The little ballerina princess shivered as she stared up the sidewalk to Uncle Pete’s house. Tombstones rose up through the dense fog, and bones littered the ground. She nudged a giant rib with her toe, clutched her goodie bag and ribboned wand tightly, and stepped forward.
The shark cruised the turquoise water, sunlight rippling through the waves to the soft sand below. A small school of silvery fish stirred up a cloud in the warm, shallow waters by the reef, but the shark turned away from them.
Archaeopteryx has been a known fossil for quite some time. Ever since that famous feather discovered in German limestone in 1860, and then the first skeleton in 1861.
Oops! Looks like our featured critter has flown the coop! I’m terribly sorry for the delay, but Pete’s on it and will bring him back as soon as possible. 🙂
While you wait, I found a few lovely old drawings and paintings of our feathered friend. And by old, I mean a part of history. In 1941 Manfred Reichel, a Swiss paleontologist, published an article on Archaeopteryx. I love how natural and lifelike his drawings are, unlike the chimeric feathered-lizard monstrosities most people have drawn for ages.
Manfred Reichel took some inspiration from reading The Origin of Birds, written by Gerhard Hellmann and published in 1926. Below is one of Hellmann’s beautiful paintings.
Come back soon! Hopefully it won’t take more than a day or two to catch our feisty dancer. 😀
It’s a dolphin! It’s a shark! It’s a…dinosaur? Continue reading
The best way to a dino’s heart is through his stomach, as they say… Continue reading
Ooh, what are the mysterious eggs for? I’m sorry for the wait, but Pete and I are having a bit of trouble finding Elmer. I think he heard the rumor about getting a check-up with the vet…
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this little preview sketch, and the picture below is probably pretty close to what Elmer’s habitat might’ve looked like. Only instead of grass there would be drought-hardy ferns, and cycads that look a bit like giant, prickly pineapples scattered about. 🙂
You’d think it would be easy to find a giant browsing in a savannah of ferns and araucaria trees! See you in a few days! I hope to have Elmer back here by next week at the latest. 🙂
He basked in the warmth of the sun, armored scales like a double row of polished stones. Eyes closed, mouth open with glistening teeth, he listened to the stillness. He could hear the distant calls of flying creatures as they gossiped about their day, the faint rustling of a summer breeze through scraggy conifer branches high above, the scratching chirp of a far away insect. The beating of wings. Continue reading
Thud.
Alfred looked up, head cocked to one side so that one yellow eye focused on a shimmering red box against the concrete wall of his paddock. He sat heavily on his haunches, watching the glinting snowflakes in the sunshine, and blinked in surprise when it moved.
