11 October 1833: Mary Anning begins a letter to Charlotte Murchison with the news that her little dog, which Charlotte had met in Lyme Regis in 1825, had been killed by a rock fall that had just missed Mary herself. We have a sketch of her dog, whose name is not recorded, drawn by Mary c.1826.

Bit of a pink and green glow to the north tonight in East Lothian.

Having returned yesterday from the fossil marine reptiles conference @morethanadodo.bsky.social where I took the opportunity to see some Mary Anning and other Lyme Regis fossils, it seemed appropriate tonight to break open a lovely bottle of wine, The Undercliff, from Dalwood Vineyard in East Devon.

I was a little more confident in my identification of this one, the seemingly ubiquitous tar spot fungus Rhytisma acerinum on sycamore.

From today’s woodland walk - oyster mushrooms, perhaps?

It’s always a delight to see this display @morethanadodo.bsky.social about Mary Anning featuring some of her fossils, including a lovely little ichthyosaur.

Ursus americanus, the American black bear looking decidedly blue tonight @morethanadodo.bsky.social

@morethanadodo.bsky.social looking good at the end of an excellent first day of talks on fossil marine reptiles here. Lots of ichthyosaur talks today. Great to see them getting so much attention.

Lovely to be back in Oxford. Here’s the old Ashmolean Museum where William Buckland lectured and discussed the fossils found by Mary Anning in the 1820s.

Lovely review of Gwen John: Strange Beauties by @palebackwriter.bsky.social in today’s Times. Brilliantly curated and displayed by CharlotteTopsfield of @nationalgalleries.bsky.social, it’s well worth a visit. Best exhibition I’ve seen in a long time. www.thetimes.com/article/f90f...

I didn’t expect this electric exhibition to make me cry

Long mesmerised by her self-portrait, I had to see Gwen John: Strange Beauties in Edinburgh, the first retrospective of her work in 40 years

thetimes.com

#MolluscMonday: spotted this clam shell decoration on a visit yesterday to Newhailes, cared for by the National Trust for Scotland. Thought at first that they were moulded plaster but they’re real, gilded, clam shells from 1816 or earlier.

4 October 1825: back in Lyme Regis after a tour of SW England, geologist Roderick Murchison noted in his journal, 'Accompanied by Mary Anning rode to Dowlands & dismounted there'. They spent the day exploring the geology of the landslipped cliffs and foreshore to the west of Lyme.

Inside the 16th century doocot (dovecot) at Dirleton Castle.

The spectacular October dawns continue. Taprain Law, East Lothian, 7.11am this morning.

Some pics from today's walk in East Lothian: geese on the move; the conical North Berwick Law (an early Carboniferous volcanic plug) with basalt outcrop in the foreground; and a strange encounter in the forest - a 6-foot diameter nest with papier-mâché eggs.

3 October 1848: the 36th day of the sale of the Duke of Buckingham's possessions, including the holotype of Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus found by Mary Anning in 1823 and which she had sold to the Duke for £110 in 1824. At the sale William Buckland bought it for the British Museum for just 8 guineas.

Today is the 150th birthday of curator & geologist Tom Sheppard, Director of Hull Museums. In 1929 he sold his personal map collection to the National Museum of Wales, 90 maps for £100, amongst them 3 copies of William Smith's 1815 geological map of England and Wales, bought for just over £1 each.

#OnThisDay in 1772 pioneering metallurgist David Mushet was born in Dalkeith. Mushet discovered that Lanarkshire's Blackband ironstone could be smelted in a blast furnace without coke. His son Robert improved the Bessemer steelmaking process www.northlanmuseums.co.uk/blog/into-th... #FerrousFriday

#FossilFriday It’s easy to see why Cotham Marble is often referred to as ‘landscape marble’. This Late Triassic limestone from the Bristol area is a microbialite. Detail from a specimen about 10 cm thick on display at the Natural History Museum, London.

#FossilFriday & ahead of next week's fossil marine reptile conference @morethanadodo.bsky.social, here are some of Mary Anning's most impressive ichthyosaur finds @nhm-london.bsky.social, including the 'first' ichthyosaur of 1811–12, the large 1832 Temnodontosaurus, & big vertebrae of the mid-1830s.

Another lovely East Lothian fiery dawn this morning.

#NationalPoetryDay: 'To Mary Anning' by John Kenyon (1784–1856), written after he met her in Lyme Regis in the autumn of 1836 and published in his 'Poems for the most part occasional' (1838). More recently, Mary Anning has featured in the work of at least nine modern poets.

We've applied for a Coastal Communities Fund grant to help repair our rear gallery roof - but we need your help! The public decides who will be awarded funding, so we'd love it if you could spare a few minutes to view for us!

Traprain Law, East Lothian, this morning, shaded from the rising sun by a bank of coastal cloud.

Hints of autumn at Gosford in East Lothian this afternoon.

#PostboxSaturday: Edward VII wallbox, set in a lovely stone wall built of the local early Jurassic Blue Lias. Chard Road, Weycroft, Axminster.

#FossilFriday: an ichthyosaur found by Charmouth fossilist Jonas Wishcombe and sold, in situ, to collector Thomas Hawkins who arranged its excavation in September 1833 and described it in his 1834 book Memoirs of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri. The specimen is now @nhm-london.bsky.social.

Searching photos I've taken over the years at Lyme Regis, I found this one of the old sea wall and groynes at Church Cliffs that had to be negotiated to get back from Black Ven if you were caught by an incoming tide. Almost a rite of passage to slip and fall into the sea here. Been there, done that.

What a difference a day makes. Hay bales in the equinox dawn light yesterday and in this morning’s torrential downpour.

Had a weekend wander around the impressive Dirleton Castle in East Lothian. Built, from the 13th century, of local early Carboniferous sandstones, it sits on a crag of the Carboniferous Garleton Hills Volcanic Formation .