Tea at Trianon: Rhino Living in Frigid Arctic Circle 23 Million Years Ago

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

Wednesday, November 5, 2025

Rhino Living in Frigid Arctic Circle 23 Million Years Ago

From Good News Network:

Rhinos have an evolutionary history that spanned over 40 million years, encompassing every continent except South America and Antarctica. The new species of ‘Arctic rhino’ lived about 23 million years ago during the Early Miocene period.

“The addition of this Arctic species to the rhino family tree now offers new insights to our understanding of their evolutionary history,” said study author Dr. Danielle Fraser, head of paleo-biology at the Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN). “Today there are only five species of rhinos in Africa and Asia, but in the past they were found in Europe and North America, with more than 50 species known from the fossil record.”
“More broadly, this study reinforces that the Arctic continues to offer up new knowledge and discoveries that expand on our understanding of mammal diversification over time.”

Scientists described the updated family tree for rhinocerotids in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, providing evidence that the new Arctic species migrated to North America across a “land bridge” that may have been a passage for terrestrial-mammal dispersal millions of years later than suggested by previous evidence. (Read more.)