I know it's Wednesday but this has been dragging on for weeks. Started out with the idea of practicing coral. I don't even know what I was going for here but this is where it ended up. #SundayFishSketch #WednesdayFishSketch

Parting shot from 10 days ago… Crested Caracara portrait 🪶

Wow. Foraminifera! ROV pilots paused and carefully zoomed in to collect footage of these single-celled microorganisms, or protists, at 843 m during the #OBVI #LivingBioreactors expedition w/ @schmidtsciences.bsky.social offshore of Argentina. Read the full caption: youtube.com/shorts/Yv_ud...

Apistogramma staying still again.

This tree grew through an old car tire in the woods.

What is good in life I-75? To sit in you chair drinking an old fashioned and watching your fish, trying to see if the catfish are hiding or dead. Alternatively according to K4 “that’s a lot of tism’ing you sad old man.”

Quick #SundayFishSketch while I move some data around of convict blennies, who are apparently probably not the sister group to cichlids after all 🫢

One of my favorite sarcopterygian lineages, the tyrannosaurs

Paper alert ‼️ 🧪Our very own Dr Jade Margerum just published her 2nd PhD paper on International Women’s Day! 💐🌻🌹🌷 15 years of monitoring of #Botovskaya Cave in #Siberia! Kudos to our women & an amazing team! @olakwiecien3.bsky.social @annabelwolf.bsky.social digitalcommons.usf.edu/ijs/vol54/is...

100 Days of Reef Fish Beautiful Reef Fish 5/10: Moorish Idol, Zanclus corutus. The common name may refer to the reverence that fishermen in some parts of Southeast Asia have for these fish. #sciart #marinelife #coralreefs #dothe100daysproject #sundayfishsketch

I enjoyed the splash of light through this quartz egg

Great thread!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Now available as final, typeset version #openaccess 🧪

Researchers, led by Dr. Bali Pulendran at Stanford, plan Phase I human safety trials, with potential availability within 5 to 7 years. The goal is to provide a single, seasonal nasal spray that could protect against multiple respiratory threats. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I've seen countless rooks, but never had one visit our (current) garden, and never seen one with an inflated gular pouch. Apparently these serve as a food store and are typical for many corvids, but they're more conspicuous in rooks because of their bald faces. #birds #wildlife

The presumed upcoming El Nino will help cement and quantify global warming acceleration, showing that 2C global warming is likely to be reached in the 2030s, not at midcentury. See Another El Nino Already? mailchi.mp/caa/another-... Also available on Substack: jimehansen.substack.com/p/another-el...

Fascinating world of ancient #glass: This #Roman flask in the form of a fish was found in Cologne, 3rd c. AD. 🐠🐟 We don't know what is was used for, maybe the shape relates to the content (fish sauce), maybe it was used to hold oil. 📷 🏺

Arctic charr are a specialist fish living in deep lakes & lochs (I'm hesitant to say rare as they are in over 220 lochs in scotland!) Normally getting no more then a 1lb in Northern europe they have sea run forms that can get over 20lb

Happy International Women's Day 💐 Did you know, for every 7 men in palaeontology, there are ~3 women. Women make up 25-35% of global vertebrate palaeontological publishing output. And are most likely to study mammals, while men, reptiles.

Happy International Woman's Day! I know you cannot recognise it, but in the first picture it is Cinthya and me, literally shading light on speleoscience in the Waipuna Cave!

Meet the Regal Damoiselle, the newest saltwater fish species to call Miami home. Native to the Indian Ocean, it is believed to have followed their nests on oil rigs that were towed across the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico where they’ve become established 🌎✌️👽🐟🌍 #regaldamoiselle #coralcitycamera

Good evening good people.

Great thread on a cool animal and a major problem: where do sturgeon come from? I still wish we could find a Triassic acipenseriform, there are a few candidates. But, the Triassic presents a daunting challenge to parsing out lineages that are gave rise to the fishes we have today.

#OTD 10 years ago we published the spotted #gar genome. 600+ citations later, we are proud of its impact on vertebrate genomics. @jpostlethwait.bsky.social Check out the new assemblies generated with @vertebrategenomes.bsky.social www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/gen... #EndlessFishMostBeautiful

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Now available as final, typeset version #openaccess 🧪

Philodromus fuscomarginatus Fuchsroter Rindenflachstrecker seen today close to Berlin

Out now in Contributions from me and @gilespalaeo.bsky.social, a deep dive into an early member of the sturgeon and paddlefish lineage. Bear with me, but there’s a long backstory highlighting uncertainty about the anatomy of living species and how well-studied fossils can still yield new insights.

Rock-dwelling cichlids like this Paralabidochromis sauvagei are known as Mbipi at the southern shore of Lake Victoria. 🐟 #photography #fishkeeping

"There's five times as many butterflies on cattle grazing sites compared with sheep grazed sites," @bcyorkshire.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Great!! Sheep are a *top* cause of nature loss. www.bbc.com/news/article...

🚨New Pub!🚨Understanding the Westphalo-Stephanian ichthyofaunal turnover with the contribution of the Vaulnaveys-le-Bas locality (Isère, France)🐟🇫🇷by Gonçalves et al. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

🐟🧪

Upcoming book on the complexities and implications of pain in fishes by Ila France Porcher. Can't wait to read it! #fishsci #fishwelfare ilafranceporcher.wixsite.com/so/71PoUcu0J...

100 Days of Reef Fish Beautiful Reef Fish 3/10: Copper Band Butterflyfish, Chelmon rostratus. These fish form long-term monogamous pairs. Thanks again, Uncle Scotter, @dinosaucerous.bsky.social for the suggestion. #sciart #marinelife #coralreefs #dothe100daysproject

Commentary: If Females Could Get Pregnant, There’d Be An Abortion Clinic On Every Coral https://theonion.com/if-females-could-get-pregnant-thered-be-an-abortion-clinic-on-every-coral/

...and a visit to the lands and seas of the Silurian. These were a ton of fun to work on and represent my biggest set of 2D works to date. I've yet to see them printed in person, but maybe one day. Lots of discussion about how they came to be in my Patreon post.

At #Patreon, I've been discussing my 2024 #paleoart murals for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History: www.patreon.com/markwitton. They include a life-size Allosaurus, Cambrian faunas, Yixian pterosaurs, birds and insects, Cleveland Shale strata and fishes... #FossilFriday #sciart #paleontology

#FossilFriday Verbeekiella australis, among the last of the Palaeozoic ‘horn corals’ belonging to the class Rugosa, from the Permian of Timor. The function of the unusual axial structure is unclear according to my colleague Brian Rosen.

Because I know you all care as much about early diverging chondrosteans as I do: deepblue.lib.umich.edu/items/b06e41...

Dental Formulas xkcd.com/3213/

No two Paratilapia have the same spot pattern, like finger prints, the size, color and distribution of blotches is unique to the individual. The pattern changes with age. Paratilapia is the least understood genus in the cichlid world, posing a steep learning curve but so rewarding to see fully grown

Oh my! What big eyes you have! Juvenile bluefin driftfish can be found near the surface, where large eyes help them navigate and spot small prey. As adults, bluefin driftfish venture to deeper waters to find food and avoid predation, where their large eyes improve their ability to detect prey.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Lead by Jeremy McCormack of @goetheuni.bsky.social, and with a miniscule contribution from me, we present geochemical evidence that sharks were marine apex predators since at least the Late Cretaceous. 🐟🦈🧪 #paleobiology #geochemistry

Like-Follow-Subscribe for more really dumb geology jokes

Miss these little buggers.

The second reports a tiny (~3 cm) articulated fish from the early Silurian. The material is challenging, but it is unquestionably a bony fish. Fittingly named Eosteus, it co-occurs with the oldest articulated jawed fishes and cements the antiquity of osteichthyans. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The first revisits Megamastax, a late Silurian fish described in 2014 as a sarcopt based on isolated jaws. Remarkable new cranial material shows it is a stem osteichthyan, providing our most detailed picture of a bony fish branching before the sarcopt/actinopt split. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Osteichthyans--the bony fishes--are by far the most diverse group of living jawed vertebrates. Two papers out today in @nature.com feature remarkable new Chinese fossils that paint a picture of substantial morphological diversity among stem osteichthyans.

Calling myself an imperfect fish from now on....

Poposaurus running simulations starting to get better than utterly ridiculous. Now just ridiculous.