🗑🐌

Zira 's lecture

This absolutely gorgeous fossil ornithischian from the mid-to-late Jurassic of China was just described a couple days ago! And beyond just being a beautiful looking specimen, this fossil includes fossilised elements of the larynx!!!

Specifically it had arytenoids, which are parts of the larynx made of cartilage in us mammals but in birds and now apparently ornithischian dinosaurs they were ossified (turned to bone). The authors described them as looking similar to modern birds', suggesting that Pulaosaurus might have been able to make bird-like vocalisations!

It's particularly exciting because it's a second point of data after laryngeal structures were found in the ankylosaur Pinacosaurus a couple years ago. So it's not just ankylosaurs doing some weird unique thing, but a structure that might have been shared by at least all ornithischians!

Photoset to celebrate Marianne utterly destroying the “Female characters can’t have dynamic facial expressions because they should always be ‘pretty’” and the “Women in 3d animation can’t have facial expressions because it’s a limitation of the 3d medium” rules.

When she gets mad, it’s not just a slight pursed lip and slightly angled eyebrows. Her whole face contorts. She juts out her lower  jaw, her nose and brow wrinkle, she gets deep lines around her mouth. She actually looks angry and not just “pouty”.

Sabine’s Gull (Xema sabini), family Laridae, order Charadriiformes, Great Lakes Region, North-central U.S.