#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

A team of researchers from Yunnan University and Oxford University recently discovered well-preserved animal fossils from a previously overlooked group of rocks in China, revealing new information about Cambrian life. #SciComm #SciNews sciworthy.com/a-new-treasu...

This #fossilfriday is brought to you by the holotype of the oldest fossil cnidarian Mamsetia manunis from @discoverygeoparknl.bsky.social . This summer we have worked with Champney’s West Mini aquarium on a new Geosite which includes a cast of this specimen. It was torn prior to fossilization

The Great Female Scientists of the Victorian Era paleonerdish.wordpress.com/2019/08/06/t... #histsci #womeninstem 🧪⚒️

In my latest (the start of my 2nd year as author of @undark.org's 'Selective Pressure' column), I examine the "Pivot penalty," where new data suggest that scientists are penalized when they move into a research area outside of their home area. undark.org/2025/07/03/o...

For #CanadaDay 🇨🇦 i wanted to share this iconic #Ediacaran fossil. #Haootia quadriformis which was discovered by the late Professor Martin Brasier close to Port Union in @discoverygeoparknl.bsky.social. The second oldest crown group staurozoan cnidarian animal in the world. Just look at those 💪.

This #FossilFriday offering is a hand painted cast of the Ediacaran fractal-like #Fractofusus misrai from Mistaken Point, Newfoundland for an outreach project i’m doing. This is one of the abundant curvy specimens that Rod Taylor worked on for this cool paper www.researchgate.net/publication/...

"It’s one thing to hear of the millions of years it took the Andes to rise; it’s quite another that, in mere centuries, the oceans may reach levels of acidity not seen in 300 million years...These days, geological forces...have escaped the confines of deep time to present themselves daily" #HPS ⚒️

This assemblage of large rangeomorphs (Fractofusus misrai and Pectinifrons abyssalis) come from the Capelin Gulch geosite in Discovery UNESCO Geopark. This site is on-boarded to share with the public and is a short 5 min walk but a bit up and down around a small bog. #FossilFriday

If you’re looking for something fun to listen to then this is an excellent palaeo podcast to dive in to!

Are you writing a paper on fossils that has significant implications for their systematics, relationships, and evolutionary history? Consider submitting it to @journalsystpal.bsky.social. @imranrahman.bsky.social and I welcome informal pre-submission enquiries!

For #FossilFriday, the mathematically pleasing & beautifully symmetrical deep-sea trace fossil Paleodictyon, seen last week in a Miocene (~ 10 mya) stratum in southern Spain. I almost never see this trace fossil "in the wild," so this spotting was one of the highlights of my trip. 🧪 #ichnology 1/2

if you care about trans people, do not watch the new jk rowling show. don’t even hate watch it or you will be funding this new intentionally transphobic organization. we cannot allow hateful people take away more of our rights

three generations of McIlroys and a cheeky plasticene cast of the branching in a #Bradgatia from the #Ediacaran of Inner Meadow for #FossilFriday

More from the early #Cambrian (~515 MYA) Forteau Fm of #Newfoundland&Labrador 🇨🇦: a tiny #meraspid (early segmented growth stage) of an olenellid #trilobite, preserved on a translucent calcite wafer. Scale bar = 10 mm. Mount St. Margaret, Great Northern Peninsula, Nfld. #TrilobiteTuesday

I was reminded of this when a colleague asked me to explain the fill of #stigmaria roots. It is a large glass-mounted thin slice, sufficiently thin that when illuminated from behind you can see the structures of the full. At ii you can see where a rootlet cut the root wall….

🙋‍♂️ Very much looking forward to speaking at this @thepalass.bsky.social event at the Natural History Museum on Thursday: 🦕 Fossil Collecting In England and Wales: Do We Need More Legislation? 🌐 Sign up now: buff.ly/LXtoUao

Choose Science. Choose Europe. A new Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025 call is now open. With a budget of €404.3 million, it will support around 1,650 researchers from Europe and beyond. Apply by 10 September → europa.eu/!fBTMgF

The Johnson Geo Centre's 2023 palaeontology lecture series is now available to watch online! This series looks at the rich palaeontological history of Newfoundland & Labrador, given by the people conducting this research on the oldest known animals on the planet. mun.ca/geocentre/le...

bought this sticker from a coffee shop today and i’m mad cos i wish i’d thought of it

for no particular reason other than it’s prettiness this is a polished bedding parallel surface with small sinuous crested #Ediacaran duneforms palimpsest with glacial scours and cut by a cleavage (boots for scale) from @discoverygeoparknl.bsky.social

In early March, I wrote about the proto-authoritarian attacks on science and universities by the Trump administration and listed some warning signs to look out for in the coming weeks. Now six weeks later and those warning signs are being realised. christinapagel.substack.com/p/warning-si...

The hand-written outline for Alfred Russel Wallace's last, unrealised, book – 'Darwin & Wallace' – has been published for the first time in #NotesandRecords. Read an analysis of Wallace's fascinating book that never was: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #HistSci #HistSTM

A prehistoric animal (Hyphalosaurus) with two heads? Yes, THIS FOSSIL REALLY DOES EXIST, & it's on the cover of THE SECRET LIVES OF DINOSAURS, by @deanrlomax.bsky.social & illustrated by me (@columbiaup.bsky.social). Available to pre-order now! #SciArt #PaleoArt #Dinosaurs #Fossils #WildlifeArt

A little ray of sunshine (well #Hiemalora stellaris) from the #Ediacaran of Port Union, Newfoundland where we are enjoying an early spring #FossilFriday in the field collecting data for a geoconservation project for @discoverygeoparknl.bsky.social

A big day for Dean and I. 😁