appendixjournal:

A cat and pigeon strapped with rocket bombs from a 1584 German warfare manual.

Found via BibliOdyssey, and digitized by Penn.

(via stufftoblowyourmind)

explore-blog:

A surviving copy of Edward Gorey’s limited-edition lost gem The Green Beads, digitized. 

(Source: )

jtotheizzoe:

 Buzzsaw Jaw

If you dug up a fossil that looked like a circular saw blade made of teeth, you’d be forgiven for being a little confused. Was it some sort of toothy nautilus? A relic of a dinosaur’s carpentry shop?

When Helicoprion (meaning “spiral saw”) was first discovered in 1899, its whorl of teeth was one of the few things identified. Even though there were few skeletal clues, it was quickly decided that these teeth were from a cartilaginous fish. But where did these “teeth” fit in? On the body? Some freaky mouth appendage?

Over a century of confusion followed, but recent work using X-ray analysis of fossil specimens has all but confirmed that this fish used a spiral-fed whorl of teeth, constantly regrowing as today’s sharks do, to catch soft prey like squid, 270 million years ago. It’s actually not a shark at all, but a ratfish, a branch of cartilage-skeletoned fish that branched from sharks in prehistoric times.

Check out more great analysis by Brian Switek at Laelaps. He also features even more great art by Ray Troll, a Helicoprion aficionado who did the image at top.

(via shaaarks)

scienceisbeauty:

Physics of the Eye (via Connexions)

Further reading: How Vision Works.

(via scientificillustration)

scientificillustration:

Hypothetical life reconstruction of Ediacaran organism Rangea.

This illustration is on the cover of the January 2013 issue of the journal Paleontology and although it isn’t credited one of the authors of the paper is the excellent artist Peter Trusler so it is likely to be by him.

Reconstructing Rangea: New Discoveries from the Ediacaran of Southern Namibia by Patricia Vickers-Rich, Andrey Yu Ivantsov, Peter W. Trusler, Guy M. Narbonne, Mike Hall, Siobhan A. Wilson, Carolyn Greentree, Mikhail A. Fedonkin, David A. Elliott, Karl H. Hoffmann and Gabi I. C. Schneider. Journal of Paleontology January 2013 v. 87 no. 1 p. 1-15

neuromorphogenesis:

 Harvey Cushing (father of neurosurgery), Medical Illustrator, 1900

In the Hopkins years, Cushing drew a number of his medical illustrations that were published in medical journals. No doubt he perfected his skill under the informal tutelage of his friend, Max Brödel, the celebrated professional medical illustrator at Johns Hopkins. This original drawing, signed and dated 1900, had as caption: “Showing relations of the middle meningeal artery to the operative foramen before and after elevation of the dura and exposure of the ganglion.”

(via neuromorphogenesis)

rhamphotheca:

A Bizarre tandem-horned elasmothere rhino from the Late Miocene of northwestern China and origin of the true elasmothere [2012]

Although the modern Indian and Javan rhinos have a single horn on their noses, the extinct one-horned rhino Elasmotherium was a source for the legendary unicorn, because the latter had a very long horn on its forehead and lived with the prehistoric human beings who drew its images on cave paintings. Elasmothere rhinos first appeared in South Asia in the Early Miocene, but the origin of Elasmotherium has been unclear.

All other elasmotheres have a weak or strong nasal horn, whereas Elasmotherium seems to lose the nasal horn of its ancestors and to get a huge frontal horn apparently abruptly. Here we report the first discovered skull of Sinotherium lagrelii from the Late Miocene red clays in the Linxia Basin, northwestern China. This skull has an enormous nasofrontal horn boss shifted posteriorly and a smaller frontal horn boss, which are connected to each other, indicating an intermediate stage for the single frontal horn of Elasmotherium.

Morphological and phylogenetic analyses confirm that Sinotherium is a transitional taxon between Elasmotherium and other elasmotheres, positioned near the root of the giant unicorn clade and originated in a subarid steppe. The posteriorly shifted nasal horn has a more substantial support and the arched structure of the nasofrontal area is an adaptation for a huge horn.

reference:  Deng T, Wang S Q, Hou S K.  Chin Sci Bull. 

doi: 10.1007/s11434-012-5574-4

(via: NovaTaxa)

(via scientificillustration)

architecturalandindustrial:

How welding works Courtesy of How stuff works

Thanks for posting! Further reading here.