#Palaeontologists

[blueiscoool]

A Rare 38-Million-Year-Old Snake Fossil Found in Wyoming

A snake fossil recently discovered in Wyoming and dated at tens of millions of years old has led to new insights into the evolution and diversification of boas and pythons.

The newly discovered species, named Hibernophis breithaupti, lived in North America 34 million years ago. It was found by scientists in a burrow in western Wyoming where four fossilized creatures were found intertwined.

[darkfictionjude]

I was thinking about MC and Imre being Paleontologists together, and while I mentioned before the Indiana Jones roleplay. I have to admit I forgot to ask about the Jurassic Park one. Like, it's right there. Imagine they go camping, and roleplay as if they are hiding of dinosaurs while having sex on a tent on a forest. Which, now that I think about it, made me think of Brokeback Mountain, but I think that's only because my MC is male. But I digress. Would Imre think about doing something like that? Because my MC would tag along with Imre even if he wanted to go to Hell and back (a Divine Comedy adventure, if you will). Especially if he (as I said, my MC is male) gets to be railed by Imre.

It's not like they wouldn't have serious journeys due to their job as paleontologists.

I’ve never heard of that scenario before like pretending giants ass dinosaurs are coming to kill you but slipping one in still 😭

Yes he would love it. He can do both as long as they compliment each other and don’t aim to take away his scholarly interests

(Love the inferno reference it is a thing that is entrenched in the narrative of the game)

[markscherz]

a person who named a genus, on tumblr

Actually, three genera, but Anilany and Nanohyla are not as catchy as Mini. A full list of the taxa I have described is available on my website. :)

[roseandgold137]

me when I’m janet drake and I’m slaying at the seminar I’m giving about pterosaurs

[cringefail-clown]

absolutely fucking munching on both strider guardians, would you mind people drawing fan art of em? (and of the au in general ofc) because i need drawing inspo and this is GIVING it

ofc i wouldn't mind at all!! id love to see it! and if any of yall draw something for the tb au pls tag me so i can scream at you lovingly!!

and i just adore strider bros, here have another one as a treat

[techno-rat]

techno and his relationship to dehumanization is SOOO important to me .

[xochimillilili]

GIR PFP PERSON IN MY NOTIS HELLO HELLO I AM FUCKINF POINTING AT YOU SO EXCITED

[borealopelta]

wip whatever

i'm gonna go ahead and consider myself tagged in @arokel's tagless tag game because i want to talk about My Wips :-) if anyone feels like joining in, please do!!

after posting my latest fic i was kinda like. hmm. i don't have anything to show. which is not true!! i have not one but two geologist!don fics in the wip folder. (now you could ask. hey finch why do you keep writing geologyfic. well a) i have this mental illness called degree in geology and b) it's basically just me trying to conceptualise what being a geologist (or studying geology) must have been like for someone who was doing it before the theory of plate tectonics was even proposed (not to mention accepted). the amount of stuff that was fully unknown to geology in the times these fics are set is limiting as fuck and that's what makes them endlessly fun to tinker with. i've done sooooo much niche research. this is what constitutes fun for me. apologies)

i've already talked about the first one in an ask game, don's horrible geology exam, which i've been slowly piecing together from semi coherent notes app scribblings from the height of my mystery illness, BUT the other is newww so. also i don't have titles picked out because i'm bad at that so the titles are. the file names. yay! snippets under readmore:

geologydonfic is the aforementioned don's exam misery fic

Bobby takes in Don – the line of his bracelet a red imprint on his cheek, bruise-black circles under his red-rimmed eyes, paler than ever, frown lines like deep etchings on his handsome face. It’s clear that he’s not dealing on his own. “Fine,” he says after barely any deliberation, “I can help you study.” He picks up Don’s textbook and flips to a random page. Most of it is taken up by a big, colourful chart, sort of like a repeating rainbow getting more and more washed out, with ray-like lines coming out of one corner. It’s utterly incomprehensible. Bobby puts the book back down on the table. “I can’t help you study.” The corner of Don’s mouth twists into an almost-smile.

argentina is the newer one, set in argentina in 1967. don is there for work, bobby is there for don, it's hot, it's dirty (so far only in the "the drill site is a filthy place in general" way but who knows)

The Jeep that had picked him up at the airport slowly rolled away to join the fleet of identical vehicles, all decorated with the letters YPF – the name of the company in charge of the work, Bob assumed. He barely had time to feel (or look) lost when he noticed Don coming his way. Or at least he guessed it was Don, from the familiar walk and the fact that the man was a good four inches taller than everyone around him. Dressed in grubby work clothes and wearing a hard-hat that cast enough shadow to hide his entire face however, he could have been anyone. Then the smile gave him away. Bob had not been twenty-two and a fool in love in a good while, but that toothpaste-commercial-runaway, all-teeth, bright-as-the-sun smile Don could smile when he really put his mind to it still made him go weak in the knees.

[blueiscoool]

Gigantic Skull of Prehistoric Sea Monster Found on England’s ‘Jurassic Coast’

The remarkably well-preserved skull of a gigantic pliosaur, a prehistoric sea monster, has been discovered on a beach in the county of Dorset in southern England, and it could reveal secrets about these awe-inspiring creatures.

Pliosaurs dominated the oceans at a time when dinosaurs roamed the land. The unearthed fossil is about 150 million years old, almost 3 million years younger than any other pliosaur find. Researchers are analyzing the specimen to determine whether it could even be a species new to science.

Originally spotted in spring 2022, the fossil, along with its complicated excavation and ongoing scientific investigation, are now detailed in the upcoming BBC documentary “Attenborough and the Jurassic Sea Monster,” presented by legendary naturalist Sir David Attenborough, that will air February 14 on PBS.

Such was the enormous size of the carnivorous marine reptile that the skull, excavated from a cliff along Dorset’s “Jurassic Coast,” is almost 2 meters (6.6 feet) long. In its fossilized form, the specimen weighs over half a metric ton. Pliosaurs species could grow to 15 meters (50 feet) in length, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The fossil was buried deep in the cliff, about 11 meters (36 feet) above the ground and 15 meters (49 feet) down the cliff, local paleontologist Steve Etches, who helped uncover it, said in a video call.

Extracting it proved a perilous task, one fraught with danger as a crew raced against the clock during a window of good weather before summer storms closed in and the cliff eroded, possibly taking the rare and significant fossil with it.

Etches first learned of the fossil’s existence when his friend Philip Jacobs called him after coming across the pliosaur’s snout on the beach. Right from the start, they were “quite excited, because its jaws closed together which indicates (the fossil) is complete,” Etches said.

After using drones to map the cliff and identify the rest of the pliosaur’s precise position, Etches and his team embarked on a three-week operation, chiseling into the cliff while suspended in midair.

“It’s a miracle we got it out,” he said, “because we had one last day to get this thing out, which we did at 9:30 p.m.”

Etches took on the task of painstakingly restoring the skull. There was a time he found “very disillusioning” as the mud, and bone, had cracked, but “over the following days and weeks, it was a case of …, like a jigsaw, putting it all back. It took a long time but every bit of bone we got back in.”

It’s a “freak of nature” that this fossil remains in such good condition, Etches added. “It died in the right environment, there was a lot of sedimentation … so when it died and went down to the seafloor, it got buried quite quickly.”

Fearsome top predator of the seas

The nearly intact fossil illuminates the characteristics that made the pliosaur a truly fearsome predator, hunting prey such as the dolphinlike ichthyosaur. The apex predator with huge razor-sharp teeth used a variety of senses, including sensory pits still visible on its skull that may have allowed it to detect changes in water pressure, according to the documentary.

The pliosaur had a bite twice as powerful as a saltwater crocodile, which has the world’s most powerful jaws today, according to Emily Rayfield, a professor of paleobiology at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom who appeared in the documentary. The prehistoric marine predator would have been able to cut into a car, she said.

Andre Rowe, a postdoctoral research associate of paleobiology at the University of Bristol, added that “the animal would have been so massive that I think it would have been able to prey effectively on anything that was unfortunate enough to be in its space.”

By Issy Ronald.

[schumigrace]

been having a very "nobody likes me" kinda day so I started stalking my ex again just to find out he's now a finance guy. so that's cured me of 2 years worth of mourning our relationship

[butterfrogmantis]

idk why I'm so attached to Skelly recently I just find him so much fun he has a great personality to play with and he's so obscure

His dynamic with Archie is 'whatever's funniest at the time', including winding him up (which I suppose is just code for besties)

Archie and Pal (c) The Smurfs

Skelly is mine

[vimbry]

remember last year when I was so shy about calling real people hot on here. like oh gee oh gosh, now people will think I don't Understand Complexities or Appreciate Talents beyond looks because they'll (wrongly) perceive admission of physical attraction as shallow. and now all I do is make you see posts about me needing some sort of old man every 3 days.

[womeninfictionandirl]

Mary Anning by Allison Adams

Mary Anning (1799 – 1847) was a fossil collector and paleontologist from Lyme Regis, Dorset in Southwest England, who became known around the world for important finds she made in marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the Jurassic Coastline. While searching for the plentiful ammonite fossils which she sold as novelty items to tourists, she began to discover larger prehistoric fossils, excavating the first Ichthyosaurus skeleton and discovering the first intact Plesiosaurus skeleton. Her findings contributed to important changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth. She was also the true-life figure behind the nursery rhyme.

[wereoz]

now that were having ‘haha sheldon cooper is so me’ renaissance can we begin to accept that some of us r not simply chandler bing. some of us (me) r also ross

[ailendolin]

Do you know any Stone Age monuments in Germany Urs can reference?

Thank you for your question!

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by Stone Age monuments. If this refers to stone circles like Stonehenge, I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you. As far as I know we don't have anything similar (in terms of fame) in Germany. Stone circles like the Menhiranlage von Darmstadt date back to the Neolithic and are about 8,000 years old. Cave paintings like the famous Lascaux cave in France don't exist either.

What we do have in Germany, however, is Ice Age art. There is the Venus of Hohe Fels, for example, or the Lion-Man. Both are roughly 40,000 years old - the same age as Germany's famous Neanderthal specimen, Neandertal 1 (though from a different region). There are also the famous Schöningen Spears - the oldest hunting weapons discovered (so far).

That being said, none of this means Urs can't reference a stone circle like Robin did in the original or make a remark about cave paintings. Not having archaeological evidence doesn't necessarily mean they didn't exist. But I think it's more likely for him to reference the Neanderthal site or even specimen Neandertal 1 specifically because they're famous enough that most people will have heard of them.

Side note: personally, I'd love it if Urs had a little mammoth ivory figurine on him that he can take out and look at. Perhaps his mother made it for him and it reminds him of her. Or perhaps he made it for a child of his own and never got to finish it. Objects with an emotional significance play a major role in BBC Ghosts (Thomas's letter, the Captain's swagger stick), so I think giving Urs one with an archaeological significance would be neat.

[waitingforeresh]

Somebody in my friends list already has a lvl 100 Mary. So based.