Goodrichthys

[Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside: evidence for vertebrate predation and recovery in the Mississippian blastoid Pentremites spicatus]

IT'S CALLED A BOQUILA TRIOFOLIOLATA AND IT'S FUCKING WITH MY BRAIN

IT APPARENTLY CAN MIMIC OTHER PLANTS AND AT FIRST I WAS LIKE "oh cool man it must take it's genetic code and copy it or feel the roots or something like that!! :3"

AND THEN I READ AN ARTICLE ON IT AND THESE FUCKING PARAGRAPHS HIT ME LIKE A BUS

LIKE READ THIS SHIT

Plant of the Day

Saturday 8 June 2019

The drama of the flowering spikes of the monocarpic giant echiums flowering at Myddelton House, Enfield, London. The species are probably Echium pininana (giant viper’s bugloss, tree echium) and Echium wildpretii (tower of jewels, tree echium) or their hybrids. These plants are biennial or short-lived perennials and die after flowering and setting seed. The bees were enjoying the opportunities provided by so many flowers.

Shikamaia akasakaensis was a giant bivalve that lived during the mid-Permian (~274-267 million years ago), in the shallow tropical waters of a carbonate platform atop an oceanic seamount in the region of what is now Japan.

It had a long flat shell up to about 1m (3'3") long, with a raised triangular hump at the front and wing-like flanges at the sides — a shape that helped to spread out its weight on the soft seafloor sediment.

Its shell was once thought to have been translucent, allowing it to host symbiotic photosynthetic algae inside its body tissues and providing it with the extra sustenance needed to grow to such a huge size. However, more recent studies suggest its shell was actually opaque to sunlight, so instead it may have hosted chemosynthetic bacteria similar to some modern clams.

…Or, considering that it shared its habitat with some other big invertebrates such as a large species of the marine snail Euconospira and a giant crinoid, Shikamaia could simply have been living in such an incredibly food-rich environment that it was able to attain gigantic sizes purely from normal filter-feeding.

———

NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Patreon

At minimum about 4.5 thousand people liked this without reblogging it.

Image description: photo of a brown sign with white text that reads: "You can't save everything cute, eat everything that tastes good, and kill everything you're afraid of and expect a working ecosystem to come out of it." -- Flip Nicklin, wildlife photographer

We have been aware of ebola for the past 50 years. We know bats in west and central Africa are virus reservoirs, they carry the viruses without showing symptoms. Outbreaks of ebola keep occurring because the viruses are now endemic and bats aren’t the only species that can harbor the virus without showing symptoms.

This is the 17th ebola outbreak in the DRC in the past 19 years. This is the second outbreak of the Bundibugyo virus in the DRC. The current outbreak is decimating gold mining regions because panning for gold is a perfect storm for zoonotic & water-based illnesses, you are constantly outside in nature, ankle deep in rivers and streams, interacting with others, often temporary workers sharing cramped accommodations. Historically and worldwide, mining camps and mining settlements have been decimated by infectious disease.

Mayozoic day 31, kākāpō. They're fun birds but the markings, augh.