Today saw HRH the Princess Royal visit our #MonstersoftheDeep exhibition, years in the making, at @TheNMMC#Falmouth. I'm guest curator & worked with the museum's Stuart Slade, @tammy_horton of the National Oceanography Centre - and others - in bringing it all together. Thread...
#MonstersoftheDeep weaves together medieval beliefs about sea monsters, the scientific discovery of deep-sea life, the cryptozoological movement, and modern exploration and discovery. We have LOADS of stuff on display, much of it for the first time...
We open with a section on medieval maps... did people of those times believe in the sea monsters shown on maps like the Carta Marina, or were other forces at play? Jenny hanivers, mermaids, sea monks, sea bishops, sea unicorns and more occupy this part of the exhibition...
Next, we explore #cryptozoology. The beliefs of the middle ages never went away, as people right up to today have argued that sea monsters might be real, including krakens and stupendous octopuses. These researchers have endorsed the existence of a list of surreal creatures...
We showcase the 'prehistoric survivor paradigm' and - major coup - have a big #coelacanth on show! Coelacanths have often been used by cryptozoologists as support for the idea that creatures known only as fossils might persist to the present...
In parallel to this #cryptozoology section, we explore how scientific discoveries of the late 1800s - in particular the Challenger expeditions - revolutionised knowledge of the sea. Loads more exhibits, including a replica Challenger cabin...
All of which leads up to a section on the amazing real animals which have been discovered in the deep ocean. We have a spectacular selection on display, some amazing showpieces!
We also have sections on the technology of deep-sea exploration, on sea monsters in pop culture and loads more...
Once again it's time to embark on a #PrehistoricPlanet megathread, this time looking at episode 2 of season 2: Badlands. The first thing to note before we get started is that I screwed up in the previous thread, since I said there that Swamps was episode 2...
Nope, Badlands is episode 2 and Swamps is episode 3. Sorry! The Swamps megathread is here, by the way ...
Anyway…
#PrehistoricPlanet is streaming now on #AppleTV and represents a highly successful collaboration between #AppleTV and #BBCStudios. A massive team of hundreds of people worked together to bring #PrehistoricPlanet to the screen...
Yes, it's time another #TetZoocryptomegathread. In previous megathreads, I've covered several #LochNessMonster photos, including Hugh Gray's from 1933, Peter O'Connor's of 1960, and the Shiels 'muppet' of 1977. Time for another one!
Yes, you've heard of the #LochNessMonster, but maybe you don't know that a key piece of evidence long used to support its reality was a grainy bit of cine film, taken in 1960 by an aeronautical engineer from Reading in southern England…
This thread might be the longest and most complex so far, so hold tight. As ever, remember that I cover both sceptical and 'pro-monster' takes on the case concerned. The case I'm referring to concerns Tim Dinsdale's Foyers Bay footage of April 1960...
For something like four decades, Dr Alan Feduccia of the University of North Carolina has been arguing that everyone is wrong about #dinosaurs. His newest book is Romancing the Birds and Dinosaurs: Forays in Postmodern Paleontology. Here's a quick thread on its contents... 1/n
The book - RTBAD from hereon - is not an instruction manual for palaeozoophiles (art by @Book_Rat), nor does it include homage or reference to the 1984 movie Romancing the Stone. Rather, it’s composed of 23 essays on the state of dinosaur science as Feduccia sees it today... 2/n
@Book_Rat Early parts of RTBAD express Feduccia's disapproval of the power-hungry, juvenile popularists of our age. Some "have Twitter accounts with large followers [sic], dealing with everything from paleontological discoveries to sports and politics!" I'm among this awful lot ... 3/n
Welcome to a somewhat overdue (mega)thread devoted to the @AppleTV / @bbcstudios series #PrehistoricPlanet season 2 (#prehistoricplanet2 if you will), streaming NOW, and specifically to the first episode: ISLANDS...
Islands is one of my favourite episodes of #PrehistoricPlanet2. We knew early on that we’d cover stories relevant to the Late Cretaceous island faunas of Romania and Madagascar (since both places have revealed numerous amazing Late Cretaceous island-dwelling animals), but…
... what else could we show? The producer for this episode – Paul Stewart – worked really hard to find appropriate stories, and succeeded in focusing on amazing animals doing interesting things…
If you're interested in science you're familiar with Piltdown man, formally named Eoanthropus dawsoni in 1912 but shown to be hoaxed in 1953. What you may not be familiar with is the DUALIST CONTENTION, and here's a thread on it...
Yes, the one thing that every single person who’s heard of Piltdown man knows is that it was eventually determined to be a hoax. What’s discussed less frequently is that early 20th century views on Piltdown man were -far more complex- than popularly portrayed...
Acceptance of Eoanthropus as a valid proto-human (as per the Margaret Flinsch illustration here) might have been the 'mainstream' view that made it into textbooks and encyclopedias, but it certainly wasn’t the only one, nor was this acceptance wholesale or uncontroversial...