The Burpee Museum, Rockford Illinois is hiring a Director of Collections and Research. They need a Ph.D. who is field, oriented, collaborative, can publish on their major fossil collections, generate grant money, & work with the public. App: burpee.org/director-of-... Dinosaurs & more galore.

Working on describing new polacanthid ankylosaur species from the lower Yellow Cat, basal Cretaceous, Berriasian. Got to playing around with my ilia overview fig. and it got out of control... So I guess, I got a bit more done on our ankylosaur character appendix as well for #FossilFriday.

Usually there's not mushroom for #FossilFriday in our Botanical journal, but this week we're in luck! Fossils in sedimentary rocks have revealed the co-oldest gilled mushroom forming fungus, and it's pretty spectacular! Check it out 🧪🌍🍄 doi.org/10.1093/botl...

News on #SVPCA, a (mostly) UK-based annual meeting devoted to vertebrate palaeontology. Things have been quiet about the meeting for the last 18 months, but a team of us are working to pick up where we left off. More details to follow ASAP, hopefully very soon. #FossilFriday #paleontology #fossil

#FossilFriday: spot the fossils around Mary Anning's dog Tray in the two famous portraits of #MaryAnning, just some of many differences between the two pictures.

So far this week: completed bunch of annual reviews, several new gallery planning meetings, reviewed two papers, sat on three internal panels, helped complete two fellowship proposals, pushed a book toward publication, repaired some fossils. Might try and do some science today 🦕

#FossilFriday Photographs of the holotype of 𝙈𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙥𝙝𝙚𝙪𝙨 𝙠𝙪𝙡𝙞𝙘𝙠𝙞 gen. et sp. nov. Read the full study by Ezcurra et al. (2025): A new late Permian archosauromorph reptile from Germany enhances our understanding of the early diversity of the clade #PalaeoSky

A huge theropod dinosaur footcast from the Upper Jurassic Lastres Formation in the Museo del Jurásico de Asturias in Spain. It must be about half a metre long. #FossilFriday

In yesterday's spring statement there was more money announced for military spending, but nothing for our NHS. 16,600 people are dying completely avoidably every year - this is an emergency. Read out analysis here: keepournhspublic.com/konp-stateme...

You might know Hintze Hall for its impressive skeletons, but have you ever looked at our beautiful display of butterflies? 🦋🤩

#FossilFriday: A curator's dream label. Doesn't get much better than this: 'This Fossil is the first I ever obtained. It was purchased from Mary Anning in July 1824. It then wanted the point of the nose. This was found 3 years after rolled on the sands & she sent it to me to Oxford – Enniskillen'

Every senator who voted to confirm RFK Jr owns this tragedy. Every single one.

The first T. rex ever found, no less. You can see its other dentary on display in the @nhm-london.bsky.social dinosaur gallery

For #FossilFriday not the usual iguanodontian but interesting nevertheless. The jaw of Tyrannosaurus rex from a partial skeleton found by Barnum Brown from the Cheyenne river, Wyoming . I think in 1901. Now in the collections of @nhm-london.bsky.social

Yusuf: “We will secure our borders, leave the ECHR, and deport those here illegally. My message to the British people is simple: I will secure our borders and make you feel safe.” There is nothing safe about these vicious inadequates turning racism into policy. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Timeline cleanse from a certain celebrity theropod for #fossilfriday here's a skull of Dimorphodon macronxy. Like most early pterosaurs it has an impressive array of strangely proportioned teeth*, while classically reconstructed as puffin like these teeth suggest it wasn't a specialist piscivore

Here's a Thescelosaurus skull at DMNS for #FossilFriday — one of the better skulls of this dinosaur I've seen. Apparently this one is going off exhibit soon, so I'm glad I was able to catch it last week

I, too, would like to have a go at the new Spinosaurus soon, but in the meantime: Here's a slide from my recent talk, which covers the DOs and DON'Ts of restoring ginkgoes within palaeoart! Enjoy! #Ginkgo #FossilFriday #paleobotany #paleoart #SciComm

Slabs showing ripples and tracks of the chirotherium (hand beast) in mid Triassic sandstone from Burton upon Trent in the Midlands. Sadly these have been lost but you can see how they got their name. #FossilFriday

"Smiling" fossil is a crinoid. Cool. Crinoids make me smile. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

So have you posted your #Valentine card? Too late now and anyway it may be safer to send an e-card! This is what might have happened in Victorian times: cartoon entitled "The Great Overflow of Affection"! victorianweb.org/victorian/pe...

A slab covered in scurrying little footprints about 3cm long, preserved alongside mudcracks. Evidence of behaviour and climate. Rhynchosauroides-like, no provenance, don't know how old (rescued from the rock store & used in teaching). #FossilFriday 🌏⚒🔬🦎

#FossilFriday: Always worth keeping an eye out for this specimen if you visit @nhm-london.bsky.social, the ichthyosaur found at Lyme Regis by #MaryAnning and her brother in 1811–12, the first specimen to come to scientific attention, and its impressive ring of sclerotic plates.

Perhaps dangerously, I've discovered there's an audience for grapolites on here. Thus: graptolite structural models made by E. S. Parkington and by (or inspired by) W. J. Sollas. The perfect dinner party centrepiece. In the @lapworthmuseum.bsky.social collections #FossilFriday

After a storm last week the sand stripped from the beach to reveal a 40 cm long iguanodontian dinosaur foot cast originally from the shores of a 120 million year old lagoon (Vectis Formation). #IsleofWight #FossilFriday

Rachel Reeves promises to lower student loan costs by tackling inflation 'By getting inflation down, we can also reduce the interest on student loans and I think that will make a big difference in making that more affordable’ Not sure students will see it that way

Mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya was the first woman to: + Earn a doctorate in #mathematics (in the modern sense) + Be appointed to a full professorship in mathematics She was also one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor. She died #OTD in 1891. #WomenInSTEM

Not been aware of this “uproar” anywhere but here. Either on the news or in broadsheet media. And there should be uproar. Because, in a nutshell, it tells you why Reform - in their infantile, idiotic, vengeful inadequacy - are so ragingly unfit for office. nation.cymru/news/uproar-...

For #FossilFriday, a cute Didymograptus deflexus collected by William Kinsey Dover and his sister Sarah Anne Willes Dover of Keswick, now in the @sedgwickmuseum.bsky.social. One for the graptolite fans.

For #FossilFriday just to show that #IsleofWight is so much more than dinosaurs a mammal jaw with roots exposed from the Oligocene some 34 million years ago. From an anthracothere a distant relation of the modern hippopotamus.

The 6 February 1829 meeting of the Geological Society was a busy one for William Buckland. Not only did he describe the pterodactyl discovered by #MaryAnning, he read another paper on her recognition of the true nature of the Lias bezoar stones for which Buckland introduced the term 'coprolite'.

February 1836: newspapers across the country report that #MaryAnning, defrauded of her savings, had been awarded £300 from the government after her friends at the Geological Society lobbied the Prime Minister. With a further £200 they had collected in Dublin in 1835, this gave her an annuity of £25.

There's a new paper out in Papers in Palaeontology describing some very fragmentary material attributed to a new 'rhabdodontid'. I'm surprised the authors didn't delay publication after our Nature paper from six weeks ago, in which we demonstrated that 'Rhabdodontidae' was paraphyletic....

Seeing conversations about this issue making the rounds again on social media. Check out my latest blog post about the myth of "de-extinction" eternalscientistmusings.wordpress.com/2026/01/30/a...

This is one of two 60w daylight simulation bulbs purchased when I was an art student 43 years ago. The first popped in 2021 after 39 years of continuous service, near daily usage. The second incandesced for 4 years until it pinged last night. We shall not see their light again. #SciArt

#FossilFriday Thinking about mired sauropods vs the western Chinese dino-deathtraps. Type skeleton of the turiasaur Mierasaurus bobyoungi was a mired sauropod. Price River II site includes many upright articulated titanosauromorph feet. @utahpaleo-ufop.bsky.social @prehistoricmuseum.bsky.social

All over the world, there are legends of sea monsters swimming in the depths. In the mid-18th century, Dutch miners came face-to-face with one. They’d discovered Mosasaurus – an ancient animal unlike anything ever seen before. Find out about this undersea titan for #FossilFriday!

happy #fossilfriday! this is copepteryx, a flightless seabird from the oligocene of japan. as a suliform, it was related to gannets, boobies, frigatebirds, and cormorants, though it and other plotopterids displayed remarkable convergence with the anatomy of penguins (art by mark witton)

I usually stick to echinoderms, but this insect was so stunning. This is a Cretaceous aged Neuropterid insect, Hemerobidae sp. #FossilFriday

Not quite #FossilFriday Here is a specimen of a very recently extinct creature that is currently relevant for…reasons. The Great Auk, Pinguinus impennis, as the name implies is the “original” penguin. It survived until likely the 1850s when it became extinct due to overhunting. Photo from ANSP

#FossilFriday The ischium bone on the right from #IsleofWight formed part of the iguanodontian dinosaur pelvis. In 1849 the bone was understandably still something of an enigma and here has been misidentified by Gideon Mantell as a clavicle.

Patient safety in UK Based on this report there is a lot that needs to be done. Waits are longer, risks not mitigated against (DVT / Infection) If the #NHS is run for acute care only (firefighting) it will continue to have problems The choice is ours🤷🏻‍♂️ www.imperial.ac.uk/Stories/glob...

This is absolutely shocking. Something has to be done about this appalling situation in which so many now find themselves. The government needs to act

Well done, Andrew Wakefield. What an achievement.

Vulcanodon is one of the earliest sauropods but it’s named for the shape of several theropod teeth referred in error to the type, as they were found in association with the skeleton (at a time when many ‘prosauropods’ were considered carnivores). Enjoy 🦖🦕🇿🇼

Cathedral Basilica of Saint Cecilia in Albi, France 🇫🇷 It is widely considered the largest brick building in the world. 
The cathedral was built in the Southern French Gothic style between 1282 and 1493.

Why TF would you ‘give Reform a go’? Yes. They represent change. But not good change. Not the change people want. This lot would torch everything we value and rely upon (NHS, public services, our rights, protections…) in an absolute frenzy of corruption, prejudice and uselessness. FFS. Please don’t.

25 January 1807: birth of William Willoughby Cole, Viscount Cole, from 1840 the 3rd Earl of Enniskillen, keen fossil collector, long-time friend of #MaryAnning & one of her richest clients, first visiting her in 1824. His collection is now @nhm-london.bsky.social & includes her 1830 plesiosaur.

I'm intrigued about how this is next week's episode, @fossilrob.bsky.social, because unless I've had some sort of episode, I don't think we have actually recorded this one yet... this was just you telling me about what you were going to tell me about. Wasn't it?

For #FossilFriday the first 7 caudal (tail) vertebrae from the #IsleofWight iguanodontian dinosaur Comptonatus chasei. A hefty tail providing lots of muscle attachments including powerful muscles from the back of the thigh. So different from large mammals, think of the elephant’s flimsy tail.