Today the 12yo has declared Chiton Awareness Day! These amazing marine molluscs can come in extraordinary colours, and are not to be confused with the garment worn in Ancient Greece and Rome.

does anyone know of any documentaries or movies that prominently feature seals?

Collaborate with me! Myself and @peterroopnarine.bsky.social are looking for a postdoc with expertise in quantitative paleoecology to work on our new NSF grant addressing whether communities after the PTME functioned differently than those beforehand. job-boards.greenhouse.io/californiaac...

#FossilFriday Graptolites are extremely useful as zonal fossils in the Ordovician and Silurian. Some look like pencil marks but better preserved examples, like this Monograptus priodon from the Wenlock of Scotland, resemble miniature saw blades.

Question from the groupchat: do whales have foreskins? 🤔

Mollusc-related Academic Grant alert Deadline: February 28, 2026 For:malacological topic, usually within biology or paleontology, with any molluscan taxon or taxa as the focus. All scientific disciplines in studying mollusks eligible Please see : www.conchologistsofamerica.org/grants/ 🦑 #snails

This morning I saw a post w/photos of Smithsonian paleontologist Charles Gilmore, and it dislodged a thought from my brain: I *still* use the dude's work, 80 years after his last paper. Why? Because he published copious data - measurements, solid morphological descriptions, great photos. <thread>

On the one hand I should decline to review this paper that I fundamentally disagree with and which used my own damn dataset to do something I think is a fools errand - I don't think I can give it a fair hearing and I should recuse myself.

Cute little foram from Negambo, Sri Lanka #foraminifera #foramsofsrilanka

wrote about what's pissing me off about the search for Leonardo da Vinci's DNA defector.com/leonardo-da-...

I wasn't fast enough to get a pic but the little scrolling LED sign in my tube just said "the next station is!! Eastcote". No one has ever been that excited about Eastcote in human history but it's cute that the tube is

Do I volunteer for the museum's valentines event again? On the one hand: they cancelled our Pride event last year (still salty about that) and this is an opportunity to showcase what I would have shown then ... on the other hand ... Valentine's Day 🙄

Reminder to @systassn.bsky.social members: membership is calendar-year not rolling: our system does not remember when you paid and calculate 12mo from then; so if you have not paid IN THIS CALENDAR YEAR you will not get stuff from us! The earlier in the year you pay the more access you get!

I don't care whether you're a professional with 8 years of work experience or a literal 8 year old who just thinks bugs are neat. All that matters is you're having fun drawing critters and want to share that with the world. Submit to our next (April) edition here:

Still time to apply for this PhD studentship on evolution and environmental changes in Polystira! blogs.reading.ac.uk/crocus-dla/c...

A new years treat for all the crab fans out there!

So I found an old Guess Who set to convert ... I'm thinking this could be a fun outreach game!

The cruelty, as so often seems to be the case with this govt, is very clearly the point 🤬

Mollusca-focused, 6-yr postdoc Postdoc in Invertebrate Evolution: jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi...

Holy shit I'm so relieved I could cry. A very happy new year to PRI!!! www.priweb.org/blog-post/pr...

SEIZED with the desire to alter a Guess Who game to have pictures of invertebrates instead of people. Gameplay would be unaltered

Got this book out on my mother's library card while I'm visiting. Halfway through. Have cried twice. Have recommended it to three people. Will be going to get my own copy ASAP once I get home!!!

Someone told my sister that Australasian magpies mate for life but the males routinely kill their partners when they want to "upgrade to a younger model" and i'm pretty sure this is bullshit and google scholar certainly isn't corroborating it, but if an ornithologist could weigh in I'd be grateful!

In a super sensible move for someone who's only visiting and will have to get everything into a suitcase, I uh, acquired a spinning wheel at long last yesterday /o\

"Amazing book, bloody amazing" - review from my mother just now. She's completely buried in it, we may never manage to extract her 😂

This, plus it goes double for "uncharismatic" critters bc mostly noone has even gone to look so there's nothing to digitise yet ... and if we piss all our money into LLMs we'll never be able to know where, say, Kellia suborbicularis really lives - we'll just have an uninformed computer's best guess

“Why are you asking a chatbot something you can so easily look up?” Why would I trust it for bigger analyses, where I know I can’t see all the variables and assumptions, when I’ve tried it for these smaller ones and watched it fail?

Back in NZ with my parents for Xmas ... feels weird, lots of familiar things mixed with unfamiliar things, jumbled together

#MolluscMonday is all about rudists! These unusual bivalve molluscs were very common in the Late #Cretaceous, especially in tropical settings around the Tethys Ocean. Individual or conjoined specimens occasionally appear in the UK Chalk but are often poorly dated.

We are excited for the #PalAss meeting in Portsmouth this weekend Some of the team will be there, including our EiC Dr Imran Rahman, so when you see our table, come and find out about the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.. See you there! @imranrahman.bsky.social #PalAss2025 #PaleoSky

If you see a doctor, a politician, a scientist, authority figure or your choice raising Concerns about gender-affirming care for kids, trans people in sports, who uses what bathroom they’re promoting a manufactured controversy invented by white christian nationalists, whether they know it or not

"An Epilogue" by John Masefield, a poem so short it fits in a post: "I have seen flowers come in stony places And good things done by men with ugly faces And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races So I trust, too"

Every so often I remember the B movie concept my writing group came up with years ago - "HAAST'S SEAGULL", tagline "it will fucking take your chips" - and start quietly cackling to myself again even though it was over a decade ago

Imagine your country being seen as a hope for a new life for thousands of people wanting to live and contribute in your towns and instead of being proud of it you go no nope nope this country should be a scary shitheap people should be scared to come here how dare they think we are good

Looking forward to outreach today that will almost certainly involve me getting overexcited and brandishing the world's largest snail over my head like it's the world cup of obsessive nerds

"Imagine if just a fraction of the spume and righteous fury over the new surcharge could be redirected to those who really need it." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Cosupervising x2 🇬🇧 PhD projects advertising now: 'The effects of climate cooling on evolution of Antarctic Eocene benthic communities' (BAS/Bristol) shorturl.at/MiWqJ 'Testing novel archives of seawater chemistry in biogenic carbonate' (Leeds): share.google/dbojTRZme92R... Deadlines early Jan '26

This #MolluscMonday here are some great ones from my recent fieldwork in Fiji with Victor Bonito, Reef Explorer Fiji: two octopus watch Victor take video to make 3d models, a clam and a nudibranch. We are mapping out different areas in the reef flats to see how soft corals change through time.

My coping mechanism is 114 years old and a literal mechanism which given the dumpster fire of everything digital right now is a balm to my soul

Visitors to the Museum will have the exciting opportunity to enter our beautiful Earth Sciences Library. A rare occasion to see treasures from the collection and learn about the Museum’s work as shown through the collections we care for. #NaturalHistoryMuseum #SpecialCollections #MuseumArchives

Speaking as a non drinker, "bottomless brunch" should mean one can show up and eat as much eggs Benedict as one likes, not all this nonsense with booze in the fruit juice

SystAssn members don't forget the AGM starts at 2PM, registration link same as above.

Our website is back!!! 🎉🎉🎉 Also, if you have yet to register for this Wednesday's Joy of Discovery lecture (online at 3PM GMT+0), do so here: tinyurl.com/bdu5xans Prof. Mike Benton, University of Bristol, will be giving a talk on the origin of feathers.

Leicester's Palaeontology program has a long track record including discovery that conodonts were vertebrates, graduates who are Fellows of the Royal Society, innovative researchers, and a growing body of undergraduate students. c.org/HJW7FVxPwv

The online Joy of Discovery event is back! 🎉 This year the event is going to be a smidge different, with a single speaker. But what a speaker! Prof. Mike Benton, University of Bristol, will be giving us a talk on the origin of feathers. Join us NOV 26 AT 3PM GMT+0 REGISTER: tinyurl.com/bdu5xans

On Sunday the 30th PRI's Museum of the Earth will celebrate Antarctica Day, including a talk by Dr. Alejandra Gandolfo,"When Antarctica Was Green: Fossil Plants Reveal Its Crucial Role in the Evolution of Southern Hemisphere Floras" come check it out #Ithaca #Antarctica tockify.com/paleontologi...

Geology and palaeobiology at the University of Leicester are under threat, with at least 14 staff expected to be made redundant. Support them, their postdocs, and their students by signing this petition: c.org/SK8Xm8dhqK

keep ai slop out of scientific journals

The Science Teachers Association of New York State (STANYS), who have had PRI as a long time educational partner (most recently last week for a program "Finding Climate Change Solutions From Across the Sciences") have made a statement of support for saving the Paleontological Research Institution ⚒️

Given recent news about definitions of certain words getting in the way of COP talks, do I recapitulate this outfit at the COP-related even at work tomorrow? 🤔