Work with us! 👉 Invertebrate Paleontology Collection Manager Position will manage the extensive collections, conduct fieldwork, participate in public outreach, & pursue external funding. 🔸 Full info: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/inver... 🔸 Apply @ufl.edu: explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...

#ICYMI 🦪 Scientists and conservationists are racing to rebuild sustainable oyster populations, something that Indigenous communities were able to steward for millennia. Archaeologists are looking in ancient middens for more data: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/when...

Scientists discover telephone-cord-like optic nerves in chameleons, which were overlooked by Aristotle, Newton, and everyone else, until now... Story: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/scie... Study: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Only eat oysters in months with an ‘r’? Rule of thumb is at least 4,000 years old 🦪 www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/oyst... "Oysters in the Southeast spawn from May to October, and avoiding oyster collection in the summer may help replenish their numbers."

#SciArt Spotlight 🎨 Florida Pleistocene This exhibit painting brings to life what the marine environments around Florida might have looked like during the Pleistocene. 🗝️ Check out the species in the art + key, and related fossils from our collections: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/exhibits/blo...

Scientists and conservationists are racing to rebuild sustainable oyster populations, something that Indigenous communities were able to steward for millennia. 🦪 Archaeologists are looking in ancient middens for more data: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/when... Study: doi.org/10.1016/j.ja...

Tempered by time, Choctaw pottery connects ancestral past with living present www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/temp... A question for archaeologists was why Pensacola potters elected to use oyster and clam shells as well as the freshwater mussel shells used by the broader Mississippian culture.

#SpookySeason Skeletons 🩻 Online Exhibit Museum technology is shifting how fish skeletons are processed, providing more access for research, education, outreach & global collaboration. Inner Beauty 🐠 Skeletons Revealed from the Museum’s Fish Collection www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/exhibits/onl...

Last call! 👉 NAGPRA Bioarchaeologist and Coordinator This is a this full-time, TEAMS exempt staff position. 🏛️📌 Apply by Oct 31, 2025 🔸 Full position info: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/caree... 🔸 Apply via @ufl.edu: explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...

Last call! 👉 Florida Museum Registrar 🏛️📌 Apply by Oct 31, 2025 The Registrar oversees the technical and regulatory aspects of collection accessions, permitting, & exchanges. 🔸 Full position info: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/caree... 🔸 Apply via @ufl.edu: explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...

Online Exhibit 🌿 Rare, Beautiful & Fascinating Feature: Florida Yew (Taxus floridana) This critically endangered native Florida plant produces Taxol, an anticancer drug. Florida yew is not harvested commercially due to its rarity. 🎧 With Kent Perkins: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/100-years/ob...

Congrats Elise! 👏👏👏 The Southeastern Museums Conference has recognized Florida Museum registrar Elise LeCompte with the James R. Short award, given in honor of lifetime (20+ years) service in the field. About her career (and recent retirement): www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/elis...

Devil’s tooth fungus 😈 Spooky natural history This alien fungus is sure to unsettle even the bravest mycologists! When it absorbs excess moisture, it exudes a red liquid that looks like blood from pores in its cap. Read more: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/spoo... 📷: ngkoons, CC BY-NC

Oct. 23 🍺🐛 Bugs, Bones and Brews Spooky season at First Magnitude Brewing with our Daniels Lab researchers, vertebrate paleontology collection & the UF Thompson Earth Systems Institute team. Hickory Horned Devil Hazy IPA 🍺 with jalapeno peppers Event: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/event/bugs-b...

We're hiring! 👉 Florida Museum Registrar The Registrar oversees the technical and regulatory aspects of collection accessions, permitting, and exchanges. 🔸 Position info: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/caree... 🔸 Apply via @ufl.edu: explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53... 🏛️📌 Apply by Oct 31, 2025

Archaeologists partnered with the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma to better understand why Pensacola potters, who lived in Mobile Bay and adjacent coastal regions to the east and west around A.D. 1150-1700, used marine shell temper in their pottery. Story: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/temp...

Winter worm summer grass 😨 Spooky natural history Ancient texts refer to a shape-shifting organism that lives out the winter as a worm and transforms into a plant during the summer. The horrifying answer might be in these cicadas: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/spoo...

We're hiring! 👉 NAGPRA Bioarchaeologist and Coordinator This is a this full-time, TEAMS exempt staff position. 🔸 Full position info: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/caree... 🔸 Apply via @ufl.edu: explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53... Please share! 🏛️📌 Apply by Oct 31, 2025

Oct. 23 🍺🐛 Bugs, Bones and Brews Spooky season at First Magnitude Brewing with our Daniels Lab researchers, vertebrate paleontology collection & the UF Thompson Earth Systems Institute team. Hickory Horned Devil Hazy IPA 🍺 with jalapeno peppers Event: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/event/bugs-b...

Spooky natural history 🪤 Gruesome trap Bladderworts may look like regular aquatic plants, but each plant produces hundreds of sophisticated and deadly bladder traps to abduct and digest prey. Read more: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/spoo... 📷: Gilles Ayotte, CC BY-SA

Museum Resource 🌍 UF Thompson Earth Systems Institute TESI advances communication and education about Earth systems science in a way that inspires Floridians to be effective stewards of our planet. Meet the '25 TESI Team & learn about what they do: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/earth-system...

Name a bat 🦇🦇🦇 this #SpookySeason! @ufl.edu is home to one of the world’s largest occupied bat abodes and you can name a UF bat by making a gift to any area on campus (including the bat houses and your favorite museum) before October 31. 🦇 Find out how: affinitygiving.ufl.edu/campaigns/na...

Spooky natural history 👾 Columned stinkhorn At the top of its stalks, the stinkhorn produces a slimy mass of spores. The smell may be repugnant to humans but it’s irresistible to some insects and other invertebrates. Read more: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/spoo... 📷 Alex Abair, CC BY-NC

Low nitrogen availability is the number-one limitation to plant growth in most ecosystems, including farmland. A new study brings scientists a step closer to engineering plants that can pull nitrogen from the air. Story: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/some... Study: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Ancient, diverse and abundant 🌏 Scientists created a global dataset of brittle star occurrences and combined this with DNA analyses to determined how brittle star species are related and how they dispersed across the world's oceans. Story: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/no-e...

Work with us! 👉 Florida Museum Registrar The Registrar oversees the technical and regulatory aspects of collection accessions, permitting, and exchanges. 🔸 Full position info: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/caree... 🔸 Apply via UF: explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53... 🏛️📌 Apply by Oct 31, 2025

Work with us! 👉 NAGPRA Bioarchaeologist and Coordinator This is a this full-time, TEAMS exempt staff position. 🏛️📌 Apply by Oct 31, 2025 🔸 Full position info: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/caree... 🔸 Apply via @ufl.edu: explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...

Museum Resource 🐟 Fishes in the Fresh Waters of Florida Explore our state's freshwater fish species and click through to our collection records, photos & map. Shown: Jack Dempsey (Rocio octofasciata), non-indigenous to Florida's freshwaters 🔗 Info & browse: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/discover-fis...

Sept 27 🐦 Early Bird Gets the Band Learn about bird banding during fieldwork with Museum ornithologist Glaucia Del-Rio and the UF Bird Observatory’s Charlie Muise, including demonstrations of bird capturing, data collection and banding. Event info: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/event/early-...

“These butterflies have puzzled and exasperated lepidopterists, taxonomists and museum curators for centuries, including me personally for the last three decades,” said Keith Willmott, curator at our McGuire Center for Lepidoptera & Biodiversity. 🦋🧬 Story: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/geno...

Museum Collections 🐈 Fossil Meow Jaguars first dispersed to North America across the Bering Land Bridge in the Pleistocene and were much larger than those living today in Central and South America. More: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/florida-vert... Featured Species: Panthera onca Specimen: # UF 14765

Online Exhibit 🐟 Rare, Beautiful & Fascinating Feature: Fishing Net Fragments From Collier Co., Florida Dates to ~AD 700-1500 "It’s well over 1,000 years old, yet you can still see the knots in the net and tell how they were tied." 🎧 With Bill Marquardt: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/100-years/ob...

Sentinel chickens, mosquito-borne illnesses and an informatics pipeline 🐓 Collaboration under a @ufl.edu Research Opportunity Seed Fund brings clarity to decades of data on Florida's West Nile outbreaks and forecasting. Story: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/dise...

Museum Collections 🧺 Seminole and Miccosukee Baskets Baskets are made from material like cane, palmetto, palm leaves, and sweetgrass and includes pack, envelope, berry, sieve, and coiled sweetgrass baskets. The collection covers 150 years of history: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/sflarch/ethn...

#ICYMI 🦈 🧬 What is going on with great white shark DNA? www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/ther... White sharks exhibit stark differences between the DNA in their nuclei and the DNA in their mitochondria. Until now, scientists believed their migration patterns explained this discrepancy.

#TBT From the Archives 💡 Dave Webb and the Giant Ground Sloths The beloved giant ground sloth fossils featured in our Florida Fossils exhibit are the result of paleontologist Dave Webb's research and the work he and his students put into the specimens: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/vertpaleo/bl...

They don't have eyes, a heart or a brain, and they once nearly went extinct, but that hasn't stopped brittle stars from getting around. An international team of scientists have created a global dataset of brittle star occurrences. 🧵 www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/no-e...

Museum Collections 🦋 Butterfly Moths The McGuire Center has been working on digitizing their sizeable Castniidae collection -- a family of diverse, tropical moths that are brightly patterned with colorful hindwings: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/mcguire/news...

#ICYMI 🐚 Paleontologists Carrie Tyler and Michal Kowalewski created a massive dataset of marine fossils to demonstrate for the first time that functional diversity can be accurately inferred from the marine fossil record. What is functional diversity? www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/pale...

Congrats to Moritz Lürig @mluerig.bsky.social! 👏👏👏 He has been awarded a group starter grant by the European Research Council @erc.europa.eu to create an atlas for moth and butterfly wing patterns using machine learning. www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/mori... 🧵

When paleontologists study fossils, they see what the organism would have looked like when it was alive and how it interacted with its environment. Those interactions constitute something called functional diversity. Story: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/pale... Study: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Museum Collections 🐚 Our Invertebrate Paleontology Collections house nearly 6.5 million specimens, from over 7,500 sites around Florida, the southeastern U.S., the Caribbean, Central and South America and Antarctica. Browse image galleries: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/invertpaleo/...

Museum Collections 🏺 Ceramic Type Gallery Our type collections of historic period archaeological ceramics (1492-1850) includes thousands of images of individual sherds, representing hundreds of different ceramic types. Browse and search: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/histarch/cer...

Museum Resource 🌻🐛 Better Together Browse the 50 most common native wildflowers and butterflies in Florida to see what plants might best support local pollinator populations this #Butterfriday! Florida's Wildflowers & Butterflies: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/wildflowers/...

#TBT From the Archives 🤿 Paleontology happens everywhere Photos from our Vertebrate Paleontology archives document the planning and teamwork involved with excavating fossils from riverine ecosystems: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/vertpaleo/bl...

Online Exhibit 🪲 Bark Beetle Calligraphy Jiri Hulcr is a forest entomologist that asked "Can insects create art?" He looks at these little beetles with scientific scrutiny but also a touch of poetry. www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/exhibits/onl... 🪲 Feat.: Ips calligraphus “worm of beautiful writing”

Online Exhibit 🐕 Rare, Beautiful & Fascinating Feature: White’s Bear-Dog Skull (Amphicyon longiramus) During excavations, paleontologists place fragile fossils inside plaster jackets to protect them for transport to the lab. 🎧 With Jason Bourque: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/100-years/ob...

Bird break 🌊 Usually quite elegant, this Great Egret (Ardea alba) was a whole mood while wading in the coastal wetlands of Pine Island in southwestern Florida near our Randell Research Center. About the species from @cornellbirds.bsky.social: www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_...

Museum Collections 🐊 #FloridaGators American alligator fossils are found throughout much of Florida & the species has has lived for millions of years with little morphological change. www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/florida-vert... Featured Species: Alligator mississippiensis Specimen: # UF 115627

Museum Resource 🐍 Florida Snake ID Guide Easy visual ID and searchable tool for learning about our state's snakes including habitat, range, diet & lookalikes. Featured: Smooth Earthsnake (Virginia valeriae) Full info and explore more: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/florida-snak... NON-VENOMOUS