🧪🦣🏺 Who wants to hear a story about biotech billions, unscientific claims, and shoddy smear tactics attacking women in science*? Thread 🧵 *which, for legal clarity, are totally denied as being connected

#Press A ‘wonder’ fossil changes our understanding of reptile evolution An international team of researchers has published a breakthrough study in the journal @nature.com ‬showing that early reptiles had unique structures growing from its skin that formed an alternative to feathers. t1p.de/qd7s3

Here it is! Please welcome the AMAZING Mirasaura grauvogeli, a NEW MARVELOUS Drepanosaur published in NATURE today! This astonishing reptile lived during the Middle Triassic in Europe and it possessed an amazing crest made of plume-like structures! I was commissioned to bring it to life #paleoart

Finally we can confirm that longisquama is NOT a series of unfortunate lizards that died on top of a plant.

New publication out today, on mammal endemism doi.org/10.1002/ecog...

People think I'm biased against Jeff Bezos, but here's Sartoria F. Caraceni, widely considered one of the best bespoke tailoring houses in the world, commenting on Bezos's wedding suit. "The most terrible, frightening, horrible tuxedo ever seen in my life. I'm really suffering"

He's 33...

link.springer.com/content/pdf/... 🦑

Been quiet lately for a good reason (vacation), but hopping onto to say: 🚨 NEW NSF LAWSUIT TODAY!!! 🥳🥳🥳 Targets grant terminations & freezes in spending congressionally appropriated funds. Press release: democracyforward.org/updates/coal... Complaint: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

NSF Division of Earth Sciences Informational Webinar starting in less than a minute.... Will live post as things come up....

What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders? Most species that have ever lived are extinct AND most we will never even have a fossil record of.

What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders? A majority of the world’s insect species have no living expert who can identify them.

Veteran photographer Michael Nigro was shot in the head with a non-lethal bullet while covering anti-ICE protests in LA. "It felt very very intentional," Nigro tells NPR, "a chilling effect to convince us to go away." Other reporters say they have been targeted too. My story below:

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Press Club has filed suit against the city of Los Angeles and LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell in the Central District of California's federal courts over its actions toward journalists covering anti-ICE protests in recent days. /more

Not done a #fossilfriday for a while, so in honour of being in France just now, heres the type specimen of Meganeura! Was pretty excited to see this famous 'giant dragonfly', which lived 300 million years ago. First discovered in Commentry, France in 1880 and described by Charles Brongniart.

🍃Palaeobotany from Lower #Jurassic. A new Ginkgoal species from the Toarcian of Eastern Siberia #FossilFriday Frolov et al. (2025) https://doi.org/10.1002/spp2.70019

A #FathersDay weekend #FossilFriday: Patriofelis ferox, the "ferocious father of cats". (Despite the name, not a cat but an oxyaenid: no more closely related to cats than to walruses or dogs or bears). Mount from the @amnh.org

This is Archie. He's too shy to tell you so himself, but he's the tallest mammoth on exhibit in the world. He doesn't like to brag. 13/10 Would snuggle him to the bone. #WeRateBones 🦣⚒️🧪#FossilFriday #LNK

Welcome back to #FossilFriday Here is a beautiful polished section of the Stromatolite Collenia undosa. This comes from the Precambrian (Paleoproterozoic) Biwabik Iron Formation in Minnesota. It is commonly referred to as Mary Ellen Jasper. This trace fossil is 2.2-2.4 billion years old!

The "certification" is asking colleges to essentially promise something that is a contradiction because anti-discrimination laws, by their very nature, result in greater diversity, equity, and inclusion. The laws promote DEI... which this administration thinks is "illegal"

"biological sex" is the idea that being born with a vulva makes you female, until it doesn't because you were too good at sports.

Well then, I hope we start getting discounts. This is so gross, for so many reasons.

Tourists on the Italian island of Sicily were forced to flee on Monday from the slopes of Mount Etna, one of Europe’s largest and most active volcanoes, after an eruption sent clouds of gas, rock and ash billowing into the sky.

I don't think anyone outside of universities, pharma and biotech, independent research institutions have any idea of what is happening right now. If you haven't sounded the alarm among your friends, family and colleagues, now is the time to do it.

A 2-million-year-old pelvis from South Africa challenges what we thought we knew about early human movement and birth. What do these hips say about Paranthropus, Homo, and how evolution shaped our walk? #Paleoanthropology #FossilFriday #HumanEvolution

#FossilFriday Remarkable preservation of the brachidium which supported the lophophore in the brachiopod Spiriferina from the French Jurassic.

Whoa

The Milwaukee Public Museum seeks a postdoctoral fellow in Invertebrate Paleontology to assist with an NSF-funded project on W. Atlantic Mollusks. The position is dependent upon continued NSF support and will have a duration of two years. www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=7...

A cool thing about getting older is you hear from your skeleton a lot more

Citing nonexistent references isn't a "formatting" issue. It's dishonesty. I never thought I would long for the days of "regular plagiarism" from people.

Valid: why should people who are famously known for loving things that are expensive and tacky be in charge of deciding what is "wasteful"?

Tell the story of the career federal worker who was the best at what they do & worked hard every day, and is now worried about how to pay the mortgage. The NIH scientists who had to walk away from potential health breakthroughs. The fired NOAA weather forecasters. Check in on them, & how they feel.

Yes, I truly do not care even a little bit how that F-ing guy feels about anything, I care about what has been broken and those impacted.

If that's "all" you're doing at conferences, you need someone to advise you on how to make better use of your time. I make it my personal goal to guide at least one student on how to better use their time at every conference I attend.

as someone who has been planning conferences for four years now, very much agree with this thread its....a really wild and impossible task to make a meeting that makes even half of people happy

THIS

🐶 Animal #666 🐈 I figured it out in 3 guesses! 🟧🟨🟩 🔥 1 | Avg. Guesses: 5.7 metazooa.com #metazooa

I've examined this specimen, can't begin to tell you how funky the teeth are. Took a microwear mold, looking forward to showing the WSC folks this summer.

Whale look at that! 🐳

Thanks @mitodynamics.bsky.social for the fun interview and for saying it like it is: “…JCS and other community journals are being crushed by the mega profit-making journals, which just seem to proliferate and spit out new journals by the day…we must all make an effort to move away from this…”

🐈‍⬛ Animal #661 🐑 I figured it out in 3 guesses! 🟨🟨🟩 🔥 1 | Avg. Guesses: 6 metazooa.com #metazooa

Need to lean into calling this the republican's war on children

Republicans snuck an amendment into this bill to ban Affordable Care Act insurance plans from covering abortion care. This is part of their play for a national abortion ban, in the middle of the night, and ripping healthcare away from millions.

This is absolutely terrible news. With the shifting regulatory climate (i.e., antivax ratfuckery), Moderna has withdrawn their application for their eagerly anticipated COVID-flu combo vaccine. This vaccine offered better protection than getting each shot separately. h/t @merz.bsky.social

Here’s how Trump’s war on science is going. NSF funding is at the lowest level in decades. We’ll lose knowledge, generations of scientists, and US competitiveness. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

I love this so much

This. Furthermore. A person who wants to outsource "ideas" is someone I have zero interest in knowing. I want these tech bros to stop trying to automate creativity and passion.

I feel like this is exactly the same problem as Gen Z being shockingly tech illiterate bc they grew up in the app-era of computers, everything is becoming an impenetrable black box and we're just eroding critical thinking skills even more now with LLMs so the problem is getting exponentially worse

I  know your goal is to try to make life as hard as possible for immigrants.