Calling all fossilologists! Can anyone help identify this? It was found loose in a drawer, no data or providence. What on earth could our little weird friend be? Please RT for reach because it's flummoxing us!

Für die deutschsprachige Community: Die SPIEGEL-Online-Redaktion (bzw. der Praktikant, der nachts für die Überschriften zuständig ist) ist heute ganz offensichtlich gut aufgelegt... :-)

The interior-design scenographers working of the new building asked for "photos of cool structures from your collections". Hard questions now need answers: Why are echinoids so cute? How many forams can I sneak in? Which is the cooler diatom? (Nobody warned me of those hard moments as a curator!)

Some more photos of Mesquite Dunes from my Death Valley trip earlier this month. This place always has a bit of a dreamy quality to it.

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This is Daisy. She helped her human make the bed today. Through moral support. 13/10 (IG: daisyneverhelps)

Finished the Anomalocaris pattern!

Ever wanted to see how a coral skeleton grows? In this paper (led by: @jtrendbio.bsky.social) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... we use Live CT, a method of scanning live organisms using microCT, to visualise how the skeleton grew over about one month.

Ach so.

High-resolution quantitative stratigraphical study shows the heterogenous extinction responses of foraminifera, with benthics being struck hard and collapsing fast. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio #Macroecology

Happy #taxonomistappreciationday! Here we celebrate the day with a 🍻 after are ICZN reading club :) @mohnika.bsky.social

David Marques: An amazing scientist, birder, musician, and a truly great mentor and friend. I’m so glad we crossed paths. His lessons and kindness stay with us. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Quote: "We need to be able to interpret genetic data in a way that humans can understand and use. That's taxonomy's job. And if we want to save what's left of the vast diversity of life on Earth, we'll have to reinvest in this science." www.nytimes.com/2024/07/07/o...

I don’t know what I like better: the bloat-and-float kangaroo(?) or the expression on the whale as it is taken down by a giant squid #FossilFriday From: Ager 1963 Principles of Paleoecology

There is an irony to generate some AI slob to promote a Critical Minerals Workshop...

🛰 Meteosat captured today a lot of #Dust from Sahara over the Atlantic. This Timelapse started at 07:10UTC ended 18:20UTC with 📸 every 10Min. Footage: @eumetsat.int

Record-breaking Antarctic drill reveals 23 million years of climate history swais2c.aq/media/record...

I recently gave a pop-science talk about the KPg boundary. I think by looking at my (excellent! ^^) drawings one can easily decipher which organisms I deal with on a more common basis ...

Founders of modern paleontology, and their contributions to systemic racism, classism and sexism (🧵) Henry Osborn (1857–1935), responsible for naming of Tyrannosaurus & Velociraptor; president of ANHM. Co-founder of the American Eugenics Society. Contributing to books later praised by Hitler.

Next Monday, join IPCC Chair @jimskeaclimate.bsky.social at the @uniofreading.bsky.social for a free public lecture on how the IPCC works & how global science supports our future climate. 🗓️ 9 February, 18:30-20:00 📍 University of Reading, online Register here 👉 bit.ly/4rvEK5r

Very effective illustration of what has happened to Florida's coral reefs in response to anthropogenic climate and environment change. The loss of this important ecosystem is all but complete - attempts to rescue it discussed here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🪸🧪🌊

Yesterday it was cows using tools, today its penguins using satellite imagery.

🚨 New vacancy🚨 Interested in high-resolution climate reconstructions, or know someone who might be? Apply for our exciting new, fully funded PhD position where you will develop reconstructions of extreme weather events in the geological past from fossil shells! 🌩️🌀🌊🐚 werkenbij.vu.nl/vacatures/ph...

A brief stint of winter in Basel - entrance to the Natural History Museum #NMB

What a nice anniversary! @mohnika.bsky.social @cr2p.bsky.social

Don't do this to me! I'm currently working on a presentation for a very public event, trying to (among others) getting the people to not only associate dinosaurs with the KPg extinction 😅

My favourite review (of a fire blanket). "Survived house fire - our house burnt down and is totally destroyed. I found the fire blanket we bought a year ago in the rubbel. Ordered a new one :D. + fire proof + found in OG packaging on rubble - could not have saved the house (fire too big haha)"

slow day in the office so figured we'd start some beef with museums

Seeing that AI pictures are getting creepingly hard to tell from real ones, the idea of carrying a totem - which only you know in detail - becomes something to think about.

TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque: "This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".

This really is a must read for anyone in academia.

Scientific first-world problems: its winter and the foot of my microscope is so cold, I could build little snow man with foraminifera as eyes and noses on it⛄ Just missing the snow...

Printing out reviews from a rejected paper - maybe it "hurts" less to read them from paper 😅...

🔔🔔New Paper 🔔🔔 Pollen-based REVEALS land-cover reconstructions for Europe during the latter half of the Last Glacial Period essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/... We show that glacial refugia and frequent openings of migration corridors may have played a substantial role human dispersal

Who else cringes everytime somebody pulls out an AI-generated image in their presentation, which in an uncanny-valley way relates to the topic they want to discuss, but delivers no added value?

If you can't be with the forams you love, love the forams you're with #Ammonia

"Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Good already has enough enemies." Ep. 274, The HOA - Welcome to Nightvale @nightvaleradio.bsky.social

Human artists!? Use one piece to convince people to follow you !

When you had "a week" (and are going into the second "a week"), but you also have lovely coworkers 🥰

🐝🐚🐙 Job Opening! 🐙🐚🐝 We are looking for a new collection manager for the macro-invertebarte collection at the Natural History Museum in Basel (CH). I can only recommend the museum and the curator!

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I love this with my whole soul

🌊 In 2023, oceans should’ve absorbed more CO2 due to El Niño, but they didn’t Despite cooler tropical Pacific waters, record-high SSTs led to ~10% less ocean CO2 uptake than expected, especially in the Northern Hemisphere Warming waters = weaker carbon sink www.nature.com/articles/s41...

One might think that Nazi crimes and palaeontology never overlapped, and yet... Have you ever wondered what happened to tens of palaeontologists & geologists in the Nazi-occupied Poland? How academics helped to bring down the fascist regime. And a curious story of Schindler-equivalent in geology. 🧵

Ich bin gerade über diesen Text gestolpert, den ich vor ziemlich genau 10 Jahren auf Facebook veröffentlicht habe. Er hat damals 3,5 Mio Menschen erreicht - dabei war das alles noch ein paar Wochen vor der großen Migration, vor Corona, neuem Ukraine-Krieg und Donald Trump…

🧪 The University of Basel is setting up a new endowed professorship in #ClimateBiophysics at the @biozentrum.unibas.ch, funded by the Georg H. Endress Foundation. This new professorship strengthens climate research @unibas.ch. www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/news/detail/...

🌲 #JobAlert! MSc in #Environmental Sciences or a related field? Experience in preparing wood samples for #StableIsotope and #radiocarbon analysis? Our #Dendrosciences group offers a position for a #technician: apply.refline.ch/273855/1763/... #ScienceJobs #dendrochronology

you think you're safe from clams on land? behold, TREE CLAMS #InverteFest

Recent @glamos.bsky.social fieldwork on the #PlaineMorte glacier by @matthias-huss.bsky.social confirms what our models had already indicated: massive ice loss caused by the August heatwave in Switzerland. Even when expected, it is still striking, and sobering, to witness a glacier in its final days