Hello I am Northwyrm and this is my Neocities page! I am working on making it look presentable, please bear with me! This is the MOBILE VERSION: I cannot work out how to change normal format to mobile so I'm just going to code a mobile version of the site side-by-side with the normal version!
Website Plans
- Work out how to collapse text
- Add images?
- Make this work for mobile
- This website has NO CONTENT ON IT!!! (March 2024)
Northwyrm
She/Her | 1996 | UK
Art by Bark of Bark's Bog
| Academic Specialty: | Metriorhynchoids, palaeontology, zoology. |
| Hobbies: | Reading, writing, bookbinding, drawing |
| Favourite Animals: | Crocodiles, snakes, worms, leeches, lizards, frogs, cats, bats. |
| Favourite Things: | Mossy forests, misty mountains, fleshy body horror, a good book and a hot chocolate. |
About My Informational Projects
Psuedosuchia
Pseudosuchians include crocodiles and all their relatives, extinct and extant. They were a huge group of animals during the Mesozoic, but are often overshadowed by their more popular archosaur cousins, the pterosaurs and dinosaurs. There aren't many websites dedicated to fun pseudosuchian facts, so I thought I would take a crack at making one!
About My Creative Projects
Dracones Mundi
'Dracones Mundi' means 'dragons of the world', and that's exactly what this project aims to deliver: a field guide to dragons of the world, so anyone can look up fun facts about local folklore and ecology. This aims to be a spiritual successor to Dugald Steers Dragonology books or William O'Connor's Dracopedia series, but with more scientific insight (as I have studied palaeontology - these dragons are based on pseudoschians because pseudosuchians are my favourite animals) and my own take on mythology and folklore. I have been working on this project for years, hopefully it will be my magnum opus, a very beautiful and cool dragon book!
Bloodmood
Bloodmood is an enormously fun writing project - the length of a novel (over 100k words!) and my main 'story' (as Dracones Mundi is a field guide and my other writing projects are embryonic right now). The story follows a misanthropic evil scientist who had to quit her evil science job after recieving a vampire bite from one of the undead nosferatus in her care. Her work starts to follow her home, however, as monsters escape from the secret underground lab. The scientist is hastily re-hired by a fairy working for the same Institute, and they team up with a secret agent and one of the vampires to re-capture the monsters. Bloodmood is a story with werewolves, unicorns, mermaids, demons, goblins, giant woodlice named 'Rhoomba' and science fiction telepathy gadgets. A little silly and a little gory. :)
Where Can You Find Me?
- I post book reviews at TheStoryGraph (although I haven't updated it since 2022!)
- I talk about my fictional characters on Art Fight (an art-trading game which is only 'open' during June, I love Art Fight!)
- Progress about my 'Dracones Mundi' or 'dragons of the world' project can be found on the Dracones Mundi Tumblr Blog
- I reblog jokes about writing and memes about vampires on the Bloodmood Tumblr Blog
- You can support my creative projects, commission art or send me a little cash on my Ko-Fi page!
- For an up-to-date look at my research, check out my ORCiD
Academic Background
- Bachelor's degree in Zoology (Newcastle University)
- Masters by Research in Palaeontology and Geobiology (University of Edinburgh)
- Main author of Rostral neurovasculature indicates sensory trade-offs in Mesozoic pelagic crocodylomorphs (Bowman et al. 2021)
- My debut paper compared the nerve and blood channels in the skulls of thalattosuchians (ancient crocodylomorphs adapted for life in open ocean) to the nerve and blood channels in modern crocodylians. Crocodylians have special integumentary sensory organs (ISOs)(look for tiny black freckles on their faces!) that they use to detect prey underwater, as their underwater eyesight is poor. Evidence for these ISOs can be seen in crocodylian skulls, which are full of tiny blood and nerve channels to supply the ISOs. In comparison, thalattosuchians have very few blood and nerve channels to supply ISOs, so it is likely they did not have ISOs. They did have large eyes, however, so my paper posits that there was a trade-off between eyesight and ISO sensation.
- Co-author of Evidence for a novel cranial thermoregulatory pathway in thalattosuchian crocodylomorphs (Young et al 2023)
- Thalattosuchian crocodylomorphs had a pair of perculiar grooves on the roof of their mouth: these paired grooves may have supplied blood and nerves to organs on the roof of the mouth that could be inflated with blood like a built-in cooling system; modern bowhead whales have a similar cooling mechanism. Nothing for certain can be said yet, the paper is mostly describing and comparing these grooves and exploring possible reasons for them.