El Nopal bakery and its famous cookies found a home again at the Chicago History Museum. blockclubchi.co/4azoDyF

Once again, for the 14 year olds: a time will come when *everyone always knew* how stupid this all was. Don’t make the mistake of forgiving or forgetting.

I had high hopes for this collection but was mostly disappointed. 3 or 4 legitimately informative and insightful chapters, but the rest felt like the authors were just inserting surface-level observations about JP into media theory essays they've written dozens of times before.

"I keep thinking about how many interesting folks have essentially stopped writing anything substantial because they've moved their entire intellectual presence to Twitter or Substack Notes. These are people who used to produce ten-thousand-word explorations of complex topics, and now they […]

he sleepin #FossilFriday

Apparently I’m not going anywhere for a bit

The London NHM has committed to overhauling it's dinosaur exhibit sometime in the next decade. Just for fun, here's a doodle of how I might do it. I don't have detailed specs on these spaces but this should be approximately to scale.

How i'm greeting 2026. www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdTO...

Wishing all of us many gorgeous nature adventures in 2026. Whatever chaos is happening there is always something beautiful or exciting or funny to see out there. 🌿

Closing out the year with some images of the Academy of Natural Sciences's various dinosaur exhibits through the ages. Someone should really write up a proper history of them one of these days.......(details in alt text)

The London NHM has committed to overhauling it's dinosaur exhibit sometime in the next decade. Just for fun, here's a doodle of how I might do it. I don't have detailed specs on these spaces but this should be approximately to scale.

I didn't make as much headway on personal research projects as I would have liked in 2025, or write many substantial blog posts. On the other hand, no less than five exhibits that I wrote opened this year. I hope you all enjoyed them!

What is it about deer that make them so hard to recreate with cgi? I was just watching the uncanny deer in Del Toro’s Frankenstein but there are so many other examples.

The Giraffe Titan, a poem by Brandon Kilbourne. A wonderful exploration of the multiple narratives embodied by objects on public display in general, and by dinosaurs in particular. From brooklynrail.org/2025/12/poet...

I'm delighted to have gotten ahold of some footage of Life Over Time's last day (May 3, 2004)! This was kindly shared by Dave Dolak, who used to show it in his classes at Columbia College. I've cut the video into three parts for easier viewing, starting with the Paleozoic:

Recently unearthed in a desk drawer: guides for now-extinct paleo galleries at the Field and Carnegie.

I love long breaks when paleontologists just start lashing out at entire phylogenic groups they don't like 😅

Look at the teensy front legs and giant back legs on these steneosaurs

a lot happened in 2020 but remember this guy? youtu.be/Ofp26_oc4CA?...

cracking open a cold one with the boys

The steps outlined here are what I'll be looking for in people to vote for next year.

Spinosaurus

Um, this is a first. A sex/lifestyle website cited one of my old blog posts to introduce The Triceratops Position (which I assume they just made up) to the world. I'm sure Marsh and Gilmore would be thrilled. 😂 My post on Triceratops forelimb position is here: extinctmonsters.net/2014/07/16/m...

Sue under construction in late '99/early '00, first in Phil Fraley's shop and then in Stanley Field Hall. At this point the Field wasn't sure about keeping the name Sue. There was even a renaming contest—"Dakota" won, but ultimately the T. rex kept the name it already had. #FossilFriday

Today we exchanged loot, made friends with a bunch of goats and miniature equids, and got Chinese takeout. Not sure what holiday we were celebrating but it sure was fun!

Here’s a sneak peak at another #lego model I’ve had the chance to work on depicting recently published Late Triassic animals, specifically the little amphibian Ninumbeehan! More details and builds coming soon! #paleoart #paleontology #scicomm #scienceart #biology #legomoc #afol

Frankly the world should look more like Douglas Henderson’s Triassic scenes

The British Museum has launched a long-term loans program that sent 80 Greek and Egyptian antiquities to India in “a rebranding exercise that preserves colonial power structures while pretending to dismantle them,” writes Emiline Smith.

These critters all lived in the first six million years of the Cenozoic and each one was, in its time, the biggest mammal that had ever existed. It took some work to balance the intended message, desired visual impact, and tech limitations, but I think the latest version of this display works well.

I'm deep in drafting today and wrote "most popular interpretations of the Triassic are artifacts of hindsight," when it suddenly occurred to me that, necessarily, *all* paleontology is an artifact of hindsight

'Tis the season for some festive science songs. If you've ever wanted to hear someone sing about a dimunitive tyranosaur then now is your chance

we, in the United States, through Trump’s mass deportation scheme, have engaged in abductions and torture for the past year, none of it in secret, much of it attested to in legal documents. there is nothing to expose, only to face.

Sometimes it's worth checking linkedin

On this shortest day of the year, let's all admire an iconic diorama depicting a scene from a place of eternal night . . .

Learning Chicago-centered geology, as is proper, from a lamppost in Rogers Park.

How do you all feel about these sorts of things

My kids these days complaint is that I have to specifically tell anyone under 25 that I expect a reply back: I can make that appointment time, I understand those instructions, etc. Otherwise for all I know my message went to Mars. Why is this?

this goes hard as hell

I cannot emphasize enough that the White House has no authority to withhold funds from the Smithsonian. It can, however, try to persuade/threaten Congress to reduce future funding.

Cool new paper documenting intraspecific variation in the skeleton of Iguana. anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... Would love to see more like it. There are recent examples of paleos naming new taxa that could have benefited from this sort of assessment of morphological variation.

I'm delighted to have gotten ahold of some footage of Life Over Time's last day (May 3, 2004)! This was kindly shared by Dave Dolak, who used to show it in his classes at Columbia College. I've cut the video into three parts for easier viewing, starting with the Paleozoic:

For #fossilfriday, The New York Times has written a good article about the Paleontological Research Institution, what the museum means to the field of Paleontology, and its current financial situation (much improved even from a few weeks ago). 🧪🦑⚒️🦣 #paleontology www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/s...

For #FossilFriday, let's look at the life-sized models that Celeste Carballo and Jason Brougham made for the Impact exhibit at AMNH. The big Hell Creek diorama features Triceratops, Trierarchuncus, Didelphodon, Mesodma, Basilemys, and enantiornithines.

GUESS WHAT (images courtesy of David Dolan, pictured)

Thalattoarchon saurophagis is an all-time great name

wraith

STOP BEING ANXIOUS ABOUT EVERYTHING AND LOOK AT THIS LITTLE GREMLIN #birds 🐣

The mysterious bard @bbo-miranda.bsky.social has been replying to my fossil and museum posts for the last few weeks and I wanted to share my favorites (it was hard to pick four!).

Love to see a perissodactyl out of storage! This is Amynodon.

I know I go on about the weird graphics in the AMNH fossil halls more than most but… What. Is. That. Rectangle?!?!