Lophophorata is monophyletic! Super excited to see this work out in Current Biology - we sequenced a phoronid genome and used shared chromosome fusions to confirm the monophyly of Lophophorata. A big team effort from the Luo Lab @yjluo.bsky.social! More here: authors.elsevier.com/c/1m3mV3QW8S...

What’s a collective noun for vertebrate palaeontologists? An assemblage? A lagerstätte? Ideas please… #SVP2025

Manitoba has over 1,700 species of wildflowers, ferns, shrubs and trees, but identifying them is not easy. For two decades, staff at the Museum, with a team of volunteer botanists, have been working on an updated edition of Manitoba Flora. Pre-order today: www.manitobamuseumshop.ca/shop.html?lo...

Museum colleagues discovered a completely white wood frog ("Boreorana sylvatica") in a pond just outside of Winnipeg! This is the first record of a white individual of this species anywhere in North America. The white wood frog was likely a female as it was found mating with a normal-coloured male.

The sidewalk in front of my house, I’ve lined with rocks from all over the world, from two billion years ago to the present, from all types of geologic environments. I wonder how many people pass by and never know they are walking back in time. LOL

Isotelus sp. from the #Ordovician Cat Head Member, Red River Formation. #TrilobiteTuesday #Paleozoic #ManitobaFossils

Last #FossilFriday I had the pleasure of visiting the @romtoronto.bsky.social and checking out the Dawn of Life gallery! I’ll dig into my favorite individual fossils soon, but the exhibit was a gorgeous mix of science, art and specimens and I loved that it featured specimens from across Canada! 🇨🇦

Manitoba Museum Student Associate and Mitacs Fellow Urgon Snider’s Master’s thesis research is on microfossils. He’ll be working dissolving ancient rocks, extracting tiny fossils, and mounting them for our collections, expanding our understanding of 450-million-year-old ecosystems! #FossilFriday

The team also guided a trip to the field site for members of Kinonjeoshtegon Jordan’s Principle Youth Camp, providing an opportunity for dialogue about the significance of this unique site and, hopefully, inspiring some future palaeontologists!

Recently our palaeontology team took a collecting trip to the Cat Head site, in collaboration with Kinonjeoshtegon First Nation. This site is known globally for its preservation of Ordovician Period fossils, and new samples will support research on the conditions under which it formed. #FossilFriday

Fun day trip this week! On a warm, sunny July day, paleontologist Melina Jobbins and her team search an old rock quarry near Lundar, Man., for 390-million-year-old fossils of an extinct fish that swam in what was once a vast inland sea. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... @umanitoba.bsky.social

New publication alert! Meet ‘Elmosteus lundarensis’, a large, armoured fish that lived in the Devonian Period. Dr. Joe Moysiuk (cambrojoe.bsky.social), worked with researchers from umanitoba.bsky.social on this study, which includes new fossils! Read the publication here: doi.org/10.1080/1477...

Best day in the field ever? Quite possibly. It’s not every day you find the oldest known muscular animal in the world. Mamsetia manunis - an #Ediacaran fossil at @discoverygeoparknl.bsky.social - before and after cleaning on the day it was discovered. #FossilFriday

Welcome back to another #fossilfriday Here is the crinoid Onychocrinus distensus. This specimen comes from the Lower Carboniferous (Upper Carboniferous) Upper Monteagle Limestone Formation from one mile east of Huntsville, Alabama.

Edrioasteroids are a strange echinoderm. I always think of them as a starfish/barnacle combination. They tend to attach to hard ground or encrust on brachiopods. This is Belochthus orthokolus from the Ordovician Verulam Fm. near Brechin, Ontario. #FossilFriday

Just signed off proofs of 'The Wonder of Life on Earth'. They're gorgeous! It's a shorter version of 'A (Very) Short Version of Life on Earth' re-written for pre-teens, illustrated by Raxenne Maniquiz. It's out in February but available for preorder www.panmacmillan.com/authors/henr...

In 1788, Hutton discovered almost vertical layers of sedimentary rock at Siccar Point. This allowed him to explain key geological processes like deposition, folding and erosion, which shape today's landscapes. View more geological photos via our archive: bgs.assetbank.app

Richard Bambach will always be remembered as a champion of functional-ecological way of thinking in macroevolution. Way before the modern trend in analyzing functional diversity. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #Geology #EvoBio

✨NEW INTERVIEW✨ THE SEA MOTH - Secrets of the Cambrian ~ with DR JOSEPH MOYSIUK @cambrojoe.bsky.social #evolutionsoup #evolution #cambrian #science #fossils 👇🏿👇🏽 youtu.be/Y9Od7gC_j40

It's finally out! 200 years since the description of Eurypterus remipes, the first eurypterid named in the scientific literature, I present a summary of the history of eurypterid research and an updated taxonomy of every known species.🧪⚒️ doi.org/10.1206/0003...

A startling 'sea moth' has been uncovered in Canada! Named in honour of a Japanese film icon, Mosura fentoni would have been a finger-sized hunter living over half a billion years ago! Find out about the life of this petite predator 👇 www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

There's a new fossil in town! Meet "Mosura fentoni". It was discovered by Curator of Palaeontology & Geology Dr. Joe Moysiuk, alongside colleagues from the @romtoronto.bsky.social. Get to know this bizarre-looking little predator in this video with Dr. Moysiuk: youtu.be/NiJFzNCbl98 #Fossil

In his office piled high with papers, behind a desk strewn with specimens, Joe Moysiuk, curator of paleontology and geology at the Manitoba Museum, turns a fossil over in his hands.

Found at the Burgess Shale, a site renowned for its quality of preservation, some specimens show traces of the nervous system, gut, and circulatory system! The study was led by our Curator of Palaeontology and Geology, Dr. Joe Moysiuk (@cambrojoe.bsky.social). Read more: doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

New fossil species alert! Meet Mosura fentoni, a 506-million-year-old predator. This creature was about the size of your index finger and had three eyes, spiny, jointed claws, and a body with swimming flaps along its sides. It was part of an extinct group known as the radiodonts. #FossilFriday

Introducing Mosura fentoni, a new radiodont from the #BurgessShale. Paper here: doi.org/10.1098/rsos.2… Thi#fossilil species has 3 eyes, spiny claws, wing-shaped swimming flaps, and a unique abdomen-like body region.

Some big #BurgessShale news coming next week...🤓🦋 #FossilFriday #Cambrian #arthropod

🧪🦖Science folks! I'm working on a piece for Scientific American about how fossil species are defined, and why that question's important for understanding biodiversity in the past and present. If that's your field, I'd love to talk to you! (Email me at aelbein at gmail!)

Turns out cycling around London with a seven foot Christmas tree on the back is a very good way to stop aggressive overtaking by drivers.