of the amber found there contains valuable fossils from the Cretaceous, but they are seen as imperfections and are destroyed by jewelers. Scientists have bought two pieces containing preserved feathers. After inspection, it surprised everyone, as it became clear that they were, in fact, a pair of wingtips. 

The structure of the wings found in the amber resembled that of modern birds, just a whopping 100 million years older. They are believed to have belonged to a prehistoric species of avian dinosaurs. 

Under closer inspection, colour returned to the feathers. Silver, dark to light brown and even white bands. Before, the feathers from avian dinosaurs were only found on imprints or fragments too small to be inspected. What appears to be the case, however, the discovered wing tips belonged to an entire bird encased in amber, before they were cut off from a larger amber piece. The rest of the bird have not been found.

1. Entire Evolution Record

 It is one thing to find wing tips of an avian dinosaur, but another thing entirely to find feathers from normal dinosaurs with no wings to speak of. 

In a massive stroke of luck, amber mine in Alberta yielded all the stages of such dinosaur feather evolution. The 80 million-year-old pieces tell a story of how sparse hair-resembling strands turned into the normal double-branched structure of modern birds feathers. 

What’s fascinating is that the prehistoric feathers weren’t meant for flying as much as for swimming, like the birds of today that live in and around water. There is also more and more evidence that suggests that most dinosaurs, even the non-bird ones, had brightly coloured plumage. The previously believed theory that their lizard skins only sprouted dull earth colours is fading from serious studies. It is a whole new way to look at dinosaurs. But a fluffy rainbow t-rex is still scary as hell.

[seyoou-blog]

seyoon usually knows better than to interrupt other people’s conversations, especially those of people he doesn’t know, but there are times when he just can’t sit around and not put his two cents in. in this case, he finds himself morally obligated to. he’d feel guilty for the rest of his life if he didn’t step in and say something.

“actually… dinosaurs and humans never lived together at the same time. you’re looking at a period of, like, 65 million years between when the last of the dinosaurs dwindled out and the first of the humans started to spring up, so they definitely did not co-exist, ever. that’s just a myth.”

the little boy he’s talking to blinks in response. he can’t be any older than eight, but he seems to be pretty set in his beliefs judging by the way he gives seyoon a skeptical look. “but on the flinstones, people lived with dinosaurs!”

“the flinstones don’t know shi- uh, i mean, a-anything about dinosaurs.” it’s a nice save. “trust me on this. that’s just a silly old cartoon that doesn’t have its facts straight. you can’t trust cartoons.”

“well, my mom told me to never trust a stranger.”

seyoon shrugs. “my name’s seyoon. there! now i’m not a stranger anymore.”

the little boy seems to think this over for a second, then shrugs as well. one might find it frightening how quick a child can put all hesitance aside and believe what any adult tells them, but in this case it’s good that seyoon isn’t someone trying to bribe this kid into his van with the promise of candy and puppies. seyoon is just genuinely trying to educate. it’s the only subject he feels he knows enough information about to share and everyone’s gotta make some sort of impact on the world, don’t they? this very well may be his.

“okay! but how do you know that people didn’t live back then if you weren’t even there?”

“you weren’t even there either,” seyoon points out. “and i know this because it’s common knowledge. you can verify this yourself by just opening up a book or searching online. do you know what anthropology is?” when the child shakes his head, seyoon goes on explaining. “there are people in this world whose job it is to actually research where humankind comes from and how long we’ve been around. if we were alive during the time of the dinosaurs, i think we would’ve found that out already - but we haven’t, because we didn’t.”

the kid rubs his chin and narrows his eyes. “hm… alright then. i guess it’s probably a good thing we weren’t alive then because dinosaurs are scary and they’d probably eat us.”

“yeah, probably. some of them, anyway.”

“what do you think would’ve been more scarier to see? a t-rex or a spinosaurus?”

seyoon raises his brows and shrugs, leaning against the railing behind him. he’s come to the museum today to take a stroll and look at some of the fossils. having a full on conversation with a child wasn’t in his plans for today, but he’s glad for the conversation anyway. seyoon loves to talk, but if there’s anything he loves to talk about the most, it’s this kind of shit. “well… they’re both powerful and terrifying in their own ways. i guess i’d say spinosaurus, though, since it was even bigger than the t-rex. that’s one of my favorites.”

“me too! who do you think would win in a fight?”

“neither! spinosaurus lived in middle cretaceous africa like a hundred million years ago. t-rex lived in the late cretaceous north america 65 million years ago. they would never have been able to fight each other. they didn’t co-exist either. that’s another myth.”

the boy seems impressed. “wow, cool! you sure know a lot about dinosaurs!”

seyoon smiles and nods. many years of research have certainly paid off. “yeah, well, i think dinosaurs are cool so i like to learn about them. what about you?”

“yes! but i don’t know a lot of things like you…” the little boy huffs a little, then grabs the arm of another kid nearby. “hey! this guy knows everything about dinosaurs! i’m serious! and you were wrong about the caveman thing! he told me so.”

overhearing the discussion, a woman turns around and offers seyoon a pleasant smile. she’s obviously here with the children as part of a school group. there are a number of them scattered around the room. “do you work here?”

seyoon takes a second to mull the question over. the actual answer should be ‘no’, but he comes around often enough to know the lay of the land. part of him thinks he knows more than the actual people that work here do. he isn’t one to lie, though. at least not about this sort of thing. “well… technically, no, but i do come here to spread information sometimes.”

“oh, like a volunteer? do you do tours? my kids are here to learn about fossils but i couldn’t seem to find anything online about organizing something like that.”

“i… could. i could do that, yes.” technically. “did you want one?”

the woman seems incredibly relieved to hear this. “yes! we’d love one. are you starting one now?”

seyoon glances around the room and does a quick mental count of how many kids are in the room, then smiles again. he’s not an actual volunteer and he’s definitely not a tour guide either, but he knows a lot of information and this makes him feel confident. not to mention, he’s good at talking - that’s basically all that tour guides do. with a nod, he glances at his watch and notes the time. he’s got about an hour to kill before he’s got to head out anyway. one little lap around the museum wouldn’t hurt. “absolutely. my tour’s departing right now.”

by the time the first tour ends, he’s agreed to take another group around - this time one that consists of families, rather than just schoolchildren on a field trip. seyoon doesn’t mind saying the same thing over again. he finds it incredibly fun to be socializing with so many people and sharing so much information about the fossils in the museum and about where they came from. at the end of the second tour, he goes home. he’s got a late shift tonight so he’s got to go get ready for it.

on the way out of the museum, a woman with her young daughter stops to speak to the employee at the front desk. “thanks so much! your tour guide was absolutely amazing! we’ll definitely be coming back here.”

the guy at the desk simply furrows his brows at her. “tour guide?”

“yeah! the tall, skinny young man with the black shirt? he had a lot of information. he really knows his stuff - and he was so sweet, too! if i were you guys, i’d give him a raise!”

the guy has to stop and think for a few seconds, trying to remember someone coming in with that description (because, as far as he knows, the museum has no official tour guides at this time), then remembers seyoon.

“oh, that kid…” another pause. “that kid does NOT work here.”

[judefan839-blog]

shall remember most about our vacation

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[eddiejpoplar]

Scouring the Gobi Desert for the Fossilized Wonders of the Cretaceous

GOBI DESERT, Mongolia — Dr. Badamkhatan Zorigt was quiet, his fingers tracing the exposed, fossilized remains at his feet. A scattering of ribs and the tucked structure of a hind leg lay all pale white against the red sandstone of the Gobi’s Flaming Cliffs. The whole of humanity’s understanding of natural history hinged here in 1923 when Roy Chapman Andrews found nests of what were originally thought to be Protoceratops eggs during one of his many Central Asiatic Expeditions, confirming for the first time that the ancient reptiles were oviparous.

Badamkhatan looked up at the crowd gathered around him, his deep brown eyes bright with excitement as he pulled a GPS from his pocket to mark the find’s location. It was a new and slender piece of the natural history puzzle. When someone asked what the fossils were, there was no hiding the thrill in his voice.

“I don’t know.”

As the head of the vertebrate paleontology division at the Institute of Paleontology and Geology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, he’s part of a small team working to catalog and study the nearly endless trove of Cretaceous-period fossils hidden in that wide, red desert. He has spent his adult life poring over the delicate remains of creatures that called this place home some 80 million years ago. The fact that the weathered sandstone can still serve up a surprise for him is a testament to all that’s hidden out here.

Badamkhatan, or Badmaa as he insists we call him, works out of a small building in Ulaanbaatar, tucked in an alley behind a restaurant a short hike from the expansive, Soviet-era city square. Mongolia serves as the perfect estuary between northern and southern Asia, its culture a finely grained mix of influences from its neighbors. So much of the architecture is Soviet, the signs lettered in Cyrillic, and nearly all of the vehicles on the road are secondhand models from South Korea, Japan, and China. It’s a miracle mix of right-hand-drive JDM Prius hatchbacks with lifted suspensions to contend with the country’s roads (or in some places, lack thereof), hammered, left-hand-drive Land Cruisers, and Mitsubishi Pajeros. There are American-market vehicles, the odd Wrangler or F-150, but they’re few and far between.

We were there at the Institute, two days before, dust and grit crunching beneath the soles of our shoes, the smell of curing resin and earth thick in the air. The place had the feel of a library, quiet save for the tender scratch of tool on stone. Towering stacks of crates and plaster-wrapped fossils lined the main hall, all waiting their turn beneath the careful hands of patient workers.

Badamkhatan Zorigt has spent his adult life combing the Gobi and studying what he finds there. We couldn’t have asked for a better guide.

“The research never ends,” Badmaa said, pointing to a freshly opened plaster jacket, a complete Tarbosaurus skull grinning inside, its teeth longer than my palm. The massive carnivore is a cousin to the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, though Badmaa says recent research bolsters the theory that the beasts were scavengers, not predators. The hypothesis sprang from a close look at intact leg structures, including the ratio between femur and tibia/fibula. The math indicates they weren’t the fast, lethal runners of cinema lore and juvenile nightmare.

“It doesn’t make us very popular at elementary schools,” Badmaa joked.

Badmaa and his team have no shortage of work, thanks in part to a recent Infiniti-supported expedition through the Gobi. The Japanese automaker and the Explorers Club Hong Kong Chapter set out on a 20-day trek in June, covering some 1,000 miles of open Gobi in an attempt to map and document new potential dig sites. Much of that effort was aimed at leveraging drones equipped with lidar (a laser-based, radarlike surveying method used for 3-D mapping that also figures prominently in autonomous vehicle systems) and other imaging devices, allowing paleontologists to scout more ground in less time, with higher resolution than before. In the past, the scientists have had to rely only on grainy satellite images to help direct their efforts, eyeing the topography for the shales and sandstones indicative of the Cretaceous and employing a bit of hit-or-miss guessing.

The expedition unearthed hundreds of fossils, but for the scientists in Mongolia, the drone data is far more valuable, having mapped hundreds of kilometers of open desert down to the centimeter. The expedition identified some 250 previously undiscovered fossil beds, all of which will provide Badmaa and the other researchers at the Institute with years of productive exploration. Once the drone team processes the footage, volunteers can scan the images, identify fossils already on the surface, and tag their GPS coordinates for paleontologists to examine in the field at a later date.

It’s difficult to convey how amazing that is. Just getting to the Gobi from Ulaanbaatar is a feat. Flights from the capital to Dalanzadgad, the closest airport, are unreliable, subject to cancellation due to crushing rain, dangerous winds, or both. Our Fokker 50 touched down in dawn’s dim hours just long enough to dump us on the tarmac and take off again. The pavement ended at the airport parking lot, terminating in a spider web of two-track ruts that sprawled out into the darkness. Seeing a line of gleaming Infiniti QX80, QX60, and QX50 models waiting to ferry us across the desert was a shock after a day in the capital. They looked like a line of high heels in a world of hiking boots.

When asked why Infiniti would commit its resources to a project like the Gobi expedition, the answer was always, “Why not?”

We threw our kit into a QX80 and climbed in, figuring that, of all the machines there, the Nissan Patrol-derived brawler would be best suited to bashing across the desert. It’s two hours from the airport to the Three Camel Lodge, our base camp, and we naively hoped to catch a few moments of sleep before sunrise. Except dozing in a vehicle requires a road, and where we were going, there was no such thing. Our driver calmly aimed the truck at the taillights ahead, dim red orbs in a thick sea of dust, and planted the throttle, ripping across the ground at 60 mph. Our world shrank to what the headlights could touch: scraps of low vegetation, khaki sand, and opaque walls of airborne grit.

These machines had already endured the expedition across the Gobi, suffering more abuse in a month than most Infinitis will see in a lifetime, and they had the rattles to prove it. It was hard to reconcile the vehicles with the place. Infiniti isn’t a brand known for trudging across the wastes. It doesn’t even have an official dealer network in Mongolia. But productive science and exploration have always courted the support of open-minded individuals, organizations, and corporations, be it for glory or profit. When asked why Infiniti would commit to a project like this, the answer was always, “Why not?”

It’s an unusual response from an automaker now, when every answer, name, and paint code must be pressed and filtered through workshops, attorneys, focus groups, and marketing teams. And while it should have come off as a stunt, it didn’t. Because of all the automakers touting themselves as rugged go-anywhere brands, none of them were so bold as to launch themselves at the Gobi. We weren’t tearing across the darkness in a Jeep. We weren’t doing our best to outrun the sunrise in a Land Rover. We didn’t dart through the center of a herd of camels in a Geländewagen. We did it in an Infiniti. Mongolians like to say that it’s better to have seen their country once than to have heard of it a thousand times. Likewise, for men and machines, it is better to do a thing once than to spend an eternity claiming you can.

By the time we arrived at the Three Camel Lodge, we were ragged with adrenaline, the first soft light of the morning just beginning to beat back the night’s grays and blacks. Every sunrise is a gift, but there are slim words for what we saw as the sun rose: land, unfettered by field or fence from horizon to horizon. I was unprepared for the endless miles of sky and the sprawling, green desert. An ocean of it, the sight of which requested a stillness in everyone. A herd of horses watered nearby, more than I’ve ever seen together in one place. Mongolia has more than 4.5 million of them, and the nomads who tend their herds in the Gobi count them by stallion. One male’s harem might hold two mares or 12, plus all of their foals. Mongolia is a country that will not stop amazing you.

Badmaa carefully documents exposed bone fragments, photographing them and noting their GPS coordinates. It’s one of a massive collection of data points the expedition gathered.

The Lodge is its own wonder, a strap-and-beam building with beautiful arched eaves. A place for the weary and wonderstruck. Its owner, Jalsa Urubshurow, met us on the front porch with an open bottle and a warm smile. He’s something of a national legend, having helped bootstrap Mongolia’s tourist economy once democracy came to the country in 1990. He grew up in a Mongolian community in Howell Township, New Jersey, after his parents fled Stalinist persecution in the ’50s, started his own construction company, made his fortune, and helped form the North America–Mongolia Business Council in 1991.

Nomadic Expeditions, a company that specializes in tailoring trips deep into Mongolia for Western visitors, sprang from the council, and the Lodge arose as a logical extension as an ecologically sound, luxury accommodation for those visitors. It’s staffed entirely by Mongolians, all of whom are paid a wage on par with or in excess of what they could make in Ulaanbaatar, Urubshurow said.

Gobi sunrise: The desert shifts by the day. Heavy rains can turn the sea of sand into a fertile green prairie.

The place is without connectivity of any kind. There is no internet and no cell reception—a true oasis. It served as our base camp for two days as we wandered the region in the Infinitis, following our guides deeper into the Gobi, sifting through sand and searching for fossils alongside Badmaa. Fossil hunting, even with the added benefit of detailed drone mapping, requires patience and a keen eye.

“It’s much better to be lucky than good,” Badmaa said.

Most of us are neither, but it was still spectacular when one of the group spotted the find at the Flaming Cliffs the day before we were set to depart. The remains had lain right there in the stone for 80 million years. It was a very real connection, a spark across millennia, to see and touch them now. In a few weeks, once the journalists packed their bags and headed home, Badmaa and his team would return to the find, carefully unearth it, and transport it back to Ulaanbaatar to see where it fits with the puzzle pieces already gathered, to see what story it could tell us.

[jesusvasser]

Scouring the Gobi Desert for the Fossilized Wonders of the Cretaceous

GOBI DESERT, Mongolia — Dr. Badamkhatan Zorigt was quiet, his fingers tracing the exposed, fossilized remains at his feet. A scattering of ribs and the tucked structure of a hind leg lay all pale white against the red sandstone of the Gobi’s Flaming Cliffs. The whole of humanity’s understanding of natural history hinged here in 1923 when Roy Chapman Andrews found nests of what were originally thought to be Protoceratops eggs during one of his many Central Asiatic Expeditions, confirming for the first time that the ancient reptiles were oviparous.

Badamkhatan looked up at the crowd gathered around him, his deep brown eyes bright with excitement as he pulled a GPS from his pocket to mark the find’s location. It was a new and slender piece of the natural history puzzle. When someone asked what the fossils were, there was no hiding the thrill in his voice.

“I don’t know.”

As the head of the vertebrate paleontology division at the Institute of Paleontology and Geology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, he’s part of a small team working to catalog and study the nearly endless trove of Cretaceous-period fossils hidden in that wide, red desert. He has spent his adult life poring over the delicate remains of creatures that called this place home some 80 million years ago. The fact that the weathered sandstone can still serve up a surprise for him is a testament to all that’s hidden out here.

Badamkhatan, or Badmaa as he insists we call him, works out of a small building in Ulaanbaatar, tucked in an alley behind a restaurant a short hike from the expansive, Soviet-era city square. Mongolia serves as the perfect estuary between northern and southern Asia, its culture a finely grained mix of influences from its neighbors. So much of the architecture is Soviet, the signs lettered in Cyrillic, and nearly all of the vehicles on the road are secondhand models from South Korea, Japan, and China. It’s a miracle mix of right-hand-drive JDM Prius hatchbacks with lifted suspensions to contend with the country’s roads (or in some places, lack thereof), hammered, left-hand-drive Land Cruisers, and Mitsubishi Pajeros. There are American-market vehicles, the odd Wrangler or F-150, but they’re few and far between.

We were there at the Institute, two days before, dust and grit crunching beneath the soles of our shoes, the smell of curing resin and earth thick in the air. The place had the feel of a library, quiet save for the tender scratch of tool on stone. Towering stacks of crates and plaster-wrapped fossils lined the main hall, all waiting their turn beneath the careful hands of patient workers.

Badamkhatan Zorigt has spent his adult life combing the Gobi and studying what he finds there. We couldn’t have asked for a better guide.

“The research never ends,” Badmaa said, pointing to a freshly opened plaster jacket, a complete Tarbosaurus skull grinning inside, its teeth longer than my palm. The massive carnivore is a cousin to the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, though Badmaa says recent research bolsters the theory that the beasts were scavengers, not predators. The hypothesis sprang from a close look at intact leg structures, including the ratio between femur and tibia/fibula. The math indicates they weren’t the fast, lethal runners of cinema lore and juvenile nightmare.

“It doesn’t make us very popular at elementary schools,” Badmaa joked.

Badmaa and his team have no shortage of work, thanks in part to a recent Infiniti-supported expedition through the Gobi. The Japanese automaker and the Explorers Club Hong Kong Chapter set out on a 20-day trek in June, covering some 1,000 miles of open Gobi in an attempt to map and document new potential dig sites. Much of that effort was aimed at leveraging drones equipped with lidar (a laser-based, radarlike surveying method used for 3-D mapping that also figures prominently in autonomous vehicle systems) and other imaging devices, allowing paleontologists to scout more ground in less time, with higher resolution than before. In the past, the scientists have had to rely only on grainy satellite images to help direct their efforts, eyeing the topography for the shales and sandstones indicative of the Cretaceous and employing a bit of hit-or-miss guessing.

The expedition unearthed hundreds of fossils, but for the scientists in Mongolia, the drone data is far more valuable, having mapped hundreds of kilometers of open desert down to the centimeter. The expedition identified some 250 previously undiscovered fossil beds, all of which will provide Badmaa and the other researchers at the Institute with years of productive exploration. Once the drone team processes the footage, volunteers can scan the images, identify fossils already on the surface, and tag their GPS coordinates for paleontologists to examine in the field at a later date.

It’s difficult to convey how amazing that is. Just getting to the Gobi from Ulaanbaatar is a feat. Flights from the capital to Dalanzadgad, the closest airport, are unreliable, subject to cancellation due to crushing rain, dangerous winds, or both. Our Fokker 50 touched down in dawn’s dim hours just long enough to dump us on the tarmac and take off again. The pavement ended at the airport parking lot, terminating in a spider web of two-track ruts that sprawled out into the darkness. Seeing a line of gleaming Infiniti QX80, QX60, and QX50 models waiting to ferry us across the desert was a shock after a day in the capital. They looked like a line of high heels in a world of hiking boots.

When asked why Infiniti would commit its resources to a project like the Gobi expedition, the answer was always, “Why not?”

We threw our kit into a QX80 and climbed in, figuring that, of all the machines there, the Nissan Patrol-derived brawler would be best suited to bashing across the desert. It’s two hours from the airport to the Three Camel Lodge, our base camp, and we naively hoped to catch a few moments of sleep before sunrise. Except dozing in a vehicle requires a road, and where we were going, there was no such thing. Our driver calmly aimed the truck at the taillights ahead, dim red orbs in a thick sea of dust, and planted the throttle, ripping across the ground at 60 mph. Our world shrank to what the headlights could touch: scraps of low vegetation, khaki sand, and opaque walls of airborne grit.

These machines had already endured the expedition across the Gobi, suffering more abuse in a month than most Infinitis will see in a lifetime, and they had the rattles to prove it. It was hard to reconcile the vehicles with the place. Infiniti isn’t a brand known for trudging across the wastes. It doesn’t even have an official dealer network in Mongolia. But productive science and exploration have always courted the support of open-minded individuals, organizations, and corporations, be it for glory or profit. When asked why Infiniti would commit to a project like this, the answer was always, “Why not?”

It’s an unusual response from an automaker now, when every answer, name, and paint code must be pressed and filtered through workshops, attorneys, focus groups, and marketing teams. And while it should have come off as a stunt, it didn’t. Because of all the automakers touting themselves as rugged go-anywhere brands, none of them were so bold as to launch themselves at the Gobi. We weren’t tearing across the darkness in a Jeep. We weren’t doing our best to outrun the sunrise in a Land Rover. We didn’t dart through the center of a herd of camels in a Geländewagen. We did it in an Infiniti. Mongolians like to say that it’s better to have seen their country once than to have heard of it a thousand times. Likewise, for men and machines, it is better to do a thing once than to spend an eternity claiming you can.

By the time we arrived at the Three Camel Lodge, we were ragged with adrenaline, the first soft light of the morning just beginning to beat back the night’s grays and blacks. Every sunrise is a gift, but there are slim words for what we saw as the sun rose: land, unfettered by field or fence from horizon to horizon. I was unprepared for the endless miles of sky and the sprawling, green desert. An ocean of it, the sight of which requested a stillness in everyone. A herd of horses watered nearby, more than I’ve ever seen together in one place. Mongolia has more than 4.5 million of them, and the nomads who tend their herds in the Gobi count them by stallion. One male’s harem might hold two mares or 12, plus all of their foals. Mongolia is a country that will not stop amazing you.

Badmaa carefully documents exposed bone fragments, photographing them and noting their GPS coordinates. It’s one of a massive collection of data points the expedition gathered.

The Lodge is its own wonder, a strap-and-beam building with beautiful arched eaves. A place for the weary and wonderstruck. Its owner, Jalsa Urubshurow, met us on the front porch with an open bottle and a warm smile. He’s something of a national legend, having helped bootstrap Mongolia’s tourist economy once democracy came to the country in 1990. He grew up in a Mongolian community in Howell Township, New Jersey, after his parents fled Stalinist persecution in the ’50s, started his own construction company, made his fortune, and helped form the North America–Mongolia Business Council in 1991.

Nomadic Expeditions, a company that specializes in tailoring trips deep into Mongolia for Western visitors, sprang from the council, and the Lodge arose as a logical extension as an ecologically sound, luxury accommodation for those visitors. It’s staffed entirely by Mongolians, all of whom are paid a wage on par with or in excess of what they could make in Ulaanbaatar, Urubshurow said.

Gobi sunrise: The desert shifts by the day. Heavy rains can turn the sea of sand into a fertile green prairie.

The place is without connectivity of any kind. There is no internet and no cell reception—a true oasis. It served as our base camp for two days as we wandered the region in the Infinitis, following our guides deeper into the Gobi, sifting through sand and searching for fossils alongside Badmaa. Fossil hunting, even with the added benefit of detailed drone mapping, requires patience and a keen eye.

“It’s much better to be lucky than good,” Badmaa said.

Most of us are neither, but it was still spectacular when one of the group spotted the find at the Flaming Cliffs the day before we were set to depart. The remains had lain right there in the stone for 80 million years. It was a very real connection, a spark across millennia, to see and touch them now. In a few weeks, once the journalists packed their bags and headed home, Badmaa and his team would return to the find, carefully unearth it, and transport it back to Ulaanbaatar to see where it fits with the puzzle pieces already gathered, to see what story it could tell us.

[weirickedu336-blog]

Five Childhood Favorites

The Hopper series by Marcus Pfister, Copyright 1991-1998

Synopsis: The plot of this story revolves around Hopper the Artic Hare learning how to be a good rabbit while also learning to be safe. After getting ready for the day with his mom, Hopper goes to wake up his friend Nick so they can play. Playing makes Hopper hungry, so he and his mom must search for food while hiding from predators. Hopper doesn't take this seriously at first and almost is scooped up by a Falcon before he is saved by his mom. Following this, Hopper must listen to his mom in order to stay safe and find food. The book does a good job connecting with students as Hopper has a voice and key plot points sunaminous with that of a young child. What Hopper finds fun makes him appealing to a young audience as he likes to play with his friends, looking for food, as well as sleeping in. Hoppers challenges are similar to a small child as he must learn how to stay safe and to listen to his mom. overall this book connects with children on a basic level while still managing to explore the Arctic ecosystem.

Prompt: As a child, I enjoyed this book for a multitude of reasons. Visually, the book was stunning as well as different. I remember really enjoying the way that the edges of images melted into the paper. Everything had so much detail and I quite literally spent hours just looking at the cover page. the story itself appealed to me as well because it contained truth. I found Hopper funny when he would complain about getting ready for the morning or when he would whine about the snow. Being a child quite interested in nature, the informational aspect of this book was entertaining as well and I very soon became interested in any books about the Arctic. It should also be mentioned that I loved this book because it had a bunny in it, the one animal I could not have as a child because I was allergic. Hopper did not help my situation as it made the idea of having a white bunny with brown eyes and blue tipped ears that much more appealing.

Moira’s Birthday by Robert Munsch, Copyright 1987

Synopsis: This book is about a girl named Moira who is about to turn six. For her birthday she wants to invite Kindergarten, First Grade, Second Grade, Third Grade, Fourth Grade, Fifth Grade, and Sixth grade to her birthday party. Her parents only allow her to invite six. While Moira intends to follow her parent's instructions, Moira feels bad for the students she does not invite and allows them to come anyway. What follows is a series of hilarious antics each crazier than the next. “Moira’s Birthday” is really just a book for entertainment, though it has exaggerated situational themes on a topic any child could relate to.

Prompt: I would have read this book when I was in 2nd grade and boy was I a fan. what I enjoyed most about this book, as well as many other Munsch books, was its exaggerated as well as repetitive nature. The characters facial expressions and responses conveyed emotion and the book followed a pattern of the big problem, turn page, silly solution. The format was predictable yet the plot was funny and outlandish. this was one of those books that I never really got tired of and would read almost religiously. I remember at one point renewing it three times at my school's library. I was sold after reading that book and Munsch became the first author to which I actively sought out. 

The Magic Tree House Series By Mary Pope Osborne, Copyright 1992

Synopsis: The Magic Tree House series follows a brother, Jack, and a sister, Annie, and their crazy adventures through time using a magic tree house that they discover in the woods. Each book in the series has a different themes including people, animals, places, events and legends. For example, the first book is set during the late Cretaceous period and deals with dinosaurs, while the following 54 and counting books include themes like Harry Houdini, gorillas, the North Pole, the sinking of the Titanic, and the legend of Camelot. These adventures are all connected as each book has a clue to the mysteries behind the magic tree house and its purpose. While reading these books, students can learn about various historical topics in on entertaining and relatable fashion.

Prompt: These books were my lifeline into the literary world when I was younger. They were my first series and the first books that really got me excited to read. I can remember all the anticipation I would have when I would pick up one of these books in the library as well as the fact that that anticipation remained on through reading the beginning middle and end of each book. At one point, a special edition bookshelf and activity workbook were on my Christmas list to Santa, only after I had collected every single book that had been released. these books were akin to collecting comic books to me, and during a time when reading was generally just a struggle, these books were just simply a godsend. I accredit my love of these books to a number of things. First, the titles and topics were really fascinating to me. I really appreciated the alliteration for whatever reason as a child, even coming up with my own at one point, and the topics or themes of the book were my first glimpse into history, a fascination that has lived on into present day. These books were also really relatable to me. so many of the books had topics that I was interested in and would look forward to reading. the fact that the stories followed a brother and sister duo was also relatable to me as my brother and I shared a lot of the same dynamics as the Jack and Annie.”The Magic Tree House ” series always seemed to balanced making a book understandable for children, while also understanding that children are capable of perceptive thought. for example, the books themselves followed a very repetitious plot, to the extent that some lines would be repeated in each book. However, the simplicity of the structure and plot elements were matched with mysteries that would take several books to solve even just a portion. I was a breath of fresh are that made me the reader and literary lover I am today.

The Shadow Children series by Margaret Peterson Haddix, Copyright 1998

Synopsis: The “Shadow Children” series takes place during a dystopian timeline in which a country similar to the United States is placed under a law limiting the number of children to two per family.  this law is heavily enforced by the government-run population police who punish any and all who challenge this law, whether by choice or by circumstance. The books in the series center around a boy named Luke who is a secret third child. while his early years are pleasant as his family lives on a farm, far away from prying eyes who would report him to the population police, his life soon changes when a housing development company buys the surrounding land boxing him into a life of seclusion. The following books follow Lukes story, as well as the stories of other shadow children, and the fight to find freedom in a world to which being born is a crime.  

Prompt: After reading the synopsis you are probably wondering how in the world this is a children's book. My answer for you is that I have not the slightest idea but this was yet another favorite of mine. I was introduced to the book series in fourth grade while reading it with my class. I think this gave me a good foundation to the book and helped me to understand the world to which the book was based on. After reading concluded as a class, I was hooked I began reading the rest of this series by myself. I am fairly certain that this lasted until sixth grade as the final book did not come out until my sixth-grade year. this series is really what I graduated to after the “Magic Tree House” series, and though the concept was an adjustment, the “Shadow Children” series followed so many of the traits that had me so in love with the Magic Tree House series but amped up to eleven. The “Shadow Children” series had the mystery that I enjoyed in the “Magic Tree House” series, however, it also had the element of suspense which made it impossible to put down. The “Shadow Children” series also had really relatable characters, however looking back on it now, they were more developed and came in a wider variety. Some of these books were from different characters points of view, a concept to which I to this day still rebel initially against. Simply put this book challenged a lot of the norms I had begun to develop regarding the way books were intended to be structured, presented, and read but it was a challenge that I really enjoyed facing up to.

Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix, Copyright 1995

Synopsis: This story is centered around a girl named Jessie and her life living in 1840 or at least she thinks it is 1840. Jessie is ripped from everything she thought she knew about her life as quarantine signs begin to slowly paint the doors of several houses in the town in which she lives. With a brief explanation from her mother, the town doctor, Jessie is forced to face the truth; she has been living in a reconstructed village made to look like 1840 though it is actually 1996. Her entire life she and her family have been in a living history museum and while the adults know the truth, the children have no idea. On the outside, tourists watch the townspeople using cameras in trees, walls, and two-way mirrors. Jessie's mother is only telling her this so Jessie can escape into the real world and find help or even a cure for the members of the town that are now sick.

Prompt: Running out of time is one of those books that I still think about. It was written by the same author of the “Shadow Children” series, so a lot of there are many elements to which enjoyed that bled through to “Running Out of Time” as well. I actually read it with the rest of my class right after among the hidden in fourth grade. The concept, use of suspense, and sprinkle of history were what really made me love this book. I began questioning my entire existence while reading this book. I distinctly remember looking into a mirror and wondering if I was in a historical simulaton, similar to the one in the book but in a different timeline. While I will admit this book caused some paranoia, it honestly came from a place of curiosity more than fear. Not many children's books were tackling interesting concepts like this, most likely because they didn't want to scare children. Never the less it is still one of my favorite books of all time,