Look at those feathers!
this specimen provides the first evidence of well-developed pennaceous feathers in a large, non-flying dromaeosaur, raising the question of what function such wings would serve.
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Zhenyuanlong
Category: Nature
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Korean Seaweed Farms
From NASA.
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Dune
Dana Allan, Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2014 (posted without permission)
It just doesn’t look real.
These are the best!
LA-based designer and art director Cathy Van Hoang had the novel idea of using sea urchin shells as upside down planters for air plants to create little aerial jellyfish.
You can buy them from her Etsy shop. These are just brilliant!
(via Colossal)
Kottke posts an anecdote from a talk Michael Crichton gave in 2005 about how mismanagement by the park service has robbed future generations of the heritage Theodore Roosevelt wrote about in 1903:
Roosevelt saw a thousand antelope, plentiful cougar, mountain sheep, deer, coyote and many thousands of elk. He wrote at that time, “Our people should see to it that this rich heritage is preserved for their children and their children’s children forever, with its majestic beauty all unmarred.”
The full transcript is worth a read.
I really hope we get better at conservation.
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Natural illustration
A Summer spent visiting museums has left me a little hooked on historical natural illustration (amongst many, many other things).
The American Museum of Natural History are posting images from their archives on a few pinterest boards, the Vertebrate Zoology Anatomy Illustrations board is probably the pick of the bunch.
It looks like they rotate the images they have up on the board periodically. The Natural Histories board also has a few nice pics.
Also worth mentioning, you can pick up Art of Nature by the Natural History Museum (London) for £4 here. The illustrations are grouped by continent and it’s a good mix of people, plants and animals (certainly worth £4!).
Currently in my Amazon basket I’ve also got Curious Beasts, a collection of animal illustrations from the 15th-19th centuries produced by the British Museum. I missed the exhibition when it came to the Midlands though I was lucky enough to catch a similarly themed exhibition in Copenhagen a few years ago (complete with mermaid skeleton), I imagine I’ll know a few of the prints already but even if not I’m fairly sure it’ll be up my street.