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A Miocene Species, Extant, Advanced & Prehistoric.

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Greetings. The hoatzin, Opisthocomus hoazin, is a species of tropical avian dinosaur that arose in the Miocene approximately 23 million years ago, a native of the Amazon and Orinoco river basins of South America.  The only extant species of the ancient genus Opisthocomus, the hoatzin occupies swamps, mangroves, and other tropical forest habitats. The species has been successful since it first appeared in the fossil record, and has several contradictory physical characteristics that confirm its ancient lineage, yet suggest advanced evolutionary processes at work. The young of the species possess claws on two of its wing digits, unique to modern birds, and reminiscent of Jurassic and Cretaceous Period birds. Adults have digestive systems that are capable of fermentation and the processing of plant matter, two attributes known from some primates and herbivorous ungulate mammals, but not known from any other species of modern bird.  Hoatzins have a length of about 65 centimeters, ...
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The Penchant for Conspiratorial Jumps.

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Greetings. The United States had not landed anything, manned or unmanned, on the Moon since December of 1972. That changed on February 22nd of 2025 when the unmanned Odysseus moon lander touched down at 6:23pm Eastern Standard Time. When the lander commenced broadcasting signals back towards the Earth, the strength of the signal was immediately seen as somewhat less powerful than expected by the technicians in charge of the probe's operation and mission itinerary. When this particular bit of news became public knowledge, the conspiracy theorists immediately began their speculations. Some made statements alleging that the mission of the probe was to somehow "hide something" from the public, although what that something is was not elaborated on. Some made the wild claim of "aliens!" Such rhetoric is typical of the UFO subculture, particularly the "woo" crowd. As it turns out, mission technicians believe that one of the probe's landing pads made conta...
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Examples of Persistence Hunting.

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Greetings. Throughout the Earth's long history of complex life forms, predatory animals have utilized several techniques in the effort to catch and dispatch prey animals in their respective habitats and environments. Some iconic species have been highly effective ambush predators, with modern-day wolves, cheetah, and the extinct theropods allosaurus, ceratosaurus, and velociraptor being charter members of the "ambush club."  Thylacinus cynocephalus, better known as the Thylacine, or erroneously as the Tasmanian Wolf, was (is?) a practitioner of persistence hunting. A large marsupial native to the island of Tasmania, the Thylacine slowly stalked its prey until it forced eventual exhaustion, dispatching its quarry soon thereafter. With the species' claimed extinction, which is still hotly debated, the landscape of Tasmania has been left void of an apex predatory species, a situation which is the direct result of destructive human activities.  Some well-known species wer...
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