It's a follow-up #FossilFriday The mysterious bone fragment I posted about last year has an ID! After examination by the Science Museum of Minnesota, as suspected, the specimen has been confirmed as a mastodon tooth cusp. If you would you have recognized it let me know. #citezenscience #mammut

For #Fossil Friday, meet "Junior." On loan to the new Bison: Standing Strong Smithsonian exhibit in Washington, DC. Junior is a massive Bison latifrons skull. Marie L. Hopkins, Idaho's first female paleontologist, excavated Junior in 1951. #womenwhodig #pleistocene #bison doi.org/10.2307/1375...

Happy #FossilFriday! Check out some recent finds from fieldwork in #NorthDakota! A claw, tooth, and osteoderms (armor plates) of Borealosuchus + some turtle shell. These are all about 60 million years old from life’s recovery phase after the big extinction that ended the Age of the Dinosaurs.

Lost Bones #6 (Bears Repeating) 🐻 For #FossilFriday 🐂🦥🐴🐪🐟 a new #LostBones article out on Substack! This one is a deep dive into brown bear (Ursus arctos) and giant short-faced bears (Arctodus simus) in the Midwest and Surrounding areas. Please share the story! open.substack.com/pub/marcusbr...

Huge deal all! @pbseons.bsky.social has made a SIX episode series around the Permian and it is a delight. Coming soon! 📺 🍿 There will be familiar faces.

#FossilFriday The final tooth—12 of 12—is SMM P2024.5.1, a lower molar found at Mississippi Gateway Regional Park (Brooklyn Park, MN) in 2023. Twelve 3D printed reproductions of the molars are also underway and are now receiving their final paint touches. #Equus #RadiocarbonDating

🐂 🐴🐪 #FossilFriday Still one of my favorite mounts! 9K years ago, a group of Bison occidentalis wandered into what’s St, Paul MN. In 1955, at Mississippi St. & Maryland road crews found them resting beneath a peat layer. Today the remains form specimen P68.54.1 at the Science Museum of Minnesota.

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#FossilFriday specimen SMM P2025.8.6 (MNH 779) comes from Nicollet County near St. Peter, Minnesota’s almost‑capital. #11 of 12 in the state’s Ice Age horse project heading to UC Irvine’s W. M. Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass Spectrometer Facility (KCCAMS) for radiocarbon dating this summer.

Amazing animals!

Huge day for reptile evolution. We FINALLY find strong morpho-/paleontological support for Pantestudines with Archosauria. WOO! 🐢 + 🐊🦩 Eunotosaurus is firmly down on the reptile stem. "Eu-not-a-turtle" amirite?? Phylo tests ALL prior candidates for turtle origins in one deeply satisfying work.

NORTH DAKOTA'S BIGGEST HELL PIG: Our brand new exhibit, a Hell Pig from right here in Dickinson! The past few months we've been piecing this together, and today we got it finished! #fossil #fossils #paleontology #hellpig #entelodont #FossilFriday #NorthDakota #dickinson

Did you know - camels originated and evolved in North America?! 🐪 But back then, they were smaller and had no humps! Wanna learn more? Head to bit.ly/oligocene-camel & tune in next week for another #FossilFriday from the Paleo Research Institute www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org/vc/ #Paleontology

Happy #FossilFriday! Today a team from the Science Museum of Minnesota went to Garden City Elementary school in Brooklyn Center, #Minnesota to talk about the fun & interesting science careers at the museum. I, of course, brought some fun #fossils to share. Great to talk to so many kids!

#FossilFriday 🐘🦥🐴Happened upon a fantastic life‑sized mastodon with its juvenile at the Boonshoft Museum’s Entering the Ice Age exhibit in Dayton, OH recently. Great for paleo‑curious kids—plus a great mammal and historical exhibits as well as giant sloth and short‑faced bear replicas. boonshoft.org

🐂 #LostBones #FossilFriday 🐟️🐘🦥🐴🐪 I'm back out #CountingBones. At the Winnebago Area Museum — bison and horse remains from two Blue Earth sites. Shout‑out: this museum has been entirely volunteer‑run for 50 years. 🏦Museum: www.winnebagoareamuseum.org 🔄Project: marcusbrandel.substack.com/about

Happy #FossilFriday! This week, the paleo team from the Science Museum of Minnesota was at Beaver Fest, at lovely Carleton College in Northfield, #Minnesota. It was our 3rd year there but the first with the Giant Beaver as Minnesota’s official state fossil. Such a good time!

Among the tiniest theropod teeth I’ve seen from this not-to-be-identified locality! Familiar to anyone? We’ve got our ideas. #FossilFriday 🦖 🦷

🐴🐘🐪 This tooth survived the end of the Ice Age in a gravel pit. 🦷 Found 5 miles east of Montevideo, this lower horse molar may have belonged to one of the last Equus roaming Minnesota. Follow the whole 12 tooth journey in Lost Bones #4 thru the link in my bio. #LostBones #FossilFriday #Equus

Happy #FossilFriday! Last night the Science Museum of Minnesota had its big Science Celebration night. We of course brought out lots of cool #fossils, including from our recent fieldwork and the new state fossil. Thanks to all who came and helped out to make the evening a success!

Fire, Bone, and Silicone — Skeletal Mount in Progress The full bison skeletal build is officially taking shape at the Southern Minnesota Museum of Natural History. Smmnh smmnh.com Walter Varcoe equineskeletons.com Lost Bones marcusbrandel.substack.com #LostBoses #CitizenScience #FossilFriday

#lostbones #FossilFriday 🐂🦥🐴🐪🐟 Possible Cretaceous age Inoceramus (or Platyceramus)—the giant clam. From the Yellow Medicine County Historical Society & Museum in MN. Explore more? Check out these links: www.co.ym.mn.gov/county-museums substack.com/home/post/p-... . . #Paleontology #CitizenScience

Happy #FossilFriday! We have a new publication out this week on extinct #crocodiles! We revise a bunch of higher level group names and propose an all new one to help streamline discussion of evolution in this awesome group of crocs! 🐊🐊🐊 Message if you want a copy! academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...

Happy #FossilFriday! The paleo crew from the Science Museum of Minnesota has been attending the annual meeting of the Association for Materials & Methods in Paleontology here in Bismarck, #NorthDakota! Great time presenting and learning about fossil methods & winning trivia!

🦥🐴🐘🐪#FossilFriday #LostBones, Lower horse molar (SMM P2025.8.7) from Olmsted County is specimen 9 of 12 headed for radiocarbon dating. The County has produced Ice Age finds over the years—several mammoth tusks and both mammoth and mastodon teeth from county gravel deposits—posted about previously.

#LostBones #FossilFriday Horses vanished from North America ~10K years ago — yet their fossilized teeth keep turning up in the Midwest. No radiocarbon dates have ever been documented in Minnesota. Dating begins this summer. What will the results reveal. More: open.substack.com/pub/marcusbr...

#FossilFriday The largest bone in the skeleton—the femur—often survives the test of time. It is the eighth most common vertebrate mammal post cranial element I’ve documented in county museum collections across the Midwest so far. #Palaeontology #CitizenScience Lost Bones marcusbrandel.substack.com

Hard to beat a Chicago #FossilFriday in Evolving Planet. 🦕 Apatosaurus at the Field Museum. 🦴🦴🦴

#FossilFriday! 🐂 A revelation for me and my friend: bison material could be found along our small town’s river gravel bars. This right frontal bone is from a juvenile bison. Other skull and horn‑core material have turned up, but this was the first—and remains the only—juvenile skull we’ve found.

Happy #FossilFriday! It’s almost #StPatricksDay, so check out this impressive skull of Megaloceros, the extinct #Irish Elk! They lived during the Ice Ages and males had antlers up to 11 feet across! Their antlers alone could weigh over 70 pounds! On display at the @lapworthmuseum.bsky.social

Happy #FossilFriday! Very happy to have a grant-funded summer position open at the Science Museum of Minnesota! Apply here for a great chance to work in our Paleontology Dept + good volunteer opportunities to join us in the field in North Dakota & Montana! recruiting.ultipro.com/SCI1003/JobB...

The Carver County Historical Society: The past is on display with a mammoth molar and exhibits on Indigenous history, agriculture, and military service. Found in 2000 when a Chaska gravel pit’s clamshell dredge—dropping through 100 feet of water—hauled up a proboscidean tooth. tinyurl.com/bdcar2zr

The Carver County Historical Society: The past is on display with a mammoth molar and exhibits on Indigenous history, agriculture, and military service. Found in 2000 when a Chaska gravel pit’s clamshell dredge—dropping through 100 feet of water—hauled up a proboscidean tooth. tinyurl.com/yc2j2j7n

Https://marcusbrandel.substack.com/p/your-german-shepard-the-geoarchaeologist #archaeology #geoarchaeology #workingdogs #caninescience #dogs #detectiondogs #humanremainsdetectiondogs #AHRDD

Bipedal crocs!! 💚🐊 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Made sure to say hello to Al Koch's Missourium today when visiting @nhm-london.bsky.social. Bones are probably from 'Koch Spring ' on the Pomme de terre river, Missouri. Perhaps with a few bits from Kimmswick, MO thrown in for good measure. Tour de force of Ozark elephant.

Random twiggy hummingbirds... a pair of Anna's in the backyard twiggery and an unknown hummer along the Rogue River near Grants's Pass. #BirdoftheDay #TwigsAreUs #Birds #Oregon

New #watercolor - the skull that launched a thousand papers - Aetiocetus weltoni, the ~25 myo toothed baleen whale that likely had teeth and baleen - from the Oligocene of Oregon. I started this last winter and only finally finished it yesterday. 🐡 🦖🐬 #sciart #whaleontology #whalewednesday #art

Pensa num bicho massa.

🐴 #CitizenScience #FossilFriday — Molar (SMM P77.20.1), specimen 8 of 12, was recovered in 1976. This story emerged from the landscape around St. Cloud, Minnesota, when P. Lansing collected this horse molar near Hgwy 23. Before modern roads and cities, horses may have roamed Ice Age Minnesota.

I'm having a really rough personal time. But, on positive personal note, I've started talks with both Polish Consulate in Hong Kong and Beijing Women's Federation, to start series of activities related to promoting historical women in geosciences and palaeontology across China.

This ones' from Olson's Point in Buffalo Lake! Wright County, Minnesota! #Equus

A Diictodon in the hand is worth two in the bush. But we’ll look anyway. #FossilFriday

🐴 #FossilFriday — Lower horse molar (SMM P2020.7.34) from my hometown ❤️‍🔥. Specimen 7 of 12 headed for radiocarbon dating. #LostBones updates on Substack: substack.com/@marcusbrand... 👇 What do you think this molar’s age will come back as — Ice Age or more recent? #Pleistocene #Equus #CitizenScience

Super excited to publish my Dinosaurs Coloring book and Dinosaurs Stickerology book today!❤️🎨🦕 📚 link to grab your copy here: a.co/d/0dnEt6Aj #prehistoric #dinosaurs #fossiladdict #evolution #paleoart #paleontology #trex

#LostBones #FossilFriday #Equus #RadioCarbonDating 🐴 In June 1921, crews at the Sagamore Mine near Riverton, Minnesota uncovered a peat layer eight feet down containing a Pleistocene bone bed with a horse molar (#6), a horse incisor, and other late‑Quaternary fossils. www.crowwinghistory.org

You're beautiful / You're beautiful, it's true

On this #FossilFriday I challenge any other museum on here to go harder for thescelosaurs than the Idaho Museum of Natural History. Proud. New van wrap 🌟 🚐

Japan's ancient 'tigers' were actually cave lions, DNA evidence shows ⛏️🧬🦁🇯🇵 phys.org/news/2026-02...