This terracotta die comes from the ancient city of Mohenjo-Daro, one of the first urban centres in human history 🎲⠀ ⠀ Gaming with dice has been a popular pastime in India for millennia, with this object dating back to 2500–1900 BCE. 🎲 Terracotta Die, 2500–1900 BCE. 2 x 2 x 2 cm. EAMd.25

Frankly My Dear, I Don't Give A Dam Just realized that the 18th c. French map of America by the Newberry Library Special Collections reading room is REALLY into Beavers! It illustrates nearly fifty of them hard at work... Building skills aside, they were probably featured because of the fur trade.

Selanik gevreği (biscotti, as known in Turkey) is half-baked, cooling down on the counter. Can't slice it before it's cool and set enough for a second bake. I added lots of orange and mandarin zest, orange blossom water, roasted anise seeds, almonds, and sour cherries.

Collecting scarce books is my thing, another 🧵 for #booksky (I think?) This is the title page to my true, 1776 first edition of one of the earlier English translations, possibly the first, of a Sanskrit work, via a Persian translation 🧵 #c18th

So for #BookSky, I’m a book collector, which includes this yearbook from 1951 around the same time my father graduated. A dreaded🧵, but I think it’s worth checking it out til the end, especially if you’re into science 🧪 related non-fiction (1/n)

This rules

'Eisige Zeiten' #FotoVorschlag My 📷

“The results suggest lichen evolved around 410 million years ago, shortly after the initial spread of vascular plants 420 million years ago and just before the earliest known forests around 390 million years ago.” 👇

3 different flavours of Polychaeta (bristle worms) in one friendship group! The biggest is from the family Spionidae, the orange one was featured is yesterday’s post, from the family Serpulidae, and the littlest is a mystery to me! #marineplankton 🦑

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What's that? You didn't know boxfish made sound? Me neither... It turns out all species (Atlantic & Pacific) do, yet little is known about how this evolved. A novel structure found only in the Atlantic species offered the answer, but it isn't quite what you think...🌍 🧪 doi.org/10.1093/biol...

Two miles of ice core on the shelf at our national ice core facility in Lakewood, Colorado. The WAIS Divide core from West Antarctica is a 3400m long (deepest US core, 2nd deepest ice core ever) 68,000 year old record of high resolution climate.

Squawroot (Orobanchaceae: Conopholis americana) is widespread but uncommon across eastern North America. It lacks chlorophyll, is parasitic mainly on oaks and beeches, and is only conspicuous when it flowers in April. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina, 11 Apr 2016.

have you ever been somewhere so dark you could step outside & immediately spot the Milky Way? i traveled to the Upper Peninsula to learn about efforts to balance industrialization & economic growth with the preservation of starry skies: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/s...

Japanese Emperor Caterpillar for President! Go up or down in the thread to see the gorgeous (pseudo)color in the adult.

A 12,000-year-old clay figurine from an archeological site in northern Israel depicts a woman and a goose in a mythological scene that hints at an animistic belief system. Depictions of human–animal interactions in Paleolithic artwork are rare. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/q06T50Xx2E8

When I was under 1, my dad was arrested in the UK. As was the standard procedure, he had the beating of his life and was left on a cell floor to reflect on the errors of his ways. He got 3 years in a max security jail. One of the men arrested with him died on hunger strike.

Exploring the roots of crop evolution just got a boost! A new model compares domesticated plants with their wild ancestors, revealing that while they share resource-use traits, domesticated versions are bigger and have shifted from survival strategies to more competitive ones, thanks to human cul...

Star Wars is trending for some reason. Here’s the deal, my older brother took me to the original when I was a young kid in ‘77. If you weren’t there, sorry, but you have no clue how mind blowingingly ground breaking it was. Seriously, you don’t (honestly no offense).

When copying the #Mahabharata in #Persian in 18th-century #India, did one praise Allah or Rama? Sometimes, the copyist praised both. More Hindus read the epics in Persian (versus Sanskrit) in this period. Images courtesy of Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Wow! @lollardfish.bsky.social & @profgabriele.com going all in on a new study using pollen to document biodiversity at & around the Abbey of St Gall in the Carolingian Age. buttondown.com/ModernMediev... #MedievalSky #interdisciplinarity

#histSTM #histsci and adjacent #bookprize Please share widely!

An explosive #eruption of Hayli Gubbi #volcano, located SE of Erta'Ale in the Afar Rift (Ethiopia), began at ~08:30 UTC on Nov 23. Eruption onset was fortuitously captured by a @planet.com overpass at 08:31 UTC. Hayli Gubbi has no record of Holocene eruptions. Toulouse VAAC reporting ash to ~15 km.

Do you enjoy cat videos? 🐱 A new study published in #RESJournal Insect Conservation & Diversity reveals how domestic cats may be impacting #arthropod #biodiversity using social media of cats preying on insects & spiders 🕷️ 🔗 buff.ly/j73gCmb #RESInsectConsDiv #UrbanEcology #Biodiversity

Young #coatimundi caught on #cameratrap. Galiuro Mountains, a rare Sky Island in the #SonoranDesert.

#OnThisDay in 1859, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was first published. Much of the original manuscript was used as scrap paper by Darwin's children. On the back of this painting of a house is an original manuscript page from Origin! #CambridgeUniversityLibrary (DAR 185)

“the history of man’s industry as exerted upon Animal and Vegetable Life, upon the Woods, upon the Waters, and upon the Sands; and to these I have added a concluding chapter upon Probable and Possible Geographical Revolutions yet to be effected by the art of man.” 👇 🌎

Over 150 yrs ago, George Perkins Marsh urged his readers to consider the disastrous environmental effects of deforestation, over-mining, and other human actions. Read more about this remarkable thinker and his extraordinary book, Man and Nature (1864) publicdomainreview.org/collection/m...

Cool inset map from this "Geologic Map of the San Francisco Bay Region," by Graymer, et al. (2006). ngmdb.usgs.gov/ngm-bin/pdp/... It shows the blocks of crust sliced & diced by Bay Area faults, and how much & in what direction they have moved in the past 34 million years. ⚒️

Scientists found the key to accurate Maya eclipse tables. Eclipse tables in the Dresden Codex were based on lunar tables and adjusted for slippage over time. arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Well this 2,600-year-old clay letter was a journey. It comes from the archive of a goldsmith named Nabû-zeru-iddin in the heart of ancient Assyria. We’ve got someone left on read, a lawsuit, a mean step-mom, and people who get drunk and steal silver.

“All of this would be highly impressive for any 17th century astronomer but it should be noted that Horrocks died in 1640 aged only 22! There has been much speculation as to what he might have achieved if he like Newton had lived into his eighties.” 👇

On 24 November 1639 the British astronomers Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree became the first observers to record a transit of Venus. #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/a...

Quinces really are magnificent fruit

🇫🇷☃️Ce week-end, un premier épisode hivernal a touché le nord-ouest de la France jusqu'au Massif central. Des chutes de neige ont - brièvement - recouvert Paris. Images de la capitale, de la tour Eiffel enneigée à de la luge improvisée à Montmartre ⤵️

Finding out that you could write a dissertation on something entirely new was a step in the right direction though, so I became the world's first PhD specializing in Renaissance pop-up books! (Yes, Dürer technically published one)... Spent time in many different museums in Prints and Drawings...

🪶 Winner of The Athenaeum of Philadelphia 2024 Literary Award for Nonfiction: "William Bartram's Visual Wonders" uncovers the strange, living drawings at the heart of Bartram’s vision, where art and nature meet. Discover more: buff.ly/3fCMLnj @upittpress.bsky.social @livunipress.bsky.social

here’s a recent guilty pleasure - this woman plays the repertoire on the big pipe organ in Riga, and if you’ve never seen one of these actually in operation you don’t realize how athletic the enterprise actually is. certainly a staggering technical challenge to keep the beast lumbering!

Too many books!?

Blind cave spiders~ This occurs due to the process of regressive evolution. In an environment without light, vision provides no advantage in finding prey or avoiding predators. The loss of their eyes means that energy and resources once used for eyes are instead allocated to other traits.

During the Eocene Epoch, 25 million years ago, parts of North America as far north as Oregon were covered with a sub-tropical forest that was nearly identical to the one found in Central America today. These large Brontotherium teeth only hint at the majestic size of a well preserved, adult skull.

Winter Is Coming: And the Earth’s oldest organisms are prepping. 🥶

Trump! Stephen Miller! Rubio! RFK Jr.! Ahhhhh!! Ok, got that out of the way. Now check this little piece of American scientific history out 👇

An engraved plate from my 1827 copy of Elements of Botany by Benjamin Smith Barton, one of the first professors of natural history in the U.S. & who built the largest collection of botanical specimens in the country. This was considered the first U.S. botany textbook. 🌱 🐡 📚💙

I’m going to keep reposting this until someone likes it

'CO2-Emission' #FotoVorschlag My 📷

“The Oxford University Roll of Service contains the names, [14,561] in number, of those members of the University who served in the Military and Naval forces of the Crown during the War.” Another page from my copy of this book published in 1920. Tolkien visiting Mordor. #booksky 📚💙

Speaking of Albrecht Dürer, detail of his engraving Melencolia I. When was it created? He added the date to the bottom row of his magic square (1514). 🖼️

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐