#pleistocene answers asks

[unethicallypleistocene]

💕Positivity prime time! Share five things you love about yourself, four things you're excited about, OR three people you care deeply about and why. Pass this along to someone whose posts make you smile💕

Hey thank you! <3

I love how deeply I feel everything. Even a sunny day is usually enough to make me want to cry in gratitude. Sometimes it's a burden, but to feel happy so deep in my bones is a true gift.

I love my relationship to music! I wish I got to play my instruments more often, but even just listening to cathartic songs every day is so good for my soul.

I love that I can write, and that I'm constantly getting ideas for my writing.

I love my books, and I love how I feel when I read them :)

I love that I take care of myself, that I'm looking out for myself and my happiness.

[practically-an-x-man]

For the ask game: Blake + he gets fatigued EXTREMELY easily

He shares that trait with Quinn! Since her accident, she's dealt with a lot of chronic fatigue and tends to get tired very easily.

[mammoth-clangen]

Do you like Clangen and Sabertoothed cats? Great, me too!

My name is Pav and this is my clangen blog! <Start reading here>

Important Things

🧓 Im a '99 bby so please don't DM if you're a minor (actually would prefer no unexpected DMs period tbh, im anxious)

⛏️ I work 12hrs 7 days, week on/week off, meaning I will completely vanish 50% of the time and there's nothing I can do about it

🦘 I'm also an Aussie, so my time zone is weird even when I'm not at work (So if I don't reply, im not ignoring u! ;v;-b )

❔️Asks and Anons are turned on! Please read the FAQ below before asking to avoid repeats c:

😻 I read all the tags and replies even if I don't reply. Tysm everyone saying nice things, it makes my day ;v;

😵‍💫 My focus changes like the weather lately, so while I'm Hoping I'll be able to keep this up, please don't get Life Or Death Invested c':

Tags

#mammothmoon -all chapters are tagged with this

#moon (1/2/3/etc) -each moon is tagged by number, and in-character asks from given moons

#mammothask -asks sent to me (will also tag who asks them)

#mammothfanart -art of my silly sabercats by other blogs, tysm!

#mammothref -character references (or possibly species refs if i make them eventually)

#paleo stuff -anything where I'm nerding about paleo biology etc

#ooc/#Pav chatter -Pav updates about Pav! or asks directed to me

#blood/gore/animal death/etc -tagged straight as is if you need to block them!

FAQ

This will be added to as I get more asks and replies to go off!

How often do you post pages?

I try for at least once every 2 weeks, as I spend 50% of my life in the outback with no ability to draw!

Where/ when is Mammothclan set?

In late pleistocene North America, around 12ka ago, during the Younger Dryas!

What species are the cats?

They're Homotherium serum, a scimitar toothed cat.

How paleo accurate is this setting?

Relatively accurate? There's not going to be any species out of their time and place, but I'm not super bothered by, say, exact plant species and how realistic certain story aspects are.

Can I ask the characters' questions?

You can, but I can't promise to answer all of them!

Are we allowed to include characters as cameos/ draw fanart?

Yes definitely absolutely!!!!

You are also welcome to change them to regular cats if that fits better cx (please don't humanise them though, I find that specifically very uncanny)

What mode are you playing on Clangen/ what toggles?

Expanded mode, mass extinctions on, cheating on, "pregnancy ignores biology" off, unknown second parent pregnancies off (bc in my trial run every queen was constantly spawning kittens at lightspeed, no ty)

How far ahead are you from the pages you've drawn?

Currently 40moons ahead, cause I like playing the long game with foreshadowing >:3c

Where do you download Clangen?

Here!

Could you elaborate on/ explain content of (page/panel/speech bubble) that confused me?

Sure! If something is unclear, but it seems like it should be explained, please ask and I'll make sure to clarify c:

Can you tell me about (character backstory/spoilers/ aspect of lore not touched on in comic yet)?

No! I don't want to spoil those kinds of things, I'd rather they come up naturally in the comic than dump them under an ask.

I'm a firm believer that if it doesn't happen in text, it's not cannon.

[sinosauropteryx--prima]

National Fossil: USA

The US have specific fossils representing each states, but which fossil do you think would best represent the country as a whole?

It could be a fossil that is just exceptionally well preserved and beautiful, had a huge impact on paleontology and our knowledge of the past, is very common/representive of the area, is beloved and famous in the public eye, is just a very unique and interesting find, or has any other justification.

I have a feeling I know the answer, but I thought I'll still ask and I have some suggestions:

Tyrannosaurus: famous movie star, everyone's favourite apex predator and one of the biggest carnivores that ever walked the planet. It is also an anomaly in the fact that compared to other big theropod we have a lot of material of them and they are well studied

Deinonychus: Maybe the single most responsible fossil for the dinosaur renaissance and our modern understanding of dinosaurs and their connection to birds. These guys were also what the raptors in Jurassic park were based on

Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus: a huge sauropod first discovered during the bone wars with a troubled naming history. A staple of American pop culture for a long time (for example Littlefoot in land before time or gertie, the first dinosaur in film)

Triceratops: another very famous dinosaur with lots of pop culture appearances, one of the first discovered and biggest ceratopsians, also first discovered during the bone wars and well studied since then with lots of specimen

Maiasaura: A duck-billed dinosaur most famous for their nesting sites, that were the first known of their kind and proofed that dinosaurs cared for their young

Smilodon: the famous saber-toothed cat of the pleistocene with more than 100 specimen coming out of the Californian fossil site of the La Brea Tar Pits

Pteranodon: One of the most famous pterosaurs, the first one found outside Europe and for long time the biggest known pterosaur. They lived around the Western Interior Seaway, an ocean that used to cover a large part of central USA

American Mastodon: Some of the most famous Pleistocene megafauna with populations all across the US

[georgegraphys]

you always try to minimize lewis with your “takes” lol just know he is and always 10x more important and famous than george

No one asks you to listen to my takes? Anon asked and I was just explaining based on my job and experience. Even a toddler knew Lewis is more famous. What point are you trying to make and why do you even bother reading my long ass takes and lurking here? Are you that jobless to do this?

I'm not asking anyone to believe in my takes. I don't need people believing in them as well as it is my rant. And which part of me "minimizing" when it's just me pointing things that anons pointed out? I had several anons asking me about the events so I had to answer. Bitch i'm just explaining how these events work??? Besides the importance and fame, these industries don't always amount to the NUMBERS. These things are decided by the higher ups. What's on those higher ups head? I do not fucking know nor if I know, their standards are specific and different. To people like you, it's about numbers. But to people behind the scene, there are other things to be considered and fame is not everything. It depends on what event it is, who are the guests, etc.

No one is asking you to stop and read my "takes" and I do not care about your opinion. So fuck off. Anon asks are opinionated anyways and if you can't handle opinionated things in this era? In the corporate industry? In social media? You might as well just go back to the pleistocene era and live an anti social life. I have always said that these takes are sometimes an answer to what people ask me for based on my experience and the proofs pointed out. Do you want me to do what? Manipulate truth? Do you want to know what? Why is George invited separately? Ask the freaking UBS and Mercedes Benz. You wanna know why my anon asks those things? Ask them and don't ask me.

Keep your jobless ass out of my account and stop reading my "takes" and discussion if you can't bear to agree to disagree. Fuck off. I'm so fucking tired with fragile people who can't stand others opinions and understand the concept of tumblr asks. If anon didn't ask, I wouldn't even speak on this. Anon asked so I answered. Based on what? My work and study experience

Besides, why is George who is "lesser famous" is invited? Because he is the BRAND AMBASSADOR. Why is he the brand ambassador? Because he's a Mercedes driver who won't leave next year. Angry at that statement? Go on linkedin, find work and get to know why companies don't sign a one-year brand ambassadors. Lastly, kindly fuck off.

[rte-66]

Some useful excerpts and totally rad art from Mark P. Witton's article, Unicorns, dragons, monsters and giants: palaeoart before palaeontology...

I won't rehash the full argument here but, in brief: griffins appeared in Near East societies several millennia before they became popular in Ancient Greece, meaning the Orientalisation of Greece during the 8th-5th centuries BCE - when the Greeks adopted culture from Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean cultures - more than accounts for the sudden Grecian interest in griffins.

It's important to ask the right questions in sceptical inquiry and in this case it's not 'did elephants inspire cyclopes?, but 'do we need elephants to explain depictions of one-eyed giant humans?'. The answer is probably 'no'. ... Citing elephant skulls as a source might complicate the myth more than explaining it - where's the rest of the elephant anatomy gone? ... Cyclopia is rare among live human births (Kalantzis et al. 2013) but occurs in one of every 200 lost pregnancies - as sure as ancient Greeks saw fossil elephant bones, they also surely saw patients of cyclopia.

We must also consider that a real-world source was not needed at all. One-eyed men and other monocular creatures are ubiquitous throughout mythology all over the world, and it's unlikely they all developed after finding fossil elephant skulls. Eyes are a well established symbol of wisdom, clairvoyance and authority in many cultures, so the modification of eyes - reduction in number, blinding and so on - has clear symbolic value in many legends.

An artwork argued by Mayor (2011) as the oldest piece of genuine palaeoart adorns a Corinthian vase painted between 560-540 BCE. This image shows an unusual, skull-like face resting on a cliff acting as the Monster of Troy, the creature which fought Heracles as it terrorised Hesione at the outskirts of Troy. Though skeletal in nature, the interactions of the face with other figures on the vase implicates it as a living creature, not the remains of a dead animal. The skull is argued to match the basic anatomy of Miocene mammals known from the eastern Mediterranean region. The giraffid Samotherium is considered a most likely identity (Mayor 2000, 2011), though the artist may have also incorporated elements of fossil ostriches, lizards, whales or crocodiles (Mayor 2000, 2011). If this hypothesis is correct, it would easily be the oldest known palaeoart, and by a huge margin - about 2000 years.

Athanasius Kircher's 1678 German textbook Mundus Subterraneus - an early thesis on geography, biology, mineralogy and geology - contains several illustrations of animals which may have been informed by fossils. They include many types of giant human, which were said to be social, cave-dwelling species based on the bones of large animals found in caves - almost certainly remnants of Pleistocene mammals. Kircher also wrote about several types of dragon, many of which were of period-typical, worm-like form, but Abel (1939) noted one unusual dragon illustration that may have been influenced by a real giant reptile: a plesiosaur.

By the end of the 18th century the seeds of true palaeontological science and palaeoart were being sowed, ready to develop fully in the 19th century. Leibniz's apparent conviction for unicornun verom and its illustration might seem charmingly naive given what would emerge just decades after Protogaea was published, one of the last examples of mythology inspiring scientific thought and early palaeoart before hard science took over. But his illustration of a restored skeleton, rather than a fanciful creature, as well as his associated documentation of the discovery and locality of the 'unicorn' bones, shows how approaches to fossils and their illustration was maturing. This bizarre restoration is a link between two different eras in our artistic interpretations of fossils, taking a near-scientific approach to a mythological concept.

[outofangband]

I saw your response to my post on megafauna in middle earth. do you think any megafauna lived in Dor Lomin?

Note: definitions of megafauna vary. Common numbers include anything from a weight more than an average human to a mass over one thousand kilograms. The term is often associated with Pleistocene megafauna but it does refer to more species than that

In the inhabited part of Dor-lómin probably not with the exception of a number of bison tended to by the descendants of Marach. But in the woods and mountains past Húrin’s house on the Southeast side, the southern mountains and in the north past the caves of Androth I think there definitely could be!

I could imagine moose, elk, and perhaps occasionally giant elk or even mammoths in the very North while they travel along grazing routes. These would mostly be in the alpine plains north of Hithlum though.

I think there are very large bears in the Ered Wethrin, perhaps something like a cave bear but these likely wouldn’t come close to the populated areas of Dor-lómin. Megafauna tends to be even more vulnerable to human habitation.

Then I have ideas for speculative species but I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to stick to megafauna that has at least once existed

I hope this answers your question! Please feel free to ask more

[castielsparkle]

62, 80, & 98 for the ask meme

hii thank u sm!!!

62. seven characters you relate to?

oh great heavens. okay. i need to post my kinlist but perhaps posting this instead will be like microdosing on that. LMFAO

castiel spn

twilight sparkle mlp

dexter morgan dexter (<- NUANCE i swear to christ im normal about that)

the mangle fnaf

will byers stranger things

jesse pinkman breaking bad

jane villanueva jane the virgin

you may ask. what the fuck do these characters have in common. well. thats. yeah

80. earth tones or jewel tones?

OUGHHH god this was so hard...... jewel tones for me personally however on other people i tend to be more drawn to earth tones!! (my gf is an earth tones guy for example!)

98. favorite historical era?

oh good heavens im gonna explode. ok. SO. man. man. man. theres so many im probably forgetting because i am very autistic about a lot of historical eras. however. wait i need to mention. i took art history classes however sadly due to the time in my life i took them at i do not remember jack shit</3 and also i was super autistic about history as a kid but ive forgotten most of that as well. the things i remember clearest however are:

italian high renaissance (who else is a davinci girl bc I AM!!!)

pleistocene epoch (aka: the ice age) SHOUTOUT TO THE SMILODON!!! i love you more than anything american scimitar cat<3 american scimitar cat smilodon is my best fucking friend now and forever. FUN FACT. i was so autistic about this when i was like 6 or 7. that when assigned a school project to get a cardboard box and turn it into an animal and then put facts about the animal on the box. i turned mine into a scimitar. wait i havent elaborated. those are a relative of the sabre-toothed tiger. Anyways. my box animal was a scimitar. i was later informed i was the only child in the history of that project in that class to have done a presentation on an extinct animal. i felt So Special and happy. :)!!

honorable mention: baroque period went off the shits as well. AND YOU KNOW WHAT. SHOUT OUT TO SPECIFICALLY THE 1880S. THATS WHEN THE LAST TARPAN (widely considered ancestor of majority of modern horses) AND THE LAST QUAGGA (subspecies of plains zebra) PERISHED. YOU WILL FOREVER BE FAMOUS. speaking of the 80s. big huge fan of the (19)70s for architecture and musical purposes. and also i just miss the 2000s every day. lol<3 oh god wait i cant post this without saying shoutout to the thylacine i saw one at a dc museum unexpectedly and legit almost started crying. wait. i think i have a photo of me with it. hang on. ( i visited the museum for my birthday<33) ok i found the photo and im gonna preface this with: this area of the museum was Empty and in a corner i was wearing my mask the rest of the trip. wanted to clarify that its important to me. anyways. when the fucking autism hits:

it was the one behind the curtain btw. thank you so so fucking much for these questions btw so so fun to answer they hit Niches in my Autism brain.<3333

hii feel free to ask more here anyone whos interested!!!

[galionne-vibin]

Just tell us everything we should know so far about canonically evil ultras in the Swap AU And maybe I'll finally leave you alone (maybe)

(I'm almost tempted to not answer so I can get more asks adjhsfhd)

First of, all of the canonically evil ultras are good guys in Ultra Swap with no exception (... so far). However I’ve only really worked on Imitation Ultraman/Moho and Belial so far, so that’s all I have to offer for now!

Imitation Ultraman ("Moho")

He was meant to be an artificial Ultra that could be cloned to create an army- unfortunately whoever created him missed a few steps in the bio-engineering process and only managed to created a being that looked like other Ultras, but lacked most of their abilities (mainly the ability to fly and to use a Specium ray). As a result "Moho-001" was abandonned in a scrapyard outside the capital where he was later found by Zarab.

Knowing no one else would care for the child due to the strong anti-ultra feelings harbored by a lot of monsters in Nozomu, Zarab decided to take in Moho. He later had to homeschool him when simply going outside proved dangerous for the young ultra, giving up on his plan to join the Monster Task Force in the process.

Despite all this Moho still had a relatively peaceful childhood thanks to his father's efforts to keep him safe and happy and the support he received from Captain Zetton (his "uncle" and Zarab's closest friend) as well as from Mayor Bemular and Bel who sent him the occasional gift and greeting card. In the current story he is about 19 and working in his father's repair shop as his assitant. He has also made the decision not to seek out his original creator, as he's happy with his life as it is and worries doing so might needlessly put Zarab and himself in danger.

Belial

While he used to rule over the other ultras alongside Ken and Mary, tension arose when he began to question wether or not ultras' should maintain their alliance with humans despite the latter's countless crimes against other alien races. Several ultras (including Belial's three eldest sons) began rallying around him and he soon found himself at the head of a small coalition. Fearing he might try to overthrow them, Ken and Mary decided to take him out before he could plan anything. They recruited Geed who they knew would do anything to take his father's place and had him infiltrate a meeting held by the coalition later that night. Believing his youngest son was finally joining his side Belial became overjoyed and dropped his guard, leaning in to hug him.

Geed promptly stabbed him through the chest with his King Sword.

Using the ensuing panic to their advantage, Ken and Mary launched their attack with the help of Zoffy, Ultraseven and a few others. Belial's eldest sons attempted to protect the other attendees, but were unfortunately no match for the group of assassins and were quickly overpowered and killed. The bodies were later loaded onto a ship with its destination set for the nearest star, erasing all traces of the massacre.

Rumor has it however, that the ship never reached the star and that Belial in fact survived the attack- but of course, it's nothing more than rumors...

[fatehbaz]

Hey! I got three chunks of money to donate for Christmas and there's so many things that need support I haven't been able to pick where to donate them yet. Mostly I want to donate to indigenous communities and environmental protection, especially bc indigenous communities do so much amazing work to protect the environment that helping one can also help both. I saw your swift fox post and it filled me with rage- do you know if there's anywhere I can donate to help?

Hmm, I know that I have friends at this site who are a part of these Native communities, and they would be better people to ask for guidance on how to help and/or donate. I’m not really equipped to give a good enough answer; not really  sure I have great recommendations. But I guess I’d like to share a couple of resources about reservations in the region. (This is the post being referenced, about the Fort Belknap reservation’s reintroduction of the previously-extinct swift fox to the prairies of northern Montana.) And I hope that, maybe, others reading this can supply some recommendations on where/how to donate.

-------

A couple of recent issues:

-- Fort Belknap Indian Community joined the Rosebud Sioux to launch a major legal case against the Keysonte XL project (run by Alberta fossil fuel company TransCanada, now known as “TC Energy”) in order to prevent the pipeline from being installed on/near their communities. In spring of 2020, after months of pursuing the case (Rosebud Sioux Tribe v. Tr*mp) the tribes achieved several victories in federal courtrooms in Montana.

-- In 2020, Fort Belknap formally declared a state of emergency partially because of increased risk of viral spread due to the influx of pipeline workers brought in by TC Energy to service pipeline construction.

-- Nearby, in June 2020, Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes began lawsuits against multiple agencies of the US federal government over Keystone XL pipeline, since the project’s route would threaten Fort Peck’s drinking water because the pipeline is planned to be built under both the Milk River and the Missouri River only a kilometer or so west of Fort Peck’s border. This would threaten the Assiniboine and Sioux Rural Water Supply System (which was left out of the government’s and oil company’s “arbitrary geographic scope of the [routine environmental health] assessment” of the pipeline project). Fort Peck relies on this water system because the local groundwater was poisoned, and the aquifer destroyed, by oil development during the 20th century. In 2020, activists demonstrated against construction of the pipeline which was taking place nearby at the US-Canada border. (Just this month, January 2021, one activist from Fort Peck was interviewed by BBC News regarding Keystone XL.)

-------

Also worth pointing out that the swift fox reintroduction program at Fort Belknap in 2020 was not the first time that the community hosted reintroduction of an iconic extinct species.

-- Beginning in 2013, Fort Belknap began reintroducing the highly endangered black-footed ferret, which had previously been functionally extinct in the wild. (These programs join other Native reintroduction efforts in northern Montana. Again, outside of Canada, in 1998 the Blackfeet reservation was the first community/organization to reintroduce the swift fox to a region where it had gone extinct.)

-- In 2019, the Fort Peck reservation reintroduced bison, when 55 of the creatures were transferred from Yellowstone and moved to the prairies north of the Missouri River at Fort Peck. (US federal government has a policy of simply harassing and/or killing bison that leave Yellowstone’s arbitrarily-drawn formal park boundaries, and Fort Peck negotiates to have those wandering bison brought to the reservation.)

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I also just want to take a moment to say that these reservations are not treated nicely by the state of Montana. Big surprise.

North of the Yellowstone region (and with the exception of the Spokane and Tri-Cities urban areas), within US borders, in the entire 2,600 kilometers (1,600 miles) between Seattle on the Pacific coast and Minneapolis and the shores of Lake Superior, there is no city with a population of over 190,000. So, the northern Great Plains are relatively isolated from easy access to metropolitan resources (internet, cell service, grocery stores, etc.). Within Montana borders, south of the Missouri River, the Plains landscape features badlands and hosts a lot of cattle rangeland and coal mining. But the landscape north of the Missouri River was historically covered by Late Pleistocene glaciers, so the soil is different, which attracted settlers more interested in farming, and this region hosts more cropland. This expansive cropland eliminated most native shortgrass prairie, so the agriculture has not been kind to the swift fox (or black-footed ferret, bison, pronghorn, etc.). Four of Montana’s formally-recognized 7 reservations are located in this region: the Fort Peck reservation, Fort Belknap reservation, Rocky Boy’s reservation, and the Blackfeet reservation. There is also the Little Shell Chippewa Tribe.

The Little Shell did not even receive formal recognition from Montana until 2019, and they only own about 3 acres of land.

The Blackfeet reservation struggles to gain access to infrastructure funding and has a poverty rate 3 times higher than the rest of Montana despite the fact that the reservation sits directly on the border of Glacier National Park, a major international tourist destination which attracts big-money visitors. In 2019, the Nat!onal Park Service estimated that Glacier added $484 million to the “local” economy.

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Here are some resources:

Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes (”Fort Peck Reservation”)

-- The Fort Peck Languages and Cultures Department provides a vision statement: “The vision of our department is to increase the language revitalization and cultural restoration with our Nakona and Dakota communities [...]. Our respectful approach addresses the historical accuracy of our people’s education past and present, community-based curriculum development, language revitalization, cultural restoration, and learning strategies [...].”

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Blackfeet Nation (”Blackfeet Reservation”)

-- FAST Blackfeet (Food Access and Sustainability Team)

You can donate online via P@yP@l, or by mailing a physical check. The team opened a food pantry in Browning in late 2019, where they prepare boxes of food. Their website also supplies a Food Sovereignty Library with info on food, housing, medical issues, elder/senior resources, etc.

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Fort Belknap Assiniboine and Gros Ventre Tribes (”Fort Belknap Reservation”)

-- Fort Belknap Language Preservation Program

Their primary website contains documents (including language dictionaries) and audio files related to Nakota/Nakoda (Assinoboine) and Ahe/A’anann (Gros Ventre).

-- Fort Belknap’s utube channel

Among other videos, their channel contains about 6/7 hours of presentations and lectures from the Fort Belknap Language Summit from 2016.

-- Aaniiih Nakoda College

The college facilitates a program to earn a Bachelor of Science in “Aaniiiha Nakoda Ecology”. Some of the courses: BiiO oto/Jyahe wida (Little Rocky Mountains/Fur Cap/Island Mountains); ‘Akisiniicaah/Wakpa Juk’an (Milk River/Little River); ?isitaa?/Peda (Fire) and Lab; Nic?/Mni (Water); Nii tsin ah hiiit/Woksabe (Balance: Ecological Health); Ethnobotany and Traditional Plants. (They also offer associate-level courses in American Indian Studies, Education, Human Services.)

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I hope that others can recommend community orgs, campaigns, projects, etc., to donate to.

[jackalsarchive]

WIP tag game

WIP tag game, swiped from @st0rmyskies and @drsteggy

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs (or as many peeps as you want, really- ‘tis just for fun!)

—————————————

Ah shit, here we go. These are WIPs that I’ve either been working on lately, or ones that I would actually have information and answers to give lol. The rest in my folders are barely any snippets, not fully formed yet! So just these posted for now. 

1. Keep the Home Fires Burning  

2. Witchbottle

3. TH/HSH Wild bartender fic (title pending) 

4. Love Me for Life   

5. Wind Waker fic (title pending)  

6. Pleistocene (Interstadial)  

7. Baby Lamb 

8. Hare in the Teeth of a Hound

9. Eventide Island 

10. Cherub

11. A Grace Period

[unethicallypleistocene]

Okay, I have to ask... how would your OCs react to meeting my OCs from the same fandoms? i.e how Tern would get along with Katherine, how Blake would get along with my X-Men OCs, etc.

OOH what a good question!

I think Tern would initially be a bit apprehensive towards Katherine, since they take a more distrustful approach to the tablet's magic because of their connection to the underworld. However, I think that they would eventually realize that the ability to transcend time is NOT one that you find every day, and I like to think that they would connect over the sheer improbability of their situations. Plus, Tern is an archivist by trade, and I think they would love to pick Katherine's brain about all the Kemetic symbolism that she's immersed in.

I think Blake would really bond with Madison over the fact that both their mutations are naturalistic and animalistic (to a degree). He and Robin also have that music connection, although I'm sure they have very different philosophies towards it. Blake also has quite a deal of trauma stemming from his mutation, but that's not exactly uncommon in the X-Mansion, so he's in good company.

(Not in the same fandom but I couldn't resist) I think Alden and Wojchek would HATE each other. They're both extremely stubborn, devoted to their crews to a fault, and would have no desire to make concessions or mediate. Alden's no stranger to having his authority questioned (see first mate James) but I think he'd unconsciously see his mirror image and react antagonistically. James would love Vivienne, though. He'd want to sketch her all day, and they'd very conspiratorially talk about Alden behind his back.

[nuadox]

Ancient wolf pup mummy uncovered in Yukon permafrost

- By Cell Press -

While water blasting at a wall of frozen mud in Yukon, Canada, a gold miner made an extraordinary discovery: a perfectly preserved wolf pup that had been locked in permafrost for 57,000 years. The remarkable condition of the pup, named Zhùr by the local Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in people, gave researchers a wealth of insights about her age, lifestyle, and relationship to modern wolves. 

The findings appear on December 21 in the journal Current Biology.

"She's the most complete wolf mummy that's ever been found. She's basically 100% intact--all that's missing are her eyes," says first author Julie Meachen, an associate professor of anatomy at Des Moines University. "And the fact that she's so complete allowed us to do so many lines of inquiry on her to basically reconstruct her life."

One of the most important questions about Zhùr that the researchers sought to answer was how she ended up preserved in permafrost to begin with. It takes a unique combination of circumstances to produce a permafrost mummy.

"It's rare to find these mummies in the Yukon. The animal has to die in a permafrost location, where the ground is frozen all the time, and they have to get buried very quickly, like any other fossilization process," says Meachen. "If it lays out on the frozen tundra too long it'll decompose or get eaten."

Another important factor is how the wolf died. Animals that die slowly or are hunted by predators are less likely to be found in pristine condition. "We think she was in her den and died instantaneously by den collapse," says Meachen. "Our data showed that she didn't starve and was about 7 weeks old when she died, so we feel a bit better knowing the poor little girl didn't suffer for too long."

Image: This photo shows a closeup of the wolf pup's head, showing her teeth. Credit: Government of Yukon.

In addition to learning how Zhùr died, the team were also able to analyze her diet. As it turns out, her diet was heavily influenced by how close she lived to water. "Normally when you think of wolves in the Ice Age, you think of them eating bison or musk oxen or other large animals on land. One thing that surprised us was that she was eating aquatic resources, particularly salmon."

Analyzing Zhùr's genome also confirmed that she is descended from ancient wolves from Russia, Siberia, and Alaska, who are the ancestors of modern wolves as well. Although analyzing Zhùr gave the researchers many answers about wolves of the past, there remain some outstanding questions about Zhùr and her family.

"We've been asked why she was the only wolf found in the den, and what happened to her mom or siblings," says Meachen. "It could be that she was an only pup. Or the other wolves weren't in the den during the collapse. Unfortunately, we'll never know."

Video: “What scientists have learned about mummified wolf pup from the ice age” by CBC News - The National, YouTube.

The specimen holds special significance for the local Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in people, who have agreed to place Zhùr on display at the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre in Whitehorse. She is cleaned and conserved so she will stay intact for years to come, allowing her to travel to other Yukon locations as well. And the research team predicts there may be more and more permafrost mummies found in the coming years.

"One small upside of climate change is that we're going to find more of these mummies as permafrost melts," says Meachen. "That's a good way for science to reconstruct that time better, but it also shows us how much our planet is actually warming. We really need to be careful."

--

Header image: This photo shows an x-ray view of the wolf pup. Credit: Government of Yukon.

Source: Cell Press

Full study: “A mummified Pleistocene gray wolf pup”, Current Biology.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.11.011

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Frozen bird turns out to be 46,000 years old

[rthstewart]

Wings in rock

@amine-eyes pointed me to this post discussing whether dinosaur fossils and bones of large Pleistocene  mammals are a potential source for dragons in folklore.  (the answer, maybe for some but not all because it’s really difficult to explain how dragons appear worldwide across so many cultures and folklores and credit it all to dinosaurs and extinct mega fauna). This is a favorite topic of mine (see all 588,000 words of The Stone Gryphon) and I recently did a three sentence fill just on it!

Narnia AU, Everbody Lives Nobody Dies, featuring Dr. Eustace Clarence Scrubb, alluring yet obvious man of science and paleontologist .As it’s “three sentences” forgive the bad grammar and run on sentences.

“Doctor Scrubb, you think this might finally be it?” one of his impossibly young doctoral students asks as she gently scrubs with a toothbrush to separate the bone turned to rock from the regular rock of the South Dakota badlands.

Scrubb sits back on his heels, wipes the sweat from his eyes with his sopping bandanna,  stares at the bone bed and takes a measure of what looks to be the radius and metacarpals and a wingspan of over 13 meters – a small aeorplane.

But it’s not just the length and breadth of the wing but whether it could have supported bulk and so far, after 30 years of digging in the richest Late Cretaceous sites all over the world, they’ve found and added enormously to their understanding of Order Pterosauria, but he’s not yet found a paleontological  reference for the most common beast in folklore worldwide; there were fossils people thought were Cyclops and gryphons, there’s got to be one for dragons, too, he just needs to keep looking.

[brella]

6, 41, and 42 for the fic meme?

6. which wip is your favorite?

ah god i'm so bad at having like, multiple things that i'm working on, my brain just plants itself in one pot and stays there until it outgrows it. that said, there's a marianne/claude fic for my dear friend meg that she commissioned for charity like. a year ago? and which i have been working on steadily, and i am really proud of the language in there and of how much of my love for her shines through (or at least i hope it does). it's got letters, travels, dancing, hair-braiding, river-swimming, and arak. i hope i can carry it home in a way that feels worthy of my friend, and all her own words have done to inspire mine, someday soon.

41. what's the last sentence you wrote, and what's the context?

an anon already asked me this but luckily i am writing in between answering these so i have a sentence that has superseded the other!

Spice Girl cranes her elegant neck, gazing at her user in the back seat—at the mess of wants and dreams she came from—with something close to sadness.

totally different scene than the last one i pulled from. this probably isn't going to be in the current chapter, but the next one. another meaningful conversation in a car! trish is asleep, and spice girl has come out to talk to narancia. it's the first conversation they've ever had, going by canon. i've been looking forward to writing this for AGES so i'm so happy it's coming up.

42. favorite opening line that you've written?

this is the perfect question for me. i put literally all of my effort into opening lines. it's actually from an original fiction of mine—"how islands are named"—and it is only my favorite for rhythm/meter reasons. and also for hopefully making whoever's reading it to be like hey what's up with this lake reasons. and also because it was an excuse to use the word pleistocene. i like all of my opening lines to have pleasing syllabic counts, yk. anyway, it's:

Lake McDermott was a volcanic lake—a remnant of the Pleistocene, or so it was said.

[hikingwithjohnqgrizzly]

The Natural Wonder of Colchuck Lake

Colchuck Lake, that unreal turquoise pool of internet fame, owes its shape and shade to an earlier time.

Not as early as you might imagine.

When you’re standing on the smooth granite of the lakeshore, the natural tendency is for your mind’s eye to wander too far back in time. Mine does. I picture a massive sheet of ice that slowly carves a hanging valley out of the batholith from which it sprang. As the Pleistocene draws to a close, the glacier slowly climbs backwards, until it tucks itself into the steep slopes beneath the col. A brief hiccup in the Little Ice Age leaves a moraine above the western shore, and then it settles into its present and, by all indications, quite final retreat.

In its long, slow wake, the glacier leaves a basin for a lake, but that alone doesn’t explain what you’re looking at. Some of the credit has to go to something much less epochal: the dam-building binge of the 1930’s.

During the depths of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, we put nature to work. Dams sprouted like a pox across North America in the geological blink of an eye. The Tennessee Valley Authority was formed; the Columbia began to be tamed by the first phase of the Bonneville; and the Colorado was enchained behind the Hoover for something like good.

Give us electricity. Let us grow crops in the desert. Sustain our homes in the saguaro-dotted sands. It seemed like a foolproof plan at the time.

A similar bout of construction happened here, albeit on a more modest scale. In the late 1920’s and extending into the 30’s, masonry and earthen dams were thrown up in the seemingly untouched, subalpine wilds of the Icicle drainage to impound more meltwater in Colchuck, Eight Mile, Snow, Nada, Klonaqua and Square Lakes.

You’d never know to look at them that they were part of an irrigation system extending miles upvalley and down. Their levels were raised to ensure a steady flow of water during dry season and drought.

You can spot the signs of their real nature easily enough, if you care to. Far downstream, as you cross the deluxe pedestrian bridge that leads from the Snow Lakes parking lot to an unending serpentine climb, your eyes might spy an aqueduct paralleling the turgid waters of Icicle Creek. It is one of the more visible sections of 40 miles of canals that route water to farms in the valley below and to the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery.

That hatchery, the largest in the world when it was constructed, was the byproduct of yet another adventure in irrigation and hydroelectricity: it was required as a remedy for the effects on fish of what was then the largest concrete structure ever built, the Grand Coulee Dam, one of many obstacles we placed in the way of salmon traveling upriver from the ocean to spawn.

However large that hatchery might be, the runs it produces can’t compare to what was here before those many diversions along the Columbia. Salmon spawned in great numbers in the waters of the Wenatchee River and Icicle Creek. That fishery was strong enough to sustain an entire peoples at the confluence of the two streams. They.called themselves the P’squosa.

By the time the US Government displaced them in the 1800’s to make way for the railroad that still snakes its way through the mountains nearby, they were easy to shunt aside. Their numbers had been greatly diminished by disease that followed the introduction of horses to the area. The powers that be simply disregarded a treaty signed with them in 1855 and lumped them in with the Colville and a few other tribes, moving them east and north and out of the way. Most of us don’t give them a second thought (really, any thought at all) as we make the turn from US2 and drive through their erstwhile homelands on our way to this or that trail somewhere up Icicle Creek Road.

Their lands would become the site for Leavenworth, when it was established at the end of the 19th century as a mining and logging town. It attracted farmers, too, who attempted to grow fruit trees in the valley (unsuccessfully at first, due to frost). Delivering water to that agricultural experiment was the original raison d’etre of the canals built in 1901, right before the town reached its apogee. In the early 1900’s, Leavenworth was even bigger than it is in its current faux-Bavarian incarnation: 5,500 people called it home then, versus the couple thousand permanent residents now (it might seem more populous on a summer weekend, when the town’s numbers are inflated by transient visitors turning lobster red in the baking sun).

Leavenworth’s fortunes would eventually fall, but nowhere near as far (nor with the same finality) as those of the people who first called this place home. All that seems to remain of them is a smattering of place names: Colchuck, Klonaqua, Wenatchee.

Don’t you believe it! The names aren’t right. “Wenatchi '' was the name that the Yakama knew the P’squosa by (synecdoche for the place they fished, Wenatshapam), and the US Government simply adopted the term from them. “Colchuck” sounds authentic enough, but it is not from the P’squosas’ Salish tongue, but Chinook jargon, an amalgam of Chinookan and other languages (including a heaping of French) that served as a trade language betwixt the tribes and between native peoples and fur trappers, traders, and the like who started showing up in the 1600’s.

Chinook jargon traveled from the coast, up the Columbia, into the interior. While the original Chinookan is all but extinct along its former range, the jargon survives, sustained in part by newcomers, including a certain topographer who bestowed the name “col chuck” word-for-word on the “cold waters” he found in a portion of the lands he mapped.

In the decade following the construction of the dams in the Icicle drainage, a different kind of new arrival took an interest in one of the area’s more ephemeral and quixotic resources: enter the peakbagger. It was during the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s that ascents of the peaks surrounding Colchuck Lake were first recorded by the mountaineering types who assign credit for such things. “Let it be known that so-and-so was the first person to stand on such-and-such spot, which is higher than other such spots.”

Today, the hills are alive with the sound of “Worth it!�� The lake’s primary function is the delivery of transitory self-gratification and temporary relief of FOMO for the thousands of people who follow in the settlers’ and summitteers’ footsteps to stake vain, itinerant claims of immortality in the form of selfies by the lakeshore (or sometimes in floaties they dragged up the trail). Trip reports and social posts are filled with the assessment that Colchuck “did not disappoint.” Colchuck is very protective of its Yelp reviews.

It is only possible for Colchuck to live up to its YOLO expectations by us ignoring everything that belies its status as a natural wonder. Conspicuously absent from all the online commentary are the things that abet our modern-day conquests, like the ribbon of asphalt that brings us to within a few miles of the lake. The parking lot is worthy of note only as an annoyance - because it’s full - as if this were an aberration and not an integral part of the experience. The pit toilet gets a callout for not being clean enough, which is odd: the river of waste flowing from thousands of modern humans landing on a small, dusty patch of space cleared from a forest should elicit precisely zero shock.  

Not mentioned at all are the dams or the P’squosa, who were here thousands of years before the purported first ascents or Instagram. This is likely the first you’re hearing of them. Surprise is the wrong word - they are hiding in plain sight, expunged through willful ignorance. By not asking the questions we don’t want to know the answers to, we repeat the role of the soldiers who paved our way. We sweep the P’squosa out of our collective memories to sustain the illusion we are taming a pristine wilderness, as if the last 200 years never happened.

If you would like to understand more about the tribe’s views on the promises made to them, please visit this documentary produced by the Confederated Colville Tribes. If you would like to read about the P’squosa in the words of their descendant, please visit P’Squosa Tribe by Mary Big Bull-Lewis.