A quiet sigh of relief courtesy of Henry de la Beche:
Awful Changes.
Man found only in a fossil state — Reappearance of Ichthyosauri.
“A change came o’er the spirit of my dream.” Byron
A Lecture. — “You will at once perceive,” continued Professor Ichthyosaurus, “that the skull before us belonged to some of the Lower order of animals the teeth are very insignificant the power of the jaw trifling, and altogether it seems wonderful how the creature could have procured food.”
He goes on, “looking at the finite element model, the weakness across the occipital clearly demonstrates that the species went extinct when their heads exploded while attempting to navigate online forms…”
Here’s the carnage:
How many guilds do you count?
9 November 2007 at 9:35 am
guilds?
9 November 2007 at 10:43 am
yep!
9 November 2007 at 4:07 pm
“Guild” is a term used in ecology for a group of organisms with a similar “lifestyle” (by way of analogy to pre-industrial European craft guilds). Horses and cows might be considered to share a guild (large, gregarious grazers) while pigs or dogs would be in different guilds….
12 November 2007 at 12:28 pm
Where did you find this ridiculously awesome cartoon?
Also, we edited the fossil article since you pointed out the glyphis. Thanks for the tip! I bet they make good eatin.
15 November 2007 at 12:27 am
Thanks Andrew. Now I have to write a whole piece about the radness of de la Beche.