It’s been a while since we’ve had any Thylacinidae content on this blog and, let’s be honest, we usually stick to the Thylacinus genus.

From this amazing blog Paleoillustration (“Mostly paleoart, but sometimes I post speculative biology too.”):

The murderous marsupial lion, from thylakos (pouch-lion), carnifex (murderer, tormentor, butcher) was a large, carnivorous marsupial mammal that lived in Australia from the early to late Pleistocene Era. Despite its name, it wasn’t part of the cat family, but was more closely related to wombats. it was one of the apex predators at its time, and probably fed on early man

George Boorujy, Pronghorn II, 2008
Ink on paper, 38”X50”

Euthora cristata.

Sometimes, I think the best thing about nytimes.com is that it gives you higher-fidelity versions of the paper’s awesome illustrations. (Also a pretty cool story.)

Voluta tesselata (Melo melo tesselata.) by William Swainson, London, 1821.

Full book can be found here. Yes, it is the best book title in the world.

Guiron’s most prominent feature is his knife-shaped head, which is 100 times harder than diamond and is packed with shuriken-like stars that can be fired from a pair of openings above the eyes. The creature has 360-degree radar vision, 60 times more teeth than a piranha, lungs adapted for long-distance space travel, sac-like organs for storing energy and uranium, balloon-like organs in the legs that blast jets of liquid through the feet, webbed fins for stability in water, and magnetic suction cups on the hands.

Illustrations by Stacey Rozich, who is responsible for the album art for the new Earth record.

William T. Horton, from The Savoy, No 2, London, 1896.

Rockwell Kent

Illustrations by Magnus Voll Mathiassen.

All Sorts had a competition for users to illustrate collective nouns from their database. The winning illustrations are now available as two color prints.

Silver brooch plated with gold, in the form of a double sun-snake, or swastika, found in Iceland.

Ellen Raskin’s illustration for A Paper Zoo: A Collection of Animal Poems by Modern American Poets, 1968.

Illustration for The Snake Mother by Abraham Merritt.

Cover illustration from Suiting Up For Space (1971).

The history of the space suit from the early ’30s to the late ’60s. Pictured on the left is an early British full-pressure suit from 1940. On the right is a 1954 Navy version.