Causal explanations are bewildered by systemic complexity.《Although life both transforms matter and processes information, the two are not proportional: the touch of a button may ignite a hydrogen bomb, while the combined military efforts of Orwellian nations will fail to make a little girl smile. 🧵

The last bombshell paleontology discovery of a year of bombshell discoveries: Ammonites survived the K-PG extinction! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just after midnight on 1 January 2026, a new eruption started from #Etna's eastern flank: a fissure opened at ~2100 m elevation, and a lava flow is descending through the desert-like Valle del Bove. Photos taken in the evening of 1 January from Etna's east and southeast flanks

What value do we place on hotspots of peri-urban wildlife? Scrub areas can be rich in #biodiversity. Total bio assemblage needs to be evaluated in ecological reports to inform #GreenInfrastructure planning. The Cringleford case - shorturl.at/3uY7D. @norfolknats.bsky.social #ecology #conservation

Wise Words for Wednesday.

Incredible effort! One mineral every day for the last year! 🧪⚒️

Earth heritage, like all phenomena, is experienced in a double-take which explores meanings both rational & imaginative, scientific & mythic. We ask both what it is in-itself and what is it for me. Can we language the world in a way equally valid for both? 🧵

I just popped in to X-Twitter to have a look around. It is rancid.

A fair return is enough to pay overheads (eg wages of staff, my wage!, energy, diesel, equipment, seeds etc, insurance etc) & then enough profit to keep investing to make us profitable (shed upgrades, equipment upgrades etc)

"The UK food supply chain is worth £147.6 billion a year, yet farm income is just £4.5 billion, that’s an alarming 3% of the total, with farmers often receiving less than 1% of supermarket profits." So it's worth asking ... wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk/features/a-f... #food #farming #UK #resilience

Not long now! Book your place on my course: Arboreal Harvestmen (recording available after the event if booked/requested). Very excited for this one, we will be talking about legs and the physiology that harvestmen use for their arboreal lifestyle! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/arboreal-h...

Today is Septidi the 7th of Nivôse in the year 234. Nivôse is the month of snow. Today we celebrate topsoil.#JacobinDay More information on topsoil

'Quaternary aminostratigraphies for the eastern North European Plain' - preprint version open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/5-396 (Thanks @matthewcollins.bsky.social for heads-up.)

The Sun’s fiery surface, a tattooed tardigrade, rare red lightning and more. www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

54.

The anthills of Rodborough Common soaking up low midwinter sunlight (but do their inhabitants notice?). Some are springy with cropped stems of Helianthemum nummularium (Common Rock-rose) - its solar flowers a midsummer blessing for butterflies and beetles. #Glos #biodiversity #flora #plants

Wayne in a manger / No crib for a bed... #Christmas

A living snowflake ❄️ for you to celebrate Christmas! Happy holidays! Moon jellyfish ephyra. #marineplankton 🦑

Lovely piece, and yes, Jasione montana (Sheep's-bit) deserves a mention in any conversation about best botanical blue! I also have a soft spot for Scilla verna (Spring Squill), which has a similar visual impact in coastal grasslands - seen here on the Unst serpentine at midsummer

Day 23 of my botanical #adventcalendar is the diminutive yet delightful Alpine Gentian - an extremely rare alpine, perhaps now only found on Ben Lawers, and assessed as Endangered on the new #GBRedList Is there a better flower colour than gentian blue? No, there is not... #wildflowerhour

《EU Pesticide Regulation prohibits approval of substances if they, or their toxic metabolites, lead to levels in groundwater exceeding the legal threshold of 0.1 µg/L. Yet, monitoring data show that TFA already exceeds this threshold in many regions.》

Happy Winter Solstice, where we celebrate the returning of the light, on the shortest day and longest night. On the solstice, when the land feels closest to its oldest stories, we’re reminded how much of England’s past remains out of reach.

Seeds of Solanum nigrum, Taraxacum officinalis & Rubus fruticosus for #WildflowerHour under the microscope showing interesting surface textures. Dormant wildflowers patiently (but vainly) awaiting their hour on a microscope slide.

A mystery seed from a Breckland, eastern England ghostpingo core as found by @hayleymcmechan.bsky.social. help oh botanists!!! 1 mm scale @annasolcova.bsky.social @jo-the-botanist.bsky.social @bramblebotanist.bsky.social @timholtwilson.bsky.social

《Dense forests only became widespread after humans eliminated the large herbivores ... Our study shows that the plants most dependent on grazing are also the ones most at risk today.》

Did the building of Sizewell A and B entail such landscape-scale destruction and disruption? Nope. And the site will be terminally besieged by sea-level rise within the next 100 years.

Biodiversity Net Gain: can developers be trusted? "When I learned that this woodland, known as Goose Hill & much loved by ramblers & bird-watchers, was to be entirely flattened & covered in concrete for a [Sizewell C] construction site, I was heartbroken" eastangliabylines.co.uk/environment/...

The Government has launched an eight-week consultation, which proposes the removal of the Gardens Trust as a statutory consultee in the planning process. Read the Gardens Trust’s statement bit.ly/3MPRRiM

Tardigrade biscuits, as eaten yesterday at the Anglian Microscopy Group meeting, fit to celebrate an eight-legged solstice. #solstice #Yule #tardigrades

The moths were just doing their job, carrying messages of love. Don't blame them for the inevitable wardrobe casualties.

Solstitial festivity for Norfolk botanical folk @bramblebotanist.bsky.social, with venison ragout illuminated by tree bearing biodiverse baubles and Xmatic sparkles. Thanks @jo-the-botanist.bsky.social for another year of great floral activity - may your star shine ever more brightly.

A walk in the woods at Felbrigg with @jeremybartlett.bsky.social brought a longed for insect - Boreus hyemalis aka Snow Flea. Managed to spot a male then found a female and another male in a second patch of moss. Happy days!

Sometimes we get more than a whiff of the ruthlessness with which clandestine evil works in the world. The murder of Prof Nuno Loureiro, for example. * www.nature.com/articles/d41... * www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... ##MIT #nuclearfusion #NunoLoureiro

A 'sore lack' of terrestrial invertebrates within palaeoart too. That's one reason I love this book: 'Evolution' by Peter Barrett (illustr.) and Douglas Palmer (text) (Octopus, 2009).

Ah, but a rolling Telychian chert gathers no sentimental bryophytes. It may be far from home but it's awesomely tough. Now lodging in a box at Keyworth @bgs.ac.uk for another 420 million years - or until fate shall set it free in some reformist chuck-out and it wanders the Earth, wild once again.

Somehow you have me feeling sorry for it - so far from home at Christmas.....

The democratic paucity of the Westminster system means MPs have almost no say over trade policy, leaving it to be shaped almost entirely by big business - including the world’s oil giants. open.substack.com/pub/abolishw...

《Britain’s trade deals cause almost as much climate changing pollution as the country's domestic economy. And elected MPs have almost no say over trade deals.》 NB @teamlabouruk.bsky.social are busy using the Royal Prerogative and 'corporate capture' to keep things that way ! @greenparty.org.uk

Our friends at the University of Florence have been looking into the aesthetic appeal of European butterflies and does this bias the species we choose to protect. You can help their research by completing a simple online survey. Many thanks in advance www.unveiling.eu?fbclid=IwZXh...

The amazing story of an erratic pebble from east Germany found in Norfolk. * Yonan Y. et al. A unique, far-travelled graptolite-bearing erratic pebble from the Lowestoft Till (Quaternary: Anglian Stage) of North Lopham, Norfolk. Proc Yorks Geol Soc, 65, 2025: pp1-12 nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/53...

Our paper about the heroic Pleistocene journey of a pebble of graptolitic chert from Mitteleuropa to Norfolk is being read now in Poland :-) www.paleo.pan.pl/news-details... #WesołychŚwiąt

Borellia-type bacteria found in Miocene amber. 《Four ticks from Dominican amber were analyzed ... revealing a large population of spirochete-like cells that most closely resemble those of the present-day Borrelia species.》#LymeDisease science.oregonstate.edu/IMPACT/2014/...

The Sainsburys Centre are asking people for personal stories about their connections with plants, to include in an exhbition (and some will also feature in a book). To find out more about this project and to submit a story, see: sainsburycentre.ac.uk/catkins/?fbc...

Exclusive: The Trump administration is moving to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, according to a senior White House official, taking aim at one of the world's leading climate research labs.

A film about A. Russel Wallace giving 1 hour, 12 mins of pleasure. A thoughtful script well acted in authentic locations. youtu.be/Z1eQ6DadodA?...

The Freshwater Invertebrates Research Group @norfolknats.bsky.social has been working at the Wheatfen Centre, Surlingham. Last night it was processing samples of 'ghost pingo' mud from East Harling for snails and identifying a Broadland Country Park water beetle. @norfolkponds.bsky.social .

<Our isotopic analyses of Late #Pleistocene and #Holocene fossil bones showed that the European brown bear gradually shifted toward a plant-based diet as primary productivity increased and growing seasons lengthened after the last glaciation, around 12,000 years ago.> #Palaeontology #Bears

Please sign an open letter to Sir Keir Starmer and the UK broadcasters calling for a televised emergency briefing on the #climate & #nature crisis. www.nebriefing.org/open-letter-... Highlights from actor Olivia Williams' powerful reading. Full version link below. #NEB2025 #TimeToStepUp