i like that the maned wolf and the bush dog are each other's closest living relatives. they're like cartoon henchmen

at least now we know why he has yet to return when Britain is in peril

We need a flick where King Arthur wakes in modern Jamaica and is very confused.

I think that would be so much funny. He wakes up on a remote beach in Jamaica and he only speaks/understands Brythonic and Medieval Latin. Locals assume he was a tourist who fell from a cruise ship or received a head injury and floated away from a resort. The authorities cannot match his description to any missing persons reports and his fingerprints and DNA produce no hits on INTERPOL. They suspect he may be Welsh or French because the language he speaks resembles Welsh or Breton but France and the UK both state he is not a citizen of their country. Stateless and deeply confused, he is taken in by the community near the beach where he was found, being cared for by a number of local families and doing odd jobs. He slowly learns English and adjusts to the contemporary world, uncertain if his belief that he is the legendary King Arthur was formed by whatever traumatic event caused him to end up Jamaica or if he is actually King Arthur and Prydain is in eminent peril. Mysterious letters from Morgan begin to reaffirm his belief he is King Arthur. He must choose between staying in Jamaica and continuing the happy life he has made for himself or finding a way to get back to Britain without any documentation.

ancient king white boy stuns locals by ordering in perfect Jamaican Patois

He gets to Britain and everyone expects him to sound like a posh noble Englishman because that is the picture Malory painted but he prefers to speak Welsh and when he has to speak English, he speaks with a thick Jamaican accent.

I love this but also am DEEPLY baffled as to why this Pye fellow found a skeleton in a cave in Britain and decided to take it with him to Jamaica. What do you need a skeleton for? Why do you need to import it? They've got bones in Jamaica already. Was it just that he was Bonded to this particular skeleton and decided that he wanted its company in the Caribbean?

For additional context, archeological giant hoaxes were extremely common in the 19th century, they were lucrative display pieces due to a number of pseudoscientific and religious reasons. Though I could not find evidence of them existing in the 18th century, Egyptian mummies were already being exhibited in Europe. There have been some prehistoric archeological remains located in Britain and Ireland that would have been unusually tall to the 18th century audience though totally within normal limits of human height with the Old Croghan Man having an estimated height of 6'6".

My best guess, if the story has a kernel of truth, is that Mr. Pye unearthed the archeological remains of a very tall individual OR grave robbed a contemporary burial of an unusually tall person and intended to pass the skeleton off as the giant remains of King Arthur, basing his story on the folklore surrounding the cave. It would be harder to verify his claims about the origin of the skeleton outside of Britain so he headed for the New World to start scamming.

In short? I assume he was on some P. T. Barnum bullshit and/or about to attempt an archeological hoax and intended to charge people to see the bones.

…

andrea.dusk

𝔲𝔫𝔡𝔢𝔞𝔡

There’s a certain folkloric idea that if you die at sea, your soul is sort of. Inextricably stuck in the sea. Because your body is irretrievable, your soul is also irretrievable, down out of the reach of the gods who look at the surface of the world. In Norse mythology, they said that the souls of sailors who died at sea are caught in the sea-goddess Rán’s net and dragged into her domain, a distinct and separate afterlife alongside Hel and Valhalla. Davy Jones Locker. The funayūrei. A lot of cultures agree that once sea has a hold on you, even when your body has rotted and dwindled and been made food for crabs, it still won’t let you go.

Do you think we’re going to wind up saying the same thing about astronauts.

Posted my Maraldichthys the other day on Insta and as it is really hard to explain without visual aid I put this together. Every time I post about this guy people don't know how to look at it. I hope this helps. And yes, this is not taphonomy, there are several specimens and close relatives.

For people unaware: Maraldichthys is a pycnodontiform fish from the Cretaceous of Lebanon, an absolute paradise for this fishes.

To further explain what going on I took Rhinopycnodus, a more normal looking relative, and morphed it into Maraldichthys. Color coded to keep track of fins.

As you can see the cloaca actually barely moves, the body just gets super short and the pelvic fins shrink :P

ALSO, the cloaca is not facing forward, the tail just faces upward, this guy is not swimming butt first! It was probably mostly hovering, going up and down

Moths Drink Tears, by artist Shary Boyle.

everyone eat more vegetables NOW!!! and mention the last vegetable you ate in the tags so we're all on the buddy system. I'll start: bok choy

“Other people have ideas, too. You can’t always have your own way.” How to get along with others. 1953. 

Posted my Maraldichthys the other day on Insta and as it is really hard to explain without visual aid I put this together. Every time I post about this guy people don't know how to look at it. I hope this helps. And yes, this is not taphonomy, there are several specimens and close relatives.

For people unaware: Maraldichthys is a pycnodontiform fish from the Cretaceous of Lebanon, an absolute paradise for this fishes.

Literally the only fish shape more deranged than modern seahorses

Florida has a lot of stupid stuff going on right now, but at least a Democratic Socialist who isn't afraid to call Gaza a genocide won the primary and is running for Marco Rubio's old senate seat

He use "Liquid Nails" to put up the mantel.

Sky and Water by M.C. Escher

A collection of time travel humor text posts, not censored by me.

All of these really made me laugh, and laughter is a very good thing sometimes. All of the time, actually. Unless you're doing something that requires a still hand or silence I guess.

If I may add @sgt-cookie-2's masterpiece:

jellyfish babies