Mark McMenamin has to be loving this

What in God's flat earth is that

Literally me

i'm happy to see the onion take over infowars. i've been a big fan of the onion for quite a long time and it's given me plenty of laughs over the years. and as for infowars, i really disliked alex jones and disagreed with him on a whole lot of things. so to me, this whole situation is a win-win

Great student grant! Supported me looking at fish fossils.

Caught some more members of the neopterygian total group.

She’s the sales associate, offering web-based services with every purchase

Fascinating aspect of paleoecology: space battles in deep time.

My student and I have the same pusheen.

Excited that my paper on a Jurassic fish with teeth on its nose is now out! Shoutout to my co-authors Ben Kligman and Maranda Stricklin, who is another all-star undergraduate mentee. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Deep in thought

If vibe coding doesn’t work on a free website it’s sure to work for banking and healthcare right?

Don’t worry guys I found the bug causing the errors today

True

A new taxon of saurischian dinosaur from the Coelophysis Quarry of New Mexico, USA (Triassic: latest Norian or Rhaetian) highlights herrerasaurian diversity in the latest Triassic - Srivastava - 2026 - Papers in Palaeontology - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Really proud of the work by my former student and undergraduate mentee Simba Srivastava. Got to see this work in progress, including the high-quality description and phylogenetic analysis. Always fun to tango with TNT (Tree Analysis with New Technology). news.vt.edu/articles/202...

On Yom HaShoah we remember the over 6 million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. Today & everyday, we must stand together against antisemitism & ensure that Jewish communities can live & pray without fear. Never Again.

Trying to increase attendance at fish talks. How's "Spinosaurus and Nanotyrannus: two species that may or may not be found in the Upper Triassic of Arizona".

Well my office is flooded, and so is the entire second floor…

Some kind of arthropod in my house…

My students are prepping a fall research project on the spotted lantern fly. So it’s time to learn about insects…where is their caudal fin?

A friend from a bygone time, spent a fun week at the Carnegie looking at this guy and his friends.

Caught some neopterygians today.

Might be making progress on this weird Triassic jaw...

This seems so cool, can't wait to read.

My cat listening intently to zoom lecture.

Colleague just asked how we determine species assignment in fossils without DNA. "Welcome to the wonderful world of morphology" I say, to their abject horror.

Some highlights, all of these photos were taken by my undergraduate volunteer! These brachiopods are covered with encrusting life, mostly worm-like animals forming tiny colonies. Also pieces of other animals get stuck to the shells.

Look at those beautiful teeth!

"Thus, animals like Proceramala and the Russian thing whose name escapes me..." Ah the adventures of writing about fossil fishes.

My student being excited to show me all the cool encrusting organisms they are finding on brachiopods is so awesome. Should have some photos of them shortly, lots of pseudo-bryozoans!

1 week till deadline

Realizing that I may now be describing my first tetrapod fossil on April Fool's is a lot of fun.

Second time through and I’m convinced this is one of the best books ever written. One gripe with Oppenheimer is they didn’t mention the commandos who risked their lives to destroy the heavy water facility the Nazis needed to build an atomic bomb, which is laid out here.

I have a very normal Jurassic fish coming soon, here’s a hint

Mystery organism on a Devonian brachiopod from the Traverse Group. Maybe the base of a coral?

Most normal fish skull

My student has cleaned, examined, and sorted 60 brachiopods with encrusting organisms. Now for the fun part, taxonomy of tiny Devonian encrusters!

Making great progress here

Strange and difficult to identifyTriassic jaw hangs over me like the sword of Damocles

Trying to find the paper I printed out a month ago in the piles on my desk (I haven’t read any of them).

Big if true

I have been tasked with creating an evolutionary biology course. I was wondering if anyone has done the same recently, and has advice. Thank you.

They could have asked for their name, the name of a spouse, child, etc. but they chose a cryptocurrency. Still not the worst name, as sadly the Hitler beetle exists.

Coconuts

From the first few sentences you know this will be a great paper. “…fungi are literally everywhere”.

Graphs like this evoke an emotional response because this is not objectively presented information. Notice the part you are supposed to be ok with is in the same shade of light green, where the “bad” part is in dark red. This is a great example of a bad graph.

I love having taught Dinos as a fish paleontologist because we have two completely separate issues. Dino workers fight over many names and early fish workers despair over the lack of decent clade names.

Important to remember the name is attached to an inferred evolutionary event, i.e. the common ancestor of saurischians and ornithischians and all their descendants being Dinos. It is interesting to consider if names had been applied differently, but the evolutionary inference is NOT arbitrary.

Took a few minutes to talk about my experience in the academic job market and the advice I have for people in/preparing for job hunting. Also, my favorite quote from Uncle Iroh (Avatar the Last Airbender) 🧪 youtu.be/Whnj9syBIXM?...