The Llangernyw Yew: The Oldest Living Thing in Europe

The Llangernyw Yew is an ancient yew in the village of Llangernyw, Conwy, North Wales. The yew is fragmented and its core part has been lost, leaving numerous huge offshoots. The girth of the tree at the ground level is 10.75 m, split trunk section where the church oil tank was formerly located. The Llangernyw Yew is an ancient tree, ad its cleft trunk appears as a living portal to the world of the dead, with a small field of tombstones resting just on the other side of wooded gateway. The Llangernyw Yew was planted sometime in the prehistoric Bronze Age and amazingly it's still growing.

This male yew tree lives in the churchyard of St. Digain's, very hard to determine the age of yew trees. Although the churchyard gate holds a certificate from the Yew Tree Campaign in 2002, according to all the data the tree is dated to between 4,000 and 5,000 years old. There is an alternative theory that presumes the tree is only as old as the adjacent saint site, which would make it around 1,500 years old. In the mid-1990s the church oil tank stood in the space between the two trunk fragments; however, this was moved when it was realized that the tree was ancient. The yew is designated one of the fifty Great British trees in recognition of its place in national heritage.

When this tank was built a lot of the dead wood was removed from the site which makes dating the age of the tree more difficult for dendrochronologists. This makes the Llangernyw Yew a likely candidate for one of the oldest still-standing trees in Great Britain. Due in no small part to this, the yew was designated as one of the Fifty Great British Trees in 2002. Local says the church of Llangernyw is inhabited by an ancient spirit known as “Angelystor”. Every year on Halloween and 31 July the spirit is said to appear in the church and solemnly announces, in Welsh, the names of those parish members who will die within the year.

The Mummy of “Nodosaur Dinosaur”

The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada unveiled “Nodosaur” Dinosaur Mummy with skin and gust intact, you can’t even see its bones. But yet scientists are hailing it as maybe the best-preserved dinosaur specimen ever discovered. The 110 million years later, those bones remain covered by the creature’s intact skin and armor. Back in 2011, a heavy equipment operator by the name of Shawn Funk, who works for energy company Suncor in Alberta, was drilling crude oil sands when he abruptly uncovered walnut brown rocks that looked like ribs. The dinosaur is so well-preserved that numerous have taken to calling it not a fossil, but an honest-to-goodness “dinosaur mummy. However, the creature’s skin, armor, and even some of its guts intact, researchers are amazed at its nearly unprecedented level of preservation.

The dinosaur, with fossilized skin and gut contents intact, came from the Millennium Mine six years ago in the oil sands of northern Alberta, once a seabed. That sea was full of life, teeming with huge reptiles that grew as long as 60 feet, while its shores were traversed by enormous dinosaurs for millions of years. The area has been coughing up fossils since the beginning of recorded time. Cabel Brown a researcher said we don’t just have a skeleton; even we have a dinosaur as it would have been. When this dinosaur a member of a new species named “nodosaur” was alive, it was a huge four-legged herbivore protected by a spiky, plated armor and weighing in at approximately 3,000 pounds. The mummified “nodosaur” remain so intact is still something of a mystery may have been swept away by a flooded river and carried out to sea, where it eventually sank.

Over millions of years on the ocean floor, minerals took the place of the dinosaur’s armor and skin, preserving it in the lifelike form now on display. Moreover, the “nodosaur” was so well-preserved; getting it into its current display form was still an arduous undertaking. The creature was, in fact, first discovered in 2011 when a crude oil mine worker accidentally discovered the specimen while on the job. Since that lucky moment, it has taken researchers 7,000 hours over the course of the last six years to both test the remains and prepare them for display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, where visitors now have the chance to see the closest thing to a real-life dinosaur that the world has likely ever seen.

 

 

 

 

“Stuckie” The Mummified Dog

Well, 50 years ago a dog went up a tree chasing a racoon or perhaps for something. Unfortunately he never came down. Thus, fast forward 20 years. But, that’s exactly what a team of loggers with the Georgia Kraft Corp. found, while cutting down a chestnut oak tree in the 1980s, somewhere in a forest in the state of Georgia, the United States of America. When they sawed off the trunk, they were stunned to discover the mummified corpse of a dog entombed inside.

Furthermore, the kind of tree that the dog had lodged itself in was exclusively qualified to lend itself to the natural mummification process. Chestnut oaks contain tannins, which are used in taxidermy and tanning to treat animal pelts so that they don’t decay. The tannins from the inside of the tree seeped out into the dog and prevented it from rotting inside. Actually, the dog had chased his prey down a hollow in the tree where it became stuck and then died of starvation.

Moreover, dry conditions inside the hollow of the tree endorsed the corpse to dry without rotting. The upward draft of air seemingly carried the scent of the dead animal away, so it wasn't devoured by insects or other creatures. The tannic acid of the oak, which is a natural desiccant, also supported to absorb the moisture and hardened the animal's skin. In its place of pulping the log, the loggers donated it whole with the dog still stuck inside to the Southern Forest World, a museum in Waycross dedicated to the history of forestry, where it remains on display. The mummified dog, teeth still bared in a fight for survival.

No one knows how Stuckie got stuck, but experts think he has been stuck since 1960. From the last 20 years or so, the dog was called simply "Mummified Dog." But in 2002, the museum ran a name-the-dog contest, and the name "Stuckie" was chosen. The innocent four-year-old dog has been known by that name since then.

The Strange Satisfying Food Photos

Well, food presentation, or “plating” has long been a vital aspect to dining across many cultures. The dawn of the Instagram era has seemingly taken it to another level. So, in the recent times, dining out can feel like a trip to a tourist landmark. Thus, dishes are wisely documented and curated for the visual pleasure of virtual diners on social media. Though, ornamental the aesthetic appeal of food is not just the domain of chefs in fancy restaurants.

Occasionally the humble green-grocer on the corner will take great pride in his produce, and prudently arrange his fruit and vegetables in a pleasing manner for his customers. Perhaps you unintentionally made a pancake that arranged itself into a triumph of geometry, or more often than not, but Mother Nature was just awesome and produced the sexiest damn onion you have ever seen. Here the compiled list of the most gorgeous grub we could find, whether it’s gratifyingly symmetrical or just plain tasty-looking!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stunning Rare Bird’s Eye View of American Landscape

From mountains to the sea, stunning aerial pictures offer rare bird's-eye view of the landscape across the United States. Talented photographer “Jassen Todorov” took the aerial images of rivers, lakes and mountains to show a different angle to American life than skyscrapers and fast food outlets. Some of the destinations that have photographed from such a height include rock formations in Utah, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Tiny Islands in Florida and Yosemite National Park.

Jassen Todorov said, I’ve been exploring the United States from above for the past four years - I love flying and photographing remote locations and most of them are not accessible by any other means. A far as me, flying is a spiritual experience and sharing these photographs with others gives me great pleasure. I fly my 1976 Piper Warrior airplane while photographing - it's a four seater 150 HP single engine plane. Therefore, so many astonishing places here in the US. We have remarkable deserts, mountains, glacier, lakes, canyons and man-made structures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Europe’s Best Scenic Roads

The stunning photographs that show why Europe is one of the best travelling place in the world for a scenic drive. Romanian Photographer Ervin Boer took unbelievable Europe best scenic roads while he travelling with Great Rally company, which organized 3 day trip for car enthusiasts from Belgium to Austria.  The most entertaining 1,250 mile trips the life time memories for me. I actually more photographing than driving and I was hypnotized by the landscapes and curvy roads and was always hanging out the window with my camera ready. Exhausting but I can’t wait to do it again. These are the stunning images that prove that Europe has some of the world's most scenic roads.

While on the road trip, he posts most of his amazing photographs on Facebook, took in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Austria and travelled on famed roads such as the San Bernardino Pass, the Umbrial Pass as well as highways through the Black Forest. He has been working in automotive photography since 2013, was picked to accompany the trip and capture the images after the founder of the Great Rally Company saw his work on Google. I was ecstatic to be picked to snap the photographs; I would say it was an impressive and memorable 7 days of driving and photography.