I stopped by a breakfast joint in Wilmington, NC called Jimbo’s. Their corned-beef hash and their grits are divine as well, and I got three beverages: water, orange juice, and coffee. After this, I’m off to the aquarium! I wonder if they’ll have American alligators. I don’t believe I’ve been to this particular location in many years. I’m at least hoping to see some sharks. Maybe sea turtles as well (or at least some kind of turtle). I listened to a Neil Gaiman interview on the way over, and I should be at the aquarium pretty soon.
The name Ambulocetus means “walking whale.” I had heard about whales’ terrestrial past, but I first discovered this particular beastie when I watched Walking with Beasts. A single specimen, a male, appears in the first episode, “New Dawn.” The episode takes place in the Eocene in what will one day become Germany, though some people have pointed out that Ambulocetus fossils are known to occur in Pakistan, along with their direct ancestors the Pakicetus.
Why did they leave behind land? Was there a shortage of food or perhaps a danger of predators? Whatever the reason, Pakicetus began taking to the water. And eventually glaciers melted and dispersed much nutrient-rich material into the ocean, giving whales a huge buffet until they reached vast proportions like those of today. I’m also a fan of Rodhocetus, Dalanistes, Basilosaurus, and Livyatan melvillei.
Scientists in Michigan were able to test the fossils unearthed in Pakistan’s Sulaiman Mountains, and one found the shape of a bone in the ear region called a sigmoid process, which only whales are known to possess.
The book is by Michael David Wilson and Bob Pastorella.
Description from Google Books:
From the hosts of This Is Horror Podcast comes a dark thriller of obsession, paranoia, and voyeurism.
After relocating to a small coastal town, Brian discovers a hole that gazes into his neighbour’s bedroom. Every night she dances and he peeps. Same song, same time, same wild and mesmerising dance. But soon Brian suspects he’s not the only one watching and she’s not the only one being watched.
They’re Watching is The Wicker Man meets Body Double with a splash of Suspiria.
I had a dream that I was in the poolrooms and Vladimir Putin was about to interrogate me while wielding a stapler.
Larry Carlson in his C̵̨̮̬̦̣̗̫̱̞̣̳͍̟̥͐̋̄͗͝ ̴̠̭̆̋̅́̀͝ù̷̪̥̏̉́̈͘ ̴̧̦̳̜̺̫̟̥̻͖̝͔̈́ͅb̷͇̟̳̯̹̪̻̳̮̐̆̿̓͐̂̄̂ ̶̟͈̞̮̙͓͙͓͓̒̾̈́̊̌ͅe̶͈͚̤̤͓̳̹͗̋̑̑̈͋̄̈͋́́͝ͅ
How do you do? As well as you know, the usual being plagued by antlered worms and attacking earth-eaters. Hopefully wizards and bats and lizards and rats can compete with that, with Carnival Jack. Though the Architect seems friendly, which is probably just swell. Beyond the Architect are the cave spiders, crawling around one another within a great cylindrical star-cavern and paying no heed to the small crab between their feet holding one Dreamsphere (ours). Upon the outside surface of the cylinder trods a great elk, and between the icy-white and ivy-draped peaks of its antlers lies a great network of cobwebs, of silken strings, upon which dances a great Remipede, playing out the Song of Reality on the strings of the great harp, which hums in the ear of the narwhal-squids which pull the chariot of the Hand of Time around the circumference of the great celestial Clown Clock, which crawls with ogres and goblins and spiders and trolls and dragons and squid and emerald crabs and hermit crabs and octopus-belugas, all hanging about in the tide-pools between its infinitely-stretching axial spars. All of this is in turn imagined by the velociraptor-monkey with a spear which lives in a tree and hides from snapping packs of weevil-aardvark-aardwolf-wolves, cougar crabs and angry lobster-tigers snapping for a denied dinner. In a hidden compartment in its tree, the velociraptor-monkey protects a hidden tankful of Architects on a reef which hold Memories in time via Dreamspheres. Butterflies and moths made of jewels flit lazily above it all, more heedless than the vultures and bustards and buzzards which are starting to crowd in the sky and blot out the sun and descend on the land to relieve its remaining carnage that following day. “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme, Yesterday Holds Memories In Time,” screams Carnival Jack’s enabler with a great cruel sneer and pulls out your heart and demands that you yield. His mouth makes impossible sounds that seem almost like words. You cannot decrypt it, no matter how you scream. We all emerge as particles of unfiltered light from the eyes at the tips of an anemone’s waving fronds.
I’ve been on a proboscidean research rabbit hole lately. As it turns out, the mastodon branch split off considerably before the evolution of both modern elephants and mammoths. Interestingly, the oldest known species of mammoth is the South African mammoth, Mammuthus subplatifrons; they branched out geographically and began to speciate from there.
Serbelodon (courtesy of Wikipedia)
The general adaptive radiation of these magnificent beasts is as vast and varied as it is fascinating. The entire order of afrotherian mammals is beautiful. I’m surely a fan of Deinotherium or hoe tuskers, and I’m fascinated by the way Stegodon’s tusks would grow together, leaving its trunk to hang to one side or the other, unable to fit between the elongated ivory chompers (or should I say spears? – they’re not really the chompiest of teeth).
I also like Palaeoloxodon (straight-tusked elephant), Sicilian dwarf elephants, gomphotheres, Stegotetrabelodon, odd-faced shovel tuskers like Amebelodon and Platybelodon, Moeritherium (which are in Walking with Beasts; I rather thought they resembled tapirs, or as the narrator Kenneth Branagh pointed out, pigs or hippos), Anancus, gnathabelodon (which had a pair of tusks on both its upper and lower jaws), the Blancotherium of Texas, Serbelodon, Rhynchotherium….
The Winter Pages 