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Archive | September, 2007

Carnivalesque-o-Rama

By on September 24, 2007 in General Skwib

Joan of Arc -- medieval babeAnother edition of Carnivalesque (the ancient and medieval edition) is available at Practica, including such categories as “Viking silliness” and this useful, but badly misnamed Middle Ages Sex Flow Chart, as it has little to do with middle age (marriage, perhaps) and the sex does not seem to be “flowing” at all. (Medieval Sex Allowance Diagram might be more accurate, though we suspect most fundamentalist religions work with the same basic principles.)

Also, there is kitty related material about witches and Vikings. You’ll find it all at Practica.

Professor Quippy: This Thanksgiving It’s Velociraptor

By on September 24, 2007 in Odd Science

Professor QuippyThe dreaded velociraptor is looking less and less like a Spielbergian nightmare, and more like something you could safely serve with cranberries.

New research into the fossilized forearm discovered in Mongolia in 1998 by The American Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum of Natural History shows that the velociraptor probably had feathers. The arm has small bumps that in modern birds are called “quill knobs.” (Stop giggling.)

Quill knobs are not geeky writers (though it would be a great way to describe some of us), but are, according to the Beeb:

… the locations where secondary feathers, the flight or wing feathers, are anchored to the bone with ligaments.

Despite what we saw in Jurassic Park, the velociraptor was much smaller, though probably still a fearsome predator. However, it was more like the size of a turkey than a human being.

Though it was the size of our modern day turkey, scientists are still trying to solve the mystery of why it tasted like chicken.

BBC: Velociraptor dino ‘had feathers’