This one is well worth a read for anyone interested in the Ediacaran

Excited to share our new paper out today in Science Advances describing some familiar Ediacaran fossils (beautifully reconstructed by Alex Boersma) in an unfamiliar place! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Happy #fossilfriday from the #Ediacaran at #InnerMeadow at 551Ma it is the youngest known example of the “Avalon Assemblage” (equivalent to the youngest “White Sea Assemblage”). The field season is underway here in NL. We continue to remove soil & fossiliferous rocks from over the fossil surface.

My recent cohort of doctoral students started getting requests to review papers and asked me an interesting question. The paper for review is close to their expertise but does that mean they have a conflict of interest? Peer review is important service you should engage with as much as possible… 🧵

Happy #FossilFriday from the #Ediacaran at #InnerMeadow. I’ve been focussing on removing boulders and soil the last couple of weeks but this beauty popped out. It is a scan of the natural cast of the base of a large #Aninoides

I feel like posting a #notafossil for #FossilFriday necessitates posting a fossil too. Yesterday Helena and i did some clearing at #InnerMeadow. Mainly just removing the thick soil & not getting down to new fossils until the end of day when the surface was wet and light flat (so no 📷) but we did..

Happy #FossilFriday from the late +Ediacaran where I (disappointedly) want to share the most remarkable pseudofossils I have ever seen. This beautiful #conulariid or protechinurus like thing (bottom) and 2 longitudinal striated tube/like things are all sub glacial scratch marks.

As tempting as it is to spend all my time in the field at Inner Meadow. This week i went on an Ediacaran adventure up the Bay de Verde Pen. with @jeffontherock.bsky.social looking at the post #KotlinCrisis interval at beautiful sites on the barrens. Access is more open after devastating fires last…

has anyone seen one of these before? It is in a Newfoundland #Ediacaran mudstone found with @jeffontherock.bsky.social today. It looks a bit like beetle boring in wood. Maybe @ichnologist.bsky.social has seen something like it. burrows on the same bed are positives, this is a negative feature.

I had great fun yesterday giving a talk to the Virtual Seminars in Precambrian Geology. Thanks to Andrea Bekker for the invitation and James Gutoski. There are some awesome talks in the series you might like to check out. Mine is posted here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNHq...

I’ve been a bit remiss with #FossilFriday (teaching palaeontology for the first time since 2005). The ground is thawing here and we have had a couple of field days already so here is a newly uncovered A. spinosa and a Primocandelabrum sp. to enjoy from our #Ediacaran #InnerMeadow lagerstatte.

Ever been confused about what images you can use from the internet to illustrate your research? Read our latest blog post to find out about copyright licences, image use, and why you should avoid generative AI for scientific illustrations. 🧪 #SciComm buff.ly/yyOMFUp

I am so unbelievably proud to present 8 years of hard work: the worlds oldest octopus is not an octopus... Pohlsepia is actually a really rotten Nautiloid (but oldest soft tissue nautiloid ever found!). 🐙❌ royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

In the latest of our string of papers on the new #Ediacaran Inner Meadow Lagerstätte here is an account of the distinctive bubble like textures (paywalled sorry but $$) doi.org/10.1111/sed.... or ask for a copy :-). Recently graduated MSc student Nagi Chida worked on the textures at…, #InnerMeadow

This is really cool. Some unexpected things showing up. There is an interesting #Mamsetia like thing which to my eye might be a stauropolyp like the former paratype of #Haootia (now in Mamsetia).

#FossilFriday "...a biosphere where the giants were only a few centimeters long." @jtimmer.bsky.social arstechnica.com/science/2026...

Something a bit different this #FossilFriday a fossil i’ve had on my desk for a while now. This is a Cambrian member of the Coronatae, undescribed, from western Newfoundland that I found way back in 2017 (I think).

Imagine the majority of life on Earth vanishing... and no one notices for 550 million years. www.iflscience.com/the-forgotte...

Extraordinary new fossils from Newfoundland reveal an ancient mass extinction worse than the asteroid-driven calamity that killed the dinosaurs. #Paleontology #KotlinCrisis #FossilFriday 🧪🧪 New for @science.org

'It guts us’: Curator fears for future of Joggins Fossil Institute after provincial funding cuts #NovaScotia #HoustonCuts Province has reduced the institute's proposed allocation by $55K www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Yet another new #FossilFriday paper! This time just me, but building on work from the MUN Paleobiology Crowd over a number of years. This OA paper outlines the lines of evidence used to determine mode of life of the #Ediacaran #Rangeomorpha. Always careful and objective we work with one

Interesting palaeopiscatorial thread here.

Another #FossilFriday and another new Nfld. Ediacaran for you to enjoy hot off the press. Introducing Arborea elegans. This is the first fossil from a rich new site near #Torbay & #MiddleCove just north of St. John’s. An area always considered unfossiliferous, but discovered by Pascal Olschewski🧵

Introducing the soft-bodied fossil Paleocanna tentaculum n. gen. n. sp., a tube-dwelling medusozoan. The first 3 authors are students.👏 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This #FossilFriday is brought to you from the #Ediacaran of #InnerMeadow with the observation that #Charnia brasieri sometimes have #Trepassia like little feathers on top of their fronds. Part of a review paper coming out next week on life attitude of rangeomorphs :-).

It’s midterms here at MUN & with cleanup from a 75cm 2 day snowstorm too it’s been a disrupted week, so a quick #FossilFriday post- #KotlinCrisis bedding plane from Ferryland NL with #Palaeopascichnus, #Aspidella terranovica & #Triforillonia material of Dr Latha Menon (submitting next week!!)

Here’s a link to a 15 min interview i did last week about #Aninoides and a link to the great comets of 1811 and 1819 via the Beothuk woman #Demasduit if you are interested :-) www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...

Earlier this year there was an article on the beautiful new #Ediacaran #Dongpo Biota in China, it has some lovely fossils in it. Well worth a look! There were also some things interpreted as fronds that we consider to be abiogenic uninterrupted Chevron marks. doi.org/10.1016/j.pr...

coming soon another new Ediacaran taxon from Newfoundland. This one is an #Arboreomorph from the #Ediacaran of the NE Avalon Peninsula discovered and written up with PhD students Pascal Olschewski @simonrosse.bsky.social. The art needs some work to do justice to the fossil but Happy #FossilFriday!

From @geopetalfabric.bsky.social and @maryanningsrevenge.bsky.social. You can follow the podcast at @weirdanddead.bsky.social. www.patreon.com/posts/150459...

This #FossilFriday, how about a little look forward in the #Ediacaran to the post Kotlin Crisis extinction event strata in in Newfoundland. doi.org/10.1130/G542... The post-extinction biotas are dominated by discs such as #Aspidella terranovica and the giant protistan #Palaeopascichnus.

TLDR; it is too early to stop doing taxonomic & natural history work and exclusively do meta-analysis; our existing datasets are highly structured & biology is weird. we shouldn't assume we already know enough to extrapolate a species' needs for conservation- we still need taxonomy & autecology

Here is a writeup of our work on #Aninoides and how it helped us to uncover a little bit of Beothuk astronomy. Obviously :-) With huge thanks to @julialaite.bsky.social gazette.mun.ca/research/dig...

Happy #FossilFriday how does a thread about the Inner Meadow biota and unexpected age for the fossils, and a refocusing of Martin Brasier’s #KotlinCrisis sound? We’ve been trickling out our findings from Inner Meadow including #Charnia brasieri, #Aninoides and there's even cooler stuff in review. 🧵

A random assortment of pterosaur skulls 🐊

New paper story time. 👁️🐟🦴🩻 Here is your gormless jawless relative Jamoytius: [1/8]

Happy #FossilFriday we just got page proofs of our paper on the diversity and geochronology of our #InnerMeadow site so let’s celebrate by sharing the first #Erniettomorph from the #Ediacaran of Newfoundland, #Phyllozoon (right) with a bonus #Bradgatia top left.

Happy #FossilFriday from a wet cold La Niña Newfoundland. How about a new #Ediacaran fossil teaser, from a brand new fossil site north of St. John’s? This is one of several remarkable fossils that came out of a rockfall and discovered by my PhD student Pascal Olschewski. A new species of #Arborea!

For @newscientist.com magazine, the writer and journalist Miriam Frankel recently interviewed me and several other astrobiologists about the search for alien life. You can read her excellent article here (paywalled): www.newscientist.com/article/2507...

Just before Christmas we published a new rangeomorph genus #Aninoides, the first new rangeomorph genus that has been introduced for a while I believe. I promised to explain the name after the break so here we are! Happy New Year and happy #FossilFriday!

Aninoides: a new rangeomorph genus from the upper Ediacaran of Newfoundland onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #PapersinPalaeontology @dmcediacaran.bsky.social

Our final #Ediacaran palaeontology paper of the year! Introducing #Aninoides coombsorum gen et sp nov Such a beautiful fossil. At the moment only known from our Inner Meadow site, Newfoundland. Paper led by PhD student Simon Rosse-Guillevic Not OA sadly :-( www.researchgate.net/publication/...

This will be my last #FossilFriday of the year. I’m going to try to tune out as much as possible now to make the most of the rest of this year with family. Leaving you with this shot of a #Trepassia and an #Arborea spinosa from our Inner Meadow site.

❓ Did you miss our recent public talk by Dr Duncan McIlroy on Charnwood Forest's newest fossil? 🌟 We've got you covered - watch the recording on our Youtube channel and discover the wonders of our fossil, Charnia brasieri! 🌐 youtube.com/live/poR8iv7...

This #FossilFriday I am teasing some images of a forthcoming new Ediacaran genus. It is a relative of #Charnia which has hogged attention these last 3 years. My PhD student Simon is lead author. It lived on the deep dark ocean floor of the #Ediacaran Fermeuse Formation in Nfld (Inner Meadow).

I am really looking forward to giving this talk. Charnwood is where I first saw Ediacaran fossils (with the late Prof. Martin Brasier in October 1992). The first Ediacaran fossil I saw in the field that day was actually a giant specimen of what is now Charnia brasieri :-).