Rediscovered during a lengthy expedition in Indonesia’s Cyclops mountains six decades after its last reported sighting, the long-beaked echidna—named after the famed naturalist, feared extinct (taxidermied specimen pictured), the nocturnal, burrowing creature, a monotreme that lays eggs like the equally unusual duck-billed platypus, is a living fossil (see also) that coexisted with the dinosaurs, branching off from the mainstream emergent mammals over two hundred million years ago. Named for the mythological แผฯฮนฮดฮฝฮฑ—She Viper and mother of all monsters—due to their shared reclusive and chimeric nature, the mammal is embedded in local Papuan culture as a conflict resolution mediator, one side of the disputing parties dispatched on an errant quest to the remote and wild mountains to find an echidna and the other to the sea to find a marlin, a task that could take years and removes the conflict from the community and gives an enduring reprieve from fighting.
Thursday 9 November 2023
zaglossus attenboroughi (11. 105)
Saturday 11 February 2023
7x7 (10. 541)
sky survey: a massive, high resolution picture of the Milky Way with three billion distinct objects
pachyderm prototype: presenting the Platybelodon—see also

hobohemian: a primer for Tramp Art
book renewal: the New York Public Library has found that the majority of literature published prior to 1964 may already be in the public domain—via Kottke
opuntia: invasive cacti are spreading in the Swiss Alps
stardust to dust: researchers propose kicking up lunar debris to create a sunshade and cool the Earth—see also
Wednesday 1 February 2023
9x9 (10. 515)
wickies: Fisheries and Oceans Canada is hiring assistant lighthouse keepers
the montessori method: a look at the world’s mist influential school system
little moving splat: Ze Frank (previously) covers the strange and wonderfully intelligent behaviour of plasmodial slime moulds

blue harvest: a history of the spoiler alert—see also
what is a map: an awful educational short from 1949 given the MST3K treatment
dead as a dodo: a de-extinction company gets a one-hundred fifty million dollar investment
the free-market tree: non-felonious children’s literature editions for the state of Florida
coast guard: a collection of lighthouses of North America
Wednesday 14 December 2022
6x6 (10. 384)
strife wins out: ๆฆ (ikusa, tatakau meaning war) is voted kanji of 2022—previously, see also—via Language Log
dunston checks in: Poseidon’s Underworld reviews the 1996 comedic film starring Jason Alexander, Paul Reubens, Rupert Everett and Faye Dunawayhearth and home: more animated Yule Log loops—see previously—via Waxy
twitterpated: a survey of possible dinosaur vocalisations
mission highlights: arresting imagery from Artemis I—see also
diwhy and regretsy: a collection of jargon and slang terms from the crafting community
Tuesday 15 November 2022
6x6 (10. 306)
honkbal hoofdklasse: Dutch for ‘Major League Baseball’
fragrant, acid, burnt and caprylic: the Crocker-Henderson odour classification system

the floor is lava: a fun looking arcade experience though the best part was climbing over the furniture and leaping from place to place
pontifex: the cathedral-like under-girding of the bridges of Seoul
phryge-fest: Paris unveils its Olympic and Paralympics mascots—anthropomorphic hats
Friday 29 April 2022
pangaea
Via Hyperallergic, we are referred to a nifty tool that lets one explore the geography and lifeforms that would have informed one’s hometown over the รฆons. Developed by engineer and palaeontologist Ian Webster, Ancient Earth ploughs through millions of years of tectonic shifts and rising and receding oceans with insights about fossils found nearby at the time and events defined the particular age and epoch. Despite the until recently relative inhospitability above the waves, one is always hoping that one’s home stays above water—especially in our current Anthropocene. Much more at the link above.
Sunday 27 February 2022
8x8
glass menagerie: more microbiological models from Luke Jerram—see previously
instant city: a 1971, tented utopian experiment on the northern coast of Ibiza
kye marn: incredible papier mรขchรฉ Carnival masks from Jacmel, Haiti
the wags, jubilee plus christmas gambols: nautical song composer Charles Dibdin, forgotten eighteenth century superstar—via Strange Company
a strange game—the only winning move is not to play: the rise of gamification in all systems and how to avoid getting caught up in it unawares
ัะฝะต, ะฑะตะฝะต, ัะตั: a Russian counting rhyme, like yan, tan, tethera
angiogenic properties: materials scientists development bioactive glass (also used to repair broken bones) that repels virtually all germs
Saturday 13 February 2021
here we come on the run with a burger in a bun
We enjoyed very much this appreciation of the Cabazon dinosaur ensemble, a novelty roadside attraction two decades in the making created by theme park artist and sculptor Claude Bell (of Knox Berry Farm fame) off the freeway near Palm Springs to draw diners to his nearby restaurant, the Wheel Inn (1958 - 2013). The Brontosaurus, Dinny the Dinosaur, and Mister Rex are made of out of salvaged, reclaimed road construction materials and since the restaurant’s closure, have been host, in a surprising turn, to a gift shop and a museum devoted to doctrine of creationism (inside of Dinny—the Tyrannosaur formerly had a slide in his tail but has been since filled with concrete due to safety concerns)—selling dinosaur related souvenirs with the rather shrill caveat that the “fossil record does not support evolution” (see also) and espousing young Earth beliefs, that place Adam and Eve among the dinosaurs about six millennia ago. Exhibits run counter to a frieze that Bell painted along the internal passage way that portray a scientific point of view and timeline that includes Cro-Magnon, Java Man and Neanderthals. More from Pasa Bon! at the link up top.
Saturday 12 December 2020
umleitung: bedheim
We made a brief stop in the village outside of the town of Rรถmhild in the county of Hildburghausen to take in the architectural ensemble, typifying a Baroque manor, of the three-wing castle and fortified church. First constructed in the thirteenth century and coming into ownership of the aristocratic family Rรผhle von Lilenstern once ennobled by Hapsburg Emperor Charles VII after 1743, chiefly then as a summer residence for Prince Joseph Friedrich von Sachsen-Hildburghausen, it is still the ancestral home of the heirs and an interesting architectural footnote on its own.

catagories: ๐ฐ, ๐บ, ๐ฆ, ๐ก️, Thรผringen
Sunday 12 April 2020
garysaurus
His massively popular and curatorially acclaimed colossal sculptures having already attracted quite a following as they were paraded, fully assembled in cross-country processions and on display in-situ became the backdrop of the 1986 sci-fi comedy Howard the Duck, Jim Gary (*1939 – †2006) was the only artist invited to present a solo exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, opening on this day in 1990, and featuring dozens of Twentieth Century Dinosaurs, stegosaurs, triceratops, tyrannosaurs, pterodactyls fashioned out of salvaged automobile parts and brightly lacquered in car paint.
When not touring, the dinosaurs resided in Gary’s garden or were on loan to his favourite cafes and restaurants (hence the appellation for one installation, the dinersaur), sort of like those art cow statues (called CowParade and conceived by Swiss artist Pascal Knapp) of its day. The term above was an encomium to Gary in an obituary by biographer and reporter for The Guardian Andrew Roth, coining the neologism to describe his creations.
catagories: ๐จ, ๐ฆ, 1990, libraries and museums, ⓦ
Thursday 16 January 2020
wollemia nobilis
Via Super Punch, we learn about the clandestine, successful mission pulled off by botanists, park rangers, conservators and New South Wales’ brave firefighters to save the only known wild population of Wollemi pines.
The trees, which may be up to one hundred thousand years in age, number about two hundred individuals and prior to their discovery in 1994 (akin to finding a living dinosaur), were believed to be extinct and only known through the fossil record. The operation was kept secret so as to not disclose the grove’s location as caretakers fear that visitors could bring contamination that could harm the critically endangered species. Clones have been propagated worldwide and have distinct broad needles and knobbly bark.
Sunday 22 September 2019
grube messel


Saturday 29 December 2018
dinosaurier des jahres
Since 1993, Germany’s Naturschutzbund (NABU, Nature Conservancy Corps) in Berlin has been awarding its annual dirisive distinction, its Dinosaur Award, to the group or individual who’s actions are most emblematic of regressive tendencies in environmental stewardship.
This year’s prize went to the chairman of an energy company who pledged to continue the expansion of its strip-mining operations and destroy the remaining sliver of the old growth Hambacher Forst despite massive protests and the gradual phasing out of coal. Earlier in the month, a ceremony was held in the nearby Ruhrgebiet to mark the closing of the country’s last black hard coal mine, also operated by the same energy giant fossil. There are regrettably too many of such barons (sometimes ourselves included for our lifestyle choices) to contend with but who might you nominate for failure to adapt?
catagories: ⚒, ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ฆ, environment
Tuesday 24 July 2018
non sequitur
Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we learn that the palaeontological community has formally accepted the name thagomizer for the anatomical arrangement of spikes on the tails of stegosauroid dinosaurs.
Coined in a 1982 comic by Gary Larson, the term was already in common-parlance, having been adopted and championed by several authoritative text books and museums and in the panel was named in honour of a departed caveman. We enjoyed seeing the Wikipedia stub on the naming waxing pedantic in pointing out, “The cartoon fate of Thag Simmons notwithstanding, stegosaurs and humans did not exist in the same era,” apparently not for the first time, as Larson suggested there be a sort of confessional whereby cartoonists can ask for absolution for such transgressions. A highly specialised parasitic louse that only plagues a species of owl in central Africa called Strigiphilus garylarsoni is named after the author.
Thursday 4 January 2018
dinosaur court
Via Messy Nessy Chic, we are introduced to the world’s first paleontological park of Crystal Palace in the borough of Bromley commissioned as an extension of the Great Exhibition of London in 1854. Though considered scientifically naรฏve by contemporary standards, the attraction predated Charles Darwin’s publication and contrary to Victorian affection for the supernatural these “antediluvian monsters” weren’t taken as patent evidence for dragons and weathered subsequent derision well enough to earn protected status and become a cultural touchstone. Learn more about the historic park and the mythos surrounding it at the link up top.
Friday 28 April 2017
one million b.c.
Like forensics experts working on a case that went cold hundreds of thousands of years ago, archรฆologists are discovering that equipped with the next generation of genetic sequencers that there able to find bits of ancient hominid DNA when sifting through the sediment of practically any old cave.
No fossil evidence nor artefacts, though surely that’s pretty exciting to uncover, is required to trace how our direct ancestors and Neanderthal cousins spread across the continents and perhaps interacted. Surely this can be expanded to the whole of the plant and animal kingdoms, as well. I wasn’t expecting that our machines were so finely calibrated to detect biochemical markers as so faint a trace, but this is sure to be revolutionary as palรฆontologists have already managed to extrapolate and reconstruct whole monstrous dinosaurs and more modest primogenitors of our kind out of just a fragment of a tooth or a little toe bone.
catagories: ๐, ๐บ, ๐ฆ, ๐งฌ, environment