Posts treating: "... ..."
Thursday, 14 January 2016
...and—as for 2014, 2013, and 2012—a few more. My rules, as modified from last year:
Because of the vagaries of stat reporting (in this case, by Google Analytics), I'm listing both the top ten posts for the year (in large font, with respective Top Ten number), and the top post for month's without a top-ten posting (non-Ten-rated posts are in a smaller font).
And so, here are the top 10
...and, like last year and the year before, a few more. And to quote paraphrase myself from last year:
Because of the vagaries of stat reporting (in this case, by Google Analytics), I'm listing both the top ten posts for the year (in large font, with respective Top Ten number), and the top two one or two posts for every month (non-ten-rated posts are in a smaller font).And so, the top 10
...on the beach at Butt Valley Reservoir, also seen here and here.
Probably dog.
Deer?
Sasquatch — I mean, human.
Crawdad.
Small crawdad pinchers. Finger is red from blackberries.
Corbicula fluminea or Asian clam, not zebra mussel.
Jelly blob, probably Pectinatella magnifica, a type of freshwater bryozoan.
Enlargement of the same photo. This is a colony, and each of
Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs [2014-09-10 21:10:00]
recommend this post
(108 visits) 
Cretaceous; GB,US
So it turns out that Doctor Who is quite popular - who'da thought? As such, there was much demand for a second instalment of The Doctor Who Dinosaur Book (1976), featuring everyone's favourite Doctor* - the Fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker - wandering around and posing like a prat among dinosaur art faithfully traced from the pages of earlier books. I do hope you enjoy.I didn't mention any thyreophorans last time - but they do feature in the book, so please allow me to rectify the situation [...]
Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs [2014-08-19 21:34:00]
recommend this post
(129 visits) Jurassic; ES,,IN
Over the years of writing these blog posts, I'd like to think that I've matured somewhat - that the vodka-fuelled gratuity of my late university years has mellowed into something more thoughtful and, dare I say it, nuanced. (Oh yes. I went there.) Sure, I'll still point out shonky dinosaur art, but with less savagery, and an acknowledgement that, by contemporary standards, it's often not so bad. Plus, illustrators gotta eat.On the other hand, one is occasionally reminded that a few - a very few [...]
In this post I am going to upload photos and short comments about the ongoing excursion of the MSc students from the Institute of Geography at Bern University. The students arrived in Trinidad the 11th of August and will leave on the 21st.Day 1 - 11th of August. Visit to the Museum Kenneth Lee in Trinidad.Day 2. Excursion to the Mamoré riverStarting the navigationDescribing and sampling a paleosol sequence outcropping along the Mamoré River bankDay 3. Visiting the Indigenous community of [...]
Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs [2014-07-22 23:31:00]
recommend this post
(110 visits) Triassic
In the first part of our examination of The Mysterious World of Dinosaurs, we came upon chubby, oily-looking tyrannosaurs, alarmingly carnivorous-looking stegosaurs, and Godzilla. However - and as the title implies - this book goes beyond the eponymous archosaur clade, taking a look at various other Mesozoic monstrosities. Bring on the zombie-pterosaurs!Now let's be fair - depicting pterosaurs in dessicated, mummy-like fashion was commonplace at the time this book was produced. Contemporary [...]
This past May I visited an old quarry south of Syracuse, NY that exposed part of the Onondoga formation (middle Devonian, Eifelian stage). The floor of the quarry exposed part of a Biostrome (an area that surrounds a reef but is not the reef itself) that is contained within the Edgecliff member. One particular layer was chock full of large diameter, stoloniferous crinoid stems.Specimen #1 (reassembled)Specimen #2 (reassembled)In places the stems seemed to be the substrate upon which everything [...]
I'm very late to be posting about Mucrospirifer thedfordensis which is one of the most common fossils found in the Widder formation at Arkona. It is similar to M. mucronatus but does not have as much ornamentation on the shell surface and is "plumper". The specimens below are still missing a part of the hinge line which would have extended out another centimeter or two beyond the shell on either side.Brachial valveAnteriorPedicle valvePosteriorProfileThis next specimen has a number of epibionts [...]
...unless you've been following my latest blog entries, anyway. The beautiful exposures of the crossbedding in the Navajo Sandstone (above) provides another clue; we are in Zion National Park, but in a section that is ignored by probably 95% of the park's visitors. As far as I'm concerned, it can stay that way in perpetuity, because it is one of the more beautiful spots on the Colorado
This interactive map is really fun. It is produced by the Arizona Geological Survey, the Arizona Division of Emergency Management, Arizona Emergency Information Network, and FEMA. It shows the locations of various natural hazards within the state such as active faults, earthquake epicenters, flood risks, fire hazards, and earth fissure locations. Here is the link for the map.When you click on the link, it will bring up an ordinary map that, like other online maps, allows you to zoom in or [...]
Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs [2014-06-13 22:56:00]
recommend this post
(94 visits) Jurassic; BE,GB,FR,NL,,CA,GR
Brussels is an intriguing city - home to the European Parliament, breathtakingly stunning buildings, more recent, butt-ugly buildings, fantastic beer, busy but untalented graffiti artists, and countless gift shops stuffed with tiny statuettes of a young boy taking a leak. It's also home to the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences*, also known as the Museum of Natural Sciences, and confusingly promoted about town using just the word 'museum' (often, but not always, accompanied by a John [...]
Aaah, the most horrible micro-surgery electronics thing I have ever done!
According to the line above, this is not 'old man friendly', but a man's gotta do......
When you take the discards from the kids, there comes a time when the battery dies. The old phones made this easy, but all the new ones take the Steve Jobs attitude of 'Screw You!'. If you are an Apple-er, you just throw it out,
Trees are uncommon in the Laramie Basin; our native vegetation is mostly grass and shrubs. But all along the Laramie River are gallery forests of cottonwoods, so when it came time to pick a tree to follow, that's what I chose. My cottonwood grows directly across the river from Rich’s bench, where I like to sit and watch the evening progress.Memorial benches have been strategically placed along the Laramie River. This one honors Rich Koschnitzki.I know this tree is a [...]
Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs [2014-05-07 22:59:00]
recommend this post
(82 visits) Cretaceous,Jurassic,Triassic; BE,MN
Lampoon me if you like for digging up an obscure book from the early '90s and treating it like an ancient relic, but one look at that cover will confirm that this is a tome from a completely different time. For where would one see such lizardy, Burianesque Iguanodon, tail-dragging, sour-faced sauropods, friendly, frog-mouthed Dimetrodon, and horribly dessicated pterosaurs, all united together on the front cover, these days? The Day of the Dinosaurs might only be from 1991, but it certainly [...]
This past spring I hunted among the eroded remnants of the Kashong Shale near Greigsville, NY and found a few interesting fossils.This is a very narrow Crinoid holdfast that must have grown on a jumble of thin shell material.It is not uncommon to find pieces of shell hash that have flat bryozoans incoporated in with them. This is a piece of matrix that has a Taeniopora exigua piece on one side...... and some Sulcoretipora incisurata on the other side.Lastly I found a portion of a crushed [...]
Onwards with All About Dinosaurs, a book written by the awesome Roy Chapman Andrews, he of Gobi fossil-hunting fame, and illustrated by Thomas Voter. Now, you know you're reading a vintage dinosaur book when...Swamp-o-pods! Mind you, All About Dinosaurs must surely lose points for lacking a full-length depiction of brachiosaurs immersed up to the very tip-tops of their nasal crests in murky water. Instead, the animals are rather more convincingly depicted wading their way through a swamp, [...]
A visit to Fox Glacier shows that changes over the last 5 years are similar to those at the Franz Josef Glacier. Here is a view of the Fox Glacier front in 2009: And this year: The terminal face from another angle in 2009......and as it was recently in 2014. The grass covered hummock in the centre marks the previous limit of the ice.There is a good view down onto the glacier from the moraine wall that can be accessed via a well made track. It is apparent that the glacier has not just [...]
Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs [2014-03-17 21:49:00]
recommend this post
(78 visits) Jurassic; GB
What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare at huge, grotesque models of extinct animals? When people ask me why I am willing to wade through hordes of screaming rugrats in order to gaze upon such eyesores, I only have to point them to the famous poem that Wordsworth didn't write. And with that in mind, Niroot and I recently took a trip down to Godstone Farm in Surrey (that's in the south east of England, for all you forrins) to check out their newly-purchased [...]
Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs [2014-03-11 23:31:00]
recommend this post
(93 visits) Cretaceous,Jurassic
While it would probably be more honest to replace 'did' with 'were' in the title of Prehistoric Monsters did the Strangest Things, it certainly makes the book an intriguing prospect. Exactly what were these antideluvian beasties up to when not ineffectively disguising themselves with pondweed? Well, read on! Published in 1974 in the States, I'm borrowing this book from reader Patrick Bate. Hats (formed of aquatic vegetation) off to him.As exemplified on the cover, the art style is somewhat [...]
