AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

squid…

coelacanth my truest friend <3

proper shimmering sapphire blue and white. almost turquoise in some lights. this like… muddy, fossil creature. always drawn in dinosaur browns and grays. and it’s alive and it’s blue. just imagine being the scientist who opened that crate to this creature for the first time. you’re already excited, you’ve known about this fish for decades, you thought it was a story, you know it’s in this box. you expect  to see the weird fins and the strange tail. you know it’s large and odd looking. and you open it up and it’s this beautiful, shining blue, you know?

[img described: a coelacanth. it is blue.]

Animals like the crest-tailed mulgara and the coelacanth are known as Lazarus taxon (plural: Lazarus taxa). These are animals that have supposedly come back from death; they had been declared to be extinct but years and years later, a live specimen of the species is rediscovered. The term was coined in 1982 by Karl W. Flessa and David Jablonski who explained: “At times of biotic crisis many taxa go extinct, but others only temporarily disappeared from the fossil record, often for intervals measured in millions of years, before reappearing unchanged”. Lazarus taxa can be anything from a plant to an insect to a mammal. 

That is gorgeous!

we are in the midst of a true Real One

behold, he is real

COOOOOOOOOL WATER

(process shots and the full res version of this artwork are on my patreon)

Ancient One

Coelacanth my beloved <3 a birthday gift for my good friend B

Look at all the work they have to do in order to even get down to where these awesome dudes hang out. THEY DEEEEEP.