PaleoLimerick #20 - Suspensful Feeding

Inoceramus, a bivalve of yore
Had a hinge, but not like a door
Filter-feeding was fine
With sea water like wine
A life habit that beckoned for more.

PaleoLimerick #19 – Ediacaran Ecstacy

Dickinsonia was a bilateral worm
That possessed a soft body, yet firm
In Precambrian seas
It became quite the tease
Not knowing the first thing about germs.

PaleoLimerick #18 – Mesozoic Misapprehension

An ammonite in the Cretaceous ocean
Was filled with the strongest emotion
Her exquisite suture
Preserved in the future
But of extinctions, she had absolutely no notion.

PaleoHaiku #13: Cruising, and a...

Trilobite trails
A burrow celebration
Shallow but profound.

PaleoHaiku #12: Thanatos in Motion

Molluscan debris
Comingling of bodies
Summer storm, long past.

PaleoHaiku #11: Abyssal Farm

Paleodictyon
Agriculture without light
A deep-sea riddle.

(Related news story)

PaleoLimerick #17: PaleoRodents of Unusual Size

Palaeocastor was a gigantic beaver
In making dams, it was an overachiever
It chewed down stout trees
With consummate ease
Turning today’s beavers into unbelievers.

PaleoLimerick #16: Pachydermal Surprise

A mammoth of considerable size
Was really an elephant in hairy disguise
With tusks that were too long
Making love just felt wrong
As a lady mammoth very quickly surmised.

PaleoLimerick #15: Fangs for the Memories

Smilodon was a saber-toothed cat
Who ate muscle, gristle, bone, and fat
Its size, to be male
Was the same as female
And their teeth were quite pointed, not flat.

(Related news story.)

PaleoLimerick #14: Flat Rocks, Hard Labor

Some dinosaur diggers Down Under
Were looking for old bones to plunder
In Cretaceous rocks
They worked like bullocks
Doing everything they could not to chunder.

(This limerick and the two preceding ones are in honor of the Dinosaur Dreaming dig site near Inverloch, Victoria in Australia.)

PaleoLimerick #13: Palaeo-Rewards

Flat Rocks is a place filled with bones
But to find them, you have to crack stones
A mammal jaw here
Deserves a big beer
You just have to break the right zones.

PaleoLimerick #12: Dinosaur Dreaming of Fashion

Inverloch is a palaeo-place
Where dinosaurs try to save face
By yielding a bone
They try to atone
For wearing Blunnies with frilly white lace.

PaleoHaiku #10: Ancient Aves

Confuciusornis
A theropod lineage
Tail, teeth, and claws.

PaleoHaiku #9: Top-Heavy Cervid

Irish elk, large deer
Pleistocene ungulate with
An impressive rack.

PaleoHaiku #8: Nontrans-Atlantic

Aquatic reptile
Permian Mesosaurus
But not sea-faring.

PaleoHaiku #7: Rusophycus Recumbent

Trilobite resting
Shallow burrow, hiding well
Summer eternal.

PaleoLimerick #11: King of the Vestigial Appendages

Tyrannosaurus was a dinosaur which
Was renown as a son-of-a-b*tch
With such tiny arms
He inflicted no harms
And died of primordial jock itch.

PaleoLimerick #10: Prodigious 'Possum

Diprotodon was a marsupial that
Weighed 700 times that of a cat
If they ever met
I would certainly have bet
That the cat would have become very flat.

PaleoLimerick #9: Beneath a Theropod Darkly

Oryctodromeus is a very long name
But it’s descriptive, so hold all your blame
With arms as digging tools
And long legs, it broke rules
A burrower of unparalleled fame.

PaleoLimerick #8: Dinosaur Down Underground

A dinosaur that dug underground
Made burrows and sediment mounds
A tempestuous flood
Filled them with mud
Ensuring that a fossil later was found.

(Artwork by Ruth Truth, a.k.a. Hallelujah, at Coffee with Hallelujah.)

PaleoLimerick #7: Bloody Big Yabby

A crayfish from the Early Cretaceous
Was so large it was considered predaceous
With one giant claw
You were shoved in its maw
Producing scat that was also hellacious.

(Poem was debuted live on October 18, 2009 at the Geological Society of America annual meeting in Portland, Oregon.)

PaleoHaiku #6: Multituberculate Thumbprint

Mammalian toes
Impressed in Jurassic sand
Minute hands and feet.

PaleoHaiku #5: Carboniferous Carnivore

Mistaken fossil
Megarachne, big spider
Now eurypterid.

PaleoHaiku #4: Grounded Sloth

Megatherium
Consuming autumn grasses
Pleistocene yearning.

PaleoHaiku #3: Turretellid Taphos

High-spired mollusc
Filter-feeding gastropod
Abundant in death

PaleoHaiku #2: Echinoderm Unassembled

Crinoidal limestone
Filled with bodily pieces
Portraying decay

PaleoHaiku #1: Arachnoeros

Dear eurypterid
My Silurian beauty
Let me be your prey

PaleoLimerick #6: Komodo No Mo'

Megalania was much more than a lizard
With a gigantic stomach and gizzard
With recurving teeth
This varanid bequeathed
Lacerations that sliced, diced, and scissored.

PaleoLimerick #5: Permian Pinhead

A synapsid with a diminutive head
Was barely aware of itself getting fed
With low-quality fodder
It was a very slow plodder
No wonder, by the Triassic, it was dead.

PaleoLimerick #4: Teleost Voracity

Xiphactinus was a very big fish
That ate whatever it wished
When making a kill
It swam with great skill
With a flourish, a flash, and a swish.

PaleoLimerick #3:Evolving Tastes

A gymosperm glanced at its seed
And said, “What else do I need?”
The bribe of a fruit
That tastes good, to boot
Caused mammals and birds to take heed.

PaleoLimerick #2: Ancient Avian Economics

Genyornis was an oversized duck
That waded through Pleistocene muck
Its gigantic feet
Contained little meat
But her rump was worth more than a buck

PaleoLimerick #1: Trilobite Ardor

A trilobite with eyes made of stone
Was so beautiful she made people moan
A break in the shale
Revealed her tail
Her most erogenous zone.