Baby Bull Kelp in the morning light. Photo credit Jackie Hindering, taken in the traditional territory of the Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw (the Kwak̕wala-speaking Peoples), Vancouver Island BC

An essay about local sand dollars - by Santa Cruz geologist Gary Griggs

I was struggling today and decided to spend some time cleaning fossils to clear my mind. Made some progress on the delicate spines on this Kettneraspis from the Devonian Haragan Fm. of Black Cat Mt. near Clarita, Oklahoma. I'm not convinced the right cheek is there, but we'll see.

With the help of the health tracking technology in my smartwatch, I've learned that I can get high quality sleep by staying in bed until 10:30am

the thing about the institutional apparatus of the dems is that it’s the biggest collection of losers we’ve seen in my lifetime. despite 2 governing trifectas in the last 18 years and the presidency for 12, they’ve overseen the return of segregationists and the end of bodily autonomy for women

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed throughout this commencement speech at the University of Arizona for his praise of AI. This comes just a week after another commencement speaker who mentioned AI was booed at a school in Florida. Read more: www.404media.co/ucf-ai-comme...

Two Paleocene and two Miocene ones

Growth rings in a fossil shark vertebra - Carcharhiniformes, ?Oligocene, South Carolina. Vertebra is about 3 cm across. 🦖

Printed a Revueltosaurus skull for some outreach this week. Once thought to be an early dinosaur, this friend is actually more closely related to crocs. Specimens from Petrified Forest NP were the first to determine this important discovery. #fossilfriday #triassicpark 🦖🧪

Younger daughter & I found these fossilised crinoid rock stars (segments of the ‘stem’ of Jurassic feather stars/sea lilies, related to starfish & sea urchins) in the gravel on the edge of a lake nr Peterborough UK. She used them to make an ammonite:

Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach is a famous destination on the Oregon coast. The silhouette of the enormous boulder stands starkly against a vibrant sunset sky. Sunset Reflections by Erin Hanson, 2021 Oil on canvas 56 x 56 in #dailyart @bsky.art #art #oregon #cannonbeach #oilpainting #impressionism

Update: We're so obsessed with the Mr. Snuffleupagus fish that we called one of the scientists who named it to learn more.

#FossilFriday The sail-backed herbivorous synapsid Edaphosaurus @ummnh.bsky.social

M13 - The Great Hercules Cluster M13 is a giant globular cluster made of several hundred thousand stars in the Hercules constellation. It is roughly 24 thousand light-years away from us, and 84 light-years across! 🔭 #astronomy #astro #astrophoto #astrophotography

#fossilfriday The gorgeous skull of Waipatia maerewhenua - the first 'spear-toothed' waipatiid dolphin to be named! Highly derived facial region of the skull but still with very 'primitive' heterodont, double-rooted teeth. Resembles a miniature Squalodon in many ways. 🦖🐬

Happy #FossilFriday Checkout this beautiful #Chione with a polydorid boring and a very interesting failed drill hole(?) #fossilsofflorida

Finally made it to The Etches Collection on the Isle of Purbeck last week. The huge pliosaur skull was the star of the show for sure; a stunning fossil, beautifully prepped. Also gorgeous fossils of other marine reptiles, pterosaurs, fish and dinosaurs (yay!) #FossilFriday

Happy #FossilFriday! Our Giant Beaver skeleton just moved to its new spot in the fossil gallery (now on level 3) at the Science Museum of Minnesota. This skeleton of a juvenile Castoroides was found right here in St Paul & lived at the end of the last Ice Age. New signage will be next!

A piece of Baculites (ammonite cephalopod related to a modern squid) with bite marks from the Cretaceous Pierre shale of South Dakota. #FossilFriday

Happy #FossilFriday! Here's a cast of Protostega, a big ol' marine turtle that swam the Western Interior Seaway of North America in the Late Cretaceous Although it's reconstructed here (@ DMNS) as similar to a leatherback in appearance, it's a bit of a mystery how close it is to the dermochelyidae

Happy #FossilFriday! Today we’ve got some South African gorgonopsians! Gorgonopsians were the apex predators of the Late Permian period, early relatives of mammals, and are among the earliest land animals to evolve saber teeth! 🧪⚒️🦊

Happy #FossilFriday again! Here's Sophie from Waco (L) and Bunker from Kansas (R) having a little mosasaur snuggle party (they both have healed bite wounds on their faces from other individuals of their species snout wrestling. Currently assigned to Tylosaurus, but will this change?

Our Evolutionary Biology graduate program at SDSU is drafting an AI policy that all grad students must adhere to and sign in order to turn in their thesis to the grad college. Does your grad program have an AI policy? I’d love to see examples if you’re willing to share! arxiv.org/abs/2604.04721

The spectacular skull of the spear-toothed dolphin Aureia rerehua, photographed during preparation during my PhD in 2013 - and formally published a decade later. Read about this and other waipatiid dolphins from NZ in my recent blog post: coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-...

Watching a series of former Confederate states rush to eliminate any vestige of black representation in the House pretty much answers the question whether the Voting Rights Act was still necessary.

found a new NOAA gallery that has terrible metadata but also this guy

I want a t-shirt of Indiana Jones saying his famous line, "Archimedes didn't know about continental drift."

And tonight, after a full day at the cartoon factory, with a break at lunch for some of my own digital art, a bit of light base paint on the painting at home. No break from art today. 😩

"Reuse (protect)", oil on masonite, 5 3/4 x 8 3/8, 2026 - $325(Cdn.) #art #sciart #crabs

My goodness this is cute. Short & Harasti (2026) named a new pipefish species after Snuffleupagus (the giant elephant muppet) Image of Solenostomus snuffleupagus sp. nov. by David Harasti. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#whalewednesday I went to New Zealand to study early baleen whales, but the fossil dolphins are almost more spectacular! Here's my Ph.D. labmate Carolina Loch with the incredible skull of the 'tusked' dolphin Nihohae matakoi - read more on my new blog post: coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-...

This fossil became BIG news here in venezuela, it was sang everywhere as an ichthyosaur, and it successfully brought attention from the government to the paleontology department except... i would've personally thought twice before being identifying it as such 🤔

New blog post! Fossil toothed whales (dolphins) from the Oligocene and early Miocene of New Zealand, and a bit of a tribute to the work of my Ph.D. adviser, Ewan Fordyce, shown here.

· #AcademicSky · A scientific publisher has joined the dozens of firms and individuals suing artificial intelligence companies over their alleged use of copyrighted works in training AI models.

🌊🦦 Let’s keep the momentum going for #seaotter restoration in #Oregon - not only to help revitalize our nearshore marine ecosystems, but also to restore an important cultural connection for #Tribal communities along the coast. youtu.be/MA8sJ-gt9sk?... #seaotters #oregoncoast #kelpforest

During my Museum at Texas Tech visit a couple of weeks ago, Jeff Martz was kind enough to show me the armor plates of the holotype of Desmatosuchus, one of the heavily armored aetosaurs from the Triassic. Beautiful armor plates and shoulder spines!

this graduation speech moment is notable, and her amazed shock at having failed to read the room feels instructive. when you're inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. but everybody isn't.

Amazing catch

Lazy sunday sketching. Deinotherium and some funky bipedal apes in a watering hole somewhere in east africa #sciart

I have to assume that the reason so many ostensibly taxonomy and biodiversity technology groups are now suckling from the AI money teat is because they are reacting to the loss of NSF and trying to preserve some part of their work. The problem is that tech companies do not care about biodiversity.

Just felt that one!

Breaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. https://scim.ag/4tsDqRr

Some Lower Jurassic tritylodonts from the Kayenta Formation I photographed in the collection of the Harvard Museum of Natural History from a few years ago that I should have been shared for #FossilFriday. @andrewtracks.bsky.social @utahpaleo-ufop.bsky.social @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social

A little morning Megaloceros to kick off #FossilFriday... 🦌⚒️🧪 This pair was on display at Trinity College in Dublin on our visit years back, and I particularly appreciated the equal representation of sexes. Usually you only see the bucks mounted ... something something huge rack, whatever. Doe!

This picture was taken in Kodiak AK!

A pretty special #FossilFriday, as today we celebrate the 100th birthday of Sir David Attenborough: an inspiration, a leader, and one of the greatest advocates for conservation for +70 years straight. The plesiosaur Attenborosaurus was named in his honour.

Skull of the Oligocene hornless rhino Subhyracodon (UMMP VP 22751) for #FossilFriday.

#FossilFriday The Miocene mysticete Eobalaenoptera

This week’s Fossil Friday is the preserved cast of a late Cretaceous crayfish, Eryma ornatus, found in Southern Alberta. It was found by Lawrence Halmrast and is APS 1990.011. Photo credit Howard Allen. #palaeontology #paleontology #fossils #crayfish #alberta #fossilfriday

Happy #FossilFriday! Mother’s Day is coming up so check out this gorgeous fossil mother croc we published from Geiseltal, Germany! It’s a 45 million year old Diplocynodon amazingly preserved with 5 of her eggs. Now also published in Dean Lomax’s book Secret Lives of Dinosaurs!