Morning of the Nqwebasaurus
Cartoons used to be a normal way to start weekend mornings and those of us old enough to remember certainly miss them. Kids that love dinosaurs should start today with a cartoon featuring a talking...
View ArticleThe Literate Dinosaur
Nqwebasaurus is well read and well read about. Not many basal coelurosaurs have been found and of those that have, only one comes from South Africa. Officially an ornithomimosaur, Nqwebasaurus has been...
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Opposable Thumbs
If one remembers the cartoon that was shared on Sunday there was mention of opposed digits and climbing abilities prescribed to Nqwebasaurus. There was not much embellishment in those statements; there...
View ArticleFamous Tongue Click
Nqwebasaurus is the only dinosaur with a name that includes a tongue click. It is also the only basal coelurosaurian from South Africa and one of the earliest theropods found in the entirety of the...
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Life Sized Models
A model of Nqwebasaurus existing somewhere in the world is inevitable. The fact that it is in South Africa should be of very little surprise given that the fossils were discovered there. This model...
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Giants of the Lost World
Donald Prothero has taught multiple generations of paleontologists, biologists, and science enthusiasts in his 35 year career. He has written more papers and books than I can count and I, along with...
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Fresh Prince of Turtles
Freshwater turtles are capable of growing to large sizes in some genera if allowed to continue to growing for along time and not killed at young ages. The past is littered with the remains of giant...
View ArticleBig Turtle, Little Star
There is an awful void of popular knowledge about Stupendemys. The name alone, meaning Astonishing Turtle, would seem to require more coverage than the turtle has received on the internet, in...
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Types of Turtles
There are two types of turtles in this world, marine and freshwater notwithstanding: pleurodira and cryptodira. Pleurodiran turtles retract their heads into their shells by bending their necks in the...
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Turtle Anatomy
As mentioned yesterday, there are two major divisions of turtles aside from binning the animals as freshwater, marine, or tortoise. There are other aspects of the anatomy of Stupendemys that are just...
View ArticlePopularly Stupendous
Stupendemys is the largest turtle that ever lived, as far as we know as yet. This has not gone entirely unnoticed by fossil animal enthusiasts, paleontologists (professional or amateur), or by the...
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Scenes of A River
Some of the best scenes are murals and I thoroughly enjoy the immense extended scenes that murals present to the viewers. Today's artistic interpretation of Stupendemys appears as a character in an...
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A Subfossil Week
©John James AudubonOn infrequent occasions in the past this blog has focused on animals that are technically labeled as "subfossil" meaning that the animals are recently extinct and are known from...
View ArticleRecently Lost, Quietly Remembered
There are not a lot of sources for the Carolina parakeet. This is perplexing and a little sad given that the Carolina parakeet was determined to be extinct less than a century ago. It is also alarming...
View ArticleSingle Documentary
As stated yesterday, there is a sad lack of Carolina parakeet material online. There is only a single documentary available online (and I cannot think of any I have seen on television) that discusses...
View ArticleBooks on Parakeets
The definitive guide to the Carolina parakeet, Conuropsis carolinensis, is most likely one of the many books that have been written about the extinct bird. There are scholarly articles as well but the...
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Eradication or Extermination
Scientific studies of Conuropsis were never conducted or published. However, occupying the forests of the middle third of North America was a medium sized parrot weighing approximately 3.5 ounces,...
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A Beautiful Parakeet
There are a lot of illustrations and models of Carolina parakeets all over North America in museums and hanging on walls. The internet has even more copies of both the illustrations and the models...
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Fire Beast Cometh
Fun facts abound today that describe and illustrate the life of the stock mammal Pyrotherium romeri. Its name means "Fire beast" and the discovery of its remains in volcanic deposits makes the name...
View ArticleThe Statue Videos
Not much of an actual fiery beast, Pyrotherium is lackluster in both video appearances and popular knowledge of the animal. This unknown factor of course inhibits video appearances in most fossil...
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