Postponed

I was going to write a post on Merriam's wonderful book on extinct marine reptiles and my profound disappointment on buying what was billed as its successor. And how black and white line drawings look more authentic and scientific and scholarly than even the best colour illustrations. I was going to move on to the Permo-Triassic explosion of reptilian diversity as the Cotylosaurs adapted to new environments and the ancestral diapsids and synapsids first took to the stage, looking little like the dinosaurs, birds and mammals they would beget. And I was going to illustrate it with Pareiasaurs and Placodonts and draw particular attentions to the convergence of evolutions that brought about the Permian Daedalosaurs, the Triassic Icarosaurus and the modern flying lizard. And that.

But I got distracted by a cup of tea.