It’s a really really really nice fossil…

…but it’s still just a fossil.  I’m referring to Ida, the fossil of what will soon be named Darwinius masillae, which is almost certainly not our direct ancestor.  I don’t have time to go into detail*, here’s someone else’s blog post with tons of links.

*(but I will quip that chains have links, trees don’t)

Extant Anomolacaris look-alike.

Image links to plate in a Flickr stream, but check out the Bibliodyssey post.

The Dinosaur Toy Blog.

Link.  It does what it says, it says what it does.

Martian trilobites, crinoids, and seashells.

This guy sees them in NASA’s pictures.  e.g.

via

B. W. Hawkins, early paleoartist.

Artist Nemo Ramjet wrote an informative blog post about Hawkins, including pictures he took of Hawkins’ pictures.

Via

Bugs in opaque amber.

We can’t see ‘em, but now we can tomogrify ‘em.

We can even print them.

See also Science Daily, paleoblog.

Mid-Cambrian Morning

A nice web comic by Rosemary Mosco with many of my favorite cambrian critters. Bonus points for having the Opabinia’s name be Steve.

(link)

Comes with an informative dramatis personae.

See also Evolution Sucks.

Thanks for the hot tip, Rafi.

Old school paleocritter trading cards.

Apparently manufactured by Waddingtons in the eighties.

Atlas of Creation by Harun Yahya

I am insanely jealous of Ainsley, who now owns the Atlas of Creation. Most of the book is juxtapositions of bad pictures of fossils with bad pictures of conordinal living things (fossil fern, living fern; fossil bunny, living bunny; fossil fly, living fly) alongside the erroneous claim that there are no differences between the extinct and extant forms. Anyway, here’s his example of a living caddisfly:

It’s a fishing lure. He stole the image from Graham Owen, from whom he also stole this:

…which he believes is a living spider. A few pages earlier, he juxtaposes a fossil scolytid with a living pentatomid, saying that the living pentatomid and the 25 myo scolytid are exactly the same thing.

Make sure you click through and look at Graham Owen’s fishing lures, they’re worth it. My fave is the solpugid.

Speaking of Eurypterids…

weird_crustacean [sic]
Originally uploaded by Ayla Sunshine