(Roughly) Daily

While excavating a Victorian site in Trowbridge (in Wiltshire), scientists unearthed a fossilised squid (Belemnotheutis antiquus) so well preserved that they were able to draw a picture of it using its own 150 million-year-old ink.

Dr. Phil Wilby, who led the excavation:

Normally you would find only the hard parts like the shell and bones fossilised but there are a handful of locations around the world where soft preservation of the muscle, guts and gills has taken place. We think that these creatures were swimming around during the Jurassic period and were turned to stone soon after death. It’s called the Medusa affect. They can be dissected as if they are living animals, you can see the muscle fibres and cells. It is difficult to imagine how you can have something as soft and sloppy as an ink sac fossilised in three dimension, still black, and inside a rock that is 150 million years old.  The structure is similar to ink from a modern squid so we can write with it…. We felt that drawing the animal with it would be the ultimate self-portrait… I suppose we could theoretically use it for food colouring, too, but I don’t think I will try tasting it.

The Telegraph (UK)

As we get in touch with our inner Nemos, we muse that it was on this date in 1973 that “Monster Mash”– featuring the vocal stylings (and personally-created sound effects) of Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers (which included the astounding Leon Russell and producer Gary Paxton)– went gold for the second time, selling over twice as many copies– over 2 milion– as its first time around (in 1962).

For all of its popular success, MM was differentially received by the cognoscenti.   Elvis Presley thought “Monster Mash” was one of the dumbest songs ever recorded.  “I was a real Elvis fan,” Pickett recalled. “One day after the song had become a hit, I bumped into this girl who used to hang around Elvis’ house in Los Angeles. So I asked her, ‘How’s the King?’ “Well, he hates your record, Bobby,’ she said. When I asked why, she told me, ‘He thinks it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard.  “So I said, ‘Well, whoever liked him anyway?’ I don’t think he knew who Boris Karloff was, to tell you the truth.” Although Karloff was alive when the record was released, Pickett never met him. “I heard that he was in a record store and was buying my album, which had ‘Monster Mash” on it, and a friend on mine was there and said, ‘Oh, Mr. Karloff, I know the young man who did the song and  he’s a real big fan of yours.’ And Karloff said, ‘I love his record.’ So I was thrilled.”

source: Branson General Store