Marcus Brandel
@lostbones.bsky.social
Coder 🖥️💾, Cycler 🚴♂, Independent Researcher 🐂🐴🐘🍃🐪🦥, Natural History Writer, Poor Golfer, Professional Nerd. Follow #LostBones to find out more about Pleistocene fossils or the Midwest https://linktr.ee/lostbones
🐂 #MinnesotaMuseum #FossilFriday 🐘🦥🐴🐪 Today I’m spotlighting the Redwood County Museum. If you’re a naturalist — and a lover of #LostBones — this one’s for you. A collection of mounted mammals and birds, plus a lineup of skulls including a nicely crusty bison skull. redwoodcountyhistoricalsociety
Happy #FossilFriday! Why’d the Giant Beaver lose its head? Because it’s going to the Minnesota State Fair! Our actual Giant Beaver skeleton is traveling to the North End Event Center, in the Ultimate Dinosaurs exhibit, celebrating it officially becoming our State Fossil. Come see it for yourself! 🦫
#FossilFriday 3.6-billion-year-old gneiss bedrock at Granite Falls Minnesota, created a landscape ideal for collecting sediment layers and preserving bones. Yellow Medicine County Historical Society holds a collection of bison remains from the area, some from a famous bison kill: the Peterson Site.
🦌 #FossilFriday — Megaloceros giganteus, specimen USNM 7051. Masterfully mounted at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History its ~3.6‑meter antlers supported by a structural steel carriage #pleistocene #megalocerosgiganteus #citizenscience Skull mount photos credit: NMNH/Loren Ybarrondo
#Equus #RadiocarbonDating #FossilFriday Latest update now in subscriber notes on Subsatck: substack.com/@marcusbrand...
Latest update is now on Substack. marcusbrandel.substack.com/p/lost-bones...
Happy #FossilFriday! The outreach continues! Today I presented for a summer youth program hosted at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota. We covered lots of dinos, Ice Age beasts, the state fossil and a titanic snake. Such a great crowd!
🐯🐾🦥🐴🐘🐪 For #FossilFriday, a fantastic mount from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Fossils. The Smilodon on display — specimen v10928 — is a composite skeleton sourced from the La Brea Tar Pits, CA. #pleistocene #smilodonfatalis #citizenscience Skull photo credit NMNH
🐂🦥🐴🐘🐪🐟🍃 A surprisingly common bone in small city and county museum collections across the Midwest — and one that’s often left unidentified — is the sternum. Fo bison It’s usually found disarticulated into its individual segments, called sternebrae. Read more: marcusbrandel.substack.com
Happy #FossilFriday! This past week the paleo team from the Science Museum of Minnesota was at TWO breweries talking science! First up was Bad Weather Brewing for their Summer Block Party then Indeed Brewing last night to do a talk & table on #dinosaurs (and other ancient life). Great times! 🦖🍻
An Eremotherium #FossilFriday. This remarkable giant ground sloth, Eremotherium laurillardi, stands at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Remounted on a new steel armature during the renovation of the Hall of Fossils–Deep Time in 2019, it reportedly reaches to a height of 13 feet.
It's a follow-up #FossilFriday The mysterious bone fragment I posted about last year has an ID! After examination by the Science Museum of Minnesota, as suspected, the specimen has been confirmed as a mastodon tooth cusp. If you would you have recognized it let me know. #citezenscience #mammut
For #Fossil Friday, meet "Junior." On loan to the new Bison: Standing Strong Smithsonian exhibit in Washington, DC. Junior is a massive Bison latifrons skull. Marie L. Hopkins, Idaho's first female paleontologist, excavated Junior in 1951. #womenwhodig #pleistocene #bison doi.org/10.2307/1375...
Happy #FossilFriday! Check out some recent finds from fieldwork in #NorthDakota! A claw, tooth, and osteoderms (armor plates) of Borealosuchus + some turtle shell. These are all about 60 million years old from life’s recovery phase after the big extinction that ended the Age of the Dinosaurs.
Lost Bones #6 (Bears Repeating) 🐻 For #FossilFriday 🐂🦥🐴🐪🐟 a new #LostBones article out on Substack! This one is a deep dive into brown bear (Ursus arctos) and giant short-faced bears (Arctodus simus) in the Midwest and Surrounding areas. Please share the story! open.substack.com/pub/marcusbr...
Lost Bones #6 (Bears Repeating)
Minnesota's Megafauna Fossil Shortage (Ursus arctos)
open.substack.com
Huge deal all! @pbseons.bsky.social has made a SIX episode series around the Permian and it is a delight. Coming soon! 📺 🍿 There will be familiar faces.
Darcy Shapiro@darcyshapiro.bsky.social · 2mo agoSo, some news: www.popsci.com/science/pbs-... We made a tv show! 🎉 #scicomm #paleontology
#FossilFriday The final tooth—12 of 12—is SMM P2024.5.1, a lower molar found at Mississippi Gateway Regional Park (Brooklyn Park, MN) in 2023. Twelve 3D printed reproductions of the molars are also underway and are now receiving their final paint touches. #Equus #RadiocarbonDating
🐂 🐴🐪 #FossilFriday Still one of my favorite mounts! 9K years ago, a group of Bison occidentalis wandered into what’s St, Paul MN. In 1955, at Mississippi St. & Maryland road crews found them resting beneath a peat layer. Today the remains form specimen P68.54.1 at the Science Museum of Minnesota.
🐊🐾
@dr-crocogator.bsky.social · 2mo agoHappy #FossilFriday! Check out this holotype (first of its kind) of Borealosuchipus, an extinct #crocodile track from #NorthDakota, about 60 million years ago, in the vault at the Science Museum of Minnesota. It shows 2 hind and 2 fore feet prints plus a belly slide! Happy #WorldCrocDay on June 17!
#FossilFriday specimen SMM P2025.8.6 (MNH 779) comes from Nicollet County near St. Peter, Minnesota’s almost‑capital. #11 of 12 in the state’s Ice Age horse project heading to UC Irvine’s W. M. Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass Spectrometer Facility (KCCAMS) for radiocarbon dating this summer.
Amazing animals!
@dr-crocogator.bsky.social · 3mo agoHappy #FossilFriday! Check out this lovely extinct rhino skeleton, Menoceras, on exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota! It lived about 20 million years ago, and is likely female since it’s lacking the pair of nose horns found in males. We also have a preserved Menoceras bone bed on display!
Huge day for reptile evolution. We FINALLY find strong morpho-/paleontological support for Pantestudines with Archosauria. WOO! 🐢 + 🐊🦩 Eunotosaurus is firmly down on the reptile stem. "Eu-not-a-turtle" amirite?? Phylo tests ALL prior candidates for turtle origins in one deeply satisfying work.
Xavier A. Jenkins@semifossorial.bsky.social · 3mo agoOur paper on turtle origins is finally out in Current Biology, with two major implications for our understanding of reptile evolution 🐢 #Paleontology #Turtles #Evolution www.cell.com/current-biol...
NORTH DAKOTA'S BIGGEST HELL PIG: Our brand new exhibit, a Hell Pig from right here in Dickinson! The past few months we've been piecing this together, and today we got it finished! #fossil #fossils #paleontology #hellpig #entelodont #FossilFriday #NorthDakota #dickinson
Did you know - camels originated and evolved in North America?! 🐪 But back then, they were smaller and had no humps! Wanna learn more? Head to bit.ly/oligocene-camel & tune in next week for another #FossilFriday from the Paleo Research Institute www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org/vc/ #Paleontology
Happy #FossilFriday! Today a team from the Science Museum of Minnesota went to Garden City Elementary school in Brooklyn Center, #Minnesota to talk about the fun & interesting science careers at the museum. I, of course, brought some fun #fossils to share. Great to talk to so many kids!
#FossilFriday 🐘🦥🐴Happened upon a fantastic life‑sized mastodon with its juvenile at the Boonshoft Museum’s Entering the Ice Age exhibit in Dayton, OH recently. Great for paleo‑curious kids—plus a great mammal and historical exhibits as well as giant sloth and short‑faced bear replicas. boonshoft.org
🐂 #LostBones #FossilFriday 🐟️🐘🦥🐴🐪 I'm back out #CountingBones. At the Winnebago Area Museum — bison and horse remains from two Blue Earth sites. Shout‑out: this museum has been entirely volunteer‑run for 50 years. 🏦Museum: www.winnebagoareamuseum.org 🔄Project: marcusbrandel.substack.com/about
Happy #FossilFriday! This week, the paleo team from the Science Museum of Minnesota was at Beaver Fest, at lovely Carleton College in Northfield, #Minnesota. It was our 3rd year there but the first with the Giant Beaver as Minnesota’s official state fossil. Such a good time!
Among the tiniest theropod teeth I’ve seen from this not-to-be-identified locality! Familiar to anyone? We’ve got our ideas. #FossilFriday 🦖 🦷
