'They enforced their live strength with the power of dead things. Dead things did their
bidding.'
Jack London,
White Fang.
North Finchley, London
'I just imagine him sitting up there under a sea of papers and occasionally pulling one
from the bottom of a stack
(probably with a week-old donut smushed in the middle of the stack somewhere) and thinking "ah yes... I ought to do something about
this."'
Anonymous
Clare Victoria Phelps
Synapsids ("fused arch"), formerly known as "mammal-like reptiles", are a class of
amniotes (the other being the
sauropsids) that developed one hole in their skull (temporal fenestra) behind each eye, about 320 million years ago during the late
Carboniferous. The 4,500 species of living
synapsids, known as mammals, are currently the dominant land animals, and include both aquatic (whales) and avian (bats) species, and the
largest animal ever known to
have existed (the blue whale).
'The female accepts a male who keeps up adequately during the dance, and rejects one
who does not. The female is,
therefore, extremely discriminating; in contrast, a male will dance with and attempt to mount a blob of wax on the end of a bristle, moved in an
appropriate side-to-side
manner and then held still.'