“It’s still astonishing to see that film. In fact, when he was doing storyboards for the Ave Maria section of Fantasia (1940) and one of the story people said, ‘You know, I don’t think we’re using the cartoon medium as we should be.’ Walt immediately turned on the guy and said, ‘This is not the cartoon medium, we shouldn’t only be thinking of this as a cartoon, we have worlds to conquer here.’”

- John Canemaker, Author and Historian

(Source: vintagemickeymouse)

usagicentric:

Ningyo (人魚, “human fish”, often translated as “mermaid”) is a fish-like creature from Japanese folklore. Anciently, it was described with a mokey’s mouth with small teeth like a fish’s, shining golden scales, and a quiet voice like a skylark or a flute. Its flesh is pleasant-tasting, and anyone who eats it will attain remarkable longevity. However, catching a ningyo was believed to bring storms and misfortune, so fishermen who caught these creatures were said to throw them back into the sea. A ningyo washed onto the beach was an omen of war or calamity.

prehistoric-birds:

Two artists’ renderings of “Proavis”, a hypothetical bird ancestor. The lizard-limbed would-be creature is certainly a product of its time, as birds were once thought to be descendants of the clade Pseudosuchia (the name Crurotarsi is more commonly used today and generally includes the same taxa). Traditionally, Pseudosuchia was considered a suborder of the now-obsolete order Thecodontia.

Gerhard Heilmann laid out the hypothesis of a pseudosuchian ancestry of birds in his highly influential 1926 book The Origin of Birds, which was considered the last word on the subject of bird evolution for several decades after its publication. Heilmann acknowledged a close relationship between non-avian theropod dinosaurs and birds but rejected the notion that the former directly gave rise to the latter. One example of his reasoning was that birds have a furcula (wishbone), a feature which non-avian theropods did not appear to him to possess (though we now know otherwise), yet ancient reptilian fossils that predated dinosaurs did show clear evidence of a furcula-like structure. Though the evidence to which we now have access overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that birds are indeed the descendants of dinosaurs rather than the crocodile-like “thecodonts”, much of the book’s research remains of interest.

(“Proavis” art sources: x x)

swiczeniuk:

amoderndandy:

ianbrooks:

The Esteemed Dr. Takeshi Yamada and his Sea Rabbit

Dr. Takeshi Yamada of the honorable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan, has dedicated his life to the repopulation of the near-extinct Sea Rabbit, a close relative of the sea lion and sea dog. Once a prolific species in the Coney Island area (coney island literally translates to “wild rabbit island”, as named by the Dutch), sea rabbits were also referred to as mermaid rabbit, merrabbit, rabbit fish or seal rabbit in the natural history documents in the 17th century. The current conservation status (risk of extinction) of the sea rabbit is “Extinct in the Wild (EW) according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Yamada though, they are now making a slow comeback.

Truly a noble effort!

Another reason why I desperately want to go to Coney Island.

quiero un sea rabbit :c