Spiral monograptids drawn by Ethel Wood in a book I've been spending lots of time with: Gertrude Elles and Ethel Wood's Monograph of British Graptolites (1901—18), ed. by Charles Lapworth #FossilFriday

The Generation Hope program for this year is now online! Events are free but you need to reserve tickets: www.nhm.ac.uk/events/gener... Lots of weekend events this year due to popular demand! Come and learn more about the planetary crisis and how to fight it. Aimed at young people but all welcome!

Spiral monograptids drawn by Ethel Wood in a book I've been spending lots of time with: Gertrude Elles and Ethel Wood's Monograph of British Graptolites (1901—18), ed. by Charles Lapworth #FossilFriday

"a delight in the contemplation of bestial vice, and the expression of low sarcasm, which is, I believe, the most hopeless state into which the human mind can fall" --- Santa Maria Formosa, Venice. --- Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 3. #grotesque #art #architecture #renaissance #Italy

I've posted this before for #BookologyThursday but I'll post it again: the Dragon in a 1958 edition of 'Beowulf' illustrated by Joseph Mugnaini. #dragon #folklore #folktale #medieval

If you'd like to support the fundraising campaign of the Friends of Lyme Regis Museum to help acquire this #MaryAnning partial letter for the museum, you can make a donation here: www.lymeregismuseum.co.uk/about-us/fri...

Fold-out plate showing different image resolutions possible with the half-tone process, from Julius Verfasser's book on the subject (4th edn, 1907 copy @theul.bsky.social). Subject is the recently built Flatiron Building in NYC. 175 lines... 200 lines... 400 lines... She cannae take any more, cap'n!

From the Point of View of a Cat ~ Karel Capek (translated by Dora Round - originally published in Intimate Things, 1935)

I had forgetten, if I ever knew, that there was a Foraminifera Sculpture Park. 114 sculptures. Sublime.

The description of an ornate book of remembrance in John Skelton's dream-poem The Garland of Laurel (written 1495), the margins of which are 'enpicturid with gressoppes and waspies / With butterfllyis and fresshe pecoke taylis / Enflorid with flowris and slymy snaylis'.

What draws Pre-Raphaelite artists and writers to enclosed gardens? Join me tomorrow at the beautiful Garden Museum - next door to Lambeth Palace(!) - to find out. www.gardenmuseum.org.uk/whats-on/pre...

A late 1990s resin-and-fibreglass cast from the mould of Allosaurus made by Ray Harryhausen for 'One Million Years BC' (1966). In the @sciencemuseum.org.uk CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Licence (collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co80...) #FossilFriday

JVC essay prize alert!

We were delighted to purchase at auction recently more letters and papers of the Victorian journalist W. T. Stead, adding a significant personal and visual dimension to his existing collection here. All thanks to a grant from @thefnl.bsky.social, which made this acquisition possible #archives

#nabibgeo DRIGGERS, E.A., 2024. Glamour and geology : women in petroleum geology and popular culture. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. ISBN 9783031645242. cercabib.ub.edu/permalink/34...

How do natural history #museums help save the world? Next Thursday @drbeldavis.bsky.social & I will explore how collections help tackle biodiversity loss & climate change today, as well as historical legacies behind these museums. Part of Birkbeck's Climate Festival: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...

It's cool that the Stansted train has effectively no space for luggage

Archaeopteryx with cool hair. By Henry Smith Williams in his book The Biography of Mother Earth (1931).

A "Syntarsus" half mount at the National Museum of Zimbabwe (via my colleague who always gets to travel to cool places). Interesting that it has both feathers and a dragging tail.

Lovely to be able to share this 18th-century bound herbarium for a workshop on botany and the book, funded by the Isaac Newton Trust and Trinity College, Cambridge. We’ve also digitised the volumes, so everyone can take a look! cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-...

"Wild-sea Holley by ye passage as you goe from portsmouth into Cornwall" collected by William Paine, 1737, from @cuherb.bsky.social. Now, this is in fact from Plymouth, and in modern parlance it is Eryngium campestre @jillwhitelock.bsky.social @timpurches.bsky.social 1/3

Call for Papers: Women’s Fieldwork and the Making of Nineteenth Century Natural History Collections We seek articles to complete a special issue on women’s field collecting, and contributions to nineteenth century natural history for Nuncius. #Histsci #NaturalHistory #WomensHistory #Fieldwork

Here's an awesome natural history humanities PhD opportunity, working with Cambridge University Library & our insect & archive collections here at @zoologymuseum.bsky.social, exploring the links between entomology, life writing & environmental change. Please share! www.ccc.cam.ac.uk/initiatives/...

At an event in Trinity Hall and have come face to face with the author of Zanoni. He's always one step ahead!

Excited to say that the website and publication date for my Flat Earth book is out. Mark your calendars for August 23! link.springer.com/book/9783032...

Today is International Women's Day and we're celebrating Mary Buckland! Buckland was a naturalist and illustrator who's work is being celebrated in our current special exhibition, Breaking Ground. This photo is one of our most recent acquisitions and was donated by a descendant of the Bucklands.

Emblem book, Flemish, 1685-86. Meekness: a nun wearing a laurel wreath, caressing an elephant that stands behind her. (British Museum)

This substation has been flooded for months. So that's how they make electric eels. (Translator's note: the speaker is in Ely)

"Fossils (February)" by the English surrealist Tristram Hillier. This 1955 painting was commissioned by Shell for the Shell Book of Nature, Fossils, Insects and Reptiles. From Ark UK: Government Art Collection. You Can Be Sure Of Shell... #FossilFriday

Is anyone keen to review Arnold Thackray's book Making Science History: A Personal Perspective from Alamogordo to AI (www.pennpress.org/978160618036...). Contact us at [email protected] if so.

Next month, at the 2026 meeting of the @thebsls.bsky.social at the @unistrathclyde.bsky.social, I'll be talking about what the heck literary scholars can, might, or should be doing with natural history collections.

From a letter in COUNTRY LIFE magazine, 13/02/1915: “SIr, The saying that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy“ appears to have been taken seriously to heart by the lads of the Naval Brigade, now in training at the Crystal Palace.. 1/2 (the Palace was closed to the public during WW1)

I've not seen many artistic representations of dinosaurs trying to escape the Genesis Deluge, or rather not many that weren't produced very, very recently. The image below is from an ebay auction (shorturl.at/Tg1TH). Harold W. Clark, Fossils, Flood, and Fire (1968). Watch out behind you, T. rex!

my article on Georges Méliès and aquariums—the first thing published from my dissertation—is now out open access at @jcmsjournal.bsky.social!! read on to see how fairy tale grottoes, Jules Verne's science fiction, and water infrastructure are all connected!!! quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/i...

Aspiring writers! The folk at Wollaton Hall (aka Batman’s house) are running an event for young people hoping for a career in writing I’ll be there to talk history & non-fiction, alongside brilliant children's authors, poets, & novelists 🗓️ 10 March, 4–7pm wollatonhall.org.uk/writing-for-...

The frontispiece to Ethel Skeat's textbook The Principles of Geography, Physical & Human (1923). Not sure if school geography textbooks still have frontispieces, but, if they do, they probably don't depict Yggdrasil, Nidhögg, 'the little squirrel Ratatösk', 'the great Midgard serpent', etc.

Cambridge isn't a city known for its PoMo exuberance but I always admire this sunny delivery centre on Tennis Court Road.

Reviewing a book is one of the best and most fun service opportunities available! Check out the awesome books available from H-Environment! #envhist #envhum #envtech #conservation #sustainability #envjustice #ecocrit #envphil #plantstudies #animalstudies #nature docs.google.com/document/d/1...

NEW EPISODE: 'A Pastoral Horror' (1890). A Tyrolean village is terrorised by a serial killer, armed with an alpine pickaxe... Chat about: early crime fiction; Jack the Ripper; Feldkirch; werewolves and cuckoo clocks! bit.ly/DODoyle; bit.ly/DOD72sn; #ArthurConanDoyle

If you need Saturday listening material, check out my chat with @davehone.bsky.social and Iszi Lawrence on the latest Terrible Lizards podcast. Two medical doctors, two twentieth-century dinosaur novels. Whoever wins, we lose: terriblelizards.libsyn.com/tls12e02-1

🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran... #BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪

"The monster opened its great toothed mouth and the sound that came from it was the sound of the Fog Horn itself. Lonely and vast and far away. The sound of isolation, a viewless sea, a cold night, apartness. That was the sound." Ray Bradbury, 'The Foghorn' #BookologyThursday 🎨 by Zdeněk Burian

Dictyonema, retouched photograph by O. M. B. Bulman. Detail from part II of A Monograph of British Dendroid Graptolites (1928). #FossilFriday

Shocking. When I was an undergrad around 20 years ago, a decent summer job & the maintenance loan saw me (carefully) thru a whole year in a provincial city. The cost of living is now so insane that hundreds, maybe thousands, of students in Belfast are using food banks. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Always a joy to find a piece by Kathryn Schulz in the latest New Yorker. This article (nay, meditation) on Richard Holmes’ new biography of Tennyson is quite wonderful. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Like Jurassic Park (Crichton)? Like The Lost World (Doyle)? Like The Lost World (Crichton)? Then this is the podcast for you. Although people who said yes to the last question may be thinner on the ground.

This 1928 Italian cover for The Lost World ... I like it.

Residents of Kent! Does anyone know if this guy is still on display in Maidstone Museum? Or has he long since departed?

I've been reminded about this very impressive online resource: Iziko Museum's loving recreation of its 1959 Boonstra Diorama exhibition on the prehistoric life of the Karoo. (www.iziko.org.za/exhibitions/...)