M.J. Rose

This is the oddest display of wealth we have heard of in a while: the phenomenon of ornamental hermitage.

 

From ati.com,

The Mysterious Lives Of 18th Century Garden Hermits
By Abby Norman

 

 

“The ceramic garden gnomes we see today have a very human — and very solemn — past.
Before the days of the ceramic garden gnome, a human being often played the role of stern, robe-wearing guardian of flora and fauna — and that person was preferably a grizzled old man who didn’t mind living in seclusion and forgoing even basic personal hygiene.

 

Meet the ornamental hermit.

 

Two trends in Georgian England created a moment in history for the phenomenon of ornamental hermitage: solitude and overt displays of material wealth.

 

Wealthy landowners desired expansive and often ornate gardens on their property, and would use these expanses to reflect not just financial riches, but existing social mores such as melancholy.

 

Elite circles viewed this deeper, more introspective form of sadness as a mark of intelligence, and thus sought to associate themselves with the sentiment whenever possible. Physical property presented an easy, obvious avenue to bring this social virtue of melancholy to life.

 

Soon enough, wealthy landowners began placing want ads in newspapers to fill this very aim. Ad writers often sought men who would agree to live in a garden for a span of time (usually about seven years, it seems) and devote themselves to a silent, forlorn — if not also wise and mysterious — existence…”

 

For the rest, click here.

 

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Scientists have only had a limited sense of what the ultimate flower ancestor would have looked like. Until now…

 

From The Conversation,

Revealed: the first ever flower, 140m years ago, looked like a magnolia

 

 

“Although most species of plants on Earth have flowers, the evolutionary origin of flowers themselves are shrouded in mystery. Flowers are the sexual organs of more than 360,000 species of plants alive today, all derived from a single common ancestor in the distant past. This ancestral plant, alive sometime between 250m and 140m years ago, produced the first flowers at a time when the planet was warmer, and richer in oxygen and greenhouse gases than today. A time when dinosaurs roamed primeval landscapes.

 

But despite the fact dinosaurs went extinct 65m years ago we have a better idea of what an Iguanodon looked like than of how the ancestral flower was built.

 

This is partly because these first flowers left no traces. Flowers are fragile structures that only in the luckiest of circumstances can be transformed into fossils. And, as no fossil has been found dating back 140m or more years, scientists have only had a limited sense of what the ultimate ancestor would have looked like. Until now.

 

A major new study by an international team of botanists has achieved the best reconstruction to date of this ancestral flower. The research, published in Nature Communications, relies not so much on fossils as on studying the characteristics of 800 of its living descendant species…”

 

For the rest, click here.

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Mummy buffs, rejoice!

 

First, The Siberian Beauty. Second, the dinosaur mummy. Wait, did we just type the words “dinosaur mummy?” Yes, yes we did….

 

From The Siberian Times,
Meet the mummified Polar beauty, her long eyelashes and hair still intact after 900 years
By Anna Liesowska

Unearthed on the edge of the Arctic, she is the only woman so far found in an otherwise all-male necropolis, buried in a cocoon of copper and fur.

 

 

“This haunting 12th century woman is a member of an unknown hunting and fishing civilisation that held sway in the far north of Siberia – with surprising links to Persia.

 

Accidentally mummified and probably aged around 35, her delicate features are visible, the green tinge on her face being the traces of the pieces of a copper kettle that helped preserve her in her permafrost grave.

 

She has long eyelashes, a full head of hair – and impressive teeth.

 

Bronze temple rings were found close to her skull, wrapped inside animal skin – possibly reindeer  – and birch bark that cocooned her.

 

Like other human remains, the medieval mummy’s feet were turned towards  nearby  Gorny Poluy River, a fact seen as having religious significance. She was around 155 centimetres tall – 5ft 1 inch…”

 

For the rest, and so many interesting photos, click here.

 

NOW, THE DINOSAUR MUMMY. Yes…

 

From ATI,

Dinosaur ‘Mummy’ Unveiled With Skin And Guts Intact
By John Kuroski

This isn’t merely a fossil, but an actual dinosaur itself, frozen in time.

 

 

You can’t even see its bones, yet scientists are hailing it as perhaps the best-preserved dinosaur specimen ever unearthed. That’s because, 110 million years later, those bones remain covered by the creature’s intact skin and armor.

 

Indeed, the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada recently unveiled a dinosaur so well-preserved that many have taken to calling it not a fossil, but an honest-to-goodness “dinosaur mummy.”

 

With the creature’s skin, armor, and even some of its guts intact, researchers are astounded at its nearly unprecedented level of preservation.

 

“We don’t just have a skeleton,” Caleb Brown, a researcher at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, told National Geographic. “We have a dinosaur as it would have been.”

 

When this dinosaur — a member of a new species named nodosaur — was alive, it was an enormous four-legged herbivore protected by a spiky, plated armor and weighing in at approximately 3,000 pounds.

 

Today, the mummified nodosaur is so intact that it still weighs 2,500 pounds.

 

How the creature could remain so intact is still something of a mystery…”

 

For the rest, click here.

 

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