Posts until Monday are going to lack intellectual heft: I have a final exam to write and visitors descending. But I’ll proffer something from The Sun that isn’t either a busty woman en déshabillé or a scurrilous attack on Richard Dawkins.
It’s a tree shaped like a Tyrannosaurus:
The photographer, Spike Malin, spotted it in Norfolk and said this:
Spike, a father-of-five who works as the property manager at Blickling Hall in Norwich, called his find “amazing”.
He said: “I could not believe it when I first saw it. The chances of this happening must be so slim.”
Not really—there must be at least a dozen trees in the world that look like T. rex, and many more that look like dinosaurs.
And The Sun made a funny!
Wonder if it has Jurassic Bark?
Well, at least Matthew Cobb will appreciate it, and it isn’t shaped like Jesus, either.
h/t: Ludo
Very enjoyable! (Intellect also in need of a break, here, but here, that’s usual…)
Of course, it only looks like our outmoded picture of a carnivorous dinosaur – standing bolt upright with its tail on the ground.
Not that I’m being picky or anything.
I’ve been trying to find an online copy of a block print which I’ve had on my various room and house walls for 35-odd years now. It’s a theropod dinosaur in the old “upright” style”, and currently hangs on the wall behind our lemon tree, which is consequently described as being “knee-high to a tyrannosaur”.
The picture is credited to “Neave Parker”, who apparently did a lot of this sort of stuff for the NHM (Natural History Museum) and others in the 1950s.
While trying to find this picture online, I realised just how well-shaped tyrranosaur’s legs are : http://donglutsdinosaurs.com/original-kaiyodo-t-rex-model/ .
Hey, I like this Don Glut guy’s style – far better taste than the Sun (or as we call it on this side of the Pond, the Scum. “Dinosaur Valley Girls” indeed!
It’s a tree that looks like a T. rex as reconstructed, like, 50 years ago.
old style
new stylr
But wait, that’s back when this tree probably germinated! What are the odds??!?
Maybe the tree is trying to tell you that sometimes the old ways are best! 🙂
Well it did make me laugh! Although I would have preferred a tree that looked like a stegosaur, or a maggot, natch.
Cretacious bark.
awww c’mon Jerry, don’t post links to the Sun – I understand you’re a busy man, but really – it pains me so much. And this is the second one I’ve had thrown at me today, along with links from the Daily Mail and the Telegraph in the past week. My eyes are bleeding!
Sorry, but I don’t like readers telling me what or what not to post. If you don’t like the link, don’t click on it, or perhaps frequent some other website.
Jerry, I think s/he was just joking.
Isn’t it a branchosaurus?
Ha ha!
(Tho I think I would have gone with branchiosaurus, were I as clever as you…)
That would translate as “gilled lizard”.
Dendrosaurus?
Well, yes, but then you lose the play on “branch.” Cf Tree Rex…(in which the capital R has been bugging me, I admit).
Sometimes it’s hard not to be a stickler.
Oooh–“stick!”
Not to nitpick, but it looks to me like it’s not the tree that’s shaped like T. rex, but the mistletoe or ivy infesting it. Either that or there’s a lot of dead wood on that tree. Hard to tell for sure at this resolution.
By jove, you’re right! There are no leaves on the branches of this or the trees in the background (ie the photo was taken recently). Whatever’s making that green, it isn’t the tree. I will leave it to someone smarter than I to come up with a dino-flavoured ivy or mistletoe pun.
Hedera helix. Clearly a herbivore.
The tree is a European oak, Quercus rubor. You see a lot of trees in Norfolk like this, ivy clad sometimes with ‘stag-head’, that is dead branches at the top (though this is a winter picture). This is a water-stress feature – the tree is struggling to get water to the top branches, the farmer ploughs deep & right up to the edge of the field damaging roots etc. The tree will often survive a long time like this – it is trying to compensate for the water loss.
oops! Quercus robur
[Snigger] A friend when I was a student was doing a 5-year long PhD on the responses of different commercial tree crops to water-stress in Scotland.
While he got his PhD, he didn’t get any actual data – over his 5 years, none of his sample areas suffered from water shortage. Which, knowing Scotland, didn’t really surprise anyone.
Yes, you’re right. But, it’s not mistletoe — ivy looks right to me.
I noticed that right away.
Looks like proof of God-zilla to me…
And here I was thinking it resembled a green meerkat on steroids … or maybe mecha prairie dog.
Lolz. The raptor of god who takes away the sins of the 6,000 year old word.
I didn’t click through to the article…was “Tree Rex” JAC’s coining?
The Sun’s.
Thanks!
My parents lived near Blickling. Note how the tree, in an exposed position, leans away from the prevailing wind.
This was my favourite recent Norfolk tree-related story –
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/child_12_rescued_from_tree_in_happisburgh_1_1138358
note how it made the local paper which covers Norfolk, the 5th largest county in England!
But what’s the largest county in the UK? (I’m genuinely curious.)
These days after the 1970s redrawing of the ancient shires, (from same root as ‘shear’ & ‘share’ I think) North Yorkshire –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_counties_by_area
Previously the original county of Yorkshire.
The largest “county” in England is, as Dominic says, North Yorkshire (I think it’s also the only one from which you can see both North and Irish Seas) with 8600sq.km (-ish). but for the UK, the largest is Highland Region at 26000sq.km (-ish). Whether Scottish Regions are comparable to English counties … is a moot point. Close enough in my experience.
Thanks, makes sense. I’ve ridden my bike (push-bike) across the Highlands and they seemed really large!
It could be Godzilla.
Or Kudzulla!
That’s not a TRex! That’s Ceiling Cat! Further proof that Ceiling Cat exists!
The notion that these things a rare is very naive. There was an ivy covered tree that looked like a T. Rex close to where I live in East Yorkshire. It doesn’t any more because the winter storms have blown bits of it off. Seeing images in the random shapes of things is really common, there is even a name for it, pareidolia, I may have spelled that wrong but I did my best. The most impressive one that I ever saw was a cloud that was shaped like Yoda. Shaped like Yoda the cloud was.