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...

#FossilFriday Eocene bryozoan Biselenaria offa first described by J.W. Gregory (1864–1932). Gregory was a geologist and explorer who published on the African Rift Valley and came close to being the leader of the tragic Terra Nova expedition to Antarctic in which Robert Falcon Scott and others died.

The first book for children to mention #MaryAnning was probably Maria Hack's 1832 Geological Sketches, during Mary's lifetime. She's popular today: in the last 10 years alone there have been over 40 books about her for young readers and she's featured in over 40 other children's books in that time.

Very nice and useful review about Global Stratotype Sections and Points (GSSP) 🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Roberts (2025)（博士論文 doctoral thesis） Increased Sampling of Small-Bodied Lophotrochozoans Yields Enhanced Resolution of the Most Enigmatic Invertebrate Superphylum www.proquest.com/openview/172...

A fossil sea urchin from the end of the world. Discovered last Sunday this basal section of the echinoid Echinocorys in a wall constructed of Chalk blocks at Worlds End in Epsom, Surrey, close to a picturesque arched doorway with a flint surround.

#MolluscMonday Sectioned Kosmoclymenia undulata from the Late Devonian, the position of the siphuncle labelled. In ammonoids of the order Clymeniida the siphuncle, a tube allowing access to the inner shell chambers, is located on the inside of the spiral (cf. ammonites where it is on the outside).

#FossilFriday Sections of fossil echinoids, including a ‘heart urchin’, in a Miocene limestone used in a wall in Adelaide, South Australia.

#TrilobiteTuesday. Deiphon barrandei from the Silurian Wenlock Limestone of Dudley, showing the dome-shaped glabella particularly well. Specimen 3 cm across.

#MolluscMonday Neither nautiloid nor ammonite, this is an early ammonoid, Timanites keyserlingi (Order Agoniatitida) of Devonian age. The large body chamber in this specimen is sediment-filled, whereas the chambers forming the phragmocone are infilled with calcite.

Visited Worthing in West Sussex today with information boards on the pier about the nearby Kingmere Marine Conservation Zone. An important inhabitant is the ‘Ross Coral’, which is not a coral but the bryozoan Pentapora foliacea.

Delighted to have received a copy of this superb book on Late Cretaceous bryozoans from the Maastricht region written by Oliver Kesselhut and Luk Goffings. Beautifully illustrated and thoroughly recommended.

It's #FossilFriday! ⚒️🧪 For your consideration: Prasopora, the gumdrop bryozoan, a common element of late Ordovician faunas in shallow, storm-influenced tropical carbonate platform sediments of the Appalachian Basin, from Kentucky to upstate NY.

#FossilFriday Graptolites are extremely useful as zonal fossils in the Ordovician and Silurian. Some look like pencil marks but better preserved examples, like this Monograptus priodon from the Wenlock of Scotland, resemble miniature saw blades.

The mythical griffin has long been used as a symbol of power and as guardians of wealth. These two griffins are on monuments in Westminster Abbey.

#TrilobiteTuesday Make what you will of this unusual view of an enrolled specimen of the Permian trilobite Iranaspidion elephas from Oman.

#MolluscMonday Two large heteromorph ammonites photographed over 20 years ago at a small museum in Bargemon, southern France. Unfortunately, details of identity, age and locality were not recorded.

#MolluscMonday: a lichen-encrusted example of the large Late Jurassic ammonite Titanites at Portland, Dorset.

#FossilFriday As last week’s post of a fake fossil frog described by Johann Beringer proved popular, here are some more of Beringer’s ‘Lügensteine’ (lying stones): mating frogs, a spider, a ghost-like creature and, most improbably, a miniature comet.

#TrilobiteTuesday Silurian buddies or thrown together in the Holocene? Small block of Wenlock Limestone with the trilobites Trimerus delphinocephalus and Calymene blumenbachii. Formerly on display in the Earth Galleries at the NHM, London.

#MolluscMonday The stone floor tiles around the gift shop in London’s National Gallery contain molluscs and other fossils, including this nautiloid, thick-shelled bivalve, echinoid spines and profuse burrows. Does anyone recognise the stone or the trace fossils?

#FossilFriday Here's one of the fake fossils that duped Johann Beringer 300 years ago (see my earlier post). The scale bar below this carved frog measures 1 cm.

Happy New Year! Please pre-register (non-binding) for the 1-3 June #Oslo Larwood #bryozoa meeting! It will help us better estimate conference needs, meaning lower conference fees! There will be ecology, evolution, taxonomy and an in-person Dennis!!! www.bryozoology.org/kopie-von-20... pls repost!

#FossilFriday 2026 marks the 300th anniversary of the publication of Beringer’s ‘Lithographiae Wirceburgensis’ which became notorious when the 'fossils' illustrated in it were shown to be fakes. Here’s the frontispiece depicting in classical style the hill in southern Germany where they were found.

During the Silurian Period, 430 million years ago, equatorial reef systems developed in the seas. The reefs were home to all kinds of invertebrates and among the most plentiful were brachiopods, bryozoans, and gastropods, seen in this specimen in our collection.