It's been 15+ years since Britain last had a mass shooting of any note (Cumbria) and nearly 30 years since a school shooting (Dunblane), in case anyone was wondering.
And both of those were far too little time ago.
(An observation: I can remember pretty much every shooting incident in Britain that's made it onto the news in my decades-long life. I can't even remember how many there've been in the past year in the US because they've all become a blur).
One for the introverts out there:
"Please be cautious when opening the door. People are on the other side."
Tokyo, Japan, Oct 2012.
Seriously, what country has this person from the hospitality sector been living in for the past 10 years?
Going out is *already* a luxury for most people and has been for a very long time.
"Please note the difference."
Higashi Honganji, Kyoto, Japan, 2012.
One of the many things I like about Japan is the gnomic mistranslations into English of the signage.
Kyoto, Japan, 2012.
I knew I had my own photos... I was privileged enough to take these at a special event many years ago at the #NHMLondon: this is the real deal, the fossilised lower jaw of a Mastodon americanus - not a cast - purchased in 1844 and originally excavated in Missouri, USA. The teeth are what give Mastodon its name - mastos from breast and odous from tooth - and, no, I'm still not seeing the resemblance to breasts. Look closely and the teeth in this fossil are fantastically opalescent. #FossilFriday
The name Mastodon, by the way, is derived from the shape of the animal's teeth: mastos meaning breast and odous meaning tooth. So, welcome to the breast-tooth platform that is Mastodon.
Image courtesy of Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mastodon_tooth_from_Mattapoisett_River_-_Robbins_Museum_-_Middleborough,_Massachusetts_-_DSC03767.jpg
(5/5)
Owen was already in the process of developing and contributing to the science of comparative anatomy, a field in which he was particularly adept. And it was he who set about reconstructing a physiologically accurate #Mastodon americanum from Koch's Leviathan.
The resulting animal is not as grandiose as the Leviathan, and Mastodon as a species are now known to have been marginally smaller animals than their pachyderm relatives of today, the elephant.
(4/5)
Koch's exhibition in London led to the purchase by the British Museum of his Leviathan for the princely sum of £1,300, and at this juncture, we meet Richard Owen who would go on to found what is now known as the Natural History Museum in London.
Owen is probably most famous for the 'terrible lizard' moniker he later gave to a subset of fossilised land animals - the 'Dinosauria' - but already by the 1840s he was a scientist with an interest in anatomy.
(3/5)
Koch gave us the 'Missouri Leviathan', comprising the fossilised bones of more than one animal to create something much bigger and much more imposing than what we now know the Mastodon to have been.
The colourised lithograph depicted here shows how Koch pitched his Leviathan to a European and London audience, with an excessive number of vertebrae and ribs, and the tusks splayed to the side of the head like a grappling hook.
(2/5)
This is a reproduction of one of my earliest #FossilFriday posts on this platform (foolishly, I let them all auto-delete). It's the Missouri Leviathan. Aka the American Mastodon.
Now housed in the central hall of #NHMLondon, this fossil was unearthed as part of a 'graveyard' of #Mastodon fossils by Albert Koch in 1840.
It's fair to say that Koch, being a showman interested in making money, took some liberties with his reconstruction of the fossilised animals he had found...
(1/5)
Hi, I'm Jonathan and I've only been using Mastodon for a few days. Like many other newbies to the platform, I started out on one of the large instances but have migrated here.
I've got an interest in #Tech, #Science, #History, #NaturalHistory, #Palaeontolgy, #Archaeology, #Museums, #Art and politics.
I'm not the most interesting person in the world but many of the people I follow will be, so there's that at least.