Merry Christmas from me and Jonesy (and Sarah)

Doubt raised about whether Rice's whale (close relative of Bryde's and Eden's whale) should be a species given that genetic divergence could be caused by a recent bottleneck from whaling, and not true inability to interbreed with other species onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Merry Christmas

🌟 Merry Christmas from a newborn star. Earlier this year the NASA/ESA/CSA #Webb Space Telescope took this stunning image of HH30, an edge-on protoplanetary disc. 🧪🔭 🔗 esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Webb_investigates_a_dusty_and_dynamic_disc

Merychippus to all who celebrate!

Behold: the first-ever list of news outlets that have banned generative AI in their reporting. As of today, this is literally information that you cannot find on Google. My goal is to fill the starter pack, so please send over suggestions with supporting evidence! go.bsky.app/8cn1XfT

tell the children

Welcome, former Twitter artists! From paleoart to fine art, comics to medical illustration, bioart to space imagery, explore the rich SciArt ecosystem on Bluesky with the SciArt Starter Pack. 150 artists, plus the entire popular SciArt Feed 🐡. And no gen AI or NFTs.

We wish you a Merychippus, and a happy New Year! This Miocene, three-toed horse hopes everyone has a safe and cozy holiday season. 🐴🎄

Everything alive in the Devonian period tried too hard. “Ooo, look at me, I’m a weird elongated pentagon” Shut up!

If you’re wondering why your friends in academia are a little on edge right now, it’s because an eighteen-year-old who hasn’t done the reading, doesn’t look at the assignment, and has does no critical thinking skills more complex than “because I think it’s in the Bible” can literally end your career

@mcuban.bsky.social it would cost $1m to save one of the best fossil collections in the US, which is considerably less than it would cost to create Jurassic Park. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/s...

O is for Opisthocoelocaudia

Diplomoceras (the clippy) and Pseudocenoceras

Ctl+F this

saw a really interesting investigation on 60 minutes last night, during their "the best of andy rooney" clip show. i had no idea ziploc bags have become that difficult to open and close

Bari Weiss won't hear your remarks about how disgusted you are with her toadying to the admin but on the other hand yes she will, these people are absolute dogs for attention and would eat their own vomit on live TV if it meant even three people would notice them

"Do we need primary data?" Wait, is that even a question?

Last month I squeezed in some tidepooling during the king tides and left the beach at Laguna (OC) just an hour before my cousin's rehearsal dinner - and photographed this golden little beauty: a woolly sculpin, Clinocottus analis - my best fish photo taken during #tidepooling! 🦑🦀

Just watched a fascinating TV documentary – The Mystery of the Desert Kites – about Neolithic people in the Arabian desert who made huge stone enclosures to herd gazelle. They also collected fossils like this ceratite and nautiloid, though I can find no literature on this. Can anyone help?

the most popular movie reviews i ever wrote were in 2022, for avatar 2 and avatar 3, after they were announced but had no further details

7/ The site became exceptional with the 2021 discovery of an unprecedented ritual deposit. Behind anthropomorphic carved stelae (one 1.12 m tall), archaeologists found 150 perfectly arranged fossils : ammonites and nautiluses. Finally, some marine inverts !

8/ These fossils were planted vertically, and were interpreted as an "assembly of little figures." A symbolic use previously unknown in the Neolithic Near East, revealing unexpected ritual sophistication and very cool display attention.

Got a couple of nice camera accessories (extension tubes) from @tetrameryx.bsky.social for Christmas and, while this is not a great photo, it is handheld without flash (or my new ringlight!). I did not intend to photograph the reflection of myself or the Christmas tree in my cat's eye...

How it started vs. How it’s going NOW 👀 LA tow truck driver who towed ICE’s car found NOT GUILTY 🦸🏽‍♂️

Result from the Mammoth Site #paleostream! This has been our first mammoth steppe formation stream, dwelling into some the classic giants of the Pleistocene. This site in South Dakota offered a unique opportunity is that is has so much stuff preserved in situ that we can...

i really think there is legit political space for running on "we are going to dismantle ICE"

more unrealistic beauty standards smdh

I am not sorry. This is simply true. Academics should be able to write fluently and express themselves clearly and academics should do their own work. It’s literally our job. It’s what we trained until 22nd grade to do. This is a simple observation that should require no explanation or defense.

Tis the season for PEPPERMINT SHRIMP! #LetsChangeThat

Happy #FossilFriday! MOR Digital Collections and Field Specialist Dr. Haviv Avrahami is surface scanning #fossils in the #MOR collections to create high resolution 3d digital models. This #ammonite (#MOR-IV-1542) is just one of hundreds of fossils digitized this year.

What did Manitoba look like during the last ice age? Check our new mural in the Earth History Gallery! During the ice age, glaciers repeatedly moved across Manitoba. During warmer periods, animals migrated back to the area, as seen by fossil evidence like the specimens pictured. #FossilFriday

#fossilfriday since im at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County i thought I'd post something from there. Lower jaw of Allison's sea cow (Dioplotherium allisoni). 15 Mya, found in Laguna Hills, California. #naturalhistorymuseumoflosangelescounty #losangeles #prehistoriccalifornia #seacow

Congratulations to everyone who wrote an op-ed about how he just wants americans to eat better

Meet me under the megalodon butthole in 20 minutes if you want an ass kicking

AI slop has made it to the deep sea. That’s not a blobfish: Deep Sea Social Media is Flooded by AI Slop www.southernfriedscience.com/thats-not-a-...

Some of these redactions are almost like modern art

Finally, a new fossil arrives on #FossilFriday :D I just received this fantastic Pseudosculda laevis from Lebanon. This lovely little mantis shrimp hails back to Upper Jurassic.

Cuvieronius, a gomphothere related to elephants that went extinct around the end of the Pleistocene, which ranged from south-southwest US, Central America, and South Amerca. This specimen is from Argentina. Taken at NHM in London in 2018. #FossilFriday #PaleorenjiPhoto

#FossilFriday Stack of opalised vertebrae from an Early Cretaceous ichthyosaur. Another remarkable fossil on display in the South Australia Museum, Adelaide.

The most complete skeleton of a woolly mammoth unearthed in Michigan is to be found in the Museum of Natural History, Andrews University. The museum's located in Price Hall, named for young-Earth creationist George McCready Price (who's discussed at length in my book doncha know) #FossilFriday

It's been an incredible year full of brand new displays and incredible beach finds but it's our last #FossilFriday of 2025! Here's a look at just a few of the amazing things we've seen this year, what's been your favourite fossil this year?

#FossilFriday The Pleistocene deer Sinomegaceros yabei at the Gunma Museum of Natural History

Exceptionally preserved Cretaceous crabs provide novel insights into the fossilization of arthropod compound eyes: doi.org/10.1098/rsos... #RSOS #FossilFriday #palaeontology

For this #FossilFriday the giant Cenozoic boa like snake Madtsoia bai, from the Eocene Sarmiento formation of Argentina. At an estimated 9 meters or more, this was a very big snake. Species in the genus have been named before and after the K/Pg boundary. #snakes #fossil #museum #paleo

Welcome back to another #FossilFriday! Here is a internal cast of the ammonite Mortinoceras equidistans. This comes from the Lower Cretaceous (Albian) Fort Worth Formation in Texas. During this time, Texas was covered by the Western Interior Seaway. Ammonites like these are common in the area.

For this week’s #FossilFriday you get Dimetrodon, a Permian Sphenacodontoid Synapsid (a type of Mammal-like Reptile) that was arguably the top predator of its era. Photo taken at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

For the 5th day of THAT FISH I present all of the Xiphactinus I've found in 2025 for #FossilFriday! The first one, an exploded skull, will be recovered sometime later next year. The rest I either left in place or were donated to a museum. 🧪🐟

A festive #FossilFriday from the Cincinnati airport, one of the few (only?) places where you can eat Skyline chili amongst ice age megafauna!