When I say "let's skedaddle" this is what I mean (Callipepla californica, Montana de Oro State Park) #wildlifephotography #nature #birding #bird

Playing with coloured lights and a vortex lens - whilst 2 nudibranchs create the next generation- a bit of a different style for me! - Bali 🤿🌊🦑 #underwaterphotography #OM1

articles that write about how "important" immigrant workers are to "the economy" without ever acknowledging that the reason they are important is that they can be treated worse for less pay

#molluskmonday Some spectacular Clinocardium shells in a ~40-50 lb concretion on the beach in Santa Cruz. These are earliest Pliocene (~5 myo) and from the Purisima Formation; each is about 6-8 cm in diameter.

#sciart One of the two pieces I entered into the SCMNH Art of Nature exhibition: the holotype mandible of the sea lion-like "double-tusked" walrus Dusignathus santacruzensis, found in ~6-7 myo rocks in Santa Cruz, CA. Watercolor and gouache, ~10x5". 🐡🐬🦖

This story is insane. Married an American, arrested at her greencard interview, flown out of state, nearly killed multiple times when her diabetes was ignored and then mistreated. When she finally got out? Found out her credit card had been used illegally. www.daylightsandiego.org/san-diego-wo...

Students and paleontologists have been excavating near a high school in Woodburn, Oregon for 20 years. These "birds of the bog" fossils, many of them waterfowl, confirm the area was once a large wetland. #fossilfriday #paleosky 🧪🏛️

This fossil may look small - that's because it's from a salamander, but what a salamander! It's actually very large and surprisingly complete for the late Cretaceous of North America. From US Public lands administered by the BLM. #FossilFriday #fossils #scicomm #salamander #microfossil

Hailing from the Pisco Formation (also home to Livyatan and megalodon), the ~7.7 m Piscogavialis used its gracile snout to snatch small, fast moving prey like today's gharial. #FossilFriday

Happy #FossilFriday from this ridge fosdil turd that im describing with @maryanningsrevenge.bsky.social Its always fun to find the poo that interests you Especially when it doesn't smell anymore

happy #fossilfriday! bonus: this is chilotherium, a rhino that lived in africa and eurasia during the miocene and pliocene. a hornless rhino, male chilotherium competed for females by using their prominent, tusk-like second incisors in combat (art by @mariolanzas.bsky.social)

Scientists uncover the secret behind perfectly 3D preserved 'sea reptile' fossils https://phys.org/news/2026-03-scientists-uncover-secret-3d-sea.html 🐟️ #marinelife #marinebiology #deepsea #Science #fossilfriday

Since this #FossilFriday is 3/27, check out StW 327: a hardy left lower jaw of a juvenile Australopithecus africanus from Sterkfontein, South Africa. Might display tooth eruption like humans and Homo naledi (doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...) Image: human-fossil-record.org/index.php?/c...

Some sabertooth fun for #FossilFriday! A colleague recently asked me what parts of a Smilodon skull that we published on (bit.ly/4dfOInK) were real. CT is the easiest way to detect restoration. Here, the right canine (saber), a carnassial crown, & all lower incisors needed to be restored. ⚔️🦷🐱

Continuing with the Early Cretaceous seas of Colombia, the ecosystem's top predator: Monquirasaurus boyacensis, "El Fósil". One of the largest and most complete pliosaurs known, a separate museum had been built around this specimen, leaving it exposed but in situ #FossilFriday

#FossilFriday! 🐂 A revelation for me and my friend: bison material could be found along our small town’s river gravel bars. This right frontal bone is from a juvenile bison. Other skull and horn‑core material have turned up, but this was the first—and remains the only—juvenile skull we’ve found.

Happy #fossilfriday I’ve spent the last few days cutting down the jacket and airscribing around the orbit and nasal bones of this Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai skull. Big Sam is looking fantastic and has some very interesting features for future study. #dinosaur

Awesome, man, congrats! Of course the ear painting is one of my all time favorites of yours.Seriously, your work should hang in more galleries.

Last night I attended the opening night of the Art of Nature exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History - two of my pieces showcasing local fossils from the Purisima Formation (Dusignathus, a walrus, and Herpetocetus, a dwarf baleen whale) were selected for the exhibit! #sciart 🐡

#fossilfriday After 20 years, I finally found clam geodes in the Purisima Formation in Santa Cruz, CA! These are ~5 myo Clinocardium (cockle) shells that were incompletely filled in by sediment after death. Groundwater rich in dissolved calcium carbonate then precipitated calcite crystals.

By-the-wind sailors (Velella velella along the Oregon coast today… millions of them! #marinelife #velellavelella #oregoncoast #beachlife #ocean #hike #rockhound

Distinct feeding biomechanics in Late Cretaceous marine reptiles from the Western Interior Seaway onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @just-fre.bsky.social @universitedeliege.bsky.social @datadryad.bsky.social

I JUST WANNA BE PART OF YOUR SYMPHONY✨✨🌈🌈💖💖💖🐬🐬🐬🥰🥰🥰 #art #digitalart #artph #paleoart #ophthalmosaurus #cryptoclidus #coproliteposting

Sperm whales have been recorded headbutting for the first time by drone! This behavior has often been hypothesized (think Moby Dick) but never captured. Exciting news for the headbutting world! 🧪 doi.org/10.1111/mms....

Some nice photos of shell beds in the Purisima Formation at Capitola (early Pliocene, ~5.2-3.6 myo) from my field trip yesterday.

I LIKE MY ICE CRUSHED art: @_paleo_punk_

DONT FUCK WITH STEGOSAURUS!!!

A new perspective, sparked by studies of pterosaurs, argues that documenting fossils and anatomy is essential science in paleontology—even without testing formal hypotheses. archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2026/03/23/i... #fossils #paleontology

"The AI Grad Student": A Harvard professor describes working with Claude. Early on, he describes misconduct that would cause any student to be terminated: "It faked results, hoping I wouldn't notice." But he ends the essay with "Now I'm doing 100% of my research with LLMs". Am I losing my mind?

Sperm whales caught headbutting each other on camera for the first time

Some snapshots of the central California coast - Montana de Oro State Park, Morro Bay, Monterey Bay

First day of BIO 173 tours of the Research Museums Center in the books. Over the past five years, the RMC community has taken ~9,000 U-M undergrads behind the scenes in UMMP and our sibling museums. Sharing these collections is always a highlight for me.

presented without comment www.inaturalist.org/observations...

I feel like the great lesson of the Civil War is that amateur armies of shopkeepers, farm laborers, and clerks can, when well armed and supplied, beat the absolute piss out of a chivalry-obsessed gentry class and their allies among the smallholders

Semi-regular reminder: Baby open-ocean octopuses sometimes ride on jellyfish like little hats. 📸 Songda Cai bit.ly/2ZmNZZH 🧪🪼🐙🦑🌿

The same kind of shell bore holes that you find on the beach today! It’s crazy how far back in time some of these species interactions can be traced in the fossil record (my other favorite: worm bore holes in fossil whale falls)

#molluskmonday A rare fossil Abalone (Haliotis sp.) - ornamented, but small (<10 cm). This one is from #socal and is from the upper Miocene (7-10 myo); it pre-dates the ca. 5 mya parallel evolution of giant body size in abalones - an event that likely indicates when kelp forests became widespread.

🐬🦷 A new study by Mathes et al on the harbor porpoise reveals that, even with their simple, uniform teeth, toothed whales follow the same developmental stages as other mammals, from early epithelial thickening to full tooth formation. Read more: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

look at this baby beaver and feel better briefly (@ wildheartrescue on TT)

I saw this gorgeous Knobbed whelk on the beach this morning. The tide was coming in so I had no problem finding it a nice spot in the deeper part of the water to take anchor. #Nature 🐚🦑

🧵OK it's time for some catch up on recent papers in marine mammal paleontology. First up, out yesterday - bite marks on dwarf baleen whale and a beluga from the early Pliocene (3-4 myo) of Belgium, Lambert et al. 1/ www.app.pan.pl/article/item...

Can you believe a whale ear bone would be this small? Whale ears are isolated from their skulls, meaning they can detect sounds without their entire skull vibrating and to determine the direction of sound underwater. #FossilFriday #LapworthRocks

Fossilized whale skulls reveal feeding secrets of sharks 5 million years ago https://phys.org/news/2026-03-fossilized-whale-skulls-reveal-secrets.html 🐋 #sirenia #marinemammals #marinelife #marinebiology #manatees #Science #fossilfriday

I had a great time doing my talk on Judith River Dinos last night for the CS Mineralogical Society. 50 people showed up to hear about these critters, and the new one I'm searching for that's still in the ground. Here's me and Pete III, who we dug up in 2006 for #FossilFriday from the upper JRF

For this #fossilfriday, really cool palaeoart (and elephant shrew) from 1st half of XXxt, by Spanish and Argentinian palaeoartist and zoologist Angel Cabrera Latorre. As exhibited at @mncn-csic.bsky.social 🦖⚒️

happy #fossilfriday! this is trogontherium, a giant beaver from the pliocene and pleistocene of eurasia. although its diet was probably like modern beavers’, trogontherium’s limbs indicate that it was more terrestrial, and its long toes suggest that its feet were not webbed (art by emiliano troco)

You're looking at the skull that began Mary Anning's career. Found in 1811 by her brother, Mary later found the rest of the skeleton – her first steps as a fossil dealer and palaeontologist. We now know these are ichthyosaur bones – find out about them this #FossilFriday (1/6)

Happy #FossilFriday, here is ANSP 12602 the lower jaw of the Mammut americanum - American Mastodon! These creatures were more basal and surprisingly distant relatives of elephants that were one of many large herbivores that once roamed the Americas. Some of their past ecosystem remains intact.

#FossilFriday: a fossil sepia ink sac drawn with fossil sepia in 1834 by Lyme Regis fossil collector and friend of #MaryAnning, Elizabeth Philpot. The pencil annotation is by Oxford geologist William Buckland. More on fossil sepia coming in the next issue of @hoggroup.bsky.social's GeoHistories.