Monday, July 19, 2010

Tiny Theropod

Birds have been a popular photographic subject forever, so they are predictably well-represented at Flickr. Some of my favorite photos are those at Dan's Photo Art. I was thinking over the weekend that I don't feature enough birds here. When this photo popped up in my contacts feed, the situation was immediately rectified. Browsing through Dan's photostream, it's tempting to click the "fave" button over, and over, and over... but that defeats the purpose of such a thing.

Female Ruby Throated Hummingbird_RGB3903

The clarity of his images floors me. He must have preternatural patience, and possibly a bit of good luck.

1 comment:

  1. I've never seen one at rest before! It actually looks like a bird - they seem so insect-like when they are buzzing around.

    The Tiny Theropod had quite a journey. First, the sauropods dominate the treetops and thus there is an opening for plants at ground level, if they can spread over a wide area without relying on height and wind. So flowering plants evolve. And eventually a former theropod looking to take advantage of the new food source evolves into the highly specialized flower feeder we see today.

    I remember from Horner's classic book that toxicology was formerly postulated as a cause of dino extinction. "Dino fossils are found in contorted poses, as if they died horribly, possibly posioned by the flowers!". Seems like a straw-man argument, given what we know about the mummification/fossilization process, but people were grasping at straws to try and understand where all the dinos went? If only they had just looked at their bird feeder the answer was right in front of them!

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