🚨HAPPY EXPLODING WHALE DAY🚨 1/n www.oregonlive.com/travel/2024/...

NEW – Analysis: China’s CO2 emissions have now been flat or falling for 18 months | @laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social Read here: buff.ly/ONGzk3a

Did you know. That the meme-explosion that was the wooden model of Sacabambaspis (an Ordovician jawless fish) held at a Museum in Helsinki, was created by a pioneering Estonian fish paleontologist and palaeoartist, Elga Mark-Kurik. 🧵

🌕🐌 #MolluskMonday 🧪⚒️ We're still snailposting! Moon snails are voracious infaunal predators, with a mantle so large it can completely cover its own conch. (Square/cube laws apply: a shell 1x across can fit a snail 4x bigger, as long as it exudes 9x more snot!) I might be exaggerating? Or not?

Lophophorata is monophyletic! Super excited to see this work out in Current Biology - we sequenced a phoronid genome and used shared chromosome fusions to confirm the monophyly of Lophophorata. A big team effort from the Luo Lab @yjluo.bsky.social! More here: authors.elsevier.com/c/1m3mV3QW8S...

Apparently all the cool kids are snailposting. 🐚🐌 I am not one of the cool kids, but I do maintain an unusually large collection of invertebrate photos.

I guess I'm stuck forever. Send good Scotch.

Douglas Adams, in his lifetime, received great acclaim for the humorous aspects of his works. I've long felt this masked his actual prescience in terms of science fiction and human nature. While the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy foreshadowed Wikipedia, he also foresaw the impact of social media:

Wondered what the cats were watching, startled this dude lying buck nekkid in my back yard. 🦌 Cats are getting more ambitious, I'll tell you what.

What's up, butterflies? Is it #FossilFriday yet? ⚒️🧪 Since there was a nice piece on brachiopod encrustation earlier today, I thought we'd revisit an old classic: the D shaped strophomenid Rafinesquina, a common element of late Ordovician assemblages. Its life orientation is somewhat controversial.

Modern brachiopods get infested with kleptoparasitic polychaetes too! My colleague Marcello Simoes documented the boring spionid Polydora selectively colonizing the margin of the living species Bouchardia rosea, snatching food particles from the inhalant current. Endobiont, not epibiont, but still.

Guess we're doing bonus invertebrates today, since it's #MolluskMonday ⚒️🧪🦑 Of course, the best mollusks attract friends. Here we have a bryozoan-encrusted orthocone cephalopod from the Liberty Fm. Why settle for filter feeding on a hard substrate, when you can settle on a hard mobile substrate?

It's #WorldJellyfishDay, if you get my drift ...

A curated list of complementary climate science documentaries that might prove useful for anyone looking at the way we portray and discuss the science and of climate change and mitigation. Or anyone on furlough with more spare time than projects.

"Eff this bullshit. I'm out." Share an angry bird and the curse you think it embodies.

Reminds me of this piece by my postdoc officemate Samuli Helama on Hutton and Siccar Point ... www.geologinenseura.fi/sites/geolog...

Like you can keep me away from the lingulids.

Happy Halloween and spooky Samhain, butterflies! We're back with #FossilFriday and it's another meme on deck. 🧪⚒️🦪🦪 Yo, dawg! I heard you like bivalves, so we put clams in your clam so you can bivalve while you bivalve! Someone tag @dantheclamman.blog , I feel like he has relevant interests.

Today's bombshell in @nature.com by Lindsay Zanno & James Napoli @jgn-paleo.bsky.social (bit.ly/4qBE6ng) shows that putative juvvy T. rex fossils actually are Nanotyrannus. I reviewed the manuscript, so Nature invited me to write the News & Views commentary. Free link: rdcu.be/eNv94 🦖

T'is the season. 👻 Busting makes me feel good!

Do you think you can stop the inevitable #MolluskMonday? Ah, balogna. Yes, it's abalone again, but seriously ... with a pose like that, how could it not be? 🧪🐚

"Initially too terrified to walk past." Ya know, I feel like that one's just a little too on-the-nose.

Small town life: hearing about the weekend fire that broke out in your former science building thru the village gossip network before any of the affected colleagues get around to mentioning it. 🔥 At least the layoffs mean not losing books and journals to smoke or water damage.

Still down with the crud, but I'm trying to get back into reading fiction again. Having just finished @tkingfisher.com 's Hemlock and Silver (good, enjoyed) I went back to the old short story collection. Jackelope Wives remains one of the best damn things I've ever read.

These iconic #corals are nearly extinct due to heatwaves: can they be saved? #marineecology #research www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Social octopuses? I'm pretty sure that one in the upper left just bought me a drink! 🐙🥃

Down with the crud today, butterflies, but since I missed #MolluskMonday I guess we're making #FossilFriday a twofer. ⚒️🧪🦪 These asymmetrical bivalves are ascribed to Exogyra, gryphaeid oysters of the late Mesozoic. Like other oysters, their calcitic shells laugh in the face of traditional symmetry.

Dan the Clam Man strikes back! Y'all have no idea how much restraint it requires not to comment (more) on the Epic of the Clam Facts.

Update on the financial crisis at the Paleontological Research Institute's Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, NY: they have until the end of the year to raise $1 million to avoid foreclosure. Pretty sure there's a Christmas movie in there somewhere.

I finished my PhD during a time of uncertainty with waning opportunities in American academia. So I went to Germany. The Humboldt program laid foundations for my career at a time when my own country wouldn't. I highly recommend looking into fellowship opportunities, especially now. 🧪

Ow. I think this is the tiniest bruise I've ever seen. 4/10 on pain hours later though, and that's only if I don't touch it. Not looking for sympathy, 'cuz this one's stupid (power drill skipped out on me) ... but it's SO TINY!!

Pteranodon sternbergi here to remind you that there's more than one species of Pteranodon. Also, given how many of you love pterosaurs, #PterosaurPtuesday should honestly be a thing. 🧪⚒️

On a bad day with bad things compounded one upon another, I find the worst is learning about the death of a friend's father. I only knew him in passing, but his son was one of my best friends in grad school.

Maraapunisaurus. 🦕 Is it obscure? Damn skippy. Part of the appeal. Is it mysterious? Oh, yeah, baby. It was named from a single vertebra that disappeared back into Faerie and never was seen since. Is it extra? Possibly the biggest land animal ever. Is it real? 🤷🏼‍♀️ The Bigfoot of Garden Park.

#FossilFriday doesn't get much weirder than this! I'm pretty sure this is the closest I've ever been to Illinois' state fossil. ⚒️🧪 No, not who you'rethinking of. Tullimonstrum, the Tully monster: a Carboniferous problematicum that might be a jawless fish, or something completely other.

Check out the actinopterygian what wanna be a tetrapod. Batfish are weird, yo. 🐟

It's #NationalFossilDay! 🧪⚒️🦖 No, the familiar looking mug you see here isn't who you think. Cincinnati has substituted Daspletosaurus torosus for the large tyrannosaur representative. After all, this is America ... we don't need no stinking kings. Sorry, Chuck. No offense.

I haven't read SciAm in years (it used to be excellent, but I have a toxic hate of registration an paywalls). I made an exception here because the hypothetical 'Francevillian biota' is simultaneously obscure and controversial, and I haven't kept up. This is good, and I highly recommend it.

🧪 cool and fascinating #SciComm theconversation.com/unusual-red-...

Got distracted and missed mollusk Monday, so I guess I have to jump to #TrilobiteTuesday. 🧪⚒️ This is a lovely example of Rusophycus on display at the Cincinnati Museum Center, illustrating predator / prey dynamics of the Ordovician. To wit: a trilobite scooped a worm out of its burrow to feed!

Halloween is coming. 🐙🦈🐟🎃

Objects in selfie may be closer than they appear. ⚒️🦕🦖

Butterflies, I have discovered the most niche piece of marketing genius since, oh, let's say the Sandbian ... PRI quietly dropped a new Paleozoic Pal when I wasn't looking, and it's Astraspis desiderata!!! Ok, this is the only place on the internet where anyone else is going to get excited.

Lurking deep beneath the surface, #FossilFriday patiently waits for the opportune moment to strike. Like, you know ... Friday? 🧪⚒️ At one point, this specimen had a label describing it as a Pleistocene muffler, but other documentation described it as a trace fossil from the Ice Age Bahamas.

When will the climate change coastal property bubble pop? A significant acceleration in coastal flooding from a lunar orbit shift (mid-2030s) will significantly stress the market. My 2024 post: "When will climate change turn life in the U.S. upside down?" yaleclimateconnections.org/2024/08/when...

This. Not only this ... we KNOW that's how writing happens. That's how it's ALWAYS got done. We all got through university that way ... learning to be able to pull that off was the entire point! Well, that, and the dance parties in the basement of the German Haus.

Some days, it's just not your jam.

It's been an overwhelming sort of day, butterflies. But it is still #MolluskMonday 🧪⚒️🐚 ... Honestly, these guys have been cropping up in conversation on and off for months, so I'm overdue. Meet the platyceratids, an extinct clade of Paleozoic gastropods with unsavory dietary preferences. 💩

"There is no branch of detective science that is so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps." -- Sherlock Holmes, A Study In Scarlet. #FossilFriday was here, my dear Watson! ⚒️🧪👣 Here, for your consideration, are some bird tracks preserved in the mud of the Green River Fm.

It's always a shame to lose the good 'uns - people dedicated to the common good and cultivation of knowledge. I've no direct connection to Jane Goodall, but my understanding of our nature, our world and kin is greater because of her.