dez-ray:

The Prothallus (fern gametophyte)

From the Dodel-Port Atlas. Images were drawn and collated by the husband and wife team of Arnold and Carolina Dodel-Port.

via McGregor Museum

(Source: proto-flake, via scientificillustration)

stilllifequickheart:

Pierre-Joseph Redoute

Tulip

1802-16

(via scientificillustration)

scientificillustration:

Columbia Lily or Tiger Lily -Lilium columbianum Leichtlin

Elwes, H.J., Fitch, W.H., A monograph of the genus Lilium , t. 35 (1880) [W.H. Fitch]

biocanvas:

Volvox aureus, a type of freshwater green algae, with daughter colonies.

Image by Gerd Günther.

biocanvas:

A fungal infection (bright green) of an Arabidopsis (a plant related to cabbage and mustard) root.

Image by Kirk Czymmek, University of Delaware.

biocanvas:

A crosscut from the leaf of a cedar tree, Cedrus atlantica.

Image by Christian Gautier.

biocanvas:

A 1300-times magnified view of the anther of Convallaria majalis, lily of the valley. Pollen grains are in green.

Image by Albert Tousson, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

ulaulaman:

The forest from the past.
In the image there is the reconstruction of a 300-million-year old forest discovered by a team of archeologists in Mongolia, China.
The research was published on PNAS with a open access article, Permian vegetational Pompeii from Inner Mongolia and its implications for landscape paleoecology and paleobiogeography of Cathaysia by Jun Wang, Hermann W. Pfefferkornb, Yi Zhang, Zhuo Feng

Plant communities of the geologic past can be reconstructed with high fidelity only if they were preserved in place in an instant in time. Here we report such a flora from an early Permian (ca. 298 Ma) ash-fall tuff in Inner Mongolia, a time interval and area where such information is filling a large gap of knowledge. About 1,000 m² of forest growing on peat could be reconstructed based on the actual location of individual plants. Tree ferns formed a lower canopy and either Cordaites, a coniferophyte, or Sigillaria, a lycopsid, were present as taller trees. Noeggerathiales, an enigmatic and extinct spore-bearing plant group of small trees, is represented by three species that have been found as nearly complete specimens and are presented in reconstructions in their plant community. Landscape heterogenity is apparent, including one site where Noeggerathiales are dominant. This peat-forming flora is also taxonomically distinct from those growing on clastic soils in the same area and during the same time interval. This Permian flora demonstrates both similarities and differences to floras of the same age in Europe and North America and confirms the distinct character of the Cathaysian floral realm. Therefore, this flora will serve as a baseline for the study of other fossil floras in East Asia and the early Permian globally that will be needed for a better understanding of paleoclimate evolution through time.

In official press releasePfefferkornb says:

It’s marvelously preserved. We can stand there and find a branch with the leaves attached, and then we find the next branch and the next branch and the next branch. And then we find the stump from the same tree. That’s really exciting.

And about the likenesses with Pompei:

It’s like Pompeii: Pompeii gives us deep insight into Roman culture, but it doesn’t say anything about Roman history in and of itself. But on the other hand, it elucidates the time before and the time after. This finding is similar. It’s a time capsule and therefore it allows us now to interpret what happened before or after much better.

You can see the images of the findings on gizmodo.

(via scientificillustration)

scientificillustration:

n254_w1150 by BioDivLibrary on Flickr.

The quadrangular Passion-flower

universe-of-waves:

(via infinity-imagined)

scipsy:

The Scale of the Universe 2

Wow.

scipsy:

15 Evolutionary Gems: A resource from Nature for those wishing to spread awareness of evidence for evolution by natural selection.

scipsy:

Pinus monophylla leaf (via sols.unlv.edu)

crownedrose:

jtotheizzoe:

cetacean34:

Ray Troll stratigraphy/geologic time. I’m printing this out and hanging it above my desk. 

Know your geologic history.

And don’t put a nautilus in the back of your pickup truck. That is not how we treat nice fossils.

Actually, there’s a lot wrong with this chart. I see it’s written as the K-T boundary instead of the K-Pg, though I’m still getting used to the change myself. But when it comes to periods and epochs, some are there, and some are not. Here are the issues:

Where’s the Paleogene period on this chart? After the Cretaceous period, it jumps right to the Paleocene, which is the first epoch (of three - followed by the Eocene and the Oliogcene) in the Paleogene period. The Paleogene period is in the Cenozoic era, so why is it missing on this chart?

If you include epochs, you must include what period they reside under, otherwise this chart now makes it out to be that the Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Piestocene, and Holocene are all periods when they are in fact epochs.

The other period is missing here that resides in the Cenozoic era as well, the Neogene. The Neogene had two epochs: the Miocene, and Pliocene, which are seen above.

For the Piestocene and Holocene epochs, they reside in the Quaternary period. Yes, all these epochs are within the Cenozoic era, but again, you must include their periods as well, and for the Mesozoic, you should include their epochs, etc. This chart would be confusing to one who does not know the divisions.

This same issue is also occurring at the bottom of the chart. The Palaeozoic era includes all those listed, but instead of having the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian subperiods listed, why wouldn’t one just put the Carboniferious period instead? I know some just use the M and P subperiods, but I prefer the Carboniferious!

To sum it up: epochs and periods are not the same, and even if many of us know our geological time charts, there are many people who would most likely confuse the terms because of this chart’s layout. If you’re still unsure of what I meant by all of what’s stated above, check out this geologic time scale on Wikipedia, which is a more accurate and easier to understand chart.

(via historiantinanatural)

thescienceofrealities:

First Photos of 298 Million Year Old Forest Unveiled.

“ Scientists have just released the first photos of the incredible 298 million year old buried forest that was recently found below a coal mine in Yuda, China. The extensive array of tree and plant fossils that were photographed were found still arranged in a forest landscape - a first for fossil discovery. The entire forest was covered by fallen ash, which erupted from an ancient volcano, preserving it for eternity.

Had it not been for the volcanic eruption, the Permian Era forest and trees would’ve been transformed into coal over the millions of years that have passed since it thrived on the super continent of Pangea.

The vegetation and animal species that grew over the layer of volcanic ash have compressed to form the coal mine that lies above the discovered site.

The fossil forest is located in Inner Mongolia, in the northern region of the Helanshan Mountains.

The area preserved by the volcanic ash is suspected to be a staggering 6.2 miles in length - almost the full length of the coal mine, which is 7.72 square miles in area.

Thus far, the scientists have explored only 10,763 square feet of the ashen fossil forest, uncovering a multitude of leaf, tree, and plant fossils, some of which still bearing a greenish hue.

An array of ferns have been found in addition to extinct trees with leaves still attached to the stem, and branches leading down to their trunks.

The volcanic fossils give an accurate indication of where each plant grew in relation to the others in the forest.

Scientists were lead by University of Pennsylvania’s Hermann Pfefferkorn.

The team will continue to explore and document this “Permian vegetational Pompeii.”

They will continue to catalog this nearly 300 million year time capsule as they go on. “

Source.

(via historiantinanatural)