My students have set up a petition to persuade the University of Nottingham not to close our Plant Biology BSc course c.org/VPhzVVrHPS Please consider signing

A nice little article highlighting the British (charnian) specimen of Charnia brasieri from the bbc :-) www.bbc.com/news/article...

🥳 NEW FOSSIL! Researchers from Canada have named a new species of fossil from the 560 million year old rocks of Charnwood Forest! 🌟 Its called Charnia brasieri, shaped like a frond, and could grow to a metre long. 🌐 Read more on our website: www.charnwoodforest.org/researchers-...

This #FossilFriday I’m excitedly sharing a new #Ediacaran #Charnia brasieri named for my PhD Supervisor & friend Martin Brasier who died 2014. I’ve wanted to name something for him ever since but I wanted it to be something special. When I saw the first one from Inner Meadow I knew it was the 1 🧵

Fossils are cultural objects - and this is not some woke b*llshit that people come up nowadays to spoil the fun in #palaeontology; this classification actually has a long history. If you're curious how fossils became #culturalproperty under int'l law, check my new paper: doi.org/10.1093/lril...

A bit late on #FossilFriday but this Ediacaran Mistaken point specimen has been on my desk haunting me this last month. It is the paratype of #Beothukis mistakensis. All know specimens of this sp. on the E Surface are oriented nearly perpendicular to the palaeocurrent doi.org/10.3389/fear...

Have you completed or commissioned a piece of palaeoart in the last year? Nominations are now open for The Marsh Palaeoart Award! 🎨🦕🌿🐌🐟🎨 You can self-nominate, or nominate an artist you think deserves recognition. Check out our website for more details - palaeosoc.org/grants-prize...

Thank you to GSA for the invite to deliver a Pardee Keynote talk on the topic of UNESCO International Geodiversity Day at #GSAConnects25. Together, we can increase public engagement with the story of our planet.

Happy #FossilFriday from the #Ediacaran of Newfoundland and our #InnerMeadow site, teasing this beauty of a #Charnia which will get a name any day now. This specimen was found just a couple of weeks ago (after acceptance of the paper) & is c. 35cm long & 8cm wide (before retrodeformation)…,,

I've never really listened to Benjamin Zephaniah's poetry before but this one's certainly worth a few moments of your time.... it's beautiful! ... then remember to get mad as hell with Jenrick, Farage and their hate-filled sycophants. Don't let these bastards dictate the narrative!

#MaryAnning will celebrate the #UK première at @leedsfilmfest.bsky.social Leeds International Film Festival (30 oct-16 nov 2025) www.leedsfilm.com/whats-on/mar... @tetzoo.bsky.social @bobnichollsart.bsky.social @stevebrusatte.bsky.social @nhm-london.bsky.social @morethanadodo.bsky.social

Bacteria 🦠 🧫 play a crucial role in how animals become fossils! Read about how decay experiments demonstrate that bacteria from the gut dominate the thanatomicrobiome (the internal microbiome of decay) and probably control fossilisation in our new paper! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Reading William Whewell's 1832 review of Lyell's Principles of Geology, Vol 2, in which he coined "uniformitarianism", and I just love this passage summarizing what in many modern geological textbooks would describe as the principle of uniformitarianism. babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hv...

🌟 New research positions working with the Geopark - share with anyone you think might be interested:

…the tar which used to boil in it to the heat, like resin in a fagot of moss-fir, was as strange a mixture as ever yet bubbled in witches’ caldron—blood of pterodactyle and grease of ichthyosaur… —Hugh Miller, MY SCHOOLS & SCHOOLMASTERS (1854) – also on @gutenberg.org 3/4 gutenberg.org/ebooks/30737

Happy #FossilFriday, brought to you this week from the #Ediacaran Johnson Discovery Surface in Discovery UNESCO Global geopark. This lovely #Bradgatia like #Fractofusus shows the wonderful fractal-like branching of the #Rangeomorpha for your enjoyment. @discoverygeoparknl.bsky.social

📅 5 years ago we had an online conference about geoheritage, and a few of us thought "wouldn't it be good if there was a special day for geodiversity". 🇺🇳 So we worked together to create it. 🏞 And now the world talks about geodiversity on Oct 6th. 😊 Happy #GeodiversityDay

this is a fabulous story :-)

Happy #FossilFriday ! When we were in the late stages of publishing the new #Ediacaran #Lydonia jiggamintia i was in very early phases of learning digital painting (I have been sculpting for a while now). and realized i wanted to try to depict a matground covered seafloor starting to reclaim #sciart

Very proud of my former student and longtime collaborator and friend Cheryl Lewis Ames. www.tohoku.ac.jp/romance/en/0...

Some lovely coverage of our supportive relationship with @discoverygeoparknl.bsky.social in this article from Memorial. it has been a longstanding commitment, established while Dr Jack Matthews was with me at MUN, and with amazingly kind support from Edith Samson gazette.mun.ca/public-engag...

#Ediacaran animals with a punk rock vibe. what is not to like :-) www.sciencenews.org/article/eart... #Lydonia @discoverygeoparknl.bsky.social

And that's how you integrate digital elements into an exhibition. Part of the temporary "China's Dinosaur World" at the Shanghai Natural History Museum, China. Closing this November. Video source: Shanghai Let's Meet

Happy #FossilFriday from the #Ediacaran of Inner Meadow in Newfoundland. The meadow is beautiful this time of year and it is great for the clearing work. Here is a newly exposed #Charnia masoni. The first masoni from this site, our faunal list is getting long!

Bob Hooper was my friend and predecessor in the role of Director at Bonne Bay Aquarium and Research Station. I am going to miss this lovely human. Anyone who knew Bob might like to watch this. #BonneBay m.youtube.com/watch?v=G1Dk...

#OTD 19 September 1991, walkers in the high Ötztal alps on the Italian border, found a body melting out of the ice. It turned out to be the remains of a c.5200 year old man preserved with all his kit. Of course, it was essential to replicate him in Playmobil. 1🧵 #PlaymobilÖtzi #PlaymobilInfestation

For #FossilFriday, one of the oldest known animal trace fossils interpreted from the geologic record (~565 million years old) preserved as a tiny trail on a bedding plane at Mistaken Point, NewFoundland (Canada), investigated during a 2012 visit by our hero, Paleontologist Barbie. 🧪🐾🪨⚒️

happy #FossilFriday! in the 1820’s a captive Beothuk woman Shanawdithit created a word list including jiggamint (spiky gooseberry). She was the last of her people & from what we know a truly amazing person. In the 1970’s punk icon John Lyndon (Johnny Rotten) inspired a generation with angst and..

New Paper by Parry et al., reinterpreting the oldest diverse #jellyfish fauna as sessile polypoid dinomischids 🪼 These findings significantly expand the temporal and geographical range of dinomischids, elucidating their morphological and taphonomic variation. buff.ly/ERV7P3C #PaleoSky #Fossils

In 1992 I visited the type material of #Blackbrookia in @charnwoodforest.bsky.social with my then PhD supervisor Martin Brasier and decided between us it wasn’t a body fossil but a microbial mat. In 2008 Blackbrookia was used to describe pimply structures from @discoverygeoparknl.bsky.social

I try to radicalize my students into observing nature & deriving joy & wonder from their personal discoveries.

Happy #FossilFriday from the Ediacaran of Newfoundland. For your enjoyment here is a specimen of the most common form of (as yet undescribed) #Charnia from our Inner Meadow site of #Ediacaran age in Newfoundland. It has J shaped branches and i particularly love the arcs the secondaries describe.

Woah!! What an utterly incredible perspective of coral 😍 🧪🦑🌿 Looks like alien art, but it's a very real and intimate view of Cauliflower soft coral (Dendronephthya) looking up from its base towards its fractal tips. Australian Geographic 2025 photo competition Winner 🎉 📷 Ross Gudgeon

Happy #FossilFriday from Johnson Discovery Surface in @discoverygeoparknl.bsky.social, famous for its #Fractofusus andersoni, but which also has large enigmatic forms dubbed #Blackbrookia (now considered a pseudofossil). The JDS material is however covered in pimples or meshes not seen in the type.

Many people have sent me the CNN piece on trade in 🇲🇦 fossils. It does many things well; picking interviewees is not one of them. No legal experts, only palaeontologists repeating legal factoids. Please read my comment. 🌐CNN: edition.cnn.com/2025/08/15/s... ✒️Blog: paul-stewens.com/blog/2025/mo...

#Charnia has been one of my favourite fossils since I saw a cast of it in an undergrad lab. it has been a privilege to be able to work on it these last couple of years. Partly through new #Eduacaran material at Inner Meadow but with my 3D reconstructions allowing us to envisage how little biomass

Did you miss my @geolsoc.bsky.social Public Lecture? Well, it is now online! Watch it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnQ... Maybe one for the #SciArt feed peeps (and the #EarthScientists too!)

Hi all, me, @richardjbutler.bsky.social and the amazing UK-US-Moroccan team are delighted to announce that.. we have a new specimen of Spicomellus AND IT'S WAY WEIRDER AND WAY COOLER THAN WE EVER IMAGINED!!

This #Fossilfriday i’m going to share a little #sciart adventure with #Charnia masoni which comes from the Charnwood Forest Geopark in the UK. The models are those i created using Martin Brasier’s rangeomorph architecture rules. doi.org/10.1144/jgs2... it has very low amounts of biomass

I find the easiest way to get orchids to re-bloom is arrange a trip away so they can do it with no one watching. This one made an error of judgment.

This was such a fun adventure. Working with Bob is always amazing!

Happy #fossilfriday from the #Ediacaran of Newfoundland. Slightly younger than our most impressive frondose fossils, but the discs of the upper Fermeuse Formation have their own charm. This block has #Aspidella terranovica, the triangular #Triforillonia costellae & Ediacaria flindersi.

This #FossilFriday i wanted to share this tiny #Staurozoan fossil from the Ediacaran of Newfoundland. It was the paratype of #Haootia but now belongs to #Mamsetia . We consider that it might be the #Stauropolyp. See the coronal muscle of the calyx & 1 arm. compare the arm of a modern #Lucernaria

New palaeo-PhD opportunity! Will you be the one to figure out the anatomy and function of fossil jawless fish? Come join the team! Application Deadline August 22nd, funding for UK student only (sorry) www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

The wildest debate in the history of American geology raged between ~1840 and 1890. It was called the Great Taconic Controversy, and it involved the oldest fossil-bearing rocks on the planet (allegedly). Read all about it on your local philpaleo blog, Extinct... www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2025...

🎉IT'S OFFICIAL!🎉 🥳 We're applying for UNESCO Global Geopark status this year! 🌐 Read more about what this could mean for our region, and sign up to get involved: www.charnwoodforest.org/charnwood-fo...

Glad to be playing a small part in this exciting news @charnwoodforest.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Save the date for this year's Canadian Paleontology Conference, Nov. 21-22! The conference is free, virtual, and open to all in paleo and related fields 🪨⛏️🔬🦐🐟🦠🦖🦣🦤🦈🪸🪱🐚🪼🐳🐾🦎 www.gacpd.ca/cpc

Meet Palaeocampa anthrax, a newly discovered Carboniferous lobopodian, and 150 year old mystery fossil! Palaeocampa is an exceptional lobopodian - it lived in rivers and lakes, bristled with thousands of poisonous spines, and more. 🧵 Open access: nature.com/articles/s42...

for #worldbrainday take a look at this evidence for a preserved dinosaur brain found by Prof Martin Brasier (published posthumously). download for free here sp.lyellcollection.org/content/earl... there’s preserved cortex, collagen, blood vessels, & membranes surrounding the brain. Amazing