I'm reading Sy Montgomery's book "Birdology" and I am quite riveted. If you read "The Good, Good Pig" then you know Montgomery is a great writer and now she's written about one of my favorite topics - birds. Apparently, birds are direct descendants of dinosaurs. In the chapter on the cassowary (which looks strikingly similar to a dinosaur), Montgomery writes, about the discovery of soft tissue in the femur of a Tyrannosaurus Rex by paleontologist Mary Schweitzer. The DNA was sequenced from the 68 million year old fossil and guess what living creature the DNA most closely resembled, a chicken! I decided to post this image after reading the following: "the timid titmouse and fluffy chickadee, it turns out, are close relatives of the largest, most powerful carnivores that ever lived. Their direct ancestors were bipedal, meat eating dinosaurs, with three toes, air-filled bones, and wishbones like those from the Thanksgiving turkey."
This black-capped chickadee also happened to be a frequent feeder at Grammy Tunney's bird feeder in Long Island - from Jurassic Park to Long Island.
2 comments:
The "Next Blog" button sent me to you! GORGEOUS artwork! Happy New Year! -Tampa, FL
These are amazing. I've never seen anything quite like them. I very much appreciate your sense of design as well as the artfulness here. Thank you, peace,
Diane
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