Thank beavers!

That’s a phrase that I’m hoping will catch on – do your part, okay?

Naturally, the full phrase is more along the lines of, “Thank beavers for our knowledge of prehistoric arthropods,” or at least some of it – they almost certainly helped. Though it was likely the evolutionary precursors to beavers. And anything else that might have done the same kind of damage read more

On this date 10


On this date, fourteen years ago (that makes it 2006, just so you don’t have to do the math,) I came across a future fossil, an insect recently trapped in tree resin. Okay, probably not. Probably not a future fossil, I mean, since to make amber, the resin then has to be preserved in certain conditions, and this particular situation did not have them – what you’re read more

Too cool, part 34: A chronicle in amber

I had initially said that I wasn’t timely on this, and that was even a few days earlier when I’d started to type this up, but then I realized how much I was falling for the same trap that has made “news’ the pathetic state of affairs that it is now. Scientific findings of this nature don’t have this bare moment of interest, like a celebrity doing something stupid, but read more

The ingredients but not the recipe

[Believe it or not, this post has sat in draft form in the system since I started it in April 2013 – it never seemed to fit in among other posts that well. So it gets to appear now as a Darwin Day post while photography has hit the winter slump. There’s still a chance something else might appear, but no promises.]


A few weeks back [a ha ha ha!] read more