life is short & the world is wide

rhamphotheca:

Blood Falls, a Natural Time Capsule Containing a Unique Ecosystem

By Atlas Obscura

This five-story, blood-red “waterfall” pours ever so slowly out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valley. Geologists first discovered the frozen waterfall in 1911, and believed the red color came from algae. Its true nature turned out to be more spectacular.

Roughly two million years ago, a small body of water containing an ancient community of microbes was sealed beneath the surface of the Taylor Glacier. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, the microbes have remained isolated inside a natural time capsule, in a place with no light, oxygen, or heat.

The trapped lake has very high salinity and is rich in iron, which gives the seepage its red color. A fissure in the glacier allows the microbial subglacial lake to flow out, forming the falls without contaminating the ecosystem within.

More photos of Blood Falls can be seen on Atlas Obscura.

(via: Slate.com - Atlas Obscura)

(via lostbeasts)

abluegirl:

The Strange Beauty of Diatoms and Phytoplankton - Full Gallery

(via scinerds)

wtfevolution:

“Check out this awesome dance move I invented.”

“Oh god, evolution, please stop doing that.”

“What? It’s called ‘pronking.’ All the springbok are into it.”

“I can’t take you anywhere.”

lesupernerd:

Once you reach your 6th Year in Hogwarts, you start to get used to all the shit.

(via muggletimelord)

paleoillustration:

Dino Hunt is a dinosaur inspired short film, in which a herd of Styracosaurs are hunted by a pack of raptors.

“We’re looking for other dinosaur and visual effects fans to consider contributing to our Dino Hunt IndieGoGo campaign, and help us spread the word! You can follow along with our progress via Twitter and Instagram!”

UPDATE: don’t worry about featherless raptors or pronated hands, take a look at this

(via jurassiraptor)

inlandwest:

Timothy H. O’Sullivan: The King Survey Photographs

Keith F. Davis and Jane L. Aspinwall

“Clarence King’s Survey, undertaken between 1867 and 1872, covered a vast swath of terrain, from the border of California eastward to the edge of the Great Plains. It was the first survey to include a full-time photographer—Timothy O’Sullivan—who produced about 450 finished photographs in large-format and smaller-format stereographs. O’Sullivan’s images convey a distinct individual quality of perception, at once direct and laconic, as well as a perfect union of objective fact and personal interpretation. As such, O’Sullivan remains the most admired, studied, and debated photographer who worked on the great western surveys of the 19th century.

This handsome and enlightening book aims to enrich and enlarge our understanding of O’Sullivan’s pivotal body of western photographs by emphasizing the idea of context. This ambition encompasses several frames of reference: O’Sullivan’s best-known images in relation to his larger body of survey work; the function his photographs served in relation to the survey’s overall goals and methodologies; and the King Survey itself as a logical part of a complex and prolonged expeditionary endeavor. The volume also includes an essential catalogue raisonné of O’Sullivan’s King Survey work.”

“A splendid catalogue raisonné.”—Larry McMurtry

• Hardcover: 252 pages
• Publisher: Nelson Atkins
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300179847
• ISBN-13: 978-0300179842

lostbeasts:

Brachiosaurus and Ceratosaurus, by John Sibbick.