Another Large Cabinet Cleave Free Calcite With Chalcopyrite. Sweetwater Mine, Viburnum Trend, Reynolds

A predatory moment, frozen in geological time

You’re a hungry spider who is rushing towards a wasp that has become entangled in your web when all of a sudden everything goes sticky, you can’t move, frozen in place like the proverbial Tantalus with your food in sight but forever beyond your reach. Very soon after you are engulfed in another wash of sticky sap oozing out of a tree and everything goes dark. The spider may ironically have also been courting a painful death, since these wasps are parasitic and known to lay their eggs in spiders and other insects, with the larvae slowly consuming the insect from the inside out, preserving it alive by leaving the vital organs for last. Such a moment was caught by a unique fossil pictured below, that turned up in a hundred million year old piece of amber from what is now the Hukawng valley in Burma.

Keep reading

The American Museum of Natural History takes you along on a dinosaur dig in the Morrison Formation of the US west, host of many of the famous Jurassic dinosaur bones found in North America.

cave exploring, thailand

Temple of Asclepius, Rome

An incredible piece of petrified wood I found a little while ago. Where, you ask? In the decorative gravel outside a pizza place near me. Yes, really.

Seriously, take a look through some of those bits of landscaping next time you're around one. I have found large, nearly whole brachiopods, petrified wood, agates....stuff I never thought I'd just find. And gravel for those is typically sourced from local gravel pits, more or less, so it will be stuff that's from wherever you are, just concentrated :)

rodrigo.paleontologist

Did you know many regular sidewalks can have body or trace fossils on them? Here I show you a sidewalk in southern Brazil (Dois Irmãos-RS) with marine invertebrate displacement trace fossils. These rocks are from the Late Carboniferous Rio do Sul Formation (Paraná Basin). Your strolls in town will never be the same now!

In the light of the recent events, I think we should take a moment to appreciate this guy even more

Let’s start with Silmarillion.

If this book would be turned into a tv series, a lot of people would be pissed. Because many characters die, including Fëanor who is introduced as main character. The number of major characters in the Silmarillion who meet their tragic end is greater than the number of major characters in AS0IAF who meet their end. Silmarillion is an ongoing tale of blood, torture, gruesome deaths, painful deaths, unbreakable dooms, betrayal, backstabbing, more torture and gruesome deaths. When I first read Silm, I was still thinking about Tolkien as that jolly old man who wrote Bilbo. I was shocked.

Yet. Tolkien still knew how to touch and highlight themes such as hope and love and how these two help the character overcome their fears and struggles and get through the dark times they’re living in. Silmarillion is a story about hope.

The Hobbit

Yes, that funny little adventure with that funny little man who meets trolls and goblins and Elves and dwarves and finds a magic ring. Should I remind you that that Dwarf whose goal was to reclaim his homeland and his crown died? Yes, he died. But as tragic as it was, his death made sense. He let his greed for gold overwhelm him. He almost killed Bilbo because of it. This is how Tolkien punished his moment of weakness. But it made sense. I cried when Thorin bade farewell to Bilbo, I cry again when I see it in the movie, but this….makes sense. Compelling arc? Tolkien knows how to write it. Two certain assholes don’t.

And now, The Lord of The Rings

Should….we….remind…you….that jolly old Tolkien….named its magnum opus…after the….you know?…the villain?

Tolkien wrote about very bad people and wrote about very dark times and throughout the trilogy you have this constant feeling of hopelessless in front of Sauron’s almost allmight. Yet:

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

Tolkien deserve all the praise for

Touching the importance of love, and not the romantic love (because the romance is more hinted and not even a secondary love), But the love between friends, the support which rekindles your hope, and ignites your courage, the courage to fight for your friends and for a better love, the love for your world and your wish to make it better.

Writing female characters properly!!!!! The product of his age as he was, he goddamn knew how to write women who are both feminine and strong, who also fight in battle or rule the household, women who have power and they are acknowledged as such. The most prayed-to godess is a godess, Varda, a woman. Galadriel and Melian are women who are held in more reverance than their male partners. Eowyn is strong both at home, when she is the beacon of hope for her people, and on the battlefield, when she kills the FUCKING Witch King of Angmar (and this was FORSHADOWED btw). Also, no focus on male gaze and no objectifying. The romance is written as it should be written - a union of the soul, more than anything. Also, If you are looking for ace/demi rep, here is the place. This is how I love Tolkien so much and I didn’t know why I identified so much with how he wrote romance back when I first read it (since I only was aware of my sexuality later). Also also, he wrote friendship between men, friendship that became love, love between comrades, forced to fight and suffer together. But they can also be read as romance. Look me in the eyes and tell me that Gimli and Legolas cannot be read as romance. They can! You can interpret them as such and not be wrong! And this sort of love is valued above everything!!!!

Aragorn struggles for Almost. 70. Years to reclaim his ancestor’s throne and he proves his worth fighting and almost sacrificing himself in the War. But after Sauron is defeated, the people accept them as king. You know? Because he saved them from destruction? Because he almost sacrificed him for them?

And last, but not the least, for writing a real bittersweet ending. Frodo, the main character, is so broken after fulfilling his quest, that he leaves Middle-Earth for Valinor, the earthly paradise, which is a symbolism of death

“….I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them. But you are my heir: all that I had and might have had I leave to you. And also you have Rose, and Elanor; and Frodo-lad will come, and Rosie-lass, and Merry, and Goldilocks, and Pippin; and perhaps more that I cannot see. Your hands and your wits will be needed everywhere. You will be the Mayor, of course, as long as you want to be, and the most famous gardener in history; and you will read things out of the Red Book, and keep alive the memory of the age that is gone, so that people will remember the Great Danger, and so love their beloved land all the more. And that will keep you as busy and as happy as anyone can be, as long as your part in the Story goes on.”

“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand… there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.”

So, dear shitty writers who compare your work with Tolkien’s (and with the movies; Because with all their faults, the movies, in the end, did highlight Tolkien’s message: hope):

If you still think of your work as being on par with Tolkien’s, you haven’t been paying attention.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien aka Jirt (rhymes with “dirt”) is the only fantasy king I acknowledge.

I now have some availability for illustration work! 🖌 My focus is Earth sciences, but I also take design and personal commissions. If you are interested, dm or visit my website: cameron-brideoake.com

Wren