Livyatan

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Our boy in the middle. Meg at the top.

 

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I am seeing Livyatan everywhere lately. I first heard of it in a tv doc years ago when its fossils were new in Peru. Since then it appears it has become an extreme apex predator badass symbol for the public. It was contemporary with megaladon and that may be part of it. With a battering ram skull and the biggest teeth of any animal, a fantasy matchup with megalodon is a constantĀ  speculation on online.

East meets West

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East meets West

This being a western site I imagine there is interest in elk. What is different here is this is an elk in PA. Coal mines stripped off the tops of mountains and grass was encouraged. Elk were added laterĀ  for better or worse reasons. I knew it was a thing there but never expected one this big to come out of PA.

the Deccan Traps would be a firecracker in comparison.

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the Deccan Traps would be a firecracker in comparison

 

But that future tectonic divorce seems insignificant when you consider the catastrophe that may befall the continentā€™s southern tip. The team estimates that, in tens of millions of years, a blob of nightmarishly gargantuan proportions will pinch off from the central cusp and rise to meet what is now South Africaā€™s foundations. This, said Sigloch, would produce cataclysmic eruptions. The Deccan Traps were caused by what we would think of as a solitary mantle plume. This future mega-blob, though, would be capable of producing volcanism so prolific and extensive that the Deccan Traps would be a firecracker in comparison.

Traps is a Swedish word for volcanic material. The traps have been debated for years in extinction theory, notably, for mass extinctions.

 

Grassland Griz

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Grassland Griz

The general trend of grizzly populations across Alberta is considered stable to increasing, so the expansion of bears eastward is not surprising. Andrea Morehouse, the Waterton Biosphere Reserve Carnivores and Communities Program Science Lead, has been monitoring these bears. When asked if the bears are establishing territories in the grasslands or just wandering away from their home ranges in search of food, she confirmed they are living in the grasslands.

I had heard 30 years ago they were occasionly in SK but this is new to me.

 

Across the border in MT.

Mom to the rescue.

 

Terror Bird No 2

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Titanis walleri, a genus of flightless bird from early Pliocene to early Pleistocene North America.
They had an estimated length of about 2 m.
by Jaime Chirinos

Ā I am going to have to control my weakness for posting these guys.

Gotcha!

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I was convinced that Dave Petzal was wrong when he declaredĀ  categorically that nothing favorable to hunting had ever come out of the New Yorker.

I was cautious because, you know, DAVID IS NEVER WRONG. When I was writing Good Guns, I made a less than reverent remark about John Moses Browning. A note came back in the next post (it was before email) saying simply “Consider in the bowels of Christ that thou mayst be wrong!” It was a quote from Cromwell. Although it showed a certain audacity to quote Cromwell to a half Irish writer, he was right.

But something kept nagging me. I was walking past my bookcase when my eyes fell on my first edition copy of Vance Bourjai5tgfrly’s 1968 book on bird shooting, The Unnatural Enemy. I was doing something else so threw it to Libby and said “See if it has a New Yorker reference!” It did indeed. On theĀ  page after the title page it said “The Goose Pits, and my title chapter,Ā The Unnatural Enemy, appeared originally inĀ The New Yorker.”

From my Sportsman’s Library: “It is important to know that The Unnatural Enemy first came out in 1963, because although its essence is timeless, it might not exist in the form that it does were it not for a fortuitous convergence of disparate forces. Which is to say: It is a book about bird hunting, a large part of which appeared in theĀ New Yorker, which is illustrated by the impeccably urban David Levine and haunted by Hemingway’s brand-new ghost, and the publishers seem to think the reader will find all this perfectly normal.”