Our queen of the night cactus had a dozen flowers open on the same night this week. It was quite a show, worth staying up to see, plus the scent of so many flowers at once was incredible.
Laura Cooper
@transitionalform.bsky.social
Postdoc investigating the plants of the past at the University of Edinburgh, plants can be rocks too!
Astounding traditional Chinese artworks of the Cretaceous invertebrates from the Jehol (远古小精灵系列), featured at the Nanjing Paleontological Museum. Glad to see creative representation of insects in palaeontology.
Partial mycoheterotrophy: a common strategy in arbuscular mycorrhizal plants? Merckx et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Do you, or someone you know, study carbon isotopes? If so, you need this paper: ⚛️🌱☁️ "A century of research on carbon isotope discrimination during photosynthesis: from early breakthroughs to future goals" (by me and @schubertba.bsky.social) #TansleyReview #PublishedArticle #OpenAccess
A century of research on carbon isotope discrimination during photosynthesis: from early breakthroughs to future goals
Advanced plant growth chambers quantified the dependency of carbon isotope fractionation on CO2 level, making possible the reconstruction of atmospheric CO2 across 500 million years of earth history ...
doi.org
Unveiled this evening: the 170-year-old, grade ii*-listed, wildly inaccurate Crystal Palace dinosaurs, now restored to their original colours and off the Historic England at-risk register.
If you want an up-to-date summary of whale and dolphin evolution, have a read of my new review paper in @natrevbiodiv.nature.com! I’ve tried to cover as much research as possible in this, so apologies if I’ve missed you! doi.org/10.1038/s443...
The evolution and diversification of Cetacea - Nature Reviews Biodiversity
Cetaceans are a highly diverse and enigmatic group of animals with a well-documented evolutionary history. This Review describes the macroevolutionary and palaeobiological history of Cetacea, from the...
doi.org
My privilege to share some lovely stories from the science community about what Sam Neill's timeless performance as Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park meant to them—and why it will continue to inspire kids to chase their own discoveries for years to come.
Sam Neill Inspired a Generation of Scientists
The actor, who died at age 78 on Monday, embodied a passionate approach to research and positive masculinity in his role as paleontologist Alan Grant in the 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park.
wired.com
Paleo Week: Ancient Secrets of the Fibonacci Spiral www.botany.one/ancient-secr... Longer cones and a clockwise spiral lead to tighter seed packing in a Jurassic conifer #Botany #PlantScience
Paleo Week: Ancient Secrets of the Fibonacci Spiral
Longer cones and a clockwise spiral lead to tighter seed packing in a Jurassic conifer
botany.one
Friends of Fossil Forests seminar tomorrow "Opalized wood from Clover Creek, Idaho: A case study in the power of amateur-professional collaboration" 🌳🌲⛏️ July 14, 2026, 11:00 AM EDT (GMT-4). All info & RSVP to get the link: www.fossilforests.org/post/petrifi... #fossil #paleobotany #wood
It's so funny when people ask me what I do: "So there's this unfathomable mystery of life..."
"Algae frequently get a bad press" 🤔 But reflecting further, most of the time they do good work. All about #algae in this excellent primer by John Raven and Mario Gordano www.cell.com/current-biol...
Algae
Algae are a diverse group of organisms that collectively have important impacts, both positive and negative, on the environment and on human lives.
cell.com
Something beautiful for the weekend! An extraordinary Acheulean handaxe knapped around a fossil shell c. 500,000-300,000 years ago! From West Tofts, Norfolk 📷 MAA Cambridge University collections.maa.cam.ac.uk/objects/4509... #Archaeology
Think you know aquatic plants? 7 facts that might surprise you 👇🌊 Read more: shorturl.at/0bCm1 As highlighted in @currentbiology.bsky.social, while at @ox.ac.uk @biology.ox.ac.uk
Seaweeds are not plants – and six other surprising facts about aquatic flora
The rules for plants can be different in water.
shorturl.at
🤔 Can a concept widely used in economics help us recognise alien life, from fossils on Mars to molecules in the outer solar system? A quick thread to explain a new paper from my research group : Can Pareto Optimality be Evidence of Life?, by Rodgers et al. 🧵 1/10 doi.org/10.1177/1531...
Very, very happy that our paper is finally out! We look at how tight a fit primates experience at birth, and found really cool results. It has been a long journey from collecting the first data seven years ago! A brief thread (1/8) www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Comparative primate analysis shows that humans are not unique in having a tight cephalopelvic fit at birth - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Analysing cephalopelvic proportions among 29 extant primate species, the authors show that a tight cephalopelvic fit is not unique to humans, with comparable or tighter fits occurring in several non-h...
nature.com
This is cultural suicide and intellectual vandalism. In an era where humanities-illiterate tech bros have unearned god-like powers, we need historians, philosophers, ethicists, classicists more than ever. Please sign. (Reposting without 404) www.change.org/p/stop-redun...
Sign the Petition
Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter
change.org
Call for Writers! 📣 Are you a student or early career researcher? Science communicator? Know someone who is? We're looking for our next round of Guest Bloggers for our journal blog The Paper Trail! Check out our vacancies page to apply, and read some of our latest posts here: buff.ly/7JVQmSx 🧪 🌍
Have you ever booped a trilobite nose? Kainops raymondi from the Devonian Haragan Fm. near Clarita, Oklahoma - Black Cat Mountain. #FossilFriday
🌿Brand new research out in Science today about angiosperm reproductive strategies and how they preceded the K-Pg mass extinction, led by UCMP PhD student, Jaemin Lee, and curator, Cindy Looy!🌿 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Diversification of angiosperm reproductive strategies predated the end-Cretaceous extinction
Angiosperm reproductive evolution is traditionally linked to the end-Cretaceous biotic crisis and subsequent ecological restructuring. Here, we report diverse and unexpectedly large diaspores (dispers...
science.org
🔥 Published today, and just in time for summer conferences, here are your guidelines for presenting badly www.nature.com/articles/s41... rdcu.be/fqa92
Scientific American is 180 years old. The most eminent science magazine for the general public. And today, sold off as scrap to stop the staff from unionizing. Many top editors I've worked with for a decade on several articles have been fired. What a disgrace @sciam.bsky.social
Congratulation @transitionalform.bsky.social @instmolplantsci.bsky.social for publishing the next chapter of your thesis @currentbiology.bsky.social ! Great work showing that the two fundamental vascular tissues - xylem and phloem evolved asynchronously. Read Laura's thread for more details 👇👇
Laura Cooper@transitionalform.bsky.social · last mo.Our paper on the origin and evolution of phloem, a big part of my PhD work, is out in Current Biology! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Our paper on the origin and evolution of phloem, a big part of my PhD work, is out in Current Biology! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Another underrated ecosystem engineer: arborescent lycopods! Plants do a lot to shape their ecosystems, but these things in particular hoovered up so much water from the swamp - and then had it transpire out through the leaves AND the trunk - they sustained the high humidity of the peat swamps
Claude ✡️🦖🦕@cascoclauda.bsky.social · 2mo agodicynodonts as ecosystem engineers is really under-explored both in literature and paleomedia. just putting it out there
📣 It's out ! ✨32✨ great #paleobotany papers in this special issue of @annbot.bsky.social on fossil #plants 🌿⛏️ edited by Mihai Tomescu, @sandyheth.bsky.social, Brian Atkinson & myself. Thank you to all the authors & all the reviewers for their contributions! 📄 academic.oup.com/aob/issue
Since there's a lot of love for all things algal right now... A chunk of Jurassic stromatolite, a structure formed by repeated layers of sediment and microbial mats (often cyanobacteria), making a blobby hummock. These guys have been doing their thing for 3.5 billion years. #FossilFriday ⚒️🌍🟢🔬🧪
Reform have now lost six by-elections in a row in England, Scotland and Wales. Their national poll rating is 26% – below Labour in 1983 – and Farage’s approval rating is -37. They’re very far from the voice of the people and need to stop being treated as such.
