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