34: Critical Raw Materials opens today! This temporary exhibition is free! At a time of rising geopolitical tensions and growing competition over the resources needed for clean energy, modern technology and defence, there has never been a more timely moment to shine a spotlight on them.

@iszi.com and I sat down with @paleokieran.bsky.social at the Lyme Regis Fossil festival to talk about everyone's favourite / the most famous fossil hunter Mary Anning. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtlA...

Just popped by to say cheerio to Mary Anning and I see that over the Fossil Festival weekend some belemnites and an ammonite have been left on her grave. The ammonite looks like one from the Lyme Regis Museum fossil polishing children’s activity, which is rather lovely.

Lovely, but exhausting, weekend at the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival. Hundreds of visitors visited the stand to learn about trilobites, how animals turn into fossils, and getting to meet real palaeontologsts! Very proud of our team, representing the very best of @thepalass.bsky.social!

Move around the plaice? Nah just go under it 📍Gozo, Malta 📷 Chris Jackson Diving on YouTube

I finally made an Instagram account for all things science!

Yearly Lyme Regis Fossil Festival #palaeoart haul!

I recently picked up a Helicoplacus for my collection. One of the earliest and strangest echinoderms.

Belated #FossilFriday from the schools day at the Lyme Regis fossil festival, I ran an activity where the children drew what they thought ammonites, belemnites and crinoids looked like in life, we then spoke about taphonomy and how we figure out what extinct animals looked like from their fossils!

Had an absolute blast speaking at the #LymeRegis #FossilFestival today as part of the student talks series! I spoke about weird fossil echinoderms, recent research showing that #starfish are all head no trunk and shared some of my own research, thanks to all who came along! 😊

And if anyone’s at the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival this Saturday I’ll be giving the talk again! ⭐️

Last week I gave my talk “Starfish before they were star-shaped” as part of the monthly Reading “Cafe Scientifique” talk series. This was my first time talking to the public about my research (!) and it was lots of fun sharing the weird world of extinct echinoderms with them!

Day one of the #Redcar #fossil event was excellent. Spoke to hundreds of people, at least. Got to show all those people very old mud and tiny dead things, and some younger mud and dead things from Redcars #Jurassic rocks #geology #paleontology

Happy weekend! Ancient clay pots with octopus decoration from Bronze Age Crete some 3,500 years ago! 🐙❤️ Heraklion Archaeological Museum 📷 by me #Archaeology

Happy pride, mollusc-botherers 🤘

#Pride in Nature 🏳️‍🌈 tours coming on Sunday 14 & 21 June at 1pm. Book your FREE place & discover the stories that are sometimes left untold... Tours led by expert volunteers. Everyone welcome. Book ahead https://ow.ly/sAOu50Z4C8K University of Cambridge Museums #Pride#PrideUK #LGBTQ+

Vesicle pipes! (in the Esperanza Basalt, Baja California Sur, Mexico) ⚒️

Global coral reef 🪸 collapse is not inevitable. We explain why in our new science & society piece for TREE! www.cell.com/trends/ecolo... Written with Lisa McManus and Rob Toonen! @soest.hawaii.edu @oxuniearthsci.bsky.social

Just realised it's #TrilobiteTueaday so here's a pic of a little beastie I saw that was set into the paving in the new gardens @nhm-london.bsky.social. Not sure what it is; looks a bit Paradoxides-like to me.

📣 Introducing MorphSim: an R package for simulating discrete morphological data along phylogenetic trees, built for fossil-inclusive phylogenetics, with all the complexity of real morphological data baked in 🪨🌿 besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

coasters for every occasion! feeling more punny or more minimalist? but don't worry, they can be mixed and matched! we will also be offering single ones at Lyme Regis #FossilFestival and @dinoconuk.bsky.social #SciArt

Today I learned about the mineral content of Stonehenge and this has brought me genuine joy. 🩶🪨

📢 📢 The journal Geobios are inviting applications for their Young Researcher Award, which supports emerging researchers in the field of palaeontology. The award offers a €500 to two winners to cover expenses related to their ongoing PhD or postdoc projects. DEADLINE SOON: 31/05

What a great review of where we're at with integrating paleoenvironmental info into biological models 🌋🗻🌏 www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

I also chose the picture for the @geolsoc.bsky.social webpage for the series - these beautiful Psiloceras planorbis from Watchet, UK. These are among the first Jurassic #ammonites, the only lineage to survive the end-Triassic extinction, and the progenitors for the Mesozoic ammonite radiation.

Phylogenetically-informed #crayfish conservation in the face of climate change - #OpenAccess zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #climatechange #EDGEspecies #phylogenetics @wileyecology.bsky.social

For #FossilFriday, an ichnological 2-for-1 deal: Eocene (~50+ mya) shorebird tracks with bonus invertebrate trails (Cochlichnus), either made by nematode worms or insect (dipteran) larvae; little "craters" may be gas-bubble escape structures. From the Green River Formation, Utah. 🧪🐦🐾

Happy #fossilfriday from the #Ediacaran at #InnerMeadow at 551Ma it is the youngest known example of the “Avalon Assemblage” (equivalent to the youngest “White Sea Assemblage”). The field season is underway here in NL. We continue to remove soil & fossiliferous rocks from over the fossil surface.

Small golf-ball sized hollows on the floor of a rockpool - created by sea-urchins and now occupied by a colorful variety of sealife. Each containing it own unique mix of intertidal life!! County Clare, Ireland.

Happy The Mandalorian and Grogu day to all who celebrate ⭐️💚🖤

Delighted to have spent Mary Anning's birthday today at the Natural History Museum, having another look at some of her fossils, and at papers held in the museum archives, including her sketch of her dog. It was killed in a rockfall in 1833. its replacement was 'Tray', the dog in her famous portrait.

Blastoids mentioned in Subnautica 2! Extinct echinoderms really are the perfect inspiration for alien life

AI is evil. If you need an infographic here is one a friend of a friend made. Else here is a thread serving as a collection of data for why we shouldn’t be using AI.

My new paper with @gdarlim.bsky.social and @hoehna.bsky.social is now out in Proceedings B! We set out to compare two different approaches to time-calibrate a molecular phylogeny: traditional node calibrations, and unresolved FBD... @royalsocietypublishing.org doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Shells from 'Neues systematisches Conchylien-Cabinet' by Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm Martini and Johann Hieronymus Chemnitz. Nurnberg: Gabriel Nicholaus Raspe. 1769-1829 Courtesy of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Library and Archives. #rarebooks #sciart #shellart

Seabirds are running out of ocean. Unlike many marine animals, seabirds don’t reduce body mass to survive climate change, they’re forced to disperse farther as their habitats disappear. By 2100, over 70% of species could lose huge parts of their range. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Guys, guys. The water slug I designed for Subnautica 2.

Cool Basket Star (Gorgonocephalus) time lapse feeding video! A classic! #echinoday youtu.be/qpPdMohsCfk?...

Thoroughly enjoyed the insightful and engaging seminar today ‘Crab Museum: A museum about crabs, for humans’ by the directors of the Crab Museum in Margate as part of the @pittriversmuseum.bsky.social Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology Series held at @morethanadodo.bsky.social

New research from NOC reveals explosive submarine eruptions leave clear signatures in seafloor sediments - meaning scientists can now spot past hazardous eruptions even without eyewitness accounts. Read about this research here: www.noc.ac.uk/news/new-res... 📸 Credit: Tonga Geological Services

Sunny day out with @taphonomist.bsky.social to Lyme Regis teaching @uniofreading.bsky.social Biology undergrads about Jurassic marine ecosystems and how to make a stratigraphic log ☀️⚒️ @colezoology.bsky.social

Bonus day in the collection to give a tour. So here's the Middle Devonian crinoid Arthroacantha.

Curious where your back yard was when dinosaurs (or even earlier) roamed the Earth? @bramvaes.bsky.social, who joined the team, contributed to the development of Paleolatitude.org during his time at Utrecht University, a fun yet powerful tool to track any place on Earth back to the time of Pangaea.

Deep sea cherry blossoms 🌸🌸🌸

Some time ago I started a series about fossil sites in Spain, showing the biodiversity known from different eras. So far I have completed the Paleozoic chapter, made of this 4 pieces: - Ordovician of Cabañeros - Devonian of Teruel - Carboniferous of Puertollano - Permian of Mallorca #paleoart

Lovely drawing of the recently described ctenocystoid echinoderm Atlascystis (bottom right) - Woodgate et al 2025, doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

April 11, 1755, birthday of James Parkinson. Although he is best known today for his report detailing the symptoms of Parkinson disease, in his time he was a celebrated fossil hunter ...

Very excited for the fossil festival again, I’ll be with @nhm-london.bsky.social and this year I’ll also be giving a talk as part of the student talks series ⭐️

Some very good tide pools