Posted on 02/27/2014 11:44:06 AM PST by Theoria
Bringing extinct animals back to life is really happening — and it’s going to be very, very cool. Unless it ends up being very, very bad.
The first time Ben Novak saw a passenger pigeon, he fell to his knees and remained in that position, speechless, for 20 minutes. He was 16. At 13, Novak vowed to devote his life to resurrecting extinct animals. At 14, he saw a photograph of a passenger pigeon in an Audubon Society book and “fell in love.” But he didn’t know that the Science Museum of Minnesota, which he was then visiting with a summer program for North Dakotan high-school students, had them in their collection. He was shocked when he came across a cabinet containing two stuffed pigeons, a male and a female, mounted in lifelike poses. He was overcome by awe, sadness and the birds’ physical beauty: their bright auburn breasts, slate-gray backs and the dusting of iridescence around their napes that, depending on the light and angle, appeared purple, fuchsia or green. Before his chaperones dragged him out of the room, Novak snapped a photograph with his disposable camera. The flash was too strong, however, and when the film was processed several weeks later, he was haunted to discover that the photograph hadn’t developed. It was blank, just a flash of white light.
In the decade since, Novak has visited 339 passenger pigeons — at the Burke Museum in Seattle, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, the American Museum of Natural History in New York and Harvard’s Ornithology Department, which has 145 specimens, including eight pigeon corpses preserved in jars of ethanol, 31 eggs and a partly albino pigeon.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Ebb and flow. That is nature itself.
somthin bout that boy just ain’t right.
I agree.
LOL
Passenger pigeons OK. T-Rex not so much. :-)
World’s worst job.
I was kind of thinking, that I’d be standing more to the side than that. She’s sort of trusting that there’s not going to be a sudden change in velocity and/or consistency.
You are using forethought and reason. Not the strong suit of someone who is doing that sort of job.
Somebody has to flip my hamburgers. Kind of hope it’s not her though.
If he was on Beverly Hillbillies, he’d BETTER have been chasing Ellie Mae...
Good lord, she was a beautiful hottie.
“..somthin bout that boy just ain’t right...”
Understatement of the year!! Haha!
Again... I reiterate...
If there is EVER a day when you’re thinking “Damn my job SUCKS!!!”
Just think about this photo... or the guy with his head stuck up the elephant’s ass in the video (posted again for the benefit of anyone who hasn’t seen it).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytWgovxo3eA
And the elephant standing there screeching “HEY!!! WTF!!! IS THAT A HEMORRHOID!!”
World full of nut cases.
But we did learn ethanol is finally good for something besides ruining small engines.
The Taiga of Northern Siberia and parts of Canada should be an adequate habitat for the Mammoth, until global warming melts 'em. (is the < /sarc > tag needed?)
They’ve got a T. Rex????
My pick for re-incarnation would be the South American Short Faced Bear. 3,500 lbs and great with kids.
Watching Michelle walk from behind looks like 2 mammoths wrestling in a gunnysack.
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