Potatosaurus dulcis

I'm such a huge sweet potato fan that to see this versatile foodstuff combined with my white-hot passion for dinosaurs sends me over the moon. It's the work of Vanessa Dualib.



I'm not the great beast's sole predator, of course. Also eternally on the prowl for its earthy sweetness is this terrifying dude.



For more food sculptures, check out this set on her photostream.

Since I just discovered that Hulu offers episodes of Good Eats, my favorite TV food program I'll get a little Alton Brown on y'all. The sweet potato, native to tropical South America, provides yet another example of pre-Columbian travel to and from the Americas. From Wikipedia, citation links preserved:

Sweet potato has been radiocarbon-dated in the Cook Islands to 1000 AD, and current thinking is that it was brought to central Polynesia circa 700 AD, possibly by Polynesians who had traveled to South America and back, and spread across Polynesia to Hawaii and New Zealand from there.^[3] It is possible however, that South Americans brought it to the Pacific. The theory that the plant could spread by floating seeds across the ocean is not supported by evidence. Another point is that the sweet potato in Polynesia is the cultivated Ipomoea batatas, which is generally spread by vine cuttings, and not by seeds.^[4]

I'm so hungry.