PhyloPic is an open database of life form silhouettes. All images are available for reuse under a Public Domain or Creative Commons license.
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posted by brundlefly
on Feb 4, 2012 -
20 comments
What happens when a Southern paleontologist falls for a creationist? According to Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally, it might go a little something like
this.
posted by yellowbinder
on Jan 25, 2012 -
30 comments
"Like many paleontologists, I believe that T. rex was a hunter: a forest hunter. More specifically, I believe that T. rex used the very same hunting strategy that millions of forest hunters practice today:
stand hunting from a tree."
posted by brundlefly
on Jul 12, 2010 -
66 comments
Meet Ida, the missing link. "Ida is the most complete early primate fossil ever found, and scientists believe that she could be one of our earliest
ancestors. She is a remarkable link between the first primates and modern humans and despite having lived 47 million years ago, her features show striking similarities to our own."
posted by HumanComplex
on May 19, 2009 -
51 comments
On April 23, 2009 Natalia Rybczynski, Mary R. Dawson, and Richard H. Tedford published their paper "
A semi-aquatic Arctic mammalian carnivore from the Miocene epoch and origin of Pinnipedia" in the journal,
Nature, detailing their 2007 discovery of the species they have named
Puijila darwini.
The carnivorous marine mammal,
which lived about 21 to 24 million years ago, was discovered practically by
accident, but as a "transitional fossil" is
re-writing our understanding of pinniped evolution. It could also be noted that it was most likely
cute as all get out, and is already the star of it's
own mini documentary.
posted by vertigo25
on Apr 29, 2009 -
28 comments
Tens of millions of
brittlestars have been
discovered inhabiting the peak of a sea mount in the Macquarie Ridge south of New Zealand. Strong currents are believed to be responsible for sweeping their predators away, more or less recreating their
home 300 million years
gone....
posted by Kronos_to_Earth
on May 19, 2008 -
21 comments
John Updike writes about bizarre dinosaurs for National Geographic. "How weird might a human body look to them? That thin and featherless skin, that dish-flat face, that flaccid erectitude, those feeble, clawless five digits at the end of each limb, that ghastly utter lack of a tail—ugh. Whatever did this creature do to earn its place in the sun, a well-armored, nicely specialized dino might ask. " Besides the Updike essay there's a
image gallery, an
interview with John Updike
[audio starts automatically], a dino
IQ test, an
audio critique of the way dinosaurs have been depicted in the latter half of the 20th Century
[audio starts automatically], a closer look at
the odder features of some of the stranger dinosaurs, an examination of the
nigersaurus (
images) as well as dinosaur
wallpapers and
jigsaw puzzles.
[via MeFi's Own ed]
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 30, 2007 -
26 comments
Project Pterosaur The goal of Project Pterosaur is to mount an expedition to locate and bring back to the United States living specimens of pterosaurs or their fertile eggs, which will be displayed in a Pterosaur Rookery that will be the center piece of the planned Fellowship Creation Science Museum and Research Institute (FCSMRI). Although, sadly, it may
not be real.
posted by geekyguy
on Oct 29, 2007 -
20 comments
Tracks of Swimming Dinosaur found in Wyoming The tracks of a previously unknown, two-legged swimming dinosaur have been identified along the shoreline of an ancient inland sea that covered Wyoming 165 million years ago, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder graduate student.
posted by hostile7
on Oct 19, 2005 -
15 comments
Why no Pliestocene Park? "Everyone seems to assume that the primeval condition of the Great Plains was bison and prairie dog, with the occasional pronghorn herd, but no other large mammals. Yet for 1.65 million years, North America teemed with large animals: the '
pleistocene megafauna.' Then as the last ice age was ending and the first humans were coming over from Siberia, most of them died out." Sad -- doesn't everybody want
a pony?
posted by namespan
on Sep 9, 2004 -
15 comments
DREAM WORLD
Given that green tea provides a more effective and environmentally-friendly method of preparing computer hard disks, pulsars are used to study gravitational waves with great precision, solar cells made from nanocrystals are found to be much more efficient, and scientists have discovered evidence for the earliest known wildfire in Earth's history, 443 to 417 million years ago, it would be hard to make the case that what we are living in is not, in fact, a Dreamworld.
posted by mcgraw
on Apr 27, 2004 -
29 comments
