My Favorite Genre Of Photo Is “excited Scientist Lying Down Next To A Very Big Fossil/animal/object/etc

cosiscience

Walking dinosaur, Columbus Interactive Science Museum

Dunkleosteus, motherfuckers.

sauropod emojis, as rated by a palaeontology student

apple:

not a bad start here overall! this is recognisably intended as a brachiosaurid, and the skull shape and overall profile are pretty good (though they look a bit juvenile-ish). points off, though, for the inaccurate hands - rather than elephantine columns, they were more shaped like lima beans in cross-section. yes, really. they also only had one claw per hand (it was on the thumb). also points off for having the external fleshy nostril located on the dome of the skull; while this is the position of the bony external nostril, there is evidence that the fleshy nostril was probably located at the tip of the snout. its dead eye haunts me

score: 7/10 solid attempt

google:

google clearly went for a cartoonier approach, and to my view it served them well. still recognisably a brachiosaur - the shape of the skull and overall proportions make it resemble Europasaurus, a type of dwarf sauropod that lived on an island in what is now eastern europe. which immediately ups its score in my book. however, it falls victim to the same issues with elephantine hands as did the apple one, and as such i can’t give it a perfect score.

score: 9/10 friendly!

microsoft:

this emoji cleverly avoids any scientific inaccuracies by being extremely cartoony. i like the use of single colours rather than gradients. a little too simple for my tastes though. i can’t tell what find of sauropod, if any, it was intended to be - a brachiosaur, because of the upright neck? a mamenchisaur, maybe? i have little to work with.

score: 6/10 just too vague

samsung:

i don’t like her at all. clearly a brachiosaur - sensing a common theme - but something about it is just unpleasant to me. the body seems too fat, the limbs too short, the tail too noodly, the head too pointy. also messes up the hands again.

score: 3/10. please leave.

whatsapp:

at last, an emoji that bucks the brachiosaur trend!! this is clearly not a brachiosaur. in fact, it looks like a possible Cetiosaurus-type deal. whatever it is, it’s charming. the nostrils are at the end of the snout as they should be and - is it? - can it be? - it is! the hands are anatomically correct! each clearly has one claw, located on the thumb, and though we can’t see well, they don’t appear to be elephantine. i love them a lot.

score: 10/10 only shooting stars break the mold - oh god im so sorry i shouldve phrased that differently–

twitter:

a classic. what it lacks in detail it makes up in simplicity. it has pleasant lines and an appealing silhouette. it’s extremely vague and not based off of any real genus, and the tail is far too short, but for some reason this doesn’t bother me too much. 

score: 8/10. exquisite

facebook:

hm. hmm. a lot of anatomical though was clearly put into this; overall the body form looks like a plausible sauropod. the proportions look a little weird, sure, but that seems to be perspective - after all, most sauropods were gigantic beings. beefy boys, if you will. its nostrils, upon close inspection, are correctly placed; however, its hands and feet are all messed up. i guess the real conundrum for me is that it seems to be a mish-mash of sauropods - remove the braciosaur-like domed skull, and it would be a great fit for an Apatosaurus. 

score: 8/10 i’m conflicted

joypixels

what in the hell is joypixels? and what in the hell is this? i just…the hands and feet are plantigrade, meaning that the ankles touch the ground, when actual sauropods were digitigrade - walking on their toes. the shoulder and hip muscles aren’t there, and instead the limbs are just awkwardly connected to the body. it reminds me of a turtle, and not in a good way.

score: 4/10. uninspired and dull

openmoji:

they didnt try. nor will i.

score: 0/10 make an effort

emojidex

every emojidex emoji i have ever seen has just been awful. this is no different. this looks like a stereotypical loser from a meme, but as a dinosaur. the contrast between the decently moderate level of artistic detail put in and the blatant disinterest towards making it look like an animal is staggering. just awful.

score: -3/10 i just cant care enough about it to rate it lower

emojipedia:

excuse me? what the fuck? what the fuck is this? this is the main character from the low-budget ripoff of the good dinosaur. the head looks like a Corythosaurus  and the body looks like barney in leapfrog stance. the gradients just make me feel a little sick. it’s awful. look at the hindlimbs and tell me that any love was put into drawing this. it’s like how a dinosaur would be drawn on tom and jerry but like, the bad charmless ones made in the 90s that were trying hard to emulate the originals. the hands look like green snowboots.

score: -500/10 i hate you i hate you i hate you i hate you i hate you i hate you 

Storyville - The Farthest: Voyager’s Interstellar Journey

Launched 16 days apart in 1977, the twin Voyager space probes have defied all the odds, survived countless near misses and over 40 years later continue to beam revolutionary information across unimaginable distances. With less computing power than a modern hearing aid, they have unlocked the stunning secrets of our solar system.

The golden record contains greetings in 55 languages, animal sounds and 27 musical clips from around the world, among them Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode.

It’s amazing that billions of years from now [after humans are long gone] Voyager will still be chugging along.

“Nightfall”, by Asimov and Silverberg

I haven’t picked a book apart in a while, so have some mildly-disjointed thoughts on Asimov & Silverberg’s 1989 novel, mostly focused on the somewhat-ropey astronomy, but looking at a few other things as well…

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WHY THE TRIASSIC????

What the FUCK is so WEIRD about the Triassic?

Well I will TELL YOU! 

Okay so first of all, the Triassic is SUPER DUPER OLD. In the grand scheme of the Earth, sure, it happened relatively recently, but working on the scale of the entire geologic time span of the Earth’s existence is not exactly fair: 

I mean, animals that we can recognize today didn’t show up until that line in the Phanerozoic (Hadean is the oldest stuff), so like, it’s smack dab in the middle of THAT 

Look, basically, here’s what happened: 

- The earth Formed. Life Appeared. Chaos reigned (4,600 million years ago until 4,000 million years ago) 

- Life began to become more complex. Some life began to stick its blueprints inside of pockets so they’d be safer. They then swallowed other life forms that were better at getting energy, but kept them around like a buddy inside of them. Some of these guys could make a shitton of oxygen. This made the earth cool and a lot of shit die out super duper quickly. Extinction rate unknown. (4,000 million years ago until 2,500 million years ago) 

- Climate change and fluctuating oceans allow life to start to group up together into SuperLife aka Multicellular Things. These multicellular things got more and more complicated. Some became animals and started moving around a lot. Some plants went on land. Some things were super weird looking and mysterious. LOTS of experimentation by life. Things start to change and a lot of these early experiments go extinct. Extinction rate unknown. (2,500 million years ago until 541 million years ago) 

- Animals can suddenly burrow underground and go absolutely apeshit and diversify faster than you can say “wait a second whAT THE FUCK IS THAT”. Ice Age causes Death, 85% of species die out. (541-444 million years ago) 

- Fish suddenly have a chance to be weird too and some of them decide, what the heck, let’s crawl onto land. Why not, right? Some other animals decide to join them. Plants make everything super cold, 75% of all species die out. (444-359 mya) 

- Land-vertebrates start to diversify. They try out a lot of new things, but there aren’t a lot of them yet. So there’s still a lot of experimentation in body plans. Mammal-relatives are actually some of the most diverse ones. Reptiles are fairly rare. A GIANT MASS EXTINCTION CAUSED BY A GIANT LAVA FIELD EXPLODING KILLS ~95% OF LIFE ON EARTH. (359-252 mya)

- NEW animals get to try to diversify and do lots of crazy shit in the wake of SO MANY JOBS IN THE ENVIRONMENT GETTING CLEARED OUT. Reptiles diversify so fast you don’t know what the heck is happening. Other animals also take this opportunity to do new and weird shit. VOLCANOS EXPLODE, KILL ~80% OF LIFE (252-201 mya) 

- Dinosaurs finally get to do fun things now that other reptiles are no longer being weird. Modern life starts to show up. (201 mya-today). 

BASICALLY: 

- Land Animals had only just started to diversify and try out new funky things with their bodies in order to cope with the challenges of terrestrial life 

- Then a giant mass extinction killed everything. Mass exinctions are bad news for a lot of shit that’s specialized for the environment that’s been destroyed, BUT it allows things that make it through to have a chance to try out new shit to fill all those empty jobs in the environment 

- So, generalist reptiles, who hadn’t had a chance to do jack diddly squat before, now suddenly had the whole planet to play with. And the other animals around them, from mammal-cousins to amphibians to fish to insects to other invertebrates, also got to try out some new stuff in this new world 

- AND THEN ANOTHER MASS EXTINCTION HAPPENED RIGHT AFTER THAT RESET THE CLOCK AGAIN

This means that the TRIASSIC has some of THE MOST UNIQUE ANIMALS TO HAVE EVER EVOLVED IN EARTH’S HISTORY. Experiments were tried, rapidly, and MANY were lost RIGHT AWAY. It’s not like the life that evolved after that, which was honestly similar to what we see today - or those that evolved after the end-Cretaceous extinction, which was even more like today. These were weirdos that appeared and were wiped out before they could continue on to today 

And, because this was a rapid evolutionary period, we see the starts of many of today’s modern groups of animals, and they’re super weird, too! 

Honestly, the only weirder period in Earth’s history is the Cambrian Explosion, when animals first started doing anything notable at all 

On top of THAT, the ENTIRE EARTH was ONE GIANT SUPERCONTINENT called Pangea! Everyone could go everywhere! There were no terrestrial barriers to movement! So many creatures spread all over the globe. It was a HOTSPOT of biodiversity and a major turning point in Earth’s History

But, because the dinosaurs that evolved in the Triassic were kind of Meh, it doesn’t get enough press!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

So, we’re going to cover the Weird and Wonderful animals of the Triassic - we have a carefully curated list of Weirdos ready to take Tumblr by storm, and we hope you’ll enjoy learning about these amazing animals right along with us! You’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see them, though - don’t want to give away the surprises! 

GET! PUMPED! 

IT’S TRIASSIC TIME!

Welcome to….DEVONIAN PARK. Please don’t tap the glass (the dunks are very sensitive).

It makes me sad how no one ever seems to mention how wild the crocodilian-line archosaurs were. Dinosaurs get all the attention when there was equally crazy shit happening on the other branch of the archosaur tree.

There was a whole linage of bipedal crocodylomorphs during the Triassic that were basically identical to theropod dinosaurs, so much so that a lot of them were initially classified as dinosaurs!

Just fucking look at them!

And these weren’t just little lizard guys, there were some big lads running around.

Not to mention the long-legged ones that galloped around on all fours like some kind of terrifying reptilian dogs.

These crazy crocodiles aren’t just from the Triassic, either; there was a galloping, hoofed crocodilian that lived during the Eocene and likely hunted horses. (They were smaller and not quite as fast as modern horses, but still)

But don’t worry, they weren’t all meat-eaters! There were vegetarian and omnivore crocodylomorphs too! Just look at this guy!

He was an ankylosaur before ankylosaurs were cool (or even existed).

MESSIER 56 The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of Messier 56 (also known as M 56 or NGC 6779), located about 33,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation of Lyra (The Lyre). The stars in the globular cluster are tightly bound together by gravity.

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How long do you think it will be before crows discover agriculture?  Surely they have the capacity to learn that seeds dropped in the dirt sometimes make more seeds.  They’re just a hop, skip, and a jump away from civilization, all things considered.