Cranial fissures and moss on an "outdoor" skull. I never get tired of looking at the contrast between the asymmetry of the individual twists and turns of the fissures and the overall symmetry of the fissures as a whole. To me they are some of the most delicately beautiful lines in nature. Although functionally similar to a dovetail joint in carpentry, cranial fissures are much stronger and more resilient due to the incredibly large surface contact area.
3 comments:
Nice shot!
Reminds me of the Mississippi river.
I love the little cracks, too.
Gives a powerful sense of time.
Why'd you cut off the antlers?
Hi Brian.
The antlers had already been cut off when I found this skull. If you look closely you can see that the mice have been chewing on the pedicles (where the antler attaches to the skull) as well. I live in the woods, on a lonely dirt road. We get a lot of hunters up here during deer season, we get a lot of people who dump their deer carcasses along the side of the road after they butcher them, and we get some roadkill. This skull was of the dumped carcass variety.
I don't know how much you know about physics and math, but the reason that the fissures remind you of the Mississippi is that the physics and math behind the formation of both cranial fissures and river courses is quite similar. The difference of course is that river courses change over time and cranial fissures do not, but the original formation of them is all about paths of least resistance, and fractal geometrics, etc. Which is why I went into art and not science. :)
Glad you like it!
Fascinating - the photo of the fissures and the science behind them.
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