Often brutal, always beautiful: the sea hounds of the Frisian Islands – in pictures www.theguardian.com/environment/...

closing out a great year for palaeontology with a surprising discovery from denmark that indicates the survival of ammonites following the asteroid impact that marked the cretaceous-paleogene boundary www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Extending application deadline to early January so still time to get your applications in! #DisabledInSTEM

It's that time of year again... time for #DisabledInSTEM 2026 Mentorship applications! I'm so excited to be running this program for the sixth year and seeing the growth over the years! Mentee form: forms.gle/um5DvYnBi3tn... Mentor form: forms.gle/BvaxnQm8uhUR... Applications due December 5th!

Paleoclimatologist Jessica Tierney recently published a global temperature record covering almost the past half-billion years. According to her model, 50 million years ago, inland temperatures approached 122 degrees Fahrenheit. www.quantamagazine.org/climate-extr...

A doubly old 'Christmas tree' this #FossilFriday! This was taken on Dec. 23 2010 during my 1st trip to Antarctica & shows a large fossil tree from the Triassic, 240 million years ago. The locality is high in the Transantarctic Mountains, above the Antarctic icesheet 🌿⛏️🏔️ Happy holidays! #paleobotany

“A-type plants present female-phase flowers in the morning and male-phase flowers in the afternoon, while B-types show the complementary pattern, a form of heterodichogamy.”

If you have money and goodwill to spare this festive season, donate it to the Palestine Museum of Natural History in West Bank, Palestine, Bethlehem 🇵🇸🎄

Super excited that our review on the ecology of the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition is now out on how ecology changes across scales from organisms to communities to the world through time. Fab art @franzanth.bsky.social showing the build up of ecological complexity www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

An ancient body of water known as the Paratethys Sea once held more water than all of today’s lakes combined, and was inhabited by miniature versions of today’s whales, dolphins, and seals. #ScienceMagArchives https://scim.ag/4oRFr7o

Sometimes archeological and fossil records preserve incredible evidence of past interactions: human who lived in what is now Bulgaria, was attacked by the European lion, survived, and was cared for. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧪 #Geology ⚒️ #Paleobio #Archeology

✨ Paper spotlight ✨ (🧵 1/6) Structural and physiological constraints on arborescent lycopsid establishment and growth nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A 407-million-year-old fossil from northern Scotland is changing what we know about plant evolution! New analysis of Horneophyton reveals how plants went from centimetres tall to growing to enormous heights! Find out more about this fossil 👇 www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

Just on time for the holidays! Happy to share the published version of the discovery of leptophytes, a new deep-branching and widespread group of microalgae based on plastid MAGs (ptMAGs). Now with additional support from a mitochondrial MAG (mtMAG) of leptophytes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Comment: Unearthing autistic voices in geosciences, an overlooked minority hidden in plain sight [free to access (via a free Nature account) for one month] www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"A study published today in Science reveals that cycads, tropical plants that resemble palms, attract beetles using infrared radiation generated by their conelike reproductive structures." #Pollination #Plants #Cycads

The origin and evolution of root mucilage Nazari et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I had a great time writing this dispatch @currentbiology.bsky.social about Jacob Suissa's recent paper on the link between fern phyllotaxis and vascular architecture. "Evo–devo: Ferns flourished due to developmental covariance between leaves and vasculature" authors.elsevier.com/a/1mH793QW8S...

Before the European Enlightenment, cultures across the world engaged scientifically with the natural history, and showcased it visually with their own unique visual language and perception of the living world. I do not understand the current aversion to different "styles" in scientific visual art.

I had a great time at #palass25 catching up with some and meeting others, and spreading the word on Prototaxites! Thanks to all the organisers!

If you missed the @linneansociety.bsky.social's annual lecture in #Edinburgh last month, you can watch it now on YouTube! 👇 Hear Mark Blaxter (@sangerinstitute.bsky.social) give an inspiring overview of the Tree of Life Project! 🌳🦋🐒 www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cca7...

A rather beautiful digital model of a fossil soldier beetle, and how it was constructed from 3D micro-CT and 2D optical data. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

#Evolution of #conifer seed cones 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #TansleyReview by @kmatsunaga @WileyPlantSci #PlantScience

Everything you always wanted to know about mushroom-forming fungi! Great collab with amazing mycologists. Thanks Laszlo Nagy for leading this effort! www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Huge News from the Western Amazon: it's the year 2025 and we are still describing entirely new, strikingly-distinctive large-bodied bird species! Behold Tinamus resonans sp. nov. the Slaty-masked Tinamou mapress.com/zt/article/v... #Ornithology @tetzoo.bsky.social 🪶

The hidden danger of Biorender (& the death of scientific illustration) A short thread 🧵

Doodles for Hong Kong 🇭🇰 In response to the tragic Tai Po fire, I'm doing charity commissions. Anyone who puts over £25/250HKD into "Feeding Hong Kong" or Hong Kong SPCA can request a coloured doodle of any prehistoric animal 🙏

Cellularly preserved chlorophyte from the 518 million year old Chengjiang biota onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The number of natural history specimens collected has fallen off a cliff in the 21st century. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A 13-year search for one of the world's rarest flowers in Indonesia ends in a 'magical experience' www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...

🚨🦜🐧Cover reveal! Thrilled to show off the cover of my upcoming book: The Story of Birds! Coming April 28. The whole history of birds, from their dinosaur origins to colossal extinct penguins & terror birds, to the 10,000+ species today. From @marinerbooks.bsky.social Preorder 👇

Congratulations to @jeremywyman.bsky.social et al 2025 for the publication of their Oxroadia paper! And thanks for bringing me onboard to do some restorations of this relative of Lepidodendron and Isoëtes from the Carboniferous of Scotland. academic.oup.com/aob/advance-... #FossilFriday #paleobotany

Check our paper with @paleobotanist.bsky.social on root suckering in a Permian glossopterid from Antarctica 🌳⛏️🇦🇶 It's the 1st report of root suckering in this group & the oldest in the fossil record doi.org/10.1002/ajb2... 🧵1/5 #paleobotany #botany @umramap.bsky.social @cnrsecologie.bsky.social

Earlier on the expedition we found the most beautiful flower, and here, my friends, is the biggest: Rafflesia arnoldi seen in full bloom today in the Sumatran jungle. This is the largest flower on earth and one of the greatest wonders of the natural world.

The Marsh Palaeoart Award nominations for artwork depicting fossil fauna from Britain and Ireland, close soon. It is your last chance, send artworks in!

Why did I only just find out that that there are water striders that live IN (ON!!) THE OPEN OCEAN? 🧪 OCEAN STRIDERS!!

my new #sciart for @chistinesd.bsky.social: her research in @newphyt.bsky.social reveals arbuscular mycorrhizae in the stem of the early plant Aglaophyton from 407 million years ago, showing that fungal-plant symbioses are as old as the earliest soils. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

NEW pub in @science.org 🥳 Is it sponges (panels A & B) or comb jellies (C & D) that root the animal tree of life? For over 15 years, #phylogenomic studies have been divided. We provide new evidence suggesting that... 🔗: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New light on old stones: a fossil #fungus in #symbiosis with one of the oldest known land plants @chistinesd.bsky.social, et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @dromius.bsky.social @ffercoq.bsky.social #PlantScience Summary also available in French and Spanish.

For brave biologists/ecologists with a penchant for venturing beyond the boundaries of the intellectual comfort zone, I strongly recommend Jan Baedke's recent monograph "The Organism" in the series "Elements in the Philosophy of Biology". An absolute conceptual treat. doi.org/10.1017/9781...

Did you know. That the meme-explosion that was the wooden model of Sacabambaspis (an Ordovician jawless fish) held at a Museum in Helsinki, was created by a pioneering Estonian fish paleontologist and palaeoartist, Elga Mark-Kurik. 🧵

💡 Need support to attend your next palaeontology event? Apply for a PalAss Diversity Bursary! 🌍✨ 👉 palass.org/palaeontolog... 💷 Funding available: up to £250 GBP per individual bursary. 📝 What you’ll need: A short supporting statement A breakdown of your anticipated expenses [1/2]

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #protistsonsky

Huge congratulations @jeremywyman.bsky.social @instmolplantsci.bsky.social for publishing the results of your masters thesis @annbot.bsky.social The work includes a new reconstruction of the Carboniferous isoetalean Oxroadia by the brilliant @palaeojules.bsky.social academic.oup.com/aob/advance-...

If you need a professional terrestrial phototroph you need a symbiont of plant+fungi. Lichen (Spongiophyton sp) colonized the land already at least in the Early Devonian: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio #Geology

Devil's Fingers, Clathrus archeri, on a Dorset heath today. #wildfungihour

What looked like a hearing organ on a tiny stinkbug’s leg turned out to be something far stranger: a fungal nursery that mother bugs use to coat their newly laid eggs in protective symbiotic hyphae, shielding their offspring from parasitic wasps. Learn more in Science: https://scim.ag/4nDrDNm

✨ Paper spotlight ✨ Mycelial Dynamics in Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... (🧵 1/5) Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi form vast underground hyphal networks that support plant life.

Very excited to announce that our collaborative manifesto for 🌱 #PlantScience #Education has now been published! Educators from >10 countries and 30 institutions have contributed to it and we are incredibly proud of the final output. Here is a short thread 🧵1/4 doi.org/10.1002/ppp3...