Fiddling around with a diagram (built in PPT) to illustrate mixed sedimentation + mafic volcanism in Neoproterozoic rift basins in Virginia. ⚒️

Pliosaur tooth found by a friend who took me into the mountains of Aslfa. A marine repite. Even at the top of a mountain, you can find remains of ancient marine life. Estimated age: ~100–90 million years (Late Cretaceous). #Fossils #Pliosaur #Paleontology

Welcome back to #FossilFriday Here is Stromatolitic growth preserved in Chert. This comes from the Upper Cambrian-Lower Ordovician boundary within the Knox Group (Copper Ridge Dolomite) from Adairsville, Georgia. This will look amazing once I get this polished.

Today is Autism Acceptance Month! For those who don't know, I have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). I was first diagnosed at the age of 8 or 9. Things were hard for me as a child. They are even harder for me as an adult on the spectrum. I have learned a lot about myself and my needs to cope.

Welcome back to #TrilobiteTuesday Here is Drotops megalomanicus. This comes from the Middle Devonian (Eifelian) limestones in Jebel Issoumour, Morocco. The white line is a vein of calcite running through the rock and the trilobite. If happened after the trilobite became a fossil.

A friend of mine also found this trilobite fossil. It’s over 400 million years old and still clearly preserved. Lovely! #trilobite #fossil #paleontology #geology

Today, I polished my very first Petoskey Stone! It took me about an hour and a half to complete. I am very pleased with how it turned out.

Welcome back to #FossilFriday Here is section of limestone full of brachiopods shells. There are at least 3 different types of brachiopods species featured here. This includes Cincinnetina, Glyptorthis and Rafinesquina. This comes from the Upper Ordovician Liberty Formation from Cincinnati, Ohio.

Welcome back to another #FossilFriday Here is the marine gastropod (snail) of Turritella vertebroides. I collected this from the Late Cretaceous (Late Maastrichtian) Coon Creek Tongue of the Ripley Formation in Blue Spings, Mississippi. The original shell is still intact after ~71 million years. 🐌

🍑 Sparkle Party! Garnet Grossular var. Hessonite. Locality: Jeffrey Mine, Quebec, Ontario, Canada. #garnet #hessonite #finecrystals #nature

Something different for #TrilobiteTuesday This is an X-ray of a Chotecops trilobite from the Devonian Hunsruck slate near Bundenbach, Germany. The soft tissues were replaced with pyrite or fool's gold and are denser than the rock. The X-ray shows the denser material including legs and gills.

A friend found this pair of trilobites and I find them fascinating. Two articulated specimens preserved together, showing very clear thoracic segmentation and a well-defined pygidium. #Paleontology #Trilobite #Ordovician #Fossil #Geology #Travel

Welcome back to #TrilobiteTuesday This is a beautiful large enrolled Flexicalymene trilobite from the Upper Ordovician Arnheim Formation from Mt. Orab, Ohio.

Welcome back to #mineralmonday These are beautiful red Spessartine crystals. This particular specimen comes from Fujian Province, China. Spessartine is a species of magnesium rich Garnet that can be deep red or orange in color. They pop out very nicely with the association of Feldspar and Quartz.

Welcome back to #FossilFriday Here is the gastropod Worthenia koninck from the Upper Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) Graford Formation in Lake Bridgeport, Texas. Worthenia is probably one of my favorite gastropods due to the fact that it has knobs around the shell which makes it quite ornamental.

Had an awesome time giving my Georgia Through Time lecture at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science for the Fossil Road Show. There was a good crowd!

Finally got to see the legendary upside down turbidites at Devil's Slide. Spectacular rocks! ⚒️

Lovely low angle normal fault in Devil's Slide turbidites. ⚒️

Here I am in Starkville, Mississippi trekking into Late Cretaceous Prairie Bluff Chalk. Another bygone world left behind by an ancient sea ~67 million years ago. It rained a day before. Big mistake 😬. It was EXTREMELY muddy! Still found a few internal molds ammonites and small oyster shells.

I travelled through Tupelo, Mississippi and came across a hillside made up of fossil oyster shells. These come from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) Demopolis Formation. This is what was left from an ancient ocean ~76 million years ago. Pycnodonte mutabilis are the most common ones found. 🌊

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.

#SpongeThursday Ventriculitid sponge from the Cretaceous Chalk of England showing disruption of the net-like structure resulting from radial regrowth into a puncture.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=gg47... So I recently did a radio interview with Super Talk Mississippi Media about Paleontology and the Fossil Road Show that is coming up this weekend on March 7th. It was a fun time getting to chat with Rebecca.

Megamastax, a mighty chew from the Silurian - paper in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

From my latest set, a nice rock exposure in Hells Canyon #RockinTuesday #geology #idahogeology #hellscanyon

Xenolith (gneissic amphibolite) that I picked up last weekend in a rounded cobble of granite. ⚒️

I'm really looking forward to our Friends of UMMP meeting this Friday. I haven't been to a meeting since October for various reasons. Here's a before and after of a nice Eldredgeops from the Devonian Silica Shale of Ohio. I found and prepped this specimen. #TrilobiteTuesday

#TrilobiteTuesday Here is the cephalon (head) portion of an Olenellus trilobite from the Lower Cambrian Rome shale collected in Shelby County, Alabama. Early cambrian rocks in the Southeast are poorly exposed but and hard to find fossils in. These are some of the earliest trilobites in N. America.

Oh my God! My mom just found this picture of me. This taken on picture day in my junior year of high school. Yes, I am holding a trilobite fossil. 😂

I love it when the sun peeks through the window in the evening and shines on my crystals just right for about 20mins😍✨️ . #crystals #altar #witchsky #minerals #geology #amethyst #goldenhour

#MolluscMonday Cut and polished specimen of the ammonite Hildoceras sublevisoni from the Lower Jurassic of Whitby, Yorkshire, preserving the early shell chambers infilled by several generations of cement.

Happy #FossilFriday This is a beautiful Hexagonaria (colonial horn coral) from the Middle Devonian Cedar Valley Formation from Coralville, Iowa. There is a location in Iowa City, Iowa known as the Devonian Fossil Gorge where you can see an intact coral 390 million year old coral reef like this one.

Rep. Al Green was holding a sign that reads "Black People Aren't Apes" at the #SOTU:

Fascinating! This has been quite the year for dinosaur science and it isn’t even March yet.

Welcome back to another #TrilobiteTuseday! Here is Asaphiscus wheeleri from the Middle Cambrian (Drumian) Wheeler Formation from Delta, Utah.

The passing of Dr. Hans-Dieter Sues really hurts man. We bonded over our love for trilobites. We met in person at my first SVP back in 2023. We were so giddy to meet each other being online friends for years. He was extremely nice and just a great person to be around. A legend indeed. 💜

Very sad to hear about the passing of Dr. Hans Sues. His last work was the description of Tyrannoroter heberti. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Finnish Meteorites: The Geological Survey of Finland have studied a rare Finnish meteorite that could reveal new insights about the universe. Lieksa meteorites may all originate from the same source-a rare and complex body with a unique composition and structure. www.abo.fi/en/news/rare...

Just saw the incredibly sad news that Hans-Dieter Sues has passed away. Beyond his major contributions to paleontology, in all my interactions with him over the years, he was a stellar human being. He took great joy in life and in being a paleontologist. I learned so much from him.

Catch me at the Fossil Road Show at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science. "At 11:30 a.m., catch keynote speaker Cameron Muskelly's (pictured below) presentation, “Georgia Through Time: Clues of the Past Left Behind in the Rocks of the Peach State”.

The Gem Hall at LA’s Natural History Museum is full of big ass rocks that look like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. 10/10 experience for mineralheads.

For #FossilFriday but also @clarkeocrinus.bsky.social ... this is the only edrioasteroid I had in the old collection. ⚒️🧪 Not Cincinnatian, but still weird and wonderful!

As if to prove how good the fossils out there have been this week, congratulations to Kevin Howard on this phenomenal find! We can definitely say we're jealous of this chunky piece of ichthyosaur jaw with teeth still in there just found sitting on the beach! #FossilFriday

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

I've been meaning to do some conodonts for #FossilFriday for a while now, but just never got around to 'em. They're on deck today! ⚒️🧪 The name means 'cone teeth' but for years, their affiliation was controversial - despite widespread importance for biostratigraphy. We now know they were fish. 🧵

#FossilFriday Presented to the British Museum in 1875 and now in the Natural History Museum, Ordovician brachiopods cover the surface of this small piece of Cincinnatian limestone from Waynesville, Ohio.

A #FridayFold of kinked, crenulated phyllite that I saw yesterday while poking around at the Virginia state geologic survey. ⚒️

#PaleoFest2026 speaker: Mary Droser, U of C, Riverside “Animals, Sediments, Slime, Muck and Goo: The Record of Earth’s Early Animals and their Environments with Implications for Discovering Life Elsewhere” March 6-8, 2026 Burpee Museum Rockford, Illinois, USA burpee.org/paleofest/le...