Verandis Ravenwatch’s Trophy Wife

You’re welcome.

in a moment, everything can change

the creature..

No, no, this isn't an AI-generated image! It's a 220 million-year-old petrified log located in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, USA. This park is famous for its vast petrified wood deposits. Petrified wood forms when minerals replace the wood fibers over millions of years, resulting in fossilized wood that can be as hard and colorful as gemstones. The log in the picture is entirely replaced by quartz crystals, making it sparkle in the close-up view. This log, dating back to the Late Triassic Period, about 225 to 207 million years ago, serves as a fascinating reminder of the ancient forests that once covered this area.

2) Also, the quartz doesn’t exactly “replace” the tree, it actually just fills in the gaps, so the original tree is actually still there! Replacement is actually a totally different process involving soft sediment that essentially creates a cast of the original thing, acidic water dissolving the original creature right out of the cast, and then leaving pyrite (yes, fools gold!) filling the cast instead. While those fossils are really really cool, this is quartz filling in between the molecules that were originally there. While it does look like some dissolving did occur (the bright color splotches), quartz usually doesn’t replace entirely, it adds a hard shell to the item, encasing it in quartz (a 7/10 on the hardness scale) and there isn’t much that is stronger than quartz (diamond, and sapphire, and ruby amongst the few items that are and those are precious gems in part because they are not exactly easy to find), so the quartz-filled tree remains around for millennia!

Sneakers enjoying the new sunflower

May you end this week feeling ever more certain of a future you’ll love

This is what an evil boop looks like.

This is what an evil boop looks like.

first official day and second night of chanukah tonight so here's the other rejected puzzle design i made <3

first night of chanukah tonight so please enjoy this rejected puzzle design ✌️