hannahkittyking

"Neighborhood Watch"

It’s Fossil Friday, so soar into the weekend with Archaeopteryx! When this dinosaur was first described in 1861, it caused a sensation. Discovered shortly after Charles Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by means of natural selection, Archaeopteryx provided an example of evolution in action—a fossil that showed the transition between reptiles and birds. The first Archaeopteryx fossils ever found included exquisitely preserved skeletons with clear imprints of wings and feathers, but also teeth and a bony tail. Today, scientists think Archaeopteryx wasn’t able to fly very well, but the species still represents a turning point in paleontologists’ understanding of the relationship between ancient dinosaurs and modern birds in the design of both its body and brain. You can spot Archaeopteryx, and so much more, at the Museum! Plan your visit.

back then i made a bunch of these but by now i lost the pic and dont know how to find the original post anymore

so anyway here is the diagram for anyone else who is interested!!

this requires pretty big carboard pieces, if you have a really big box or something you can make it from one piece, but if you don't, you can also just make each of the pieces individually and then tape them together

and then in the end you put it together like this!!

and then when you make a bunch you can put them all next to each other and stack your books like crazy

These bottles were created and used as unguentaria (otherwise known as balsamaria) which are ancient vessels that were typically filled with scented oils, cosmetic powders, balms, or ointments. Unguentaria could be crafted from ceramic, glass, or stone, and they came in various shapes and sizes, but dove-shaped vessels made of glass were especially popular during the second half of the 1st century CE, when they were produced and distributed throughout the Roman Empire.

Above: a dove-shaped unguentarium with residue from the original contents still visible inside

Each bottle was crafted from blown-glass that was carefully modeled into the shape of a bird; the inner cavity was then filled with perfume or cosmetic powder, and the tip of the tail was reheated and compressed, effectively sealing the vessel.

Above: dove-shaped vessels that were opened and emptied long ago, c.50-100 CE

As this article explains:

The vessels were produced with glass blowing pipes by so-called "free blowing," and are for this reason extremely thin-walled, with body thicknesses significantly below 0.1 cm.

After the containers had been filled, the tail feathers were sealed airtight by reheating to protect the contents from moisture. Parts of the containers, such as the head or tail feathers, had to be broken off in order to access the contents of the vessels, which means that they were disposable packaging.

Above: vessels with the tips of their tails broken off

Most of these bottles were made from clear or pale blue Roman glass, but some were crafted with a dark blue, green, purple, or yellow appearance instead:

As cheap, mass-produced goods, the packaging consisted mainly of the conventional thin-walled and transparent Roman glass with an unintentional light blue colouring. Specimens made of intentionally coloured transparent glass (e.g. dark blue, dark green, violet or yellow) are less common. This may also have to do with the fact that the pink or white contents could be visually better distinguished and marketed if the vessels were made of the conventional Roman glass, which offered more transparency to the beholder than the intentionally coloured glass.

Above: a sealed unguentarium that likely contains scented oils and cosmetic residue, from Rovesenda, Italy, c.50 CE

Research suggests that many of these bottles were filled with powder, including pink substances that have been described as "blush" or "rouge," while others were filled with liquid.

Above: more dove-shaped unguentaria from the Roman Empire

Vessels with this design (which is also known as Isings form 11) have been unearthed at Roman-era sites located throughout Europe:

Evidence shows that these glass containers were widely marketed in the Roman Empire. The main areas of distribution are the central and northern Italian regions of Campania et Latium, Venetia et Histria, and Transpadana, along with the northwestern provinces of Gallia Belgica, Gallia Lugdunensis, Germania inferior and Germania superior [in what is now Italy, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands].

There is also evidence from the Balkan and Danube region in the provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia, and also from the eastern Mediterranean in the provinces of Achaea, Creta et Cyrenae and Macedonia. The distribution in the western Mediterranean seems to be limited to Hispania Tarraconensis.

Above: the severed heads of two bird-shaped unguentaria

Sources & More Info:

Glassware and Glassworking in Thessaloniki: 1st Century BC-6th Century AD: Bird-Shaped Inguentaria (Isings Form 11)

The Austrian Archaeological Institute: New Finds of Bird-Shaped Glass Vessels with Residues of their Former Content

The British Museum: Roman Perfume Bottle in the Shape of a Bird

Società Friulana di Archeologia: Glass Doves and Globes from Thessaloniki: North Italian Imports or Local Products?

Analytical Chemistry for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage: Compositional Analysis of Greco-Roman Unguentaria Residues

I went to Muir Woods yesterday, on the other side of the Pacific, and had that same feeling. The trees were certainly larger, but I looked at the clover that grows in the shade of the trees, the pine needles coating the floor, the babbling brook, the ferns and mushrooms, and I thought of home.

Convergent ecology is when biomes converge on the same collections of similar plants following similar roles, and that explains at least some of it. All three of these places — Busan, San Francisco, Duluth — have heavy fogs that roll off a large body of water, and so the mosses can grow everywhere, and the ferns are plentiful. They're cooler places, so you get firs.

I kept looking at the rocks in Muir Woods, which are mostly hidden beneath the soil and pine needles. Duluth sits in one of the most geologically unique places in all of North America, the Midcontinent Rift, where a billion years ago the entire continent threatened to split apart, then didn't, leaving behind volcanic bedrock, dark basalt and red rhyolite. In the Muir Woods, it's the Franciscan Complex, a jumble of ocean-floor rocks, chert, graywacke, and serpentinite, all scraped off the bottom of the Pacific Plate. Very different, but both result in thin, nutrient-poor, damp soils that encourage the growth of specific kinds of plants.

When my wife and I hiked the Igdae trail in Busan, I kept being amazed by the similarities, seeing the same basalts, the same rhyolite, the same way that these rocks jutted out into the water and were shaped by erosion, covered in lichens, with the trees hanging off them. I chattered with my wife about it, and briefly thumbed through my phone to find pictures of home, to make sure this wasn't a traveler's pareidolia. And later I would read about the geology of South Korea, and how these hiking trails went along rock formations that were formed by a very different sort of geological cataclysm from the Midcontinent Rift. There, I loved it, the way everything seemed to echo what I already knew.

That's us, together.

While we're looking up at the Artemis II astronauts journeying to the Moon, they're looking back home at us. 

In this image, Earth peeks through the capsule window, reminding us that a view like this relies on the ingenuity and hard work of countless people back home.

In the second image, we see our home planet as a whole, lit up in spectacular blues and browns. A green aurora even lights up the atmosphere.

This is from 1966 and you can see over a hundred photos on the NYPL digital collections website. It is absolutely gorgeous. These are just a few of my favourites.

Plus Puck's face here: