When a big cat strangles a ground sloth, but the ground sloth spills out the cat's guts: (I'd say I'm about 80% joking and 20% serious here)

I finally got the fantastic ReptiMax Mapusaurus in the mail! Here it is compared to the BotM 1/18th scale T. rex.

Future dinosaur documentary producers: give me just one episode set in the Ojo Alamo Formation with a giant tyrannosaur hunting a giant titanosaur* and my life is yours. *One around the size of the one indicated by the arrow will do

So uhh, how ‘bout them Avatar (element people, not blue people) movie leaks?

One thing that bums me out is that there is no museum and/or fossil site near me where Cenozoic fauna are the star attractions. Places like that exist, like the La Brea Tar Pits Museum, the Gray Fossil Site, Agate Springs, or the Ashfall Fossil Beds, but those are far from me.

He doesn't need it because he's already hella strong, but...I think it would've been cool if Kregg's cybernetic eye could shoot a laser. He'd be a bit more like the archetypal flying brick with laser eyes, while making him stand out a bit more from the other Viltrumites.

I actually like the look of this Ankylosaurus plushie. Only reason I didn’t buy it at the museum Friday is because it’s like, $29 or something.

A point that I fully agree with is that no one needs to have characters who are 1:1 with them to relate to them. But just as a girl doesn’t need a character to be female to relate to them, nor does a boy need a character to be male to relate to them.

An illustration of a stoat guarding a mountain hare kill from a couple least weasels. Appears in “A history of British mammals” Volume 2 Part 3. Probably drawn by Edward Adrian Wilson.

Yeah, I’m a “non-lethal hunter”. Not a very good one, but I try.

I want to address a particularly asinine "counter" said on Twitter regarding my (correct) statement that orcas (or dolphins in general) are whales. It is that "so anteaters are ursids?" (rhetorical obviously) (because anteaters can be called "ant bears"). Jfc NO, these are NOT comparable.

Only on Twitter...only on Twitter do you get schizoids who insult you for arguing that you're fine calling an orca a whale.

Got a Bos bison latifrons plushie from Etsy in the mail today!

I’m 95% certain that if we only knew these as fossils, no one would suspect that this skull is capable of smashing through 2-foot thick ice. Photo by Josh Dugat

Thinking of an idea for a paleoart piece where a beaked whale is under attack by a large predator. I, of course, want it to match fossil evidence, while still being as interesting of a scene as possible. My top candidate right now is Parotodus benedenii.

Btw, the fact that beaked whales have these small tusks (or tiny denticles on tusks) that appear to be used for fighting just goes to show that just because a sharp implement on an animal isn’t big doesn’t mean it wasn’t used offensively (or defensively).

Something I ordered is coming today I think. If it does I’ll share pics.

The Spinosaurus was 99% my reason for getting this dinosaur tube set.

I made a good call coming to the Academy of Natural Sciences today, actually

Just been thinking about this. Two giants equal in heft. One is a reptile extinct for 66 million years, but a household name studied for over a hundred years. The other is alive, but belongs to a group that are among the least understood of all mammals.

Crazy that before yesterday you could’ve looked at the latest IUCN assessment for these three species and reasonably said, to the best of your knowledge, that they’re doing okay/kinda okay.

The cranium of the extinct beaked whale Berardius kobayashii. It lived in Japan during the Miocene ~12.3-11.5 million years ago. #FossilFriday

Cool thing I learned the other day: the Dayak people tied spearheads at the ends of their blowguns, so that when they ran out of projectiles, they could still use them for melee combat. Pretty clever idea.

Equally shocking to me about Muttaburrasaurus is that this same new study corroborates elephant/T. rex-level body masses for it.

I do want to preorder everything in this wave eventually, just not all at once.

Crazy thing about strap-toothed beaked whales is that they have small triangular denticles on their tusks. It’s thought that only these sharp denticles are used for fighting each other, not the whole length of the tusks.

I saw a series of photos earlier showing an orca delivering a large bite wound to a strap-toothed beaked whale. And I thought, if an orca could do that, I shudder at the thought of what many extinct marine predators with much larger mouths and larger, sharper teeth could do.

The unicellular organism Stentor coeruleus selects anchoring sites based on their shape www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

I think one of the best parts about these Illumination Mario movies is everyone reacting to whatever batshit insane casting choice they make that, in most cases, actually turns out to be perfect.

It slightly annoys me that I can make a post or an entire thread pertaining to zoology, then some pseudointellectual with ten times more followers can qrt me, say something half false that misses my entire point, and get ten or twenty times the engagement.

For a group with some serious giants, beaked whales are shockingly little known to the general public. (Photo by Junko Kimura)

A couple times now I’ve watched YouTube videos that play the same sound I use as my morning work alarm, and both times I felt lowkey, to-my-core uncomfortable for a brief moment. My brain gets tricked thinking it’s time to get up until it realizes what’s going on.

You know you fucked up if you somehow managed to piss off a basking shark of all things.

Preordered these three cool kids last night

I can’t believe I got too lazy to drive to a museum today. Hope the bookstore has something neat.

Since dinosaur skin discourse has been a hot topic lately, a possibility I think should be explored more is thick/collagenous skin. Even without large scales, spines, or osteoderms, thick skin can protect their owners up to a certain point.

Looked at this size comparison of the larger animals in After Man by @fabioaleromero.bsky.social. And now I’m wondering how heavy some of them have got to be. Gigantelope’s got to be AT LEAST large bush elephant-sized.

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University was my core natural history museum growing up. It is also by far the nearest one to me, and the most fundamental in Philadelphia, but faces funding issues today. Please support it by signing. c.org/7zdSm5pbqX

I need you to tell me which idea sounds better: 1) Saiyan and Kryptonian in a universe-wide Bone Wars-esque feud (they collect nat hist specimens and fight each other). 2) Saiyans and Viltrumites warring and competing with each other.

Bovines liked to become longhorns when given the chance. Stupendously long, laterally-splaying horns in Bos buiaensis, Bos bison latifrons, Bubalus palaeokerabau, and Syncerus antiquus.

The fact that I even have to explain this…

I've been scared of the appearance of spiders my whole life, but I think I've reached a point where I think tarantulas are the least scary-looking to me. (Photo by Bastian Rast)

I know I say “I wanna see an animated documentary set in *insert time and place not often depicted*” a lot, but I GENUINELY mean it every time. Anyway, I would love to see an animated documentary about early Pleistocene Olduvai Gorge’s paleofauna.

Prehistoric mammals I would buy (affordable) figures of if they existed:

Saw the Mario Galaxy movie. A few notes: 1) I see what people were saying about the pacing towards the latter half 2) I also see what they were saying with the little screen time Rosalina got 3) Yoshi was the best part 4) Bowser Jr. was pretty cool too

That ancient YouTube video I watched as a kid but keep coming back to: m.youtube.com/watch?v=j-0d...

Buffalo jump by Jay Matternes

What’s more expensive? Four exquisitely sculpted, painted, and articulated prehistoric animal figures AT LEAST 10 inches long, some with multiple parts, PLUS shipping, OR… …a McDonald’s photocard?

Preteen me getting back into paleontology after a short ancient warriors phase, but I see these two new words “Paleogene” and “Neogene”: