Roy Plotnick
@fossilexpress.bsky.social
Paleontologist, geologist, ecologist, educator. Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois Chicago. Author of EXPLORERS OF DEEP TIME. Also American Flyer trains and the Little Engine that Could.
Welcome to the CAMBRIAN FECAL REVOLUTION. We didn't name it the Cambrian fecal explosion for obvious reasons. I'm happy to share this paper on fecal matter and its role in Cambrian ecosystems. So if you want to read a really shitty paper (50 days free access): authors.elsevier.com/a/1nYg8cZ3X7...
$50.1 million could fund over 400 doctorates; 933 years worth of annual curator salaries (UK), or running cost for a millennium-worth of free events like the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival. It is inane that people can accumulate such wealth, and use it explicitly to cause public harm.
Steve Brusatte@stevebrusatte.bsky.social · 3w agoGus the T. rex fetched $50.1 million at auction, a new record price for a dinosaur If this is how much dinosaurs cost now, how can museums afford them? Where does that leave science & education? Will the public still have opportunities to be inspired? www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/14/a...
T. Rex Fossil Sells for $50.1 Million, Putting the King Back On Top (Gift Article)
In a booming fossil market, the T. rex had been dethroned by a stegosaurus. No longer.
nytimes.com
Alan Grant in Jurassic Park was essential for me because it modeled what an ethical, kind, and caring male collaborator and research partner should be for all women in science. I won't put up with anything less.
Genuine rewrite the textbooks discovery! 🧪🦑 The same team led last year's discovery of even deeper chemosynthetic animal communities. And they are in a crewed submersible, so they actually SAW THE WHALE GRAVEYARD!!! Can't wait for them to keep exploring!
franz@franzanth.bsky.social · 2mo agoFinally, footage from that new whale graveyard. The fact that fossils and fresh carcasses mix together in this spot is bonkers. But of course it makes sense, because the scavengers that live down there also need a steady supply over millions of years. They can't just suddenly adapt to the deep.
Howard, R. J., R. J. Garwood, G. D. Edgecombe, and D. A. Legg. 2026. A revision of Praearcturus gigas: a giant scorpion from the Lower Devonian (Lochkovian) of Britain. Palaeontology 69(3):e70064.
Cole, S. R., et al. 2026. Exceptional soft-tissue preservation reveals the oldest evidence for tube feet and their ecological significance in crinoids. Royal Society Open Science 13(6).
Song, et al. 2026. High-fidelity modular skeletons authenticate a Cambrian origin for Bryozoa. Nature. Wang, Z., and T. Shi. 2026. Trace fossils constrain the perceptual ranges of the earliest motile animals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 123(23):e2609730123.
The last few weeks have seen a series of new papers (none on dinosaurs!) that demonstrate the continued intellectual vitality of paleontology: McCoy, et al. 2026. Stepwise loss of complexity in hagfish eyes prior to deep sea colonization. Biology Letters 22(5).
Made this graph of the high temperature in Chicago over the last 50 days. Mean is 57.3 and the s.d. was 15.4. Not sure how this compares to the usual this time of year, but it the swings feel more extreme than usual.
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
Was approached by "Example 2." Then the alarm bells went off. Be aware. lits.mtholyoke.edu/news/2026-03...
Watch out for so-called "pig butchering scams" targeting professors | LITS
lits.mtholyoke.edu
Eocene belemnites?! *Fascinating* identification of these in Hungarian marine rocks. Would be curious to hear from those who know the clade better than I do.
Eocene belemnites from Hungary
The Middle Eocene nummulitic limestone at Dudar, Transdanubian Hungary, has yielded several belemnite rostra during the last 60–70 years. The correct interpretation of these fossils was made possible....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Search-and-rescue crews were “flying blind” trying to rescue survivors from deadly tornadoes that hit the Midwest last week. Why? Because Kristi Noem hadn't approved FEMA’s $200,000 contract with a tornado-tracking tool. But she had time to spend $220 million on anti-immigrant ads. Priorities.
Very proud of the @paleosoc.bsky.social for advocating a safer & more welcoming community for all paleontologists
Paleontological Society@paleosoc.bsky.social · 6mo agoThe Paleontological Society statement on recent events.
Dowding, E.M., Dunne, E.M., Collins, K.S. et al. The billion-dollar case for sustaining palaeontology’s digital databases. Nat Ecol Evol (2026). doi.org/10.1038/s415...
The billion-dollar case for sustaining palaeontology’s digital databases - Nature Ecology & Evolution
The authors survey community palaeontological databases, documenting their contributions to science as well as their vulnerabilities, and provide recommendations for the future of open science databas...
doi.org
About NSF GRFP's being rejected without peer review: [from submitted info to Grant Witness] "12 RWRs as involving ecology, six in cell biology, five in psychology, four in neuroscience, and 14 in other subfields of biology" www.science.org/content/arti...
NSF’s flagship fellowship program is rejecting applicants without peer review
Students seeking graduate research scholarships speculate that biology is being disfavored
science.org
True fact: the ice age ended 11,700 years ago. Some people have not gotten the message.
Our paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) and our explainer thread below! Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage
Whatever one thinks of the attack on Venezuela, you have to admire the skill and strategic precision of the military forces that stormed Madura's fortress and so effectively removed the Epstein Files from the headlines.
Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/c...
A Somber Mood at Science Meeting as Trump Budget Cuts Continue
nytimes.com
Delighted to publish Forum Article by @nicolasgaltier.bsky.social et al: "Journals run by learned societies or universities have more ethical policies while being cheaper and similarly cited" doi.org/10.1093/jeb/... Thank you for choosing JEB - we encourage the support of #societyjournals
Time to publish responsibly: DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly journals in ecology and evolutionary biology
Abstract. The current economics of scientific publishing reveal a profound imbalance: academia pays prices far exceeding the actual costs of publication. R
doi.org
Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine (Gift Article)
A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.
nytimes.com
