The Action Replay I ordered turned out to be a POS and didn’t work like it was supposed to. On the bright side I did get this in the mail earlier this week.

Lately I've been thinking about what a story about a Dimetrodon in a prehistoric fantasy world would be like due to how it's often included in dinosaur lineups or anachronistic prehistoric settings with them. (This is a Dimetrodon from a pitch animatic for Primal)

The paleoanthropologist who originally described this specimen believed that the skull was probably not transported far after death, and was probably scavenged. However, I couldn’t find any mention of tooth marks on this skull.

Do not fail me Surviving Earth

The skull of Sivapithecus indicus specimen GSP 15000, discovered in Pakistan. #FossilFriday

They phrased the title as if lions aren't literally up there in the top three most well-known and feared predators, or just animals in general.

Ancient Animal Tales without context (I skipped ahead several chapters, but the story in question is fully uploaded online in Korean atp):

There was this nature documentary series in the early 2010s called Mutant Planet, and occasionally it featured animated extinct animals as ghosts. This one not only features Haast’s eagle and a giant moa, but also depicts them falling into a natural trap.

Early maturation of host antimicrobial peptide defences is associated with host–pathogen coexistence www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A video from ReptiMax is up on his #Andrewsarchus figure, featuring me at the Natural History Museum, @treytheexplainer.bsky.social with the Walking With Beasts model and Kat / YourLocalFederalAgent. Also includes @dinoconuk.bsky.social mention as Max will be in attendance! youtu.be/M4IHGb4D1s0?...

Thanks to all the Bayverse Transformers posting I've been seeing on my tl lately, I've been obsessing over that epic 3v1 forest battle again. Idk if I've ever posted this on Bluesky, but here's a real example of an epic 3v1 with a white-tailed deer and three grey wolves.

I'm waiting for a campaign to get closer to its end so I can pledge at the last minute. This is so I can avoid any snafu over having to get refunded for stretch goals that weren't reached. But like, I'm already itching to support it.

I don’t care what organism it belongs to, if it’s a fossil, it’s cool m. I’d be ecstatic of I hauled up a fossil walrus skull from a fishing boat.

I love this Starscream laugh

I don’t know when these were put up, but I didn’t notice these on my previous visits. Anyway, I think it’s cool that they now feature recently extinct species in addition to their flagship dinosaurs.

Well, finding this Spinosaurus unexpectedly has renewed my interest in getting Schleich’s other 2026 prehistoric animal releases.

Idk how it took me this long to realize, but I don't really care for dragon designs where they're not obviously organic creatures. Lava dragon? Ice dragon? You can keep that. Regular animal integument for me.

I know it’s just due to how recent the Spinosaurus toy is, but man, it and these other two are like night and day. All of them are Schleich models.

Apparently NBC was uninterested in making any making-of specials or other supplemental material for Surviving Earth because they wanted to focus on the "immersive element" of their program. (Starts around the 44:00 mark) chasmosaurs.podbean.com

I know this might reek of falling into stereotypes, but one of my general mental images of a paleontologist talking about anything paleontology-related is still that of Sam Neill as Alan Grant.

My new work schedule the past couple months has made work busier for me and post less frequently per day. This habit bled over into my free time. So if it feels like I’m less active here, it’s that. Not anything serious, luckily.

Tried to take photos of my figures on a natural background. It wasn’t perfect, but a step in the right direction.

I got hit with the deaths of two actors just this moment. I wish the families of both and those closest to them the best.

Mammoth bone huts were crazy. Of particular note, look at how many jawbones were used to create them, and then remember that each mammoth only has one mandible.

So it looks like Evolution with Chris Packham will air in the USA on PBS as NOVA episodes. They’ll start airing on October 14th, 9 PM that day. www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/se...

Random thought: I wonder what notungulates and litopterns would have tasted like. Just like certain modern mammals or their own taste entirely?

Holy geez that’s huge (Notiomastodon platensis)

Postcranial osteology of Boverisuchus vorax from the middle Eocene of Wyoming, USA: Implications for terrestrial adaptation in eusuchian crocodyliforms onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I was curious to know what kinds of projectile points were used to hunt woolly mammoths specifically. I found this: a fractured fragment of flint embedded in the rib of a woolly mammoth. It was found in a site called Kraków Spadzita in Poland.

Trying not to make any judgements, but I see this is what Curiosity Stream’s been putting on since I cancelled

If I had a nickel for every time there was a 3v1 fight between Megatron plus two other Decepticons and the then-leader of the Autobots…

Great thing about having these is that I originally planned on having an artist draw these two for me. I could still do that if I’m really bored later, but I’d rather now think of a way I can take a really epic photograph of these two figures.

I found some photos online where black caimans seem to have preyed on smaller caimans.

I feel guilty that I’ve reached a point where I’m perfectly okay with waiting until Monday to watch new Surviving Earth episodes. The first two episodes I couldn’t wait to watch them as soon as I could.

There’s a non-zero chance that if this were a dinosaurian predator, they’d talk about how the tooth marks were probably from scavenging and how the eaten animal would’ve been too tough as live prey…even though it’s well within observed predator-prey size ratios.

The skull of the extinct Morenelaphus brachyceros from the Pleistocene of South America. It was one of the largest deer that lived on the continent. #FossilFriday

Elephant slayers

Has anyone ever tried to make For Honor's cover art, but with the warriors as historically accurate as possible? That would be really cool.

A recent study found that Smilodon fed on a wide variety of megafauna at Salto de Piedra. It was an apex predator, focusing almost exclusively on megafauna.

And suddenly I get it

It was once proposed that humans tried to domesticate Myotragus as it went extinct, on the basis of horns that were seemingly clipped off. It’s more likely this was the result of taphonomy, including other Myotragus gnawing on the horns of dead ones.

Carnotaurus had a plan. It worked, but he didn't completely think it through.

At the Academy of Natural Sciences near where I work, there are stuffed specimens of passenger pigeons, great auks, and other extinct/probably extinct birds on display, and it always feels like the closest thing to an actual grave for them.

This same source also mentions how wolves might be able to smell moose with necrotic mandibles or decaying teeth from actinomycosis, allowing them to sniff out more vulnerable prey.

The Legend of Aang movie is now set to come out July 25th, a lot sooner than expected. Also they’re working on more content. ew.com/avatar-aang-...

Wolves have actually been observed riding on the backs of moose that they hunt. At least some of the time, this seems to be done when the moose in water.

I keep telling myself that I don’t have to deal with the “no more discs” nonsense for video games, then remember that a lot of my favorite iOS games have been and are becoming non-functional for the last decade b/c the devs no longer care to support them.

The crowning moment of my day today:

I looked through the hatchling tyrannosaurid paper. For what it’s worth, the mention of Haversian remodeling in the leg bones (suggesting precocial locomotion) is consistent with a BMIT abstract by Eric Snively that I came across years ago. New to me is the tooth wear.