where all things come to die

"I wish I did not have to sugarcoat my sadness, but if you swallowed it raw, naked, and uncouth, it would curdle your insides and shrivel up your tongue."

“THAT’S RIGHT, SLY COOPER! I was the truth all along! As we all know, THE TRUTH IS LAVA PROOF!!”

*WARNING: SLY 3 SPOILERS!

Sly Cooper goes to Starbucks.

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Sly goes to Starbucks to get some coffee, where he runs into Bentley and Murray. But he doesn’t seem to know who they are — This is after he “lost his memory.”

#SPINE06 !

Hello mocists everywhere! It is officially June, and as with last year and my #DH2005 challenge, I will once again be hosting a challenge based on year of G1 twenty years back. That makes this year’s moc challenge based on the groundbreaking year 2006!

This year, instead of requiring mocs to use only parts made before the year of the theme, I am going to free up parts usage to whatever builders like. Instead, the challenge will be only require ONE part.

Piraka Spines!

Obviously that makes builds a little easier to achieve without having to worry about “qualifying”, and I’m hoping more people will be interested in participating. If you DO only use parts made before 2007 feel free to brag about it! Last year a few people were dubious on the theme since they felt unsure of their ability to identify what year specific parts were made, and that’s fair not everyone has an internal catalog of Bionicle and Hero Factory sets and can’t easily discern that without research. I think a lot of us love Skakdi though, so this should be more accessible and fun!

However, your build doesn’t have to BE a Skakdi either! It only has to utilize a Skakdi spine, how you use that part is totally up to you! Is it a trophy worn by a Makuta? The face of some Bara-Magna desert animal? The tail of a Rahi? All up to you! One request I will make with any submissions people would like showcased is some sort of fun lore blurb, those were far and away some of my favorite things to read last year and I can’t wait to see them again this year.

Finally, this year I will be organizing all submissions into a “showcase” post at the beginning of next month, showing off as many submitted mocs as I can in a single post and talking about what I liked about each of them. I want to make it clear this is not a contest, it’s just for fun. This year the tag will be #SPINE06 MOCS.

As with last year, I'll be tapping some users specifically to participate, but if you're reading this don't feel left out, I can't wait to see what you'll make! As usual, I'll be tapping @binkybonkles, @kopakaskoolkompanion, and @origsmocs, who've been super helpful in arranging these moc bashes. I'll also be tapping @arzeron, @nihilpersona, and @biomechanicalfun, all of whom made some AMAZING Dark Hunter mocs last year. Also tapping @toaimahordika and @leftysupremacy, who interacted with the interest post for the June Challenge!

Once again, the tag for this years challenge is:

#SPINE06 MOCS

Although ceratopsian dinosaurs were widespread around the northern continents during the Cretaceous, for a long time they appeared to have been completely absent from Europe. A few possible fragments were found – but their identification as ceratopsians was highly disputed, with some paleontologists instead identifying the remains as belonging to ornithopods.

But this year some new fossils have given more support to the ceratopsian interpretation, suggesting that a whole diverse European branch of these dinosaurs was there the whole time. They'd just been misidentified as rhabdodontids due to the convergent anatomy of their teeth, jaws, and limbs.

One of these newly-recognized ceratopsians was Ferenceratops shqiperorum (previously known as Zalmoxes shqiperorum), which lived during the late Cretaceous (~72-66 million years ago) on the subtropical Hațeg Island, in the region of what is now Romania. 

It was a small species, about 2m long (6'6"), and seems to have lacked the elaborate frills and horns seen in many other ceratopsians, despite being closely related to both protoceratopsids and stem-ceratopsids.

Its new genus name references Ferenc, the birth name of Baron Franz Nopcsa, the gay Transylvanian paleobiologist-adventurer-spy who originally found some of its fossil remains.

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