It’s time for another Trilobite Tuesday. Sometimes fossilized trilobites are little more than flat impressions upon a rock surface. Other times, however, they’re preserved as near-perfect three dimensional reliefs—like this 2.4 in (6 cm) Nankinolithus! This critter, which lived during the Ordovician some 460 million years ago, was found in what is now Scotland.
It’s Wednesday, so hang in there like the silky anteater (Cyclopes didactylus)! This critter, which spends most of its life in the trees, uses long claws and a prehensile tail to hang high above the ground. It’s the world’s smallest anteater and only grows about 17.7 inches (45 centimeters) in length, much of it tail. Fun fact: This mammal’s ideal home is a ceiba tree because the tree’s seed pods are similar in appearance to the anteater’s own silky fur, camouflaging this small species from predators.
Photo: Quinten Questel, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
The tradition of giving miniature Easter eggs was not a new one but when Tsar Alexander III (r. 1881-1894) commissioned Peter Carl Fabergé (1846-1920) to make one for Easter in 1885, a legend was born. Over 50 eggs were made by the masters of Fabergé’s workshop, many of them for the Russian imperial family as Alexander and then his son Nicolas II (r. 1894-1917) gave these to their wives and, in the case of the latter, also to the Dowager Empress each year at Easter.
Meanwhile in Arkansas, Governor Sarah Suckabee Sanders just legalized child labor.
It’s probably important to emphasize that the relaxation of child labour laws isn’t directed at white children, or more broadly the children of middle and upper class American citizens. These changes to labour laws are intended to make it even easier for employers to exploit the labour of migrant children, who already make up a not unsubstantial portion of the manufacturing and meat packing sectors.
