Awesome Photos of the Day

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That is really gorgeous. This next is mind-boggling:
I'm always suspicious, when a photo is composed with a sense of scale (in this case, Steve Holen) behind the object of interest: there's a good chance the subject will be seen as exaggerated in size. But in this case, this prehistoric bison skull has a horn tip-to-horn tip size of over six feet! This guy was about twice the size of modern bison... and at around a ton in weight, those aren't kittens.
Finally, today's Big Picture has a gallery of 39 photos from the eruption of Mt Merapi in Indonesia. Some of the pictures are quite grim and graphic, though the two worst are blacked out so you won't see them unless you click through- an option I appreciate. Others such as the one above are just beautiful. But as spectacular as eruptions can be, they have their downside too. Despite something called volcano monitoring, and timely calls for evacuation, many locals have disregarded the warnings, and the death toll, last I heard, was approaching 150 from repeated nuées ardentes.

Update: The death toll is now 156.