Paleoparadoxia, a bizarre marine mammal with bizarre teeth and jaws and bizarre giant hands and- you get it, its got nothing to do with hippos lol (paleoart comm)

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...

I must have a writing deadline coming up because I found time to finish a months old blog post. A discussion of the "twin exhibits" on the end-Cretaceous extinction and Paleogene recovery currently at AMNH and the Field Museum: extinctmonsters.net/2026/08/03/t...

Two museums, two exhibits, one story

“Twin films” is a term that refers to a pair of movies released by different studios around the same time, which have similar plots or are inspired by the same source material. Museums …

extinctmonsters.net

I've long held that Mesozoic mammals and their relatives were probably getting bigger than expected, they're just hard to find. Nice to see some tracks back that up!

Aline Ghilardi@alinemghilardi.bsky.social · 4d ago

Remarkably large mammal-like tracks from the Botucatu Formation (Lower Cretaceous), Paraná Basin, Brazil: implications for the evolution of large size in Mammaliaformes www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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). ⚒️

New at Tetrapod Zoology, a longish discussion of what happened at #DinoConUK 2026.... tetzoo.com/blog/2026/8/...

DinoCon 2026, a Giant Event at Hilton Birmingham Metropole — Tetrapod Zoology

Bigger, better… in fact, around twice the size of DinoCon 2025. Let’s discuss what happened at DinoCon 2026…

tetzoo.com

The story of “The petite bodies of the robust australopithecines” is changing in light of the last 15 years of evidence, and footprints are leading the way. www.johnhawks.net/p/the-big-fe...

The big feet of Paranthropus boisei

New analysis of footprint trackways suggest a larger body size than previously thought for this Early Pleistocene human relative.

johnhawks.net

Eomyodon volkeri, a terrestrial eomyid rodent of Late Oligocene Europe

Funded. Day one. Pterosaurs: The Field Guide is going to print. 252 species, 200+ genera, every one illustrated. Thank you. Every one of you. We're not stopping there. Every $2,000 past the goal adds a newly described pterosaur to the book and pays an artist to draw it. https://fossi.ls/ks

Sod it. Here’s a quick explainer on why using generative AI as a science communicator is a bad idea and will destroy your credibility! In short: It makes stuff up and lies, and that makes you untrustworthy by proxy. In long: 1/6

Emi Thomas 🦤🏳️‍🌈@zhejiang0pterus.bsky.social · 5d ago

So. A thing you like just implemented generative AI

this is key to the findings: "the team [added] Spanish-language papers, papers from smaller journals[,] and samples from a museum in central Mexico" to English sources, doubling their dataset. So much info out there if people are willing to investigate non-English records!

Bethany Brookshire@beebrookshire.bsky.social · 5d ago

Did you know North and South America used to have a sea between them? South America was the Australia of the early Miocene, marsupials and all. Then, they joined at the Isthmus of Panama. And mammals from the north flooded south. Uh oh... www.sciencenews.org/article/mamm...

Please say hello to Austronaga, an aquatic trachelosaurid from Triassic Asia. In a new OA paper published yesterday in Science Advances, Dr. Wei Wang , @stephanspiekman.bsky.social and colleagues presented a description of a COMPLETE Austronaga #paleoart #sciart

Eons: Life and Death on Pangaea thread The Eons team trusted @lacerdajulio.bsky.social @kiabugboy.bsky.social and myself to help with the reconstructions for the series. I'm consolidating my posts to this thread so that they're easier to find. #Art #SciArt #PaleoArt Watch link:

Eons

Take a journey through the history of life on Earth.

pbs.org

July 30, 1920, birthday of American geologist Marie Tharp. At a time when there were still few options for women in science, Tharp studied oil geology, but more interested in broader earth sciences, she became one of the 1st women at what’s now the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory ...

Good snail news 🐌 🦑 www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07...

Taronga Zoo breeds rare snail back from brink of extinction

About 1,000 Campbell's keeled glass snails are settling into their new home in the crevices of a secluded valley on Norfolk Island, after being bred back from the brink of oblivion.

abc.net.au

Three days until Pterosaurs: The Field Guide goes live on Kickstarter. Twenty illustrators, around 390 pages, over 200 pterosaur genera. The first comprehensive field guide to the flying reptiles. Kickstarter · August 1 · https://fossi.ls/Nev1YT/bs #Pterosaurs #Paleoart

PBS Eons new TV series premieres today! Check out the first episode: youtu.be/RY8mipBWjyw #Science #Permian #Biology

How the Formation of Pangea Changed the World | Eons: Life and Death on Pangea

YouTube video by PBS Eons

youtu.be

Gemma, Marc and Natee finally get around to discussing Neave Parker’s monochrome saurians. Then, Marc interviews American artist and author Timothy J Bradley on a career that encompasses Dinamation, toy design and literally hundreds of illustrations.

Podcast Show Notes: Episode 51 – Parkersaurs to Ultimasaurs

In this slightly-delayed-by-the-heatwave episode, Gemma, Marc and Natee finally get around to discussing some of the best-known and most widely reproduced and copied palaeoart of all time – Neave P…

chasmosaurs.com

Eight sets of footprints, 1.43 million years old, found on an ancient Kenyan lakeshore reveal a hominin group larger than expected, possibly rewriting what we know about Paranthropus boisei body size and social behavior. 🦶🌍🔬 #Paleoanthropology #HumanEvolution #Turkana

Eight Sets of Footprints on a Vanished Shoreline

What 1.4-million-year-old tracks in Kenya reveal about a heavy-bodied hominin nobody expected to be this large

anthropology.net

New paper reviewing the issues around presentation of claims for #Naledi burials, both in publications and popular media. Useful not merely re: this site, but in considering how archaeologists construct arguments (& data collection) more widely. 🏺 🧪

Andra Meneganzin@andrameneganzin.bsky.social · 2w ago

My joint work w/ Matteo Bedetti is now officially out in Biology & Philosophy! [Re-sharing the 🧵, with full-text link 👇] We examine how evidential standards are negotiated in funerary #archaeology debates, using the Homo #naledi burial controversy as a case study in epistemological practice.🧪🏺💀

This. I never get tired of the reaction when someone realises the sheer amount of information about 🌍 past we can get from 'any old rock' or 'any old fossil'. Especially when people learn we can tell the temperature of ancient oceans and continents from fossil shells. 🤯

Prof Chris Jackson@seismatters.bsky.social · last wk.

Rocks are like time capsules. They reveal ancient life and climates. They’ll help us fight climate change. They record the birth, life, and death of continents. They give us a framework for understanding lithosphere-biosphere dynamics at a global-scale. They’re ace, frankly [2/2]

The new Microraptor model @amnh.org is quite nice. There is also a cast of the M. gui holotype.

A wonderful slab preserving hundreds of ammonites of different sizes. #Paleontology #Fossils #Ammonites

“A Penn professor thought she’d sell 1000 copies of her ‘Odyssey’ translation. She sold a million this year alone, thanks to Christopher Nolan.” “West Philly's Emily Wilson, who penned a highly acclaimed translation of the epic poem in 2017, is having a big summer.”

A Penn professor thought she’d sell 1000 copies of her ‘Odyssey’ translation. She sold a million this year alone, thanks to Christopher Nolan.

West Philly's Emily Wilson, who penned a highly acclaimed translation of the epic poem in 2017, is having a big summer.

share.inquirer.com

The racist backlash to Chris Nolan’s Odyssey is a kind of stolen valor, an attempt by the right to claim credit for achievements they had nothing to do with in order to justify racial hierarchy in the present. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The Fear of Black Greeks

White people don’t own the accomplishments of ancient Greece.

theatlantic.com

Let me introduce you to Tametara mirim, a basal Cretaceous snake from South America that was likely fossorial. It is known from a beautifully preserved and articulated specimen that includes a skull! If you know anything about snake fossils you will know that is VERY rare #snakes #paleoart

Hey everyone - For #FossilFriday, I'm relaunching a completely overhauled Skeletal Drawing dot Com. Check it out, read the welcome post (below), and let me know what you think! www.skeletaldrawing.com/blog/welcome...

Welcome to Skeletal Drawing 4.0! | Skeletal Drawing

Welcome to the completely overhauled SkeletalDrawing.com. For the last month and a half I've been working on a ground-up overhaul of the website. I'd like to explain a bit of what's changed and why, h...

skeletaldrawing.com

Libraries are so wildly good that sometimes I get teary when I think about them.

What if we mapped the U.S. without state boundaries? An article co-authored by #NASmember and archaeologist Torben Rick explores how nature’s maps—from ancient seas & migration routes to watersheds & biomes—reveal the connections shaping our landscapes. theconversation.com/where-nature...

Where nature draws the map – here are 5 ways to look at the US, without state boundaries

State lines are one way to picture the US, but natural history provides another – one that shows the ancient and living connections running across the landscape.

theconversation.com

Say hello to Albadris smithsoni! A new Carboniferous tetrapod from Scotland, a little critter living in the coal swamps. Named after Tim Smithson. Fossils found by Frank Elliott. Study led by @theo-nychus.bsky.social for his Masters in Edinburgh. Congrats Theo! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...