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

On the 3rd day of fossils, my true love gave to me... 3 cyclocystoids! I wouldn't be surprised if you've never heard of a cyclocystoid. They are one of the rarest fossil echinoderms and related to starfish and sea urchins. They are small and fall apart quickly after death. 1/x #12DaysofFossils

Absolutely delighted to be a recipient of the @thepalass.bsky.social Annual Meeting Poster Prize at #Palass25! It was a pleasure to discuss our new taphonomic approaches with so many of you all.

I also presented my bachelors dissertation on some sabertooth FEA which I worked on with @palaeostephan.bsky.social! This was an amazing conference, super thankful for @richardjbutler.bsky.social and the host committee for letting me help out

This weekend I very briefly presented some of my research on hydrodynamics of bone beds at PalAss 2025. Big thanks to the host committee and @tweetisaurus.bsky.social @imranrahman.bsky.social for all the help with the project!

Really enjoyed my first @thepalass.bsky.social annual meeting! Thank you to all the lovely people that I met for making it a great time. I'm delighted to have been awarded a poster prize for my work on annelid locomotion. Congratulations to the other prize winners, including @lej-palaeo.bsky.social!

Presenting my latest work on the evolution of sea urchin feeding morphology and my use of deep learning at #PalAss2026 @thepalass.bsky.social - come have a chat during the poster session!

Thank you @thepalass.bsky.social for a great conference and awarding me a prize for my poster on the results of the first chapter of my PhD! And congrats to @harrysavage.bsky.social and the other three recipients of poster prizes for their amazing work #PalAss25

Large-eyed animals like owls 🦉 have a trade-off between large eyes & short optic nerves, which lowers eye mobility (to compensate they evolved swivelly necks) But chameleons 🦎 have long, coiled optic nerves with extra slack for eye mobility, allowing them to use their famous large swivelly eyes 👀🧪🌏

9 November 1812: local newspaper reports the discovery of a fossil 'crocodile' 17 feet long at Lyme Regis. This was the recovery by Mary Anning of parts of the post-cranial skeleton related to a fossil skull found by her brother a year before. It was described and figured by Everard Home in 1814.

#FossilFriday Here are 3 beautiful Pentremites sp. Blastoids I collected from the Upper Mississippian (Lower Carboniferous, Serpukhovian) Lower Bangor Limestone in Russellville, Alabama.

Hallucigenia sparsa, a small lobopodian from the Cambrian-age Burgess Shale, climbing on a sponge.

Fantastic new slab of eensy little sea urchin fossils from Oregon, courtesy of @smilodonichthys.bsky.social #FossilFriday ⚒️

This may be the smallest trilobite in my collection. A tiny 3 mm Triarthrus eatoni from the famous Beecher's Bed (Ordovician Lorraine shale of New York). #TrilobiteTuesday

Who here loves big extinct cephalopods? in my opinion the Ordovician period got the best! 🎨Illustration from my book DINOSAURS: Understanding Prehistoric Life and Geological Time 📚Get your copy here: a.co/d/6Y8ekXW #sciart #fossiladdict #evolution #paleoart #prehistoric

A literary Iguanodon at the Earth Sciences Library. Do any other libraries have dinosaurs or other antediluvian creatures carved into the furniture?

I tried to ask them about their pre-radial evolutionary history but they declined to comment :( #starfish #seaurchin #echinoderm

#FossilFriday Fossil sea star 🌊⭐️, found by Deanna Graham on Hornby Island in British Columbia.

An exotic #FossilFriday - sand dollars (Scutella subrotunda, Oligocene) are everywhere at the famous Blue Hole in Gozo, Malta!

🚨 THIS IS NOT A DRILL 🚨 We’ve just seen this, by creator “Menapian” - a 4,998-piece set of the Great Exhibition (1851) Crystal Palace - complete with a bonus Megalosaurus and Ichthyosaur… beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

Another Iridigorgia chewbacca n. sp. account #octocoralFriday nerdist.com/article/scie...

major traffic incident

For #FossilFriday a cast of Archaeopteryx siemensii the ‘Berlin specimen’ with its plumage restored by the prolific and fabulous sculptor Karen Fawcett.

JURASSIC NURSE LOG. A 150 million year old Scottish conifer log shows the same processes of white fungal rot, insect boring, then growth of new seedlings seen in modern forests. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... Research by @sandyheth.bsky.social & co-authors.

Buckle up, babes, the fattening is almost upon us. Mark your calendars: Fat Bear Junior: September 18-19 Fat Bear Week: September 23-30

My favourite week of the year begins on the 23rd September, follow @explore.org to see some chonky bears getting ready to hibernate and vote for who you think the fattest bear is at explore.org/fat-bear-wee...

The Cretaceous fossil goniasterid Peedeeaster sandersoni from the Peedee formation of North Carolina! A new genus/species I described a few years ago! My first fossil species! #echinoday #fossilFriday (can provide upon request) mapress.com/zt/article/v...

This is an interesting hash plate of ocean debris from the Devonian Hungry Hollow Mb of Arkona, Ontario. Plants had just started to take "root" on land. In the center is a small piece of petrified wood. There is also a Decorocrinus calyx with a long anal tube. #FossilFriday

"Your boss may fire you, your dog may bite you, your wife may leave you (and probably will), but the joy and fascination of crinoids will not let you down." -Harrell L. Strimple

Continuing my theme from last week. Just find a way to survive. This Agaricocrinus from the Mississippian Edwardsville Fm. near Crawfordsville, IN. was attacked and lost an arm. It started to regenerate. Find a way. #FossilFriday

Here's a strange one for #FossilFriday. This is Porocrinus sp. from the Ordovician Maquoketa Fm. of Iowa. I had never seen one with a stem until the MAPS show last weekend.

Some of the specimens are flipped upside down. A storm event probably tumbled them before burial. #FossilFriday

Happy #FossilFriday from Johnson Discovery Surface in @discoverygeoparknl.bsky.social, famous for its #Fractofusus andersoni, but which also has large enigmatic forms dubbed #Blackbrookia (now considered a pseudofossil). The JDS material is however covered in pimples or meshes not seen in the type.

Woah!! What an utterly incredible perspective of coral 😍 🧪🦑🌿 Looks like alien art, but it's a very real and intimate view of Cauliflower soft coral (Dendronephthya) looking up from its base towards its fractal tips. Australian Geographic 2025 photo competition Winner 🎉 📷 Ross Gudgeon

It's fair to say that not everyone was convinced by our identification. But now we have a much more complete skeleton, excavated by our UK-Moroccan-US team. Not only does Spicomellus have spikes fused to its dorsal ribs, it has metre-long spikes extending from a cervical half ring

Spicomellus was named by @tweetisaurus.bsky.social & colleagues in 2021 named on a very strange & intriguing but extremely incomplete specimen - a single partial rib, but with huge weird spikes, something we don't see in any other animal alive or dead.

You don’t always need to travel to the coast or a museum to find fossils, sometimes the gravel on your driveway will do nicely! #FossilFriday

This is a different genus of blastoid, but highlights the hair like brachioles and preserved color patterns. This is one of the most common blastoids, Pentremites, and is from the Mississippian Glen Dean Fm. of Kentucky. #FossilFriday

This is from the Friends of the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology Silica Formation book. Stunning plates and hilarious art.

Sarah Gabbott's @thepalass.bsky.social plenary talk has been living rent free inside my head ever since December so I'm delighted that she's written it up as a Comment for @natecoevo.nature.com: we need taphonomy to understand plastic pollution rdcu.be/eAmRU www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Prehistoric cephalopods were fashion icons 😎

This is one of my favorite crinoids that I've found. This is Gilbertsocrinus spinigerus from the Devonian Windom Shale of New York. The long arms didn't get preserved, but the spines on the calyx are amazing. They may have discouraged snails from attacking. #FossilFriday

A marine serial killer at large, caught at last: researchers identify the agent of the sea star wasting disease that nearly caused the collapse of kelp forests along the Pacific Northwest www.nature.com/articles/s41... @hakai.org @science.ubc.ca @tula.org @nature.org @uwenvironment.bsky.social

After years of work, a team of researchers with support from The Nature Conservancy have identified the causative agent of Sea Star Wasting Disease! Big implications for my work & an inspiring example of the amazing things we can do w/ science...plus I'm quoted in it ;) www.cbc.ca/player/play/...

This is one of the most stunning crinoids in my collection. Gennaeocrinus mourantae from the Devonian Arkona Fm. of Ontario. A large pocket of these were found decades ago and very few have been found since. #FossilFriday

Me and bro enjoying the muddy bank

🌟Did you know..? While modern echinoderms like starfish have five-fold symmetry, the fossils of extinct echinoderms exhibit very different types of symmetry! Read about the 3D reconstruction of ctenocystoids, Rahmen and Clausen (2009): buff.ly/xN07qjx @imranrahman.bsky.social #fossils #PaleoSky

New paper out today with @profpaulbarrett.bsky.social @gondwannabe.bsky.social Kimi Chapelle and Paul Upchurch. In it we describe the partial femur of a large silesaur from Zambia 🧪🦕 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

#MolluscMonday: the wonderful ammonite lampposts of Lyme Regis.