#archeopteryx

[hexasart]

The Diaphonized Wet Specimen pins are now up for sale!!

And so are the stickers!

If you're interested, or were international and unable to pledge to the kickstarter, check them out!!

ETSY - All international (And domestic)

The Hexabeast - US and Canada only

PLEASE reblog and spread the word! It helps me out so much, especially because tumblr suppresses links in the tags, still.

[racecarart]

Archeopteryx with the coloration of a violet-backed starling. <3

Based off of a photo by Hugh Chittenden found on this blog: http://rockjumperbirding.blogspot.com/2012_03_01_archive.html

[chaeopteryxbites]

shimmy shimmy yay shimmy yay shimmy ya drank swalalala

https://toyhou.se/26446881.wyrm

[trashpandaart3000]

Archeopteryx by Gerhard Heilmann, from 1926

[crowrosive]

I like to buy cheap poundland knock off dinos sometimes and see how much I can salvage with a bit of paint!

This guy appears to be a stolen mould of the PAPO archeopteryx but the velociraptor label is a good giggle

[fajmanjay]

Im not dead! have some WIPS and sketches

I'll try and post more, but I have been really busy, and haven't had much time to draw, and when I did, it wasn't dinosaurs or anything of the like. But perhaps I will post more often!

[maple-seas]

requests from twitter ^_^

@neoperks @interruptingkau @sonokido

[tadpoles-yay]

Some screenshots i took in prehistoric kingdom feel free to screemchshot

[daily-plush]

Colorata Sitting Series Archeopteryx Plush

[floppa-stan-account]

archeopteryxposting

[riceumbrella]

i made some really small dinosaurs out of clay

[balanceoflightanddark]

Creationism and Early Paleontology

It should come to no surprise to anyone that the field of paleontology has more often than not rubbed shoulders with Creationism, or the belief that the development of species like mankind had divine intervention as opposed to natural selection and evolution. I'm not gonna really go too into detail on Creationism since this isn't really about debunking it (especially since I am a devout Roman Catholic).

It's more about a time in the history of paleontology when Creationism was a widely accepted belief and how it impacted the very beginning of the field.

For hundreds of years, Creationism was THE dominant belief that everything in existence was created to be perfect by God and the world and species themselves were unchanging. Why change what is already perfect after all. George Cuvier would be the first to challenge that assumption, contending that some species could in fact go extinct for one reason or another. To support this claim, he cited fossils of elephants that once lived in Europe as a different species that would've been easy to find if they were still alive. This species would later become known as the Wooly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) by today's paleontologists.

At the time, the ideas of extinction and deep time was practically unheard of, so it was inevitable that details wouldn't exactly age too well with so little evidence to go on. For example, the biblical flood from the story of Noah was often used as an explanation for why fossils from seemingly different parts of the world would end up in places they shouldn't be. In 1821 for instance, Reverend William Buckland examined hyena fossils that were discovered in Kirkdale Cave, England.

Rather than assume that they belonged to an extinct species of hyena, Buckland believed that the bones were washed to Europe by the Flood, citing their shallow deposition within the cave as proof.

Buckland would later go on to describe Megalosaurus, the first dinosaur ever to be described.

It wasn't until around 1859 with the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species that the rift between paleontology and Creationism began to form. Darwin argued that, rather than species being made perfect, they evolved to best survive in their environment over a gradual period of time. He often cited fossils of South American prehistoric mammals about how various species changed over time. Naturally he got in hot water with the Church for his radical ideas.

It's here where dinosaurs would find themselves in the middle of this controversy. Archeopteryx was discovered in 1861, just two years after Darwin published his book, and was often used as a missing link between birds and reptiles. While Darwin himself never studied Archeopteryx, he did remark its existence proved that we had a lot to learn about the denizens of the prehistoric past.

Perhaps the most outstanding example was the widespread belief in the early 20th century that dinosaurs may still exist in some parts of the world. The idea was that since the Earth was believed to have been only a few thousand years old, then chances were there might be living relics somewhere in the unexplored wilderness. In particular the Congo and South America. One of the most notable instances was an account by Percy Fawcett, the famous explorer that went missing for the lost city of Z, remarked on an early expedition in 1906 that he had seen:

“an animal he believed might be Diplodocus, the eighty-foot reptile of twenty-five tons. This animal he though might still be in existence as it was an eater of aquatic plants, which grow profusely in this region. The Diplodocus story is confirmed by many of the tribes east of the Ucayali”.

Obviously, there's a decent chance he may have fabricated these stories as many explorers did, but there was a real effort to find living dinosaurs at the dawn of the 20th century. A concept that was used for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's best selling novel, The Lost World, who directly based the accounts of dinosaurs off of Fawcett's stories.

Nowadays, living dinosaurs is only widely believed by those that adhere to the Creationist theory, along with the belief that the earth was young. But it's important to remember that there was a time that these ideas weren't considered pseudoscience, but practical fact and seriously considered by scientists. It was a fascinating period where knowledge of paleontology was still very young, and how some things that would seem like fiction or farcical were taken seriously. And a reminder of how much time has passed since then and how much information has rewritten how we view the ancient world.

[jpanimador]

Icarus

Archaeopteryx lithographica

[chaeopteryxbites]

ceo of whores

[theblogthattimeforgot]

I am absolutely in love with this game, the graphics, the design and customisation of the park is beyond my expectation.

[tinymilkshakedoe]

i've been wanting to get into sewing fo a while, so hopefully this will be the push i need :)

(author)