Where am I?


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Where in the world is this, and why have I posted this image today?

Answers later, but post your guesses.

Update: Yes, it is the Galapagos Islands (though South is "up"). On today in 1835, the HMS Beagle, carrying the young naturalist Charles Darwin, arrived at the islands. To quote Darwin:

The distribution of the tenants of this archipelago would not be nearly so wonderful, if, for instance, one island had a mocking-thrush, and a second island some other quite distinct genus, -- if one island had its genus of lizard, and a second island another distinct genus, or none whatever; -- or if the different islands were inhabited, not by representative species of the same genera of plants, but by totally different genera, as does to a certain extent hold good: for, to give one instance, a large berry-bearing tree at James Island has no representative species in Charles Island. But it is the circumstance, that several of the islands possess their own species of the tortoise, mocking-thrush, finches, and numerous plants, these species having the same general habits, occupying analogous situations, and obviously filling the same place in the natural economy of this archipelago, that strikes me with wonder. It may be suspected that some of these representative species, at least in the case of the tortoise and of some of the birds, may hereafter prove to be only well-marked races; but this would be of equally great interest to the philosophical naturalist.

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You are in your flying time travel machine, and you are looking down at the end of the biblical flood. Noah et al are just getting ready to eat all the dinosaurs and start the big in-breeding party!

Or, maybe it's after a rugby game and those are chunks of an early lunch in an American housewife's blue-bowl clean toilet.

Cheers!

I almost instantly recognize it.

I going to say the Galapagos Island, and today may make an anniversary of about them - made Darwin's disembarkment onto the islands?

Because you've been checking out the Mat That Campus series at The Daily Transcript.

By somnilista, FCD (not verified) on 15 Sep 2006 #permalink

Oops, that was "Map That Campus", not Mat.

By somnilista, FCD (not verified) on 15 Sep 2006 #permalink

The Galapagos, of course. Stomping ground of the high priest of evolution and origin of species. Nice image.