According to the experts at HMNS, this little feller (he’s about 4″ or so) is Anurognathus, the frogmouthed mini pterodactyl. He, too, is about 150 million years old and according to tour guide and HMNS fossil guy David Temple he’s the best of perhaps two specimens found to date.

He’s about the size of a bat, and shaped accordingly, and I have to admit that for some reason I was kinda taken by the li’l guy. Not that I’d want one for a pet or anything, but..

It’s never been a secret that I’ve been a science fiction fan for nearly 50 years now. I wasn’t terrifically impressed with the Stargate movie, but SG-1 ranks high in the pantheon. This is only relevant because it starts to explain that while I was touring the Solnhofen fossils at the HMNS exhibit, my first reaction to this guy was “Holy Crap! It’s a fossilized Goa’uld!! What the HELL?”

Obviously, it’s not. My best guess at this point is that it’s some form of banjofish; I’ll confirm when I get back to the exhibit later this week.
(It wasn’t. It’s a very old fish that got itself fossilized in a very odd configuration; we’re looking at it from the top. The expanded head is because its gill covers are splayed out.)

Okay, the saying is old, 1742, or thereabouts, but sometimes it’s not bliss, it’s just damned embarrassing.

Monday a couple weeks back I made the opportunity to visit one of my favorite places in town, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, for a “Behind The Scenes Tour” of the Archaeopteryx: Icon of Evolution exhibit.

So here’s the thing. I, like an awful lot of people I’ve talked to since, had very little knowledge of this critter, and, as I discovered, most of what I knew was wrong. The reality is one heck of a lot more fascinating and fun.

So… the first of several shots I’m going to post from the evening.

David Temple, Associate Curator of Paleontology (also occasional tour guide, Canon shooter, and generally nice guy) fronts for a coelacanth fossil from a Jurassic-period limestone quarry in Solnhofen, Germany. All the fossils in the exhibit, most of which I didn’t photograph for various reasons involving not wanting to hold up the tour, are from Solnhofen.

More pix to follow, including something unique, something SyFy, and, of course, Archaeopteryx! (Plus things I learned during and since, some of which are in their own ways just about as mindblowing.)

And, for Donna The Dragonfly Lady…

This one’s a bit older than most – something on the order of 150 million years. or so.

Enjoy. Weekend approaches. Go shoot.

NOT the way I’d want to spend my midday in a Houston August…

Yeah, that’s a rip saw he’s playing; it’s a kind of odd eerie ethereal sound. He said he does this every so often, but before I could get anything about who he is or why he does this, the light went green and the guy behind me leaned on the horn. There’s a story here though.

Almost recovered from White Linen Nights, so… a few pix. Nothing serious, mostly just wandering and eyeballing, visiting friends. Oh, and buying a new coffee mug from John Delafield. (I think he meant it to be a beer stein but it’s just the right size for mornings after… like this one.)

(Few more shots behind this one. Haz Click en photo.)

Another in the series of photographs that just crawled into the camera…