Even unassuming specimens have backstories. Here’s a good example for #FossilFriday: the Paleocene gastropod Turritella mortoni from near Fredericksburg, VA (UMMP IP 329).
Neil Kelley
@kelleypaleolab.bsky.social
Paleontologist, professor and weird internet guy. Nashville, TN. He/him.
Today’s Exhibit of the Day is a blast from the past! Snapped in 1938, this archival image depicts Museum preparators sculpting a model Styracosaurus. This large ceratopsian dinosaur was related to Triceratops. Photo: Image no. 315713/© AMNH Library
Edible Mushrooms (1827) by A. Cornillon, from Atlas des Champignons. Source: Lloyd Library and Museum / Biodiversity Heritage Library https://pdimagearchive.org/images/f5faed1e-1dd3-4370-a2a9-3c3f6dbfe3e4 #nature #food #botanical #mycology #mushrooms #bookillustration #lithography #art
#fossilfriday Kelp holdfasts from the early Oligocene (31 Ma) Makah Formation of Washington State, USA. These rare specimens occur in the same rocks as some of the oldest known fossil dolphins and the flightless diving plotopterid birds. From Kiel et al. 2024. 🦖🧪🦑
Open source so you have not excuse for NOT reading this and there is an obvious soundtrack available to you (somewhat legally?), as well: www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1Ab...
Hieroglyphics - 3rd Eye Vision (1998 / IndieHipHop / CA)
YouTube video by Rare & Unfamiliar Hip Hop Underground And Vintage
youtube.com
Kelsey Jenkins, PhD@reptiliferous.bsky.social · 3w agoCheck out the paper here: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article... And a huge shoutout to my co-authors Caleb Gordon, Lisa Janzen, Chris Griffin, and Bhart-Anjan Bhullar!
New research out today! Some animals have three eyes?! This eye isn't for "seeing" per se, but it's connected to a part of the brain responsible for regulating body temperature. So if you see a lizard basking out in the sun to get warm, oftentimes this eye plays a central role. But there's more...
To show women in palaeoart are not a novelty, here's a historic artist, Alice B. Woodward (1862-1951)
🐉 The book of the great sea-dragons, Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri, [gedolim taninim] gedolim taninim, of Moses. London, W. Pickering, 1840. [Source]
Glad to share our new study at @natcomms.nature.com which resulted from several workshops on the early warning signs of mass extinctions and coordination of macroevolutionary vulnerability and the states of carbon cycle and temperatures. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio
🦎 This is an interstitial frog & lizard account now 🐸
🦎 The natural history of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands: . London: printed for C. Marsh [etc.]1754.. [Source]
🦖🦑🧪🦈New blog post! I wrote about a paper my student Addie Miller published a few years ago, all about the concentration of juvenile giant shark teeth in the Oligocene (25 myo) Chandler Bridge Formation of South Carolina - a nursery for giant sharks. coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2026/07/a-nu...
A BILLION YEARS OF MISSING TIME The Great Unconformity at East Bluff, Devil's Lake, Wisconsin: 1.63 Ga Baraboo Quartzite overlain by a boulder breccia at the base of the sandstones of the Cambrian Sauk Sea (600-505 Ma). ⚒️
I feel really sorry on behalf of a 19th century lady. Self educated, doing free labour for her husband. For that husband to write entire preface, being embarrassed by her: "Engravings are the first performances of a lady but little skilled in the art (...) destitute of that neatness and uniformity"
Natalia (娜塔莉)@wrycritic.bsky.social · 4w agoEarly British Palaeontology trivia. Divorce was impossible till 1857. It's unusual, wife of Gideon Mantell, Mary, seperated in 1839 Mary illustrated works of her husband to rather condescending credit The dispute between the pair complicates attributing discovery of the first dinosaur (Iguanodon)
Essay Towards a Natural History of Serpents, Plate II (1742) by Charles Owen. Source: Ernst Mayer Library / Internet Archive Available to buy as a print. https://pdimagearchive.org/images/55de4dd0-8734-40a5-a62f-12363f2aee9e #serpentine #wings #hydras #creatures #dragons #art #publicdomain
OK, well mild spoilers here, but haven’t even gotten to the Lotus-eaters in my thread so you’re just gonna have to wait.
Ferwen@ferwen.bsky.social · 4w ago#FossilFriday With the hype around #TheOdyssey, meet Palaeoloxodon falconeri: an extinct dwarf elephant (<1m tall) from the Pleistocene of Sicily & Malta, whose skull was once mistaken for a Cyclops paleonerdish.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/g...
Some large productid brachiopods for #FossilFriday ⚒️🧪 While most brachiopods tend towards the small side for benthic invertebrates, often just a few mm to cm, late Paleozoic productids could get relatively large. There's a good case for the bizarre reef-forming taxa being photosymbiotic.
Reposting for the afternoon crowd. And if you think this thread was dead ... well much like Tiresias we have a lot more to say! This journey might take a decade to complete!
Neil Kelley@kelleypaleolab.bsky.social · 4w agoMuses! Tell me about the random fossils that are somehow connected to the #Odyssey in an overcomplicated stochastic fashion as we ravel a #FossilFriday thread... 🧵
#FossilFriday Sponge labelled Toulminia bullatus with stalk and roots in the NHMUK collections. Collected from the Late Cretaceous Chalk somewhere in southern England.
Pam Gaible is probably the best natural history mountmaker there ever was. I've been admiring her work since I was a kid and it's been such a privilege to work with her. Wishing Pam a happy retirement this #FossilFriday!
Muses! Tell me about the random fossils that are somehow connected to the #Odyssey in an overcomplicated stochastic fashion as we ravel a #FossilFriday thread... 🧵
Affirmation of the day: Just because you are extinct, doesn't mean you aren't cool anymore.
Ausarchosaur@ausarchosaur.bsky.social · last yr.Plotopterids were cool (Copepteryx by Mark Witton)
Newly described Australian fossils tell a wild story: an ichthyosaur ate a pterosaur, then was itself torn to pieces by a pliosaur. This is the first evidence of these three animals interacting within the same food web! 🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Excited to share our new paper in Science Advances! Led by Dr Wei Wang at #IVPP in Beijing, it presents a complete skeleton of #Austronaga, the most marine of all archosauromorphs. To boot, this fossil preserves the oldest complete digestive tract of any reptile! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
