I collected too much data and had to buy a backup notebook in the NHMU giftshop. In conclusion, Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry has too many interesting bone surface modifications.
Julia McHugh
@drjmchugh.bsky.social
Vertebrate Paleontologist at the Museums of Western Colorado. Nature photographer and owner of Earthly Exposures. Foster of Kittens. All opinions are my own.
The Trump administration has approved the first AI data center to be built on federal public land. The project will occupy roughly 88.5 acres of Bureau of Land Management land in southern Nevada and will set a major precedent for using America’s public lands for private AI infrastructure.
Rifts are prominent tectonic features on Venus. A study in Nature Geoscience indicates that rifts on Venus are still, or were recently, active and may have undergone faster extension than usually assumed, potentially because of mantle plume activity. go.nature.com/4bdXot0 ⚒️🔭🧪
A mother gave the government her fingerprints, tax records, and DNA to get her 6-year-old daughter back. She did everything officials asked. ICE used that information to find and arrest her. A child welfare system became a deportation tool. open.substack.com/pub/adamkinz...
ICE Turned Family Reunification Into A Deportation List
A program created to place migrant children with relatives has become a pipeline for deportation arrests.
open.substack.com
Hanging out in the Natural History Museum of Utah's collections, hunting bite marks and other taphonomic goodies:
Here be Witches. We come as four and toil with the dead until their secrets start to pour. #taphonomy #Morrison #dinosaurs #Macabre #science @uglyfossils.bsky.social @jptaphonomy.bsky.social
White House admits it used keywords to kill billions worth of California research grants apnews.com/article/cali...
White House admits it used keywords to kill billions worth of California research grants
Federal agencies that terminated more than a thousand research grants at the University of California last year admitted that they used keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and COV...
apnews.com
President Trump today signed orders reducing federal protections across nearly 3 million acres of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments.
Trump cuts nearly 3 million acres from 2 Utah national monuments
Utah's biggest national monuments have been the object of political football for years.
axios.com
Rare copy of Declaration of Independence found by UK National Archives in papers of captured US ship Researchers at the National Archives have since identified the document as a rare early copy of America’s founding document, printed just days after the original was signed on July 4, 1776...
Rare copy of Declaration of Independence found by UK National Archives in papers of captured US ship
Michael Scurr, a volunteer at Britain’s National Archives, has discovered a rare early copy of the Declaration of Independence.
apnews.com
The #Snyderfire is now at 65% containment & access to our dig site on BLM lands has reopened! I'm so relived. Fire prep was a ton of work, but I'm glad we did it, and not needing it was the icing on the cake! Going to be a long fire season, so we're keeping the prep up for now, just in case.
Collections prep for the #SnyderFire is almost complete. The fire is now at 10% containment and still across the river, but we are ready to move if things worsen during today's winds.
The #Snyderfire is burning near our museum in Fruita, so we suspended field work to kick fire prep into high gear. Fire systems are ready to go, but with sprinklers to fight fire, we also have to prep for water mitigation too. We're not in any immediate danger, but how's the time to get ready!
A cool study with several interesting take aways, including the convergent evolution of snout sensitivity, and... that other item: that Suchiomimus may not be a valid taxon. geodiversitas2026v48a12.pdf share.google/jwoZWU7IldnA...
share.google
My editorial in this week’s Science @aaas.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧪
The enduring pursuit of science in America
Imagine an American organization that convenes scientific experts not to advance any ideology or interest but to provide the nation with a clear understanding of complex problems. Imagine this body wo...
science.org
Today marks 12 years at the Museums of Western Colorado. My office has grown significantly in stuff (and things).
Made these in celebration of all the dedicated dads of the animal world, and in memory of my stepdad.
I found old photos of my first car, an '86 Chevy Cavalier held together with duct tape. It's name: "The Wench Mobile" 🤪 I never realized my first license plate actually was whispering my future identity: "Dr. J".
May was a busy month for me, so I completely missed this article by Riley Black @restingdinoface.bsky.social coming out in Smithsonian Magazine @smithsonianmag.bsky.social. Enjoy with plenty of dino-mite quotes from yours truly. www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu...
What Was the Biggest Dinosaur? Fragmentary Fossils Make It Hard to Tell
Pinning down the most titanic of the large sauropod dinosaurs is not an easy task, since the odds were generally against the biggest ones being buried and preserved
smithsonianmag.com
I'm up to 9 different ways my week has gone sideways and it's not even noon on Wednesday.
NSF GRFP awards just announced: www.research.gov/grfp/Awardee.... Nice to see that the overall numbers are back up, but only one award in paleontology (7 honorable mentions). No awards, one honorable mention for sedimentary geology.
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research.gov
First Report of a Hollow Cranial Crest in an Early-Diverging Duck-Billed Dinosaur, with Implications for Convergent Evolution of Acoustic Signaling www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/15...
mdpi.com
Join Utah Gelogical Survey Mapping Program in creationing Geological Maps in some of the most spectacular Geology in the world. utdgohcm.csod.com/ux/ats/caree... Job stability in these trying times. @agu.org @geosociety.bsky.social
Project Geologist
The Geologic Mapping and Paleontology Program of the Utah Geological Survey (UGS) is seeking a full time permanent geologic mapper. This is a un...
utdgohcm.csod.com
Anatomy of a perinatal woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) from Niederweningen (Late Pleistocene), Switzerland sjp.pensoft.net/articles.php...
Anatomy of a perinatal woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) from Niederweningen (Late Pleistocene), Switzerland
Here we report on the anatomical re-investigation of a Late Pleistocene (Middle Würmian Interstadial, MIS 3, ca. 40–50 ka BP) perinatal woolly mammoth excavated in 1890-91 from Niederweningen, Switzer...
sjp.pensoft.net
📣 #EGU seeks proposals for the development of a #ScienceForPolicy workshop! Have some ideas? Why not submit your proposal and get up to €2,000? 📝 Submit your proposal by 24 April 2026. 👀 Learn more here: egu.eu/9RMKKK 📸 Stephan Sprinz on imaggeo.egu.eu
Musculoskeletal function of stem tetrapod limbs - Molnar - 2026 - Palaeontology - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Musculoskeletal function of stem tetrapod limbs
The tetrapod water–land transition has been studied for more than a century, but questions about the locomotor function of early tetrapod limbs still remain. The limb and girdle skeletons of stem tet...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com