#Sir David

[markscherz]

frogs be upon ye

and upon ye, @revcleo

[freshthoughts2020]

[crumbpigeon]

what else ought there be?

[diioonysus]

objects in art: swords/daggers

[liliumsdoe]

I'm obsessed with the way the background in this frame makes it look as if Aziraphale has wings of fire—on consacrated ground, no less — while he realises he cannot deny his feeling for Crowley any longer.

am I delusional? yes sssir !!!

[villainboygirl]

Husk doing cute things with his wings:

[muffinlance]

I appreciate the lovely science museum volunteer who saw my four-year-old and started carefully explaining basic magnetic properties

I appreciate EVEN MORE that when firstborn went "oh, like a maglev train" and "that's an electromagnet!", said lovely volunteer totally code-switched, and we quickly ended up at

"Want to see a gaussian rifle?"

Oh boy did firstborn EVER

[wardengrill]

I've come to realize I'm more married to this team than I ever was to three ex-wives

[kedreeva]

In more good news, the Sir David's long-beaked echidna, made an appearance on an expedition team's trail cams! This species hasn't been documented in over 60 years, and was thought to be extinct. This is also the first time a live specimen has been photographed/recorded, as the species was only identified in 1961 by a single dead specimen.

[captainfantasticalright]

Today is Sir Terry Pratchett's birthday. So, why not celebrate with some of the easter eggs we have in Good Omens that are all about him.

Mind how you go.

[gayassmullethaircut]

[filmbroandy]

big thing about the terror is how it treats every single death as a massive tragedy. from the death of david young in the first episode through every horror that follows every death scene is given enormous weight in the narrative, it never once feels like anyone is expendable despite most of the cast really not mattering that much. it's such a good choice to make tonally in a show about how these people are simultaneously tools of british colonialism and victims of the indifferent imperial machine.

[neick-hitlz]

study Alan Rickman's (my husband) face for my soul ! ฅ՞•ﻌ•՞ฅ

[i-live-in-my-bookshelf]

Michael slutty waist Fassbender

[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.

[lucy-moderatz]