‼️Special volume about arthropod paleontology was published today in the Journal of Paleontology, honoring the late Dr. Rodney Feldmann.🦀🦞🦐 Many of the 20 articles are open access. @paleosoc.bsky.social #paleontology #fossil #crab #lobster #shrimp Full volume: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

#WorldOctopusDay! Octopuses including Octopodoidea don't preserved well in the fossil record, but their traces (predatory drill holes) can be found in some molluscan shells. Here's a Cretaceous example from a 2021 paper in collaboration with Neil Landman. #paleontology 🐙 doi.org/10.1093/biol...

‼️New paper on Paleocene (early Danian, ~65.3 mya) decapod crustaceans from Alabama. 🙂 Eight species (incl. 2 new) is more diverse than previously known for any early Danian site in North America. Thanks also to the @paleosoc.bsky.social for grant support. Paper: sciencepress.mnhn.fr/en/periodiqu...

#FossilFriday! The Alabama Paleontological Society is the recipient of the 2025 Alabama Avocational Paleontologist Award. It will be awarded on Saturday September 20 at the University of Alabama campus as part of Alabama's National Fossil Day (Alabama Fossil Fest) event: tiny.cc/d6hs001

📊 new paper! The natural phenomenon of upwelling, which normally occurs every year in the Gulf of Panama, failed for the first time on record in 2025... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... [most co-authors not on bluesky except @javsdiaz.bsky.social @jonscibulski.bsky.social]...

I'm hoping to take 1 MSc & 1 PhD student next year in the areas of Phylogenetic, Computational, and/or Evolutionary Paleobiology. Please reach out if you are interested in joining the @oupaleobiology.bsky.social, especially if interested in working on fossil echinoderms. Link for more info below. 🧪

Just one more week (till 5 Sept) to apply for the postdoc position with me at UA Museums' Department of Museum Research and Collections. NSF-project together with Jill Leonard-Pingel, @odealab.bsky.social, and @sethf.bsky.social focused on marine ecosystems in Panama. bsky.app/profile/pale...

Croc Discovery Alert‼️🐊 Last month, Kelly Griffiths found an ~84 million-year-old fossil of a crocodile. It's an osteoderm or scute, a bony plate sitting primarily on the back of the animal. Found during the same @almnh.bsky.social trip for the public a hadrosaur tooth was found! 😀 #FossilFriday

Croc Discovery Alert‼️🐊 Last month, Kelly Griffiths found an ~84 million-year-old fossil of a crocodile. It's an osteoderm or scute, a bony plate sitting primarily on the back of the animal. Found during the same @almnh.bsky.social trip for the public this hadrosaur tooth was found! 😀 #FossilFriday

Discovery Alert‼️In July, Kaylee Baize and Ava Broyles found a great piece of a mosasaur jaw in an Alabama creek during an ALMNH trip for the general public. This Cretaceous (~84 million-year-old) specimen is now in the @almnh.bsky.social paleontology collection. #FossilFriday #paleontology #fossil

Job Alert‼️ Postdoctoral Fellow opportunity in paleontology/biology at the University of Alabama Museums: careers.ua.edu/jobs/688232b... Aim: assess biotic interactions using mollusks from both sides of the Isthmus of Panama. Please share widely! @paleosoc.bsky.social @almnh.bsky.social

🦐 New article honoring my PhD advisor Dr. Rodney Feldmann, who passed away last year. Lobetelson feldmanni n. sp. is a ~305 million-year-old shrimp from New Mexico. Open access paper J Paleo: doi.org/10.1017/jpa.... @paleosoc.bsky.social Specimen @almnh.bsky.social collection. #FossilFriday #fossil

Discovery alert‼️A ~84 million-year-old hadrosaur dinosaur tooth was found by ALMNH director Dr. John Friel during a recent Alabama Museum of Natural History summer trip to shark tooth creek in western Alabama. #FossilFriday! @friel.bsky.social @almnh.bsky.social #Cretaceous #paleontology #fossil 😀

Research Alert‼️ Why were ~50 enigmatic, small crustaceans from the Carboniferous Period found clustered together? Paper led by my good colleague Russell Bicknell. Here's a short news story: collections.museums.ua.edu/2025/07/03/o... Belated #FossilFriday #paleontology #fossil @almnh.bsky.social

#FossilFriday‼️🦀🦞🦐 Next week, together with Danish colleagues, I am organizing the 9th Symposium on Fossil Decapod Crustaceans in Faxe, Denmark. Abstract and program books are printed. We will welcome everyone starting on Monday! Website: tiny.cc/fx4m001 #fossil @almnh.bsky.social #paleontology

‼️Research alert for #FossilFriday‼️ Well-preserved, ~69 million-year-old ammonites from South Dakota show two type of lethal injuries: lateral punch holes and ventral bite marks in 7.3% of the 1303 shells. Crustaceans and coleoids may be the predators. Read more: tiny.cc/wogl001 @almnh.bsky.social

#FossilFriday‼️ 😲 Remarkably large (~20" or 50 cm) ammonite from an Alabama creek exposing Upper Cretaceous sediments. The specimen is still underwater in this photo (see tadpoles 🐸). Specimen @almnh.bsky.social. Discovered by George Martin. #paleontology #fossil #Alabama

#FossilFriday‼️ Cephalopod time! 😀 Internal molds of nautiloid air chambers exposed in a limestone in central Alabama. Nautiloids can be abundant in some Paleocene rocks in the state. Specimen @almnh.bsky.social collection. Discovered by Research Associate Prescott Atkinson. #paleontology #fossil

#FossilFriday‼️ Tiny specimens often get overlooked, but they are important parts of ecosystems. Here's a very rare, pyritized, ~82 million-year-old coral from Harrell Station in Alabama. 😲 Collected by Jan Novak during a trip organized for the Birmingham Paleo Society. Specimen @almnh.bsky.social.

😲 #FossilFriday‼️ Not one but two rare, pyritized ammonites were discovered at Harrell Station during a recent trip organized for the Birmingham Paleo Society. The only two non-jaw pieces in the last 5 years! Cretaceous (~82 Ma), Alabama. Collectors: Chase Egli & Adiel Klompmaker @almnh.bsky.social

‼️Student highlight for #FossilFriday‼️ UA Blount Scholars Museum Intern Lilly Roehrig curated a collection of >130 Mississippian-aged crinoids (sea lilies) from Alabama this semester, after a generous donation by Jessica Cost in February. Specimens @almnh.bsky.social collection. #fossil #paleontology

🦈 Exquisite Cretaceous shark coprolite (dung) from Harrell Station Paleo Site, Alabama. 😲 Mooreville Chalk, ~82 Ma. Coprolites can tell about the diet of ancient sharks. Specimen: ALMNH:Paleo:2389 @almnh.bsky.social Collector: Brown Hawkins, 1990. #FossilFriday‼️ #fossil #paleontology

‼️Research alert for #FossilFriday. Last week, my former intern Celie Cowart presented research at UA's undergraduate conference on "Dining on Oysters during the Cretaceous Period"! While the drilling gastropod culprits did not preserve, they left their traces behind on the shells. @almnh.bsky.social

#FossilFriday‼️ Two weeks ago, I went with my Paleontology & Society class (UA's Blount Scholars Program) to Harrell Station, a classic Cretaceous site in Alabama. Everyone found various fossils, even mosasaur teeth. 😀 Here are mosa teeth found by 3 students! @almnh.bsky.social #fossil #paleontology

#FossilFriday‼️ Marvelous example of a colonial coral from North Alabama. 😍 325 million years ago, the ocean was located to the north instead of the south and tropical waters hosted a range of organisms. Specimen @almnh.bsky.social paleo collection! Collector: Prescott Atkinson #fossil #paleontology

#FossilFriday‼️ Today is Harrell Station Paleontological Site day with my Paleontology & Society class. Here's a nice ~82 million-year-old sea urchin from this site in central Alabama found earlier. 😃 Usually, only loose plates are found. Specimen @almnh.bsky.social collection. #fossil #paleontology

‼️#FossilFriday‼️ A neat discovery by an undergraduate student in the lab this week! Grey Eaton found a part of a mosasaur jaw when sieving marls from UA's Harrell Station paleo site in Alabama. 😲 Remarkably, it fits to another jaw piece found earlier! @almnh.bsky.social #fossil #paleontology

‼️#FossilFriday‼️ Neat burrows in ~315 million-year-old lithified mud of northern Alabama. Nearly all of the >5000 slabs with fossils from this locality (see inset photo) were collected by avocational paleontologist Ron Buta. Many of them were donated to the @almnh.bsky.social fossil collection. 👍

‼️early #FossilFriday. Remarkable specimen of the rudist bivalve 𝐷𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑎 𝑚𝑎𝑥𝑖𝑚𝑎, found in Pickens County, Alabama. Mooreville Chalk, Cretaceous (~ 82 Ma). 😍 Specimen used by Zimmerman et al. (2023: J Paleo @paleosoc.bsky.social). Specimen @almnh.bsky.social (ALMNH:Paleo:12696). #paleontology #fossil

Or: "Ecologists discover palaeontology (and historicity of biology) 200 years after Cuvier" nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Remember my words: this is just a tip of the iceberg of rebuilding of the ecological theory through its integration with palaeontology 🧪 #Macroecology

🐊‼️#FossilFriday‼️Here's one of the vertebrae of the Late Cretaceous croc Deinosuchus schwimmeri. Mooreville Chalk, Alabama; found by boy scouts, 1950s. See exhibit @almnh.bsky.social showing more of this specimen (ALMNH:Paleo:1002), used to describe this croc species in 2020. #paleontology #fossil

‼️Check out these marvelous ~315 million-year-old tetrapod trackways ascribed to Nanopus reidiae. 😀 Found in the Pottsville Formation of the famous Union Chapel Mine in Alabama by P. Atkinson. #FossilFriday #fossil #paleontology Specimen @almnh.bsky.social collection: ALMNH:Paleo:5943.

😃 New rudist bivalve from ~82 million-year-old marls of the Mooreville Chalk at Harrell Station, Dallas County, Alabama. ALMNH:Paleo:21755. Collector: David Braswell, during a trip organized for the Alabama Paleo Society in Nov 2024. #FossilFriday #fossil #paleontology Specimen @almnh.bsky.social

‼️The final circular for the 9th Symposium on Fossil Decapod Crustaceans, 9-13 June 2025, Faxe, Denmark is available now: collections.museums.ua.edu/9th-fossil-d... The deadline to register and for abstracts is 1 March 2025. Everyone is invited to participate this summer in southern Scandinavia. 👍

We continue to rehouse, verify, and photograph a part of the invertebrate fossil collection @almnh.bsky.social. Undergraduate student Riley Chandler is helping along this semester! Here are some well-preserved, ~40 million-year-old gastropods from Alabama. #paleontology #fossil early #FossilFriday

Here's an Eocene (~48 Ma) crab from Alabama under study. This is a partial carapace of Costacopluma grayi, a retoplumid crab described in 2007 by the late Dr. Rodney Feldmann and Roger Portell. It's rare: less than 20 specimens are known! #crab #fossil #paleontology #FossilFriday @almnh.bsky.social

‼️Research Alert‼️ Incredible mistakes by predatory gastropods: holes made from the inner side of a bivalve shell. 🙃 😃 First two instances from the fossil record. It's very rare though! Open access paper with Greg Dietl: doi.org/10.1017/jpa.... #FossilFriday #paleontology #fossil @almnh.bsky.social

Nice, new rudist bivalve specimen from ~82 million-year-old marls from the Mooreville Chalk of Greene County, Alabama. Taxon name = Radiolites sp. Dr. Alex Zimmerman published on such rudists in 2023: doi.org/10.1017/jpa.... ALMNH:Paleo:21753 @almnh.bsky.social #FossilFriday #fossil #paleontology

What a find! 🦈 Finding teeth associated with shark vertebrae is a rarity. Here's one example of Cretalamna from the ~82 million-year-old Mooreville Chalk of Harrell Station Paleo Site, Alabama. Discovered during a UA class field trip. 😀 early #FossilFriday Specimen @almnh.bsky.social collection.

There is still time to apply: For the Fall 2025 semester, I am looking for a PhD student to study biotic interactions in fossil and modern mollusks from the Isthmus of Panama as part of a collaborative NSF-funded project. Please share widely, and get in touch if interested. @almnh.bsky.social

UA Blount Scholars undergraduate student Celie Cowart recently completed a curation project of 184 Mississippian crinoids from Alabama as part of her museum internship! Specimens were graciously donated by Jessica Cost. Specimens @almnh.bsky.social collection. early #FossilFriday #paleontology

Cretaceous Eldorado for vertebrate fossils. A fish coprolite with vertebrae within it and mosasaur vertebrae were found by Ashton Johnson during trips for the Alabama Paleo Society to Harrell Station! 😃 Specimens @uamuseums @UAMNH. #paleontology #fossil #fish #mosasaur early #FossilFriday‼️

🐟🐟 Fishing for fossils in the Cretaceous. A couple of neat predatory fishes were found by the Braswell brothers during an Alabama Paleo Society trip to Harrell Station on Nov 9! 😃 Specimens @uamuseums @UAMNH collection. #paleontology #fossil #fish early #FossilFriday‼️