Tea at Trianon: 500,000-year-old Fossils in Florida

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, February 23, 2025

500,000-year-old Fossils in Florida

From Live Science:

Fossil collectors have discovered a prehistoric graveyard buried in Florida’s Steinhatchee River. The site has yielded a remarkable collection of more than 500 fossils dating back roughly half a million years. It was full of exceptionally well-preserved bones from ancient mammals, including horses, giant armadillos, sloths and possibly a new species of tapir.
These fossils remained hidden until 2022, when fossil collectors Robert Sinibaldi and Joseph Branin stumbled upon them during a routine diving expedition in the river’s murky waters. After Branin spotted horse teeth sticking out of the sediment, the pair uncovered a hoof core and a tapir skull, signaling a potential major discovery.
“It wasn’t just quantity, it was quality,” Sinibaldi said in a statement released on Feb. 12 by the Florida Museum of Natural History. “We knew we had an important site, but we didn’t know how important.”
The Florida Museum recognized the significance of the find and dated it to the middle of the Irvingtonian North American Land Mammal Age (1.6 million–250,000 years ago)—an evolutionary transition period with a sparse fossil record. (Read more.)