Picture taken from the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. That’s right up there with those videos of flying tractor trailers taking during the Dallas tornado a few days ago.
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Discoveries of mammoth carcasses preserved in permafrost in Siberia are a fairly regular occurrance any more, especially with all the people looking for mammoth ivory these days. Back in February, Connie and I stopped in a gem and mineral shop in Santa Fe and saw a large Siberian mammoth tusk for sale for $27,000. However, …
Spring Snow
Storm came in very early this morning and left us with about four inches. It’s hard to believe that it was 82 degrees and 5 percent humidity only day before yesterday. Welcome to spring in the Rockies. And of course the peach trees bloomed over the weekend. Doesn’t bode well for our crop this year. …
More T n’ R
… with Mars, from Shiri of course. I think Tavi is trying too hard in the first… The boy is getting big, no?
Quote for the (dismal late sleeting) day:
From Annie Davidson, quoting from Ron Swanson on fishing: “It’s like yoga, except I still get to kill something.” Neither of us know who Swanson is. But I particularly like that “still”…
Snake Alphabet
Tom McIntyre’s Ophidian Abecedarium (story below with “Gun Alphabet”). Pix, anecdotes, suggestions all encouraged. Right click photo to enlarge… SNAKE ALPHABET–A to Z AspBoomslangCottonmouthDeath AdderEastern Diamondback RattlerFlying SnakeGarter SnakeHognose SnakeIndigo SnakeJapanese Striped SnakeKing SnakeLyre SnakeMamba (Jonathan Hanson’s friend Neels with pet)Night SnakeOlive Sea SnakePythonQueen SnakeRat SnakeSidewinderTaipanUrutuVine SnakeWater MoccasinX (Equis in Spanish, another name for the …
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A looter has been convicted for stealing Civil War artifacts from the Petersburg battlefield in Virginia. The picture shows cans of minie balls he collected. Reanalysis of a Pleistocene ground sloth bone from a museum in Ohio determined that it showed butcher marks. I believe this is the first evidence for ground sloth butchering in …
Findings
Harper’s Magazine isn’t on my regular reading list, but I ran across this and enjoyed it. Findings By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi Entomologists re-created the chirping of the Jurassic bush cricket, and Russian soil cryologists cultivated a 31,800-year-old plant from a fossilized squirrel burrow in Siberia. It was determined that ancient Egyptians fed snails to dead ibises, …
Gun and Snake Alphabets Project
Tom McIntyre writes: “Here’s a school project, if you’re game (might even work into a blog post). “Enter my great-nephew, age 7. On a recent visit, unbidden, he asked me to create a “Snake Alphabet” (why an alphabet, I’m not sure) for him. So I did, as best as I, a non-herpetologist, could… His task …
Swimming Eagle of Baton Rouge
Everyone needs to see this YouTube video.