Gaia's Little Corner

Goes down a bit like this.

When a storyteller sets up something as a mystery, they are telling the audience that the answer to that mystery is important to the narrative. This is why some “twist endings” work and others don’t. If the revelation changes the situation or the audience’s perception of it, then that’s a satisfying reveal. One needs only to look at, say, any given Hercule Poirot story to see this. All the pieces fit together once you know the answer. 

On the other hand, lets say you have a story where, for instance, a major hero is struck dead by lightning in the second act. And when people go “hey, what’s with this lightning bolt out of nowhere?” and then you say “its a mystery!”, you’re telling people its not just a random event. It meant something to the story. If you knew where the lightning bolt came from, that part of the story would make sense. That’s the understanding you’re coming to with the audience. So when you go and say “the lightning bolt happened because an un-involved monarch butterfly flapped its wings in Tibet” you haven’t given an answer. You’ve given an explanation. It tells you why there was a lightning bolt, but functionally its no different than saying the character was unlucky or it was Tuesday.

There’s no answer. No meaning.No agency.

via Deja View

These guys are Azhdarchid pterosaurs, and they were some of the strangest reptiles to ever exist. They were perfectly capable of flight, but their physiology suggests that they may have spent a significant portion of their lives hunting on the ground. 

The largest of them could reach over 5 metres tall while standing, and had a 10-metre wingspan. They varied greatly in body type, from the tall, spindly forms of Quetzalcoatlus and Arambourgiania (images 4 and 1-2 respectively) to the heavy brute strength of Hatzegopteryz, a species that may have used its head to bludgeon its prey (images 2 and 3).

There has never been another flying animal before or since to have reached such incredible sizes, nor any predator so intimidatingly tall. Well, not any that we know of yet.

All of these illustrations are by Mark Witton, a palaeontologist and artist who specialises in pterosaurs. This is his blog about palaeontology and the science of reconstructing extinct species. You can find out more about each of these images here, here and here.

The protagonists and a few disposable minor characters are walking carefully through a forest at night, covered by a thick fog. They know there are dinosaurs everywhere, but they can’t see more than three metres in front of their own faces.

Eventually they stop near a small cluster of trees to rest. As they sit there, exhausted, one of the trees begins to move. Everyone freezes, terrified. They have no idea what this thing is.

Then a massive beak slams down, longer than a person is tall, and plucks one of the minor characters off his feet and into the air.

The small group erupts into movement, frantically running away from whatever those things are. There’s two of them now, and as the fog begins to clear the group are able to make out more of their shape. They are huge, with long, spindly necks topped with a massive, daggerlike head. The long legs that they once mistook for trees have an almost mechanical movement as the giant creatures stalk towards them. And then comes the next terrible surprise.

These guys are Azhdarchid pterosaurs, and they were some of the strangest reptiles to ever exist. They were perfectly capable of flight, but their physiology suggests that they may have spent a significant portion of their lives hunting on the ground. 

The largest of them could reach over 5 metres tall while standing, and had a 10-metre wingspan. They varied greatly in body type, from the tall, spindly forms of Quetzalcoatlus and Arambourgiania (images 4 and 1-2 respectively) to the heavy brute strength of Hatzegopteryz, a species that may have used its head to bludgeon its prey (images 2 and 3).

There has never been another flying animal before or since to have reached such incredible sizes, nor any predator so intimidatingly tall. Well, not any that we know of yet.

All of these illustrations are by Mark Witton, a palaeontologist and artist who specialises in pterosaurs. This is his blog about palaeontology and the science of reconstructing extinct species. You can find out more about each of these images here, here and here.

The protagonists and a few disposable minor characters are walking carefully through a forest at night, covered by a thick fog. They know there are dinosaurs everywhere, but they can’t see more than three metres in front of their own faces.

Eventually they stop near a small cluster of trees to rest. As they sit there, exhausted, one of the trees begins to move. Everyone freezes, terrified. They have no idea what this thing is.

Then a massive beak slams down, longer than a person is tall, and plucks one of the minor characters off his feet and into the air.

The small group erupts into movement, frantically running away from whatever those things are. There’s two of them now, and as the fog begins to clear the group are able to make out more of their shape. They are huge, with long, spindly necks topped with a massive, daggerlike head. The long legs that they once mistook for trees have an almost mechanical movement as the giant creatures stalk towards them. And then comes the next terrible surprise.