#arboreal

Robin Hood’s Famous Major Oak Tree Is Believed to Have Died. The Major Oak is said to be 1200 years and weighs a massive 23 tons. More than 900 of the trees in the park are over 600 years old, and the forest is rich in wildlife.

For the first time in over a millennium, Major Oak in Nottingham’s Sherwood Forest failed to produce leaves this spring, signaling the tree’s demise.

The ancient oak tree would have been around in the 12th century during the High and Late Middle Ages, when Robin Hood is said to have lived.

Rest in Peace Major Oak :( The death of Sherwood Forest’s legendary tree marks the end of an era, while offering a sober reminder of climate change and important lessons for the future protection of the trees and forests around the world.

The Major Oak will remain standing in the forest as a monument for people and wildlife, the RSPB confirmed.

Saplings from the tree have also been planted across the world.

Source: Country Living

Pink Toe & Green Bottle Blue.

The leaves are coming out:)

Spring is now well underway and yesterday (19.4) walking through the park and looking up at the leaves coming out on the trees, I could really feel it:)

Following up on some new speculative biology concept art, I decided to redesign and create new alien species for a hypothetical world around Alpha Centauri A. The original idea which, was tied with my old Proxima Centauri b series, was a high gravity world. The updated setting is a hypothetical moon that orbits a real gas giant candidate that was delicate fairly recently that orbits in Alpha Centauri A's habitable zone.

The first set of species are a redesign of the Octopods. The original Octopods resembled cephalopods with eight knuckle walking legs, four eyes, and a radial symmetry. This version drops the radial symmetry and more resembles jumping spiders with two pairs of legs for locomotion and two smaller pairs for manipulation. The base species on the top left resembles Earth's Gorilla's a fills a similar ecological niche. Right next to it is a gibbon-like arboreal species that can feed while constantly moving. On the top right is an insectivorous species akin to Aye-Ayes with hands the sense the faint vibrations of prey in the branches before using their strong teeth and elongated fingers to fish them out. Right below is a frog-like freshwater species and next to it is a burrowing mole-like species that evolved calluses on it's limbs to aid in said burrowing. At the bottom left is a marine species that retained the hands on its smaller limbs to shift ocean beds for shelled organisms to feed on. Lastly on the bottom right is an arctic species that is the largest octopod species and evolved calluses on it's smaller limbs to shift through snow.

Expect more aliens to come in-between other projects.

Result from the Tiaojishan formation #paleostream! We had a closer look at the arboreal fauna of this formation

Also some close ups