Christmas golabki :)

Helicoplacoid in a Santa hat and fossil friends wish you a very merry Christmas from the Cambrian mat grounds!

The CDC has announced a Salmonella outbreak linked to raw oysters in 22 states. A survey about twenty years ago found Salmonella in 7.4% of sampled oysters in the US, with considerable variation from bay to bay. Oysters are delicious boiled, broiled, fried or baked! www.cdc.gov/salmonella/o...

I count 10 cities in 2025 that are on track to have the fewest murders since at least 1970. Newark is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1956 (though only have data through Oct this year) and San Francisco is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1942.

posting just so I don't forget the name of this fantastic animal again: the land snail genus Whittenia is doing the horrible (said with deep and pure love) Nipponites heteromorph thing with its shell. maybe the worst shell on a currently living thing I've ever seen (I love it)

Solen marginatus ▬

The Seasquare 😂 📸 Prof Michael Sweet

Betty Reid Soskin, the National Park Service’s oldest ranger, has died. She was 104.

I've tried and failed a couple times to write a post explaining how serious this would be. NCAR is globally essential to our climate change response. This can't just be replaced. Every scientist in the world will be doing climate research with one hand tied behind their back for at least a decade

It is hard to overstate how critical @ncar-ucar.bsky.social is to climate science in the US and around the world. It's the beating heart of our field. Generations of scientists have trained there, and almost everyone I know relies on deep collaborations with NCAR scientists. It's end is unthinkable.

NCAR is quite literally our global mothership. Everyone who works in climate and weather has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources. Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet. Unbelievable.

Yes...YES

One of my neighbors has been putting up these fish facts posters. All kinds of different fish, marine, freshwater, deep, shallow, all kinds. This is a good one. “Stg this real fish” took me out. Good work, neighbor.

Surf scoters, visiting Monterey Bay from Alaska or British Columbia for the winter. 🪶

Float like a tuna crab, punch like a shrimp

Tule fog fills California’s Central Valley.

Clams

Be the voter fraud you want to see in the world

IYKYK

A valvometer is like a fitbit for clams, used to measure the opening and closing of the valves. I installed valve sensors on juvenile giant clams I farmed at Biosphere 2, finding they opened up in the daytime to bask and photosynthesize, partially closing at night to avoid predatory worms (319)

The world is losing its mind so I'm gonna post more clam facts. We need some order and calm

We're snailposting, post your snails! Team green snail \o/ 💚🐌

Join our Clean Water program scientist Dan Killam for a salty lunch hour webinar this Wednesday!

Reminder: Wednesday @ 12 Pacific time I'll be joining my fave mag @baynature.org for a talk about salinity in SF Bay! 🧂🌊 Register at this link: free for members or $5 for nonmembers ! baynature.app.neoncrm.com/nx/portal/ne...

These are my snails. They are good boys. And excellent comic relief. Pomacea bridgesii

Here are some fossil pleurotomariids, which have lived in Earth’s oceans for over 450 million years.This is a kind of snail you won’t find in your garden or on a seashore. You’d have to dive 400 meters to see a living one.If you could beachcomb in the Jurassic, you’d probably find one on the coast🐚

I often think about how the government hounded Aaron Swartz to death for scraping Jstor, yet all these AI companies scraped almost literally all of human knowledge (and continue to do so even when they're told to stop) and have had no criminal consequences.

Lunule and umbo are both going on the list of words I have to remember to use to annoy people when playing Scrabble :)

Iykyk

Moment of silence for all the cat owners who didn't survive the time change today

Happy Halloween and spooky Samhain, butterflies! We're back with #FossilFriday and it's another meme on deck. 🧪⚒️🦪🦪 Yo, dawg! I heard you like bivalves, so we put clams in your clam so you can bivalve while you bivalve! Someone tag @dantheclamman.blog , I feel like he has relevant interests.

The article talks about opening up central California to oil and gas development.. Looking at Bureau of Ocean Energy Management maps, this could include a large swath of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, including the Bodega and Año Nuevo basins, and Partington basin off Big Sur.

trump take science

They should create a living man out of the body parts of various corpses

Genuinely torn...

At 185 mph maximum sustained winds, Cat 5 Hurricane #Melissa is now just 7 mph shy of what @michaelfwehner.bsky.social r.bsky.social & Jim Kossin have defined as the cutoff for a prospective "Cat 6" hurricane: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

All I see here is a very everyday leaf (the leaf is doing a great job).

Holy shit, echinoderm gang, are you seeing this video? @echinoblog.bsky.social @daveyfwright.bsky.social

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-... 🧵

Despite all my rage I am still just a bug in a cage.

Sexy Amorphophallus konjac

Concurring with The Onion: There Absolutely Nothing We Can Learn from Clams I wrote an article concurring with the recent Onion article: "Biologists Announce There Absolutely Nothing We Can Learn From Clams"

Share if you agree

On 11/12 at 12 Pacific time I'll be joining my fave mag @baynature.org for a talk about salinity in SF Bay! Thinkin on the salt of the Bay, wasting time.🧂🌊 Register at this link: free for members or $5 otherwise, with the fee going to a great cause! baynature.app.neoncrm.com/nx/portal/ne...

This is DISASTROUS

It's impossible to doom scroll if you're scrolling through a feed of hundreds of clam facts.

Premeditated murder of the American research community. None of this had to happen.