#science illustration

[nemfrog]

"Human liver in which the portal vein had been injected white." The physiological anatomy and physiology of man. 1859.

Internet Archive

[alphynix]

Spectember 2024 #05: Most Weasel

@gaycoonie suggested a "future legless mustelid":

Descended from an arboreal offshoot lineage of the modern least weasel, Maximagale gaycooniei is a bizarre mustelid that appears to have converged on the lifestyle of ambush-hunting tree snakes, evolving in northern latitudes where actual snakes are largely absent.

Growing to about 1m long (3'3"), it's not truly legless but its limbs are all reduced down to tiny vestigial single-clawed spurs, which are used to help anchor its body while climbing and as claspers during mating. It moves around with a distinctive inchworm-like looping gait, alternating grasping and releasing with its front and hind spurs.

Its build is bottom-heavy, with most of its mass concentrated in its thicker back end, and its tail is semi-prehensile. It clings to trees with its body bunched up, camouflaged with cryptic coloration, and rapidly whips its long flexible front half out to snap its powerfully-muscled jaws at prey – such as insects, birds, lizards, frogs, small mammals, and pretty much anything else that comes within its reach.

It will also opportunistically raid the nest of birds and arboreal mammals.

Due to the less frequent meals its ambush-hunting tactics provide, it has a much slower metabolism than its ancestors, and it conserves energy with daily periods of torpor and longer hibernation during the colder months of winter. It has also retained its ancestor's tendency to seasonally shrink its brain size to reduce energy requirements even more.

[rebeccarhelm]

The lost jellyfish art of Ilona Richter, from Anita Brinckmann-Voss's 1970 book on jellyfish of the Mediterranean Sea...

[quailtea]

Endangered Species of Japan 🌸

[typhlonectes]

I’m sorry, but some of y’all really need to see this…

[counterintuitivecomics]

Some colorized bits from my recent free printable zine WHY WE MASK: It's Not "Just A Cold"! I purposefully made the whole thing b&w to make printing as cheap as possible, but it's fun to add color especially to the snot-splosions.

HEY COMICS FRIENDS going to SPX or other cons this weekend - MASK UP, EAT OUTDOORS, and REST if you start feeling run down. COVID-19 levels are BAD bad right now (it's currently the worst September out of the whole pandemic) and the government does not have our backs. This virus causes YEARS worth of horrible vascular, neurological, and immune system damage, and each infection raises your chances of gaining fun new disabilities that could prevent you ever making comics again.

I strongly advice cancelling festivals, cons, indoor dining, anything involving crowds indoors OR outdoors, etc. But I know people depend on income from cons, so: PACK MASKS, NASAL SPRAY, and CPC MOUTHWASH and actually use them! If you develop any COVID-19 symptoms (headaches, dizziness, nausea, stomach pain, diarrhea, sore throat, sore joints, etc) don't assume it's "just a cold". Stay in your dang hotel room and REST! You can TRY to "push through" to keep tabling but you are NOT gonna like the long-term results (aka Long COVID).

I care about all you comics people and I want you to enjoy many more decades of making and sharing and reading comics with each other. If you're feeling sick at a show this weekend and don't know what to do, drop me a line! No judgements. Take care of yourself and each other out there and remember, no one can rest your body for you but you.

(Image Descriptions are in the Alt Text. Also please feel free to print my zine and hand it out if you do go)co

[natureintheory]

CROP: An autumnal scene at the Institute Pond: onlookers observe a gravitational-wave-emanating event in the dark, star-filled water — two black holes orbiting around one another, sending out ripples. Art by Olena Shmahalo for The Institute Letter.

[slowlytenaciouscherryblossom]

Te dejo un CHISMECITO: aquí el corazón humano

[beary-good-finds]

🤖 Illustrations from Motorized Capsela Science Discovery Design Manual, 1993 🤖

Capsela was a construction toy line featuring gears and motors encased in clear plastic spheres, which can be combined to create a wide range of static and moving models. This manual meant to provide instructions for assembling and working with Capsela components to build various designs.

[asparklethatisblue]

Bat and human arm bones~

I figured it’d be something to help a child visualise the similarities

[koenji]

Badgers of the world. Illustrations by Toni Llobet. x x

[nemfrog]

"Phases of Saturn's rings." A fourteen weeks course in descriptive astronomy. 1870.

Internet Archive

[alphynix]

Metriorhynchids were a group of fully marine crocodyliforms known from the mid-Jurassic to the early Cretaceous of Europe and the Americas. They were the most aquatic-adapted of all known archosaurs, with streamlined bodies, smooth scaleless skin, small front flippers, larger hind flippers, and shark-like tail flukes. They may also have been endothermic, and might even have given live birth at sea rather than laying eggs.

Rhacheosaurus gracilis here was a metriorhynchid that lived in warm shallow waters around what is now Germany during the late Jurassic, about 150 million years ago. Around 1.5m long (~5'), its long narrow snout lined with delicate pointed teeth suggests it fed on small soft-bodied prey, a niche partitioning specialization that allowed it to coexist with several other metriorhynchid species in the same habitat.

Unlike most other marine reptiles metriorhynchids didn't have particularly retracted nostrils, which may have had a limiting effect on their efficiency as sustained swimmers since higher-set nostrils make it much easier to breathe without having to lift the whole head above the surface. The lack of such an adaptation in this group may be due to their ancestors having a single nasal opening formed entirely within the premaxilla bones at the tip of the snout, uniquely limiting how far it could easily shift backwards – other marine reptiles had nostrils bound by the edges of multiple different bones, giving them much more flexibility to move the openings around.

(By the early Cretaceous a close relative of Rhacheosaurus did actually evolve nostrils bound by both the premaxilla and the maxilla, and appeared to have started more significant retraction, but unfortunately this only happened shortly before the group's extinction.)

Metriorhynchids also had well-developed salt glands in front of their eyes, but the large sinuses that accommodated these glands may have made their skulls ill-suited to deep diving, being more susceptible to serious damage from pressure changes and restricting their swimming to near-surface waters only.

Preserved skin impressions in some metriorhynchid fossils show several unusual "irregularities", including curl shapes, small bumps, and cratering. It's unknown what exactly caused these marks, but they may represent scarring from external parasites such as lampreys and barnacles.

———

NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Patreon

References:

Andrade, Marco BD, and Mark T. Young. "High diversity of thalattosuchian crocodylians and the niche partition in the Solnhofen Sea." 56th Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy, 2008. https://svpca.org/years/2008_dublin/abstracts.pdf#page=14

Séon, Nicolas, et al. "Thermophysiologies of Jurassic marine crocodylomorphs inferred from the oxygen isotope composition of their tooth apatite." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 375.1793 (2020): 20190139. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0139

Spindler, Frederik. "Live Birth in a Jurassic Marine Crocodile." Abstracts of the 90th Annual Meeting of the Paläontologische Gesellschaft, 2019. https://www.palaeontologie.geowissenschaften.uni-muenchen.de/pdfs/palges2019_abstracts.pdf#page=141

Spindler, Frederik, et al. "The integument of pelagic crocodylomorphs (Thalattosuchia: Metriorhynchidae)" Palaeontologia Electronica 24.2 (2021): a25. https://doi.org/10.26879/1099

Young, Mark T., et al. "Convergent evolution and possible constraint in the posterodorsal retraction of the external nares in pelagic crocodylomorphs." Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 189.2 (2020): 494-520. https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlaa021

Young, Mark T., et al. "Skull sinuses precluded extinct crocodile relatives from cetacean-style deep diving as they transitioned from land to sea." Royal Society Open Science 11.10 (2024): 241272. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.241272

Wikipedia contributors. “Metriorhynchidae” Wikipedia, 12 Nov. 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metriorhynchidae

Wikipedia contributors. “Rhacheosaurus” Wikipedia, 02 Dec. 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhacheosaurus

[dirtmossart]

Sedimentologist, Natacha Fabregas, using a microscope to check grain size

[araiceii]

[comixqueen]

Repostober 7: He stretch his leggy out real far! Anchiornis from 2018, a piece from grad school.