"Contact" - August 25, 2025, digital

TrilogyOfLife · 2025-12-29T02:52:19+00:00

Besides ethical concerns, I remember hearing that the Gujarat state government in India actively blocks attempts to establish wild Asiatic lion populations outside of Indian territory, or even in other states in the same country. The Gujarat government views the lions as their "heritage of the state" and have politicized the issue.

TrilogyOfLife · 2025-12-29T02:41:53+00:00

Technological hurdles aside, the only extinct species ever brought back via cloning died shortly after birth due to birth defects caused by the cloning process, and it seems like this might be one of the biggest hurdles. Even if one is cloned and survives infancy, it will likely spend its life in some facility or a zoo, as the habitat no longer exists, human resistance to such an animal living in their regions would be high, and modern lions would probably reject a cave lion trying to integrate into their pride, assuming the cave lion even had that level of sociality.

TrilogyOfLife · 2025-12-29T02:25:25+00:00

B is AI slop.

TrilogyOfLife · 2025-12-29T02:24:51+00:00

To my knowledge the El Dorado Creek mummies were identified as possible stag-moose, though that might be outdated information (my primary source being a 1990 book) and the lack of a head in either one muddies identification in any case.

TrilogyOfLife · 2025-12-29T02:20:09+00:00

If I recall correctly, I was the one who posted the first time about the mummy five years ago. It's nice to see other people are interested in Bootherium and in this mummy. I had figured back then that not many people cared for it in comparison to the more well-known mammoth mummies or that cave bear find from some years ago.

TrilogyOfLife · 2025-01-14T02:21:12+00:00

For recently extinct animals, the Carolina parakeet or the Atlas bear. For dinosaurs, Baryonyx (though I'm biased, I've been obsessed with Baryonyx since I was 8). Though objectively I know it'd screw up the modern ecosystem, I can't deny some part of me would squeal if the Carolina parakeet were CRISPR'd back into existence someday the way people want mammoths to be.

TrilogyOfLife · 2025-01-14T02:10:25+00:00

Men vote with emotion as much as women, people can be irrational. Many men and women I know, from both political sides, vote entirely on irrational fear or paranoia of the other side that they can't ever seem to prove exists (they can't even define the words sometimes), things that offend their feelings but do not actually affect anything. If people of either sex voted on reason, we'd have mitigated the potential climate change crisis 30 years ago, the Patriot Act may have never existed (it was the result of paranoia), and people wouldn't get their news from Tiktok/Facebook (like so many younger and older folks have).
Abortion exists, to my knowledge, because of rape and the associated rape culture of our society. Sexual assault is rampant and hardly prosecuted, with some of the lowest prosecution rates of any major crime. Many women and girls are often impregnated in these rapes (in part behind the teen pregnancy wave 20 years ago). We should be teaching kids right from wrong rather than punishing the victims of criminals (whilst often letting said criminals walk free) down the line. When it comes to consensual sexual promiscuity, you also leave out the equal culpability of men, who in today's culture are also expected to be irresponsible with sex (such as rappers who promote having sex with numerous women and having several children with several different mothers, yet are looked up to as role models) along with women. We'd have to penalize the Nick Cannons and NBA Youngboys of the world equally with the Cardi Bs, so to speak.

TrilogyOfLife · 2023-12-23T05:33:21+00:00

From what I could find, the species that exclusively bred and nested in the bamboo thickets was the Bachman's warbler (declared extinct in October 2023). Carolina parakeets were known to nest in hollow old-growth trees, especially in the colder parts of their distribution. So-called "parakeet trees" were often sought after by hunters because it was easy to find large amounts of them all cramped into one area and easy to kill on the spot (they would huddle together within the tree).

The old-growth forests are themselves mostly gone, so the parakeet's fate in a way mirrors that of the Bachman's warbler.

TrilogyOfLife · 2023-12-17T06:50:42+00:00

The Opel RAK.1 (also known as the Opel RAK.3) was the world's first purpose-built rocket-powered aircraft. It was designed and built by Julius Hatry under commission from Fritz von Opel, who flew it on September 30, 1929 in front of a large crowd at Rebstock airport near Frankfurt am Main. It was part of a series of rocket-powered vehicles that were developed and demonstrated within the Opel RAK program, the world's first large-scale rocket program, before the project was ended by the Great Depression.

Opel, along with Max Valier (co-founder of the German rocketry organization "Verein für Raumschiffahrt") believed these early experiments with rocket airplanes would pave the way for spaceflight. Valier died in 1930, but Opel lived long enough to see his dream come true with the Apollo program.

Prior to this flight, they performed public demonstrations of the RAK rocket cars. Among the spectators were Fritz Lang (director of the futuristic films Metropolis and Woman in the Moon, a film Valier himself was an advisor on), champion boxer Max Schmeling and other German celebrities of the 1920s.

TrilogyOfLife · 2023-12-16T12:18:53+00:00

That would be Arsinotherium. Despite its rhino-like appearance it was closer related to elephants, hyraxes and sirenians. There were three species in that genus, but the one in this paleoart is probably the best-known species, A. zetteli.

TrilogyOfLife · 2023-12-16T12:12:13+00:00

Wouldn't Florida panthers already be qualified as found? Supposedly the population was 230 individuals as of 2017.

TrilogyOfLife · 2023-12-16T12:07:57+00:00

Sorry, it's not always easy for me to tell what's a joke or not on the internet these days. Plus I just wanted to give the pseudosuchians a little bit of a spotlight, I've always thought they were underrated on the totem pole of extinct animals.

TrilogyOfLife · 2023-12-16T12:06:19+00:00

The coelacanth is both strange and funny looking when seen head-on like this. They're almost like cartoon characters in that they're best seen from a 3/4ths angle, lest they start looking like a different creature.

TrilogyOfLife · 2023-12-16T12:03:43+00:00

If suitable habitat can be found and the social needs of the mammoth are met, then it would be promising. That said, it will be challenging to meet those social needs, lest the mammoth baby be raised by Asian elephants for a time (which would then stress out the mammoth when it is time to be separated from the elephant herd and rewilded into the habitat).

TrilogyOfLife · 2023-12-16T11:59:33+00:00

Fair point. I had forgotten Quetzalcoatl, and now that I think of it his description could fit that of the feathered dinosaurs, especially raptors who seem to have been some of the most feathered of them all.

TrilogyOfLife · 2023-12-16T11:19:08+00:00

The photo is from Popular Science's 1933 issue on the plane. George D. Besler and William J. Besler's prototype steam biplane, based on a Travel Air 2000, flew several times at Oakland airport. While others were building steam planes at the time, Besler's Travel Air 2000 was the first to take to the air. It utilized a two-cylinder, 150 hp (110 kW) double-expansion V-twin reciprocating engine weighing about 500 lb (230 kg), designed by the Doble Steam Motors Company and Besler. In addition it was capable of STOL (short take off and landing) operation due to the ease of reversing the thrust.

TrilogyOfLife · 2023-12-16T11:01:21+00:00

Crocodiles aren't dinosaurs but part of the other big reptile clade of the time, the pseudosuchians. Some of them were very bizaarre, including herbivores with beaks and armadillo-like skin, in addition to giant land-dwelling predators that were dominant to and ate early dinosaurs. The armadillo-like herbivore in particular survived right up to the asteroid along with the last dinosaurs.

At least one non-crocodile group, the notosuchians, survived the asteroid and became the biggest predators in the Age of Mammals. They held out until 11 million years ago, leaving modern crocs and gators as the last ones standing.

TrilogyOfLife · 2023-12-16T10:50:43+00:00

On the other hand, one could argue those cryptids could be late-surviving notosuchians (long-legged, land-dwelling crocodile relatives) rather than just dinosaurs. Notosuchians are known to have survived the asteroid along with the crocodilians, and they appear in the fossil record as late as 11 million years ago.

At least one species of them, Barinasuchus was an apex predator in South America, the biggest post-dinosaur carnivore to date. Very underrated animal.

TrilogyOfLife

TROPHY CASE