Squid!!!

I'll make this short, and simple, unlike the squid below does (don't worry, that will make sense in a minute). This is a mature male Onykia ingens, a deep-sea squid. This specimen was caught in deep-water by a research team on the Patagonian slope, and I'm estimating is around 7 - 8 meters in length from tip of the tentacle to tip of the fin. This isn't a new species, but researchers did learn something pretty spectacular about it recently. (Slightly graphic image after the jump.)

Photo by V. Laptikhovsky, from BBC Earth News.

"Trilo-bits"

Once again, I have failed to submit a piece to the ART Evolved Time Capsule. The theme for the July gallery was trilobites. With two months to work on something, I really should be ashamed of myself (especially since I've missed 8 of the 9 other gallery submission deadlines as well). All I managed to finish (or rather, start with) are some very simple sketches. Even the scan came out pretty bad. I guess this qualifies as an "epic fail".

But there is a long weekend coming up, and lucky for me, "The Evolved Crew" is extremely forgiving when it comes to late submissions. Maybe I'll eventually finish all of the drawings I've started for their various Galleries of Life. For now, enjoy The Trilobite Gallery over at ART Evolved!

Whale wars!

Well maybe not "wars", but some violent enough encounters to say the least. The July issue of Nature contains the publication of a paper describing a new species of Miocene sperm whale from Peru that like Carcharocles megalodon (a gigantic shark contemporary of the whale), would have been a dominant predator feasting on other medium sized whales of the time. Named Leviathan melvillei ("Herman Mellville's giant mythological marine monster"), this whale represents one of the largest known raptorial predators, and may hold the superlative of "biggest tetrapod bite ever". Awesome.