Diary (December 19, 2020)

Online diary of Karl Jones for Saturday December 19, 2020.

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Diary

Gallery

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  A Maze of Stars by John Brunner - front cover.

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  Western Interior Seaway during the mid-Cretaceous (approximately 100 million years ago).

A Maze of Stars

"A Maze of Stars" by John Brunner (1991)

My prison is the universe,
a maze of stars my cage.
I bear an unremitting curse:
My prison is the universe.
No mercy may my doom reverse
nor pleas my plight assuage
My prison is the universe -
a maze of stars, my cage.

• A Maze of Stars @ Wikipedia

Western Interior Seaway

The Western Interior Seaway (also called the Cretaceous Seaway, the Niobraran Sea, the North American Inland Sea, and the Western Interior Sea) was a large inland sea that existed during the mid- to late Cretaceous period as well as the very early Paleogene, splitting the continent of North America into two landmasses, Laramidia to the west and Appalachia to the east. The ancient sea stretched from the Gulf of Mexico and through the middle of the modern-day countries of the United States and Canada, meeting with the Arctic Ocean to the north. At its largest, it was 2,500 feet (760 m) deep, 600 miles (970 km) wide and over 2,000 miles (3,200 km) long.

• Western Interior Seaway @ Wikipedia
• Marine transgression

Ammolite

Ammolite is an opal-like organic gemstone found primarily along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains of North America. It is made of the fossilized shells of ammonites, which in turn are composed primarily of aragonite, the same mineral contained in nacre, with a microstructure inherited from the shell. It is one of few biogenic gemstones; others include amber and pearl.1 In 1981, ammolite was given official gemstone status by the World Jewellery Confederation (CIBJO), the same year commercial mining of ammolite began. It was designated the official gemstone of the City of Lethbridge, Alberta in 2007.[2][3]

Ammolite is also known as aapoak (Kainah for "small, crawling stone"), gem ammonite, calcentine, and Korite. The latter is a trade name given to the gemstone by the Alberta-based mining company Korite. Marcel Charbonneau and his business partner Mike Berisoff were the first to create commercial doublets of the gem in 1967. They went on to form Ammolite Minerals Ltd.

• Ammolite @ Wikipedia

Egg Mountain site

Egg Mountain was discovered in 1977 by Marion Brandvold, owner of the Trex Agate Rock Shop in Bynum, Montana, who discovered the bones of juvenile dinosaurs at this site. It is a colonial nesting site on the Willow Creek Anticline in the Two Medicine Formation that is famous for its fossil eggs of Maiasaura, which demonstrated for the first time that at least some dinosaurs cared for their young. The eggs were arranged in dug-out earthen nests, each nest about a parent's body length from the next, and baby dinosaurs were also found with skeletons too cartilaginous for them to walk - similar to those of altricial (helpless) baby birds. The parent(s) must then have brought food to the young, and there is plant matter in the nests that may be evidence of either this or for incubation of the eggs. Maiasaura also grew extremely fast, at rates comparable to modern birds. Skeletons of Orodromeus and skeletons and eggs of Troodon were also found at Egg Mountain.

• Two Medicine Formation @ Wikipedia

Briallen Hopper

Briallen Hopper is an American writer and literature scholar.

She is the author of the collection Hard to Love: Essays and Confessions.

• Briallen Hopper @ Wikipedia

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles