MetaFilter posts tagged with naturalhistory

Gomphotheres, megafauna, and anachronistic fruits

fiercecupcake — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:01:56 -0800

Osage orange, avocado, papaya, honey locust, paw paw, persimmon, and many more: fruits that have outlasted the gomphotheres and other megafauna. These "anachronistic fruits" can be a key to understanding their intended consumers. More. More. More. And even more.

American Museum of Natural History Photo Collection

peacay — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:39:49 -0800

Picturing the Museum: The American Museum of Natural History Photo Collection.

going forward with the "true eye of a lynx" to study the very anatomy of nature

jessamyn — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:53:19 -0800

"While we are generally horrified by monstrosities in the case of human beings, we love them in fruit" - Giovanni Battista Ferrari (naturalist, "discoverer" of the blood orange and the cure for scurvy). Illustrations in Ferrari's book Hesperides sive de Malorum Aureorum cultura (1646) are based on close collaboration with Cassiano dal Pozzo and his Paper Museum, called one man's project to "commission drawings of all known antiquities, and to attempt to systematically categorize this vast repertory of visual images." This collection of over 7,000 seventeenth century illustrations, drawings, and prints -- now held by the Royal Collection -- is being assembled, cataloged and published in thirty-four separate (expensive) volumes with every item reproduced. It contains the work of the Linceans and the first illustrations created with the use of a microscope. Most of the non-fruit illustrations have never before been published. tl;dr? Here are some links to "the good stuff": highlights of the Paper Museum with Sir David Attenborough, article on the Paper Museum's discovery by David Freeberg in Natural History (1990), three scholarly articles from David Freedberg about the collection Ferrari and the pregnant Lemons of Pietrasanta, Cassiano dal Pozzo, Natural Historian, Ferrari on the Classification of Oranges and Lemons (more) [via]

The Strangest Shop in All of Paris

jonson — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 14:58:58 -0800

Deyrolle: The Strangest Shop in All of Paris. "Paris has many unusual shops, but one of the most unusual has to be Deyrolle."

The River Above

owhydididoit — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 20:51:50 -0800

Alabama has many beautiful rivers, but the Cahaba is special. Its biodiversity is impressive. Boasting 131 different fish species, no other river in North America has more species of fish per mile. It's also the longest free-flowing river remaining in Alabama. It is home to a considerable number of rare plants*, including the Cahaba lilly. The proximity of Birmingham has taken a toll, but recovery efforts are underway, and the Cahaba remains popular with river and wildlife enthusiasts. *Page contains embedded quicktime

Skulls and Skeletons

OmieWise — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 06:48:40 -0800

A collection of bird skeletons (with 3d rotating skeleton goodness). The site also has tips on cleaning your own, and identifying those you might, uh, stumble across. Comparative pictures and anatomy of orangutan, chimp, marmoset, and lemur skeletons. Will's Skull Site, with close to 100 skulls and details (Cougar!). The California Academy of Sciences site on skulls, including this cool animal-to-skull match tool. Skeleton specimen tutorials from the Vetrinary Museum. The Human Osteology pages. A x-ray anatomy of the human skeleton. The Human Skull module at CalState Chico. And, you know, dragon physiology. And previously, the skeletal systems of cartoon characters.

Owls are rad.

OmieWise — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 06:27:31 -0800

Owls are rad. Sometimes they look kind of metallic and scary, sometimes wise, sometimes puzzled, and sometimes like skulls, (Index); sometimes they sound like dogs or pigs, sometimes they sound like a little train, sometimes they sound alarmed, (Index of MP3s); sometimes you come across an extensive gallery of Central and North American owls with pictures, ranges, video, and even a description of the '04-'05 Northern Owl Invasion; sometimes it's a dynamic range map of Owls of the Western Hemisphere; sometimes it's the OwlCam homepage with downloadable owl movies, sometimes it's a series of articles on all things owl; sometimes at BiologyBase it's a printable owl sighting lifelist, sometimes it's Ruru, the morepork, New Zealand's native owl at NZBirds. Or, w0t! w0t!, it's attracting barn owls and building nest boxes at World Owl Trust. Previous MeFi birding FPP.

Romantic Natural History

OmieWise — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 13:50:23 -0800

Romantic Natural History: "A website designed to survey relationships between literary works and natural history in the century before Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859)." Including links to various natural historians from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, illustrations and illustrators, literary figures in Romanticism, and, of course, much more.

Blogging through life, natural history illustration, and the past 65 million years.

Sticherbeast — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 13:13:40 -0800

Carl Buell, natural history illustrator, has started a blog. Interview with the man here.

John Day's Orchids

frykitty — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 09:44:56 -0800

The orchid scrapbooks of John Day. Over the course of 40 years, John Day participated in the popular Victorian pursuit of orchid collection. He collected his stunning paintings of the plants into 53 scrapbooks, a selection of which is available online at the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens. [via the remarkable BibliOdyssey]