A fun timelapse video of the preparation of a massive 4” wide lower molar of an adult Titanothere from the Chadron Formation of South Dakota. I found this on a trip this summer with
. The molar is a little weathered as it was exposed and sticking out of a cliff face when we found it. It’s actually prepped out really well though and has all its complete root system. Titanotheres or Brontotheriidae (also known as “Thunder Beasts”) were the massive horned herbivorous giants of North America during the Oligocene.
Aries: Something old. Something without teeth or eyes, dragging its great tendrils along the ocean floor, trawling for the corpses of leviathans.
Taurus: Something fast. Something hidden by the dust storms. Something with wings and paws and talons and a beak. A golden blur from a rising savannah sun.
Gemini: Something drawn to the sites of naval battles. Hardened, twisted shells adorned with the eyes of dead sailors. Casualties of war pressed into grim pearls.
Cancer: Something that looks like a hen. Something that disguises itself among the others in the coop. Rotten eggs. A second, gaping maw.
Leo: Something with a sting worse than death. A mane of quills. Pellets of bone and hair. The king of the arid mountains.
Virgo: Something that sits just below the water. Long flexible antennae flashing to mimic the dancing of fireflies. Whiplike, threshing tentacles covered in stinging barbs.
Libra: Something pure white. Great wings and soft fur host to intoxicating spores. A great proboscis for feeding on sleeping giants. Thousands of lidless, orange eyes.
Scorpio: Something slow and heavy. Powerful arms terminate in claws meant for digging. Something that hates the corpse-eaters. Something that plants seeds atop the unburied.
Ophiuchus: Something like a tree stump, dragging itself along the ground on strong, gnarled roots. Following large prey until it dies of exhaustion, and replanting itself.
Sagittarius: Something fragile and light. Something that drifts with the wind on gaseous bladders, protected by its own noxious cloud.
Capricorn: Something pale and hungry. Something that feeds off trash and the insects attracted to it. Something far worse than garbage and flies.
Aquarius: Something with scales and a mane of colorful feathers. Something that hunts in packs, sharing moisture from kills.
Pisces: Something colossal. Wings like a thunderstorm and talons like massive fishhooks. Migrating from pole to pole, catching whales for their young.
The crested owl (Lophostrix cristata) is a species of owl in the family Strigidae. It is the only species (monotypic) in the genus Lophostrix. It is a resident bird and occurs in Central America and northern South America. It is a medium sized owl, easily recognizable with its very long whitish ear tufts and otherwise darker appearance. They inhabit lowland rainforests and prefer old growth in proximity with water. The crested owl is a strictly nocturnal species, but very little is known on its behavior.
I’m guessing the dark face/crest areas serve to hide their eyes and make them less obvious to anything on the lookout for owls. Mostly it’s just made them absolutely gorgeous.
anyway Sherlock Holmes is public domain so catch me writing a story in which Holmes’ seemingly timeless nature and is explained in canon as Holmes being a restless preternatural entity discovered (summoned?) by the original Dr. Watson, who acted as its companion/custodian as it careened around doing the only thing that could preoccupy its wildly inhuman mind, ie, getting all up in people’s business and freaking them out with how much shit it knows.
the Holmes entity can die, but always reappears within a generation and without fail seeking out the latest in the Watson line. the Watsons, grown savvy over time, and now devote much of their time to a.) preparing the younger members of the family for Holmes’ inevitable return or b.) desperately trying to get the hell out of dodge and live a normal life before it can happen to them as well.
just uuuuh. like a very knowing story about the inevitability of the Holmes and Watson story, centered a creepily inhuman Holmes and the long-suffering family who have spent more than a century documenting it.
This is so so so good
well damn Kayla, positive reinforcement is my biggest weakness and now I have to write it
It’s a well established fact that various fantasy races like to have interracial sex (yes, even orcs. The ritual gangrape thing can go die. They just like fucking non-orcs sometimes). But there’s no reason why the beauty standards have to be the same between races. A fat middle aged guy might be really mediocre by human standards. But for elves, visible aging takes absolutely forever and is a sign of great wisdom and fat is hard to accumulate when you live an active forest lifestyle, have a mostly vegetable diet and your treehouse is 300 steps off the ground, so all the elves think he’s a hunk. Meanwhile, this elf dude he’s hitting on is youthful and leanly muscular, with blond hair and a tan..because he’s an elf, they’re all youthful, being outside almost all the time gets you blond hair and a tan really fast and the amount of treeclimbing they do means everyone is leanly muscular. So they each think they’re both mediocre people and the other is highly attractive. This knowledge is useful for worldbuilding, roleplaying, comedical purposes or the intersection of the three.
I had an NPC in a campaign and if the campaign would have gone on the players could have discovered that she, while being really pretty by human and elf standards, felt really ugly because she’s a half-orc with a strength of 9.
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