Due to scheduling we will be recording our final Q & A/retrospective episode on Weds, so please send over any Qs by then and we’ll do our best to answer them :)

With apologies to the Sec Pistols ....

The 12yo had declared it Banff Springs Snail Awareness Day! This amazing endangered wee air-breathing freshwater snail manages to live in the low-oxygen sulphurous hot springs of Sulphur Mountain in Banff National Park, & nowhere else, it was the first mollusc on Canada’s list of Species at Risk.

What's up folks I've been on fieldwork in china for ten days: what did I miss?? This is my fave pic I took on the trip, a beach near Ningde that gave us the best skies as we slopped around in the mud searching for clams <5mm across

Bringing this one back for 2026 🤘 trans rights and bad art forever 🤘

Welcome back to #FossilFriday Here is the shell from the clam Crassatella vadosus. I found this from the Late Cretaceous (Late Maastrichtian) Coon Creek Tongue of the Ripley Formation in Blue Springs, Mississippi. The original Aragonitic shell is still preserved and both valves are still attached.

#TrilobiteTuesday Ampyx from the Ordovician of Asker, Norway. On display in the Geologisk Museum, Oslo.

Slightly delayed publication of this episode for various reasons means we will have two episodes in back to back weeks! Exciting! This week please enjoy LONELY m.youtube.com/watch?v=uYIe... with the lovely @marcehjones.bsky.social 🐋 🦎 🐢.

Large surf clams (Mactromeris) in life position (& with original coloration) in the middle Pleistocene (~700,000 year old) Merced Formation near San Francisco, CA. #fossils #paleontology 🦖

Happy pride, mollusc-botherers 🤘

Prog rock Spirifer! (There are so many occurrences of Spirifer that I had to make it a double poster event)

Mollusc collage progress pride flag with blue ringed octopus closeup for the intersex flag ... is this anything? Has someone already made this or do I now have a weekend project?

Reviewing my fourth paper of the year ... meanwhile the ms I submitted in January is still sitting "under review" with the journal 🙄

🌈Want to come listen to me talk about queer nature? Of course you do! I'm doing a cute little talk this Sunday 07 for Manningtree Pride at ✨Little Bear Bar✨. Tickets are only £5, so if you're in the area you've got no excuse, really. Buy a ticket! 👇 checkout.square.site/merchant/MLA...

Thrilled to finally share our new paper on giant scorpions from the Early Devonian! Behold Praearcturus gigas! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/S54Y6Y...

Absolutely overjoyed to share our new paper describing the oldest occurrence of soft-tissue preservation in crinoid echinoderms and their ecological significance 🧪

One of the easiest animals to come by for biology class is the mussel, Mytilus edulis. But understanding the anatomy when dissecting a mussel isn't that easy, so this infographic makes it understandable. And keep in mind: this is what you eat when eating a mussel..

Diversity: It's in our nature. Happy Pride 2026 from NHM Library and Archives! (All images taken from artwork in our collections.) #Pride #PrideMonth #PrideMonth2026

Solidarity is how we win. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Happy #NationalSnailDay !🐌 Today-in-snails I'm working on a paper about Colposigma capitanea and C. euthenia from Antarctica w/ @ming-tfk27.bsky.social Come celebrate national snail day by visiting the Museum of the Earth's Marvelous Mollusks exhibit in person or online! #snails #gastropods 🧪🦑🐌

It’s #NationalSnailDay!!!! 🐕🐌🦑🌊

🚨 New paper alert! Delighted to have been involved in this @nature.com study using trait-based ecosystem modelling to examine plankton extinction patterns in the first *100 years* after the Chicxulub impact event at the #Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. ☄️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It really does feel crazy experiencing climate change through extreme weather and have the gov cheerlead massive ai data centres and want to do away with net zero all together

Running machines for the sake of running machines cause the idea of running machines makes some people rich thats what we are betting the whole of future of the economy and the biosphere on. And we all know which is the one that matters more to the ruling class

Seashell studies in watercolour. #art 🐡

Abstract submission (and early-bird!) deadline for the BioSyst.EU approaches! You have until Sunday, May 31st to send it in! Join us and our fellow European systematics associations in Uppsala, August 17-19, 2026 for the 4th BioSyst.EU meeting! Details: www.trippus.net/BioSyst2026 #BioSystEU2026

The "stop illustrating heatwaves (like yesterday's 34C when it should be about 17C) with pretty beach pics and people outside" challenge. Maybe if we showed the consequences (increased mortality risk, higher cost of cooling, discomfort) that might get the point across?

New paper alert 🚨🧪⚒️ link.springer.com/article/10.1...

half of my feed right now is brits complaining about the heat wave with the occasional pics of melting puppies and kittens have we considered collecting photos of melting puppies and kittens (and human babies) to pester politicians like "what's your climate plan because look at my sad puppy???"

It might be the heatwave but woww I'm irked with people not providing their code for paper reviews. If you must hide your dryad repo and make your GitHub private then ffs just give me the script in a notepad document. Something. Anything. If I can't check your code it's major revisions for you bucko

Hand slipped again oopsie daisy (shoutout to @thefairestfowl.bsky.social for providing the original lineart of this critter that I traced over!)

I've noticed this as well ... submitted in January, absolute crickets - meanwhile I've done two reviews and have a third lined up and boy are automated journal "reminder" emails insistent

Whoops my hand slipped

My first graduate thesis was on radiolaria and I have a soft spot for them a mile wide - can't wait to read this!

It really is just on its face ridiculous to suggest requiring someone to have to use a third segregated space wether they want to or not is somehow not discrimination or in any way respectful or dignified

It is juts fucking crazy they straight up let people’s “discomfort” with someone overrule their human rights

Oh my god 😂

Today we celebrate Mary Anning's birthday (21 May 1799) — pioneering fossil collector, palaeontologist, and one of the most influential figures in the history of Earth science. To mark her birthday and her discoveries, check out Moon's phylogenetic study of ichthyosaurs: buff.ly/ovaAjuM #PaleoSky

A very big fuck you to anyone suggesting trans people Should ask for our own segregated spaces

Unaccountably no Latin dictionary is willing to give me a noun for "pain in the butt" which is what I would like to name my current taxon of study

My god the @nhmlibraryarchives.bsky.social team are miracle workers. It's a very happy new (old) book day for me!!

anybody want to review a short paper on a gorgeous nudibranch with a possible range extension in South America? DM me please I'm short on nudi friends.

Unironically just referred to "my boy Euclid" in conversation lmao this is what learning morphometrics eventually leads you to

It's bloody hard to research an obscure Mesozoic clam when the original author in a fit of misplaced humour decided to name the damn thing "Legumen". All I keep finding are PEAS

And while we're at it, TELL US if one of our specimens is being used as a new type. We can't keep on top of everything in the literature so if you don't tell us, we won't know and it won't be recognized in the collection.

We’ve looked at snails with one shell and slugs with no shells. Now let’s have a look at a snail with two shells, because Nature laughs at our puny attempts to pigeonhole. In today’s #AtoZ – J is for Julia (Juliidae) (1/9) Pic: © uwkwaj CC BY-NC

Invertebrate palaeontologists of Bluesky, I need you to tell me which species in your study taxon would look best on a band shirt, and the genre of that band, for an Art Project Reason

Audited one of my favourite drawers today. As far as I can tell there was an entire generation of past mollusc curators who communicated entirely by means of passive-aggressive drawer notes to each other

Domatia are tiny pockets on the undersides of some leaves. They're almost always associated with mites; so biologists think they provide a safe home ("domatium" means little house) for mites that clean leaves of fungal spores. Karamu (Coprosma robusta, Rubiaceae) from New Zealand. Explanation in ALT

So I spin yarn, amongst my other hobbies ... if I spun a set of nudibranch-themed yarns, is that something folks might bid on at the next World Congress of Malacology auction, do we think?