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.

OH WOW! A whole web page DEVOTED to SPONGE SPICULE Imagery ! #porifera #spongeThursday www.spicules.org

Holy shit I'm so relieved I could cry. A very happy new year to PRI!!! www.priweb.org/blog-post/pr...

Is it a sculpture of a bird? No, it’s Remarkable Rocks, a tor on Kangaroo Island, South Australia, where the granite has been weathered into some incredible shapes.

#TrilobiteTuesday One from the archives, Cybantyx anaglyptos, a small Silurian trilobite from Much Wenlock, Shropshire.

Something very different for the last #MolluscMonday of 2025 – a montage of record album covers featuring ammonites. I’m sure there must be more.

#FossilFriday Fine specimen of the problematical fossil Dickinsonia costata from the Ediacaran. On display at the South Australia Museum, Adelaide.

Phidoloporid bryozoans, like this colony picked from a crab pot at Apollo Bay, Victoria, Australia last month, are often confusingly known as 'lace corals'.

JOB KLAXON! The @nhm-london.bsky.social is recruiting a micro-CT specialist! jobs.nhm.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

#TrilobiteTuesday Tail of the Cambrian trilobite Neodrepanura known in Chinese folklore as bat stones or swallow stones. 6 cm across.

Last call! We're hiring 👉 Invertebrate Paleontology Collection Manager 📌 Apply by Jan 5, 2026 This position will manage the extensive collections, conduct fieldwork, participate in public outreach & pursue external funding. 🔸 Full info + application: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/inver...

#MolluscMonday Slab covered by opalised Early Cretaceous bivalves in the public galleries of the South Australia Museum, Adelaide. Not nearly as rare as the ichthyosaur vertebrae posted for the last #FossilFriday, but eye-catching nonetheless.

Just watched a fascinating TV documentary – The Mystery of the Desert Kites – about Neolithic people in the Arabian desert who made huge stone enclosures to herd gazelle. They also collected fossils like this ceratite and nautiloid, though I can find no literature on this. Can anyone help?

#FossilFriday Stack of opalised vertebrae from an Early Cretaceous ichthyosaur. Another remarkable fossil on display in the South Australia Museum, Adelaide.

#MolluscMonday Another fossil in the galleries of the South Australia Museum, the heteromorph ammonite Tropaeum imperator, Collected from Early Cretaceous rocks at Coober Pedy, this is claimed to be the largest known ammonite from Australia with an uncoiled length of 3 metres.

Back to bryozoans for this #FossilFriday with a sample of free-living (lunulite) cheilostomes from the Chalk of Rügen, Germany. Spot the crinoid interloper.

To brighten up a British winter evening here are some of the 'Twelve Apostle' sea-stacks on the coast of Victoria State, Australia, photographed a few weeks ago.

This is fantastic! The design is apparently based on certain fossils-now I need to find someone who knows the history of fossilizing, or fossilography.

Just finished delivering an online talk on Chalk bryozoans to the Amateur Geological Society, which was fun

#TrilobiteTuesday From the public galleries of the South Australia Museum in Adelaide, a very fine fossil of the Cambrian trilobite Redlichia rex.

#MolluscMonday Section of a particularly slender nerineid gastropod in a building stone at the Supreme Court, Adelaide.

@bsky.app #FossilFriday Arborea arborea, one of many impressive enigmatic Ediacaran fossils from the Flinders Ranges on display at the South Australian Museum in Adelaide.

#MolluscMonday Ammonite and belemnite in the limestone steps leading up to Avignon Cathedral in France. Probably Early Cretaceous ‘Urgonian’.

#FossilFriday From the black ‘marble’ floor of the Immigration Museum in Melbourne, a horizontally sectioned productid brachiopod and a solitary rugose coral enveloped by a syringoporid coral. The stone looks to be European Carboniferous but I would welcome any feedback.

#MolluscMonday A fossil scallop shell ‘Down Under’. Photographed in a building stone of Miocene Batesford Limestone at the Old Magistrates Court, Melbourne.

#FossilFriday One extra fossil from Singapore, in the black limestone cladding of the same Prada shop as the rugose coral posted earlier, a brachiopod preserving internally the calcite supports of the two arms of the lophophore visible as rings of dots on the left and right side of the fossil.

Final fossil from Singapore - a silicified tree trunk, one of several in the Marine Bay gardens. Age and provenance unknown to me.

Another fossil from the streets of Singapore, a large nerineoid gastropod in the stone cladding of a jewellery shop in Little India. Presumably a European Cretaceous limestone.

Singapore Fossil Number 2, a Late Palaeozoic rugose coral, fortuitously brought to Singapore by Prada in a polished black limestone cladding one of their shop fronts.

A bonus for #MolluscMonday, the first fossil I spotted today in Singapore, a sectioned ammonite on a polished slab of German Jurassic Treuchtlingen Formation used to clad a wall in Changi Airport.

#MolluscMonday The L.F. Spath collection at the NHM in London includes numerous thin sections through the early growth stages of ammonoids. This crudely photographed example is of a Cretaceous ammonite.

20数年ぶりに福岡市地下鉄天神駅を訪問。階段手摺りのサンゴ・ウミユリ・腕足類・クダサンゴなどの化石はまだ存在していました。よかったよかった。 石材はベルギー産のプチグラニ🇧🇪 #街の中で見つかるすごい石 #UrbanGeology #金曜日だから化石貼る #FossilFriday

#FossilFriday Painted black to enhance contrast, a pair of cheilostome colonies encrusting a test of Echinocorys from the English Chalk. Bryozoans are exceedingly common on the tests of this infaunal echinoid which had to be exhumed before encrustation.

For this #FossilFriday, something special for me: one of the few books on fossils in Turkish when I was a kid. 13 yo me was turning the pages, reading word by word to learn about fossils, dreaming about being a paleontologist. Many years later, at a Palaeontological Association conference dinner...

This is excellent advice for all first time presenters … also, the quality of your talk will not impact your future career - that comes down to your CV & skills overall, not your ability to perform on the platform. So, if you slip up a bit don’t sweat it - most of the audience won’t realise anyway 🤷🏻‍♂️

#MolluscMonday Balanced on a wall beneath the ice-cream parlour at Aubeterre (Charente, France) is a fossil of the large rudist bivalve Hippurites, probably collected from a local field underlain by Campanian limestones.

Beach Finds #OutNewton