AshPoust
@ashpoust.bsky.social
Paleontology, Anatomy, Evolutionary Medicine, Travel. Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at University of Nebraska State Museum, Lincoln Grazing with the dinosaurs and dear old horses. -What I'm about to show you may shock and educate you
If you don't know Kenshu Shimada, read this letter anyway. But realize that this is coming from someone who, in addition to being an intellectual heavy hitter, is one of the nicest, best humored people in the sciences. This was not written lightly.
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.@arctomet.bsky.social · 18h agoLETTER: Absolute need to maintain entire ‘collections side’ of Sternberg Museum intact hayspost.com/posts/d21f98...
LETTER: Absolute need to maintain entire ‘collections side’ of Sternberg Museum intact hayspost.com/posts/d21f98...
LETTER: Absolute need to maintain entire ‘collections side’ of Sternberg Museum intact
Image by Pixabay Dear Dr. Tisa Mason,I am a proud graduate of Fort Hay
hayspost.com
Happy #FossilFriday! Had an amazing week taking part in BeaverCON in Minneapolis this year! I presented on the Giant Beaver as our state fossil and learned SO much 🦫! We even brought a bunch of #beaver fossils from the Science Museum of Minnesota to the @bellmuseum.bsky.social for a Dam Good Night!
Speedpainting of Miophyseter gunmaensis, a new species of physeteroid described from Japan. The specimen consists of a nearly complete skeleton of a young individual, with an estimated length of 3 to 4 m. It lived approximately 16 to 14 million years ago. #paleoart
Hi! My World View in Nature Reviews Biodiversity was published today! Read about my three main aims when educating people about topics in natural history. www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Three ideas to inspire curiosity in natural history education
Nature Reviews Biodiversity - Natural history can captivate the minds of all manner of people for a multitude of reasons, but a shifting media landscape demands adaptation from public educators....
nature.com
We are impressed with the representation from the scientific ocean drilling community among the 2026 AGU Honors recipients! Honorees have led and participated in expeditions, completed Schlanger Fellowships, and advised the SciOD community on committees. Congratulations to all!
#fossilfriday An example of why the ANSP and its collections must be saved. Atlantochelys mortoni, a giant protostegid sea turtle - named in 1849 by Agassiz based on the proximal humerus fragment. In 2012, someone found a large distal humerus that FIT ONTO THE SAME BONE in ANSP collections. 1/ 🦖🧪
I've worked for a natural history museum for 11 years at this point (man, yikes) and while it is sad, it isn't surprising to see two major institutions facing closure this year.
11/ In Summer 2023, I finally saw the specimen again with @ashpoust.bsky.social at UCMP! We're working on redescribing the specimen and it's circuitous history, along with describing many additional teeth and postcrania. This species is known to be a maximum of 500,000 years old.
It's #seaotterawarenessweek! 🐬🦑🧪 Sea otters only live in the North Pacific today and are the smallest marine mammals. Frustratingly, they have a very limited fossil record, and their origins are quite murky. We know *much* more about their ecology than their evolution; read more here:
The terrible fossil record of sea otters, part 1: What do we know about modern sea otters?
You can find the second part here , and the third part here . Introduction Sea otters are perhaps my favorite marine mammal, for se...
coastalpaleo.blogspot.com
1) Don't wait until a museum is closed or threatened with closure to support it and speak out for it. By that point, it's often too late, and if it's not too late, the path out of the trouble is way harder and more expensive than avoiding the crisis.
Some Monday morning thoughts on museum closures, spurred in part by the recent Academy of Natural Sciences, but not necessarily specific to that. <thread>
#FossilFriday Complete skeleton of Hemicyon sansaniensis, a fully carnivorous and cursorial bear from the Middle Miocene.
Hell pigs gathered in their masses, They were bona fide bad asses, Omnivorous mass destruction, And Oligocene predation, Oh lord yeah! 🤘
Good #FossilFriday post - coughDinohyuscough is an amazing animal. Honestly, I think it's as frightening as T. rex.
Ben Miller@extinctmonsters.bsky.social · 2w agoDaeodon is a genuinely horrrifying animal. #FossilFriday
What’s your best museum memory? We’re working on a story about the future of science museums and we want to hear from you! Tell us about a museum experience that you can’t forget. Leave us a voicemail at 877-4-SCIFRI. https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/contribute-your-voice-to-our-show/
Another big potential #FishJob Curator of Fishes (or Mammals, but let it be ichthyology) at the American Museum of Natural History careers.amnh.org/postings/4925
Assistant Curator/Assistant Professor, Vertebrate Zoology
The Division of Vertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) seeks an outstanding tenure-track Assistant Curator/Assistant Professor in either the Department of Ichthyology or M...
careers.amnh.org
New #artwork! #watercolor illustration of the 3 meter long block containing the holotype skull, jaws, and vertebrae of the 26 myo eomysticetid baleen whale Tokarahia kauaeroa (Kokoamu Greensand, New Zealand), which I named in 2015 for my PhD research. Large for me, ~20x8"; ~20-24 hours. 🐡🦖🐬 #sciart
Alexander von Humboldt born #OTD 1769
The Pioneering Maps of Alexander von Humboldt
Beautiful and insightful, the illustrations of the German naturalist helped shape a new understanding of the world
smithsonianmag.com
Andrea Wulf@andreawulf.bsky.social · 3w agoHappy birthday Alexander von Humboldt! A man who warned about harmful human-induced climate change. Clearly we didn’t listen.
"Keep on reading the big and badly written book, they said. It'll be fun finishing it, they said. It is totally worth the time, they said..."
For #FossilFriday: holotype of the extinct Pleistocene bison species Bison antiquus, one of millions of specimens housed in the collections of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University - the oldest natural history museum in the US, now slated for permanent closure on 30 September. 🧪
For #FossilFriday, here's some 2019 #paleoart of Deinonychus subduing a juvenile Sauroposeidon using the Raptor Prey Restraint (RPR) model of dromaeosaur predation: grabbing prey with taloned feet, pinning it down with its body weight, and then eating it alive. Just like modern raptors, then.
#fossilfriday A cluster of large cockles, Clinocardium meekianum, in a sandy concretion from the Purisima Formation in Santa Cruz, California. Early Pliocene, ~4-5 myo. Each cockle is about 6-8 cm in diameter. 🦑🦖🧪
The horn core and partial skull of Antidorcas recki, a fossil Springbok, from Kenya 750,000 years ago #FossilFriday
you bigots better not make Joseph Needham rise from the grave and slap you around for falsely claiming that East Asian countries never invented anything
Science and Civilisation in China - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
As both an academic and a writer, I am repelled by the "this looks like a long document. Would you like me to summarize it for you?" that seems to appear at the top of every pdf viewer now. NO. The *entire point* of good writing (either books or journal papers) is that every sentence has a purpose.
A scientific paper already has a carefully thought out abstract & conclusions I can look at if I want an overview. A book is supposed to be a joy to read, an intellectual and emotional experience to relish. This is not something that advanced statistics can either add to or improve on.
