If I Were Simply A Ball Of Moss With No Thoughts Or Feelings That Would Be Great Thanks

One-Of-A-Kind Orange Snowy Owl Leaves Scientists Scratching Their Heads

Wildlife photographer Julie Maggert has been taking pictures of snowy owls for years. So when she heard that a strange, orange-colored snowy owl had been spotted flying around Michigan’s Thumb area, she knew she had to see the bird for herself. Maggert drove two hours out to where the owl had been observed. Before long, she spotted her in the middle of a field. She couldn’t believe her eyes — she really was orange...

Read more: One-Of-A-Kind Orange Snowy Owl Leaves Scientists Scratching Their Heads - The Dodo

who cares about my gender? just hit me with your car already

I find it suspicious that you never see posts along the lines of “cishet people should stop using the word ‘queer’, that’s a word that only queer people get to use.” Not because I think that it’s necessarily true, but because that’s the normal way social conversations around reclaimed slurs & pejoratives evolve. You rarely hear people on tumblr saying “black people/hispanic people/asian people aren’t allowed to say [slur that has been used specifically against them].” Because most of us recognize that that’s nonsense, and that you don’t get to tell minorities which words they can and can’t reclaim.

But tumblr didn’t do that with the word ‘queer’. It didn’t go the usual route of discussion around who can and can’t say what. Tumblr just jumped straight into trying to erase the word completely. And that is because the discourse around ‘queer’ isn’t a conversation that evolved naturally within our community. It was purposefully (and successfully) created out of thin air from a sudden, relentless onset of terf propaganda. Terfs who hated having a trans-inclusive umbrella term for our community, who wanted nothing more than to disrupt unity. Well congratu-fucking-lations, it’s been disrupted.

God I wish I was crab with knife, I bet crab with knife doesn’t have to deal with pornbots

card declined three times trying to get toronto tickets and now i have to try to get tickets during an exam but save me chicago

Gigantic Skull of Prehistoric Sea Monster Found on England’s ‘Jurassic Coast’

The remarkably well-preserved skull of a gigantic pliosaur, a prehistoric sea monster, has been discovered on a beach in the county of Dorset in southern England, and it could reveal secrets about these awe-inspiring creatures.

Pliosaurs dominated the oceans at a time when dinosaurs roamed the land. The unearthed fossil is about 150 million years old, almost 3 million years younger than any other pliosaur find. Researchers are analyzing the specimen to determine whether it could even be a species new to science.

Originally spotted in spring 2022, the fossil, along with its complicated excavation and ongoing scientific investigation, are now detailed in the upcoming BBC documentary “Attenborough and the Jurassic Sea Monster,” presented by legendary naturalist Sir David Attenborough, that will air February 14 on PBS.

Such was the enormous size of the carnivorous marine reptile that the skull, excavated from a cliff along Dorset’s “Jurassic Coast,” is almost 2 meters (6.6 feet) long. In its fossilized form, the specimen weighs over half a metric ton. Pliosaurs species could grow to 15 meters (50 feet) in length, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The fossil was buried deep in the cliff, about 11 meters (36 feet) above the ground and 15 meters (49 feet) down the cliff, local paleontologist Steve Etches, who helped uncover it, said in a video call.

Extracting it proved a perilous task, one fraught with danger as a crew raced against the clock during a window of good weather before summer storms closed in and the cliff eroded, possibly taking the rare and significant fossil with it.

Etches first learned of the fossil’s existence when his friend Philip Jacobs called him after coming across the pliosaur’s snout on the beach. Right from the start, they were “quite excited, because its jaws closed together which indicates (the fossil) is complete,” Etches said.

After using drones to map the cliff and identify the rest of the pliosaur’s precise position, Etches and his team embarked on a three-week operation, chiseling into the cliff while suspended in midair.

“It’s a miracle we got it out,” he said, “because we had one last day to get this thing out, which we did at 9:30 p.m.”

Etches took on the task of painstakingly restoring the skull. There was a time he found “very disillusioning” as the mud, and bone, had cracked, but “over the following days and weeks, it was a case of …, like a jigsaw, putting it all back. It took a long time but every bit of bone we got back in.”

It’s a “freak of nature” that this fossil remains in such good condition, Etches added. “It died in the right environment, there was a lot of sedimentation … so when it died and went down to the seafloor, it got buried quite quickly.”

Fearsome top predator of the seas

The nearly intact fossil illuminates the characteristics that made the pliosaur a truly fearsome predator, hunting prey such as the dolphinlike ichthyosaur. The apex predator with huge razor-sharp teeth used a variety of senses, including sensory pits still visible on its skull that may have allowed it to detect changes in water pressure, according to the documentary.

The pliosaur had a bite twice as powerful as a saltwater crocodile, which has the world’s most powerful jaws today, according to Emily Rayfield, a professor of paleobiology at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom who appeared in the documentary. The prehistoric marine predator would have been able to cut into a car, she said.

Andre Rowe, a postdoctoral research associate of paleobiology at the University of Bristol, added that “the animal would have been so massive that I think it would have been able to prey effectively on anything that was unfortunate enough to be in its space.”

By Issy Ronald.

Wait, what happened on November 5th, 2020?

I finished another moth yesterday, I’ve decided to give them the name ﾟ+*𐐪𐑂☽ Snooze ☾𐐪𐑂*+ﾟ to match the theme of sleepy names. 

I gave her an entirely fluffy body and legs instead of just the thorax. I also made their wings a bit more closed and slighty different shaped. Her button eyes are also slightly mismatched, since I couldn’t find a true matching pair. 

Explains why you speak as an old god, deprived of peace

Have You Ever Slept.?

once, but my sleep was disturbed and my grave ransacked. Now I can never know peace