Eponymator

rhamphotheca:

Ambulocetus: The Walking Whale
by National Geo staff
Discovered in Pakistan in 1992, the fossil skeleton of 50-million-year-old Ambulocetus (“walking whale”) suggests it was able to walk on four legs—on land and in the water. Why it matters: Explaining the leap from land mammals to whales was another evolutionary headache for Darwin, who proposed bears as possible whale ancestors. Recently unearthed fossils trace whales to a doglike predecessor of hoofed plant-eaters, and genetic analysis has identified hippos as whales’ closest living relatives. Fossil expert Donald Prothero of Occidental College says Ambulocetus is the “most complete, best studied, and clearest case of something with a whale’s head, the beginnings oof an aquatic lifestyle with webbed hands and feet, but still fully quadrupedal.”
(via: National Geo) (illustration by Shawn Gould)

Ambulocetus: The Walking Whale

by National Geo staff

Discovered in Pakistan in 1992, the fossil skeleton of 50-million-year-old Ambulocetus (“walking whale”) suggests it was able to walk on four legs—on land and in the water.

Why it matters: Explaining the leap from land mammals to whales was another evolutionary headache for Darwin, who proposed bears as possible whale ancestors. Recently unearthed fossils trace whales to a doglike predecessor of hoofed plant-eaters, and genetic analysis has identified hippos as whales’ closest living relatives.

Fossil expert Donald Prothero of Occidental College says Ambulocetus is the “most complete, best studied, and clearest case of something with a whale’s head, the beginnings oof an aquatic lifestyle with webbed hands and feet, but still fully quadrupedal.”

(via: National Geo) (illustration by Shawn Gould)

atypographiclife:

Designer: Herb Lubalin

via typogabor.com

DIY tree stump drawers

vintagemarlene:

julie newmar as catwoman contact sheet, circa 1960s

dcwomenkickingass:

demonsee:

Batman Boogie by Steve Lambe

Don and Peggy watusi in the back, while Pete and Roger talk business round the sunken living room.

coten:

This Has It All! by glen.h on Flickr.

coten:

This Has It All! by glen.h on Flickr.

cwnl:

Sunspot AR1402 Kicks Up More Solar Energy

via SOHO/SpaceWeather

Sunspot AR1402, the source of this week’s powerful M9-class solar flare, is acting up again.

On Jan. 26th between 0100 UT and 0600 UT, a sequence of C-class magnetic eruptions around the active region hurled a bright coronal mass ejection over the sun’s north pole, shown here in a coronagraph image from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.

The cloud is not heading toward Earth, at least not directly. This and future eruptions from AR1402 are unlikely to be geoeffective as the sunspot is turning away from our planet. By week’s end it will be on the far side of the sun, blasting its CMEs toward planets on the opposite side of the solar system.