#FossilFriday A wealth of fossils can be seen at Hampton Court Palace. The youngest are these late Pleistocene–early Holocene antlers of Megaloceros giganteus – the Irish deer or Irish elk – mounted on a wall among smaller antlers from extant deer.

Happy #EarthDay 🌍 Plus a reminder that most of Earth is Ocean, and that life on land and life in the seas are inextricably linked... www.cell.com/current-biol...

#MolluscMonday Rare example of an Ordovician orthocone nautiloid with a fractured shell. Photographed in the stone floor of the King’s Gallery at Hampton Court Palace last week.

Since @echinoblog.bsky.social has been pushing #bryozoanstoday for #FossilFriday, I figure I need no further encouragement. 🧪⚒️ Here we have some uncoiled Yorktown snail tubes 🐚 immured in (completely overgrown by) cheilostome bryozoans assigned to Schizoporella. Nice camouflage!

Interesting new study of boron isotopes in some modern bryozoan skeletons for the geochemically inclined doi.org/10.1016/j.ch...

#FossilFriday Space, the final frontier. Branching cyclostome bryozoan battling it out for living space with two cheilostome bryozoans on a shell from the Early Pleistocene Nukumaru Limestone, Whanganui Basin, New Zealand.

Last day to register for Larwood 2026 1-3 June in Oslo! #bryozoa #marineinverts

It's gorgeous! Looks like a mosaic work of art. It's the best thing i have seen all day! Thank you for cheering up my Monday. 😊

#MolluscMonday Centre of another sectioned ammonite from the Middle Jurassic Inferior Oolite of England.

#FossilFriday Among the Cretaceous gastropods and rudist bivalves in the floor tiles at the Le Shuttle terminal in Folkestone are some branching fossils that resemble bryozoans but are more likely to be sponges.

PRI is hiring! We are looking for a new Associate Director for Operations and an Exhibits and Maintenance Lead. More info on our website!

Progress and Challenges in Phylogenomics and Genomics of Lophotrochozoa/Spiralia | Zoologica Scripta onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Bryozooloigsts! Remember to register for Larwood Oslo 1-3 June 2026 #bryozoa www.bryozoology.org/kopie-von-20... the deadline is coming up fast! Please remind your friends and colleagues!

#MolluscMonday Bivalve borings in a fragment of a fallen marble column from the ruined Temple of Serapis at Puzzuoli, Italy. The temple was famously figured by Charles Lyell in his Principles of Geology (1830).

#FossilFriday A brachiopod with a hole, the pygopid Antionomia.

Oh no! My PhD advisor pushed me to publish with JoG, and they were always extremely careful and professional. It feels like so many of the institutions I always thought would be there are failing around us ... "End of an era" is a little too on the nose.

#MolluscMonday Small individual (5 cm across) of the Middle Jurassic nautiloid Cenoceras smithi from Dundry in Somerset.

For #FossilFriday have this lovely picture of a baby Protoceratops to accompany this short piece I've written on problems with current trends in publications in science. TLDR: all references in a paper should be cited. It'd fix some problems. archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2026/03/27/t...

#FossilFriday A tiny rolling bryozoan from the Late Cretaceous of Norfolk. Volviflustrellaria taverensis grew by continuously budding new zooids from a growing edge (top of image) to cover the older zooids of the colony.

@bsky.app #MolluscMonday Back from the dead. The ‘Lazarus’ gastropod Calyptraphorus was once believed to have become extinct in the Eocene until a Pliocene species some 30 million years younger was discovered. This specimen is Calyptraphorus palliata from the Late Cretaceous of Pondicherry, India.

#FossilFriday Echinauris lateralis from the Permian of the Glass Mountains in Texas. The silicified shell of this extravagantly spinose brachiopod was freed from the the limestone matrix using acid.

#MolluscMonday This sectioned nautiloid shows the siphuncle bisecting the chambers. Cenoceras pseudolineatus from the Middle Jurassic of Dorset, England.

#FossilFriday Tentaculitids galore on this piece of Ordovician siltstone from Shropshire, all preserved as moulds following dissolution of their calcareous shells. The taxonomic affinity of this common group of Palaeozoic invertebrates is uncertain.

Very interesting - seems that like ammonites, some belemnites may also have survived the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. ☄️☠️ Unlike ammonites which only persisted a few 100 thousand years they lasted a long time - into the Eocene at least! 🤯

It's never too late to become a palaeontologist: www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

#MolluscMonday Two sectioned nerineoid gastropods from the polished limestone floor of a staircase in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Spot the bivalve borings in the shells. ?French Cretaceous.

#FossilFriday Verbeekiella australis, among the last of the Palaeozoic ‘horn corals’ belonging to the class Rugosa, from the Permian of Timor. The function of the unusual axial structure is unclear according to my colleague Brian Rosen.

#SpongeThursday Ventriculitid sponge from the Cretaceous Chalk of England showing disruption of the net-like structure resulting from radial regrowth into a puncture.

#MolluscMonday Cut and polished specimen of the ammonite Hildoceras sublevisoni from the Lower Jurassic of Whitby, Yorkshire, preserving the early shell chambers infilled by several generations of cement.

🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran... #BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪

Compare and Contrast! The living species, Calliderma emma from deep-sea habitats throughout the Indo-Pacific! Are they the same genus? An interesting question! Could this genus been around since the Cretaceous? #echinoday

#FossilFriday A beautiful Cretaceous seastar. This fully articulated specimen of Calliderma was collected in the Chalk of England.

Very sad to hear about the passing of Dr. Hans Sues. His last work was the description of Tyrannoroter heberti. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Piltdown forgery extended to other fossils supposedly from the site (but probably planted) that Dawson stained brown. My personal favourites being 'The Piltdown Clams'! Two specimens of Upper Cretaceous inoceramid bivalve derived from the #Chalk.

#MolluscMonday Dating mostly from the 16th and 17th centuries, nautilus shell cups consist of metal-mounted shells sometimes capped by a small figure of Poseidon. This example on display at the British Museum shows remarkably intricate carving of the shell and septa.

#FossilFriday Presented to the British Museum in 1875 and now in the Natural History Museum, Ordovician brachiopods cover the surface of this small piece of Cincinnatian limestone from Waynesville, Ohio.

LGP will have a stand at the Essex Rock & Mineral Show this Saturday (21/02/26). We will have small display of London’s geology and building stones, will be doing rock and fossil IDs and will be selling @geolassoc.bsky.social guide books. Do come and say hello!

#MolluscMonday Uncoiled ammonites known as heteromorphs (‘other shapes’) are mostly Cretaceous in age. However, this example of Spiroceras is from the Middle Jurassic of Dorset.

Beach Finds #Aldbrough

#FossilFriday Cousins in life, companions in death. Belemnite guard by chance preserved in the body chamber of the ammonite Parkinsonia from the Jurassic.

The Jurassic gastropods are not all they seem - Portland Roach infilled with white resin to make an even floor …

#MolluscMonday 99% of visitors to the Egyptian and Greek galleries in the British Museum will be too focused on the items displayed in the cabinets to notice the Jurassic gastropods and Cretaceous rudist bivalves in the flooring beneath.

#PostboxSaturday Delhi, 2019.

#FossilFriday Polished floor tile in the British Museum consisting of Carboniferous crinoidal limestone. The larger of the crinoid fragments are sections of stem segments (columnals) from the these so-called ‘sea-lilies’.

THE WONDER OF LIFE ON EARTH - published today www.panmacmillan.com/authors/henr...

Carolann Schack my talented collaborator made some #bryozoan cookies over Xmas. How many genera can you name??

If you’ve ever wondered what curators get up to, wonder no more! I was joined by @jamesashway.bsky.social who found out about the latest behind-the-scenes goings-on in the NHM fossil mammal collection!

#MolluscMonday Sectioned specimen of the ammonite Parkinsonia parkinsoni on display in the Enlightenment gallery at the British Museum. This Jurassic fossil was named for the great James Parkinson (1755–1824).

I did a blog for the Geological Collections Group on type specimens of #fossils and how to find them, based on years of digging into old museum collections #naturalhistory @originalgcg.bsky.social @nmireland.bsky.social geocollnews.wordpress.com/2026/01/30/w...