Tiktaalik

[smokingboot]

With thanks to larians for the following link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1747926,00.html

The problem with science is that it is too magical to remain unglamourised in my head: Tiktaalik may be an incredibly important fossil detailing a hitherto unknown transition between gills and lungs, flippers and limbs, land-living and water breathing; for me it has all become translated into upright crocodile men in big hats, wandering the earth looking for wisdom and little birds to crunch. Even the name works: Tiktaalik. Sounds like some kind of tribe or race, doesn't it?

Archeopteryx holds a special interest for me too because I have always been fascinated by the links between lizards and birds. When unable to sleep recently, I kept having insomnia fueled visions of a man with what I thought was a tattoo of a great cross on his back, only to get up close and find it was a giant tattooed archeopteryx. When I touched it, the bones crunched beneath his skin, and he looked at me expectantly. I watched, waiting for him to fly; he watched me waiting, I think, for me to kiss him.

I can see him now, in my mind's eye, high above a desert, standing at the edge of a sunset cliff, taking off with outstretched bone wing stems that grow very long and may or may not become feathered and scaled. In my head, he sometimes crashes to the red land below; now that land is peopled by Tiktaalik, who sometimes heal him, and other times eat him all up.

http://www.dinosoria.com/mammifere/sobek.jpg

Let's face it, I need sleep. Badly.

Comments

[kol.livejournal.com]

Thats brilliant.

every game should have Tiktaalik seers.

"no one ever quite knew where they stood with the Tiktaalik tribes. They always came seeking the inner mysteries of the universe, and seemed sincere enough, but they always left with full stomaches, no wiser than before..."

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

*Grins* You see them as clearly as I do!

Of course, if they ever solved any universal mysteries, you can be sure they'd never let on. They would just wander around looking smug until bribed by man chops or other epicurean wonders...

[jadeent.livejournal.com]

Of course if they were that good at solving the univeral mysteries they would never have become extinct.

Or have they......?

Only the illuminati know

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

...;-)

[falco-biarmicus.livejournal.com]

On a different note - many thanks for the loan of your man. I have just had a lovely lunch and a much needed break. However - I still need some time with the boot to make it complete :-)

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Time together would indeed be very fine! There is the Unicorn event soon perhaps...