Although I didn’t go into paleontology, PRI still played a huge role in my career path. The Paleobio course was the first time I realized I could keep up with grad-level work, and volunteering with PRI’s outreach department was some of my first teaching experience. Please help them if you can.

The Museum of the Earth in Ithaca NY has until the end of the year to make the last $275,000 on its mortgage. I mean, I could cover that. I'm unemployed. It would wipe out my retirement. It's not much more than the market value of my home. But I really can't ask my family to endure that. Please.

We’ve spent the past two days on the road, so my dog has barely moved from her bed since we got home last night. But then I tried to eat some string cheese without her, and that was unacceptable enough to motivate her to get up to force me to share.

A few seconds of kettling vultures for your evening. #birds

Every semester, any of my upper-level students who don’t already know it learn why ducks are The Worst.

My dog’s version of opening a present but only playing with the box.

The designer of today’s holiday socks needs a quick lesson in font choice. Or maybe “oh, oy” is just how they feel about the holidays.

and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, nor can he be said to still live, not until such time as his box is opened and the quantum entanglement is resolved

Today’s holiday socks feature solid life advice and horribly inaccurate sloth biology.

My end-of-semester crash was the worst it’s ever been this year, and recovery has been slooow. Burnout sucks, y’all.

For #fossilfriday, The New York Times has written a good article about the Paleontological Research Institution, what the museum means to the field of Paleontology, and its current financial situation (much improved even from a few weeks ago). 🧪🦑⚒️🦣 #paleontology www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/s...

Well I timed this afternoon’s dog walk pretty perfectly.

I finally got my final grades submitted, then my brain shut down and is refusing to do anything even faintly productive. I did manage to swap out the fall and winter foliage on my LEGO bonsai tree, though.

Snoot booped! Snoot booped!! We got booped by the snoot!!! We had a most wonderful encounter with a curious manatee today :)) #manatee #manateesofcoralcity #seacow #seapotato #boop #boopthesnoot #whiskers #sirenia #cutiepie #coral #coralhead #coralcitycamera #miami #portmiami #biscaynebay #coralcity

I love when, if a student can't remember a term for something on an exam, they draw me a little diagram to show what they're talking about.

I've got an exam question asking which vertebrates they'd put on the brochure for a time-travel ecotourism business going to various geological periods. Most answer straightforwardly, but some get VERY into planning their business model catering to the desires of time-tourists. 😆

This incident got meme-ified! 😂

Gorgeous Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) on our dog walk this morning. #HawkWatch2025 #birds 🪶

A little color to start off the weekend – a vibrant monkey grasshopper, Paramastax sp., from Colombia. They really do look like this - no saturation or vibrance added during processing. #bugsky 🐙🌿

Everyone (including me) showed up on time and ready to go – if a little grumbly (including me) – for our 7:30 a.m. final exam today. It’s a holiday miracle!

I'm so happy for Ellen and hope she enjoys the heck out of her well-earned retirement!

What everyone wants in a Dickensian holiday vibe: MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL on loop. What everyone is getting in a Dickensian holiday vibe: outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases.

#LocalVertDiversity 43. Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) My catbird for this project this semester was IDed mostly by call (which does, in fact, sound like a cat); the pictures I got were absolute trash. So here's a marginally less-trash picture from fall of 2024 instead. #birds 🪶

My dog is *almost* the perfect grading companion, except for the fact that every time I glance at her I am reminded how much I too would like to curl up on the couch and take a nap.

#LocalVertDiversity 41 & 42. Fishies! *Very* tentatively IDed as Grass Carp (the big one; Ctenopharyngodon idella), and Eastern Mosquitofish (the little ones; Gambusia holbrooki) It's near-impossible to get a decent picture of fish with my super-old phone camera. But there's def. 2 species there!

Tetrapoda*: how it started vs. how it's going. *OK, OK: stem-Tetrapoda. But it's not as snappy.

#LocalVertDiversity 40. Pond Slider (Trachemys scripta) Red-eared sliders (T. s. elegans) are familiar to most people because they're invasive in so many places (including here), but I think this is the native subspecies, the yellow-bellied slider (T. s. scripta). #turtle #wildlife 🐢

After a grocery run last night, I realized that my finals week supplies are largely the same as my hurricane prep supplies (chocolate, drinks, Publix smores cookies, and PB&J ingredients).

#LocalVertDiversity 39. American Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus). I learned this semester that the Botanical Gardens are not just for plants, they're also a great place for finding bullfrogs and other wildlife. I think this was one of three or four I saw.

These Pygmy Fruit-eating Bats are another one of my neighbors here at @casabentbill.bsky.social #CostaRica They cut along the midrib of banana leaves to make them collapse into a protected little house. And then they cuddle with each other and wonder why this strange man is looking at them. #bats

I would like to formally apologize to whatever minor deity / universal power / person at the registrar's office for whichever offense I committed that caused the final exams for both of my courses this semester to be assigned 7:30 AM time slots.

I would never have thought this was the same species as the Hairy Woodpeckers I’m familiar with.

During the semester, my #vertz students each have to give a "Get to Know a Vertebrate" presentation on a species of their choice, including adding it to the class GTKAV phylogeny, which starts with juncos (my study species) and humans. Here are all the cool species I got to learn about this year!

Everyone DOES need to see a Stegosaurus occasionally.

Hooray, it’s finally jamdvent calendar season! I’m a few days late in starting, since my Thanksgiving guests only left yesterday and the mini jam jars are decidedly single serving.

One of the best laughs I've gotten this semester, a thread: 🧵 Background: Our intro bio series has course codes BSC2010 and BSC2011, and around the department, we tend to just refer to them by number. In class today, I was talking about the difference between foregut and hindgut fermenters. 1/5

Time to play another round of "will any of my students recognize the reference from the 1980s?" (This is the last slide of my last lecture in #Vertz. Cetaceans are the last group I talk about, and phylogenetically, the whole semester has been about fish, so it's doubly appropriate.)

This #givingtuesday please consider donating to the Paleontological Research Institution/Museum of the Earth PRI is a major US fossil collection and education center & has been struggling after a major donor was unable to fulfill a pledge but is almost out of the woods, any support helps! 🦑⚒️🧪🐌🐚

Wisdom’s mate joins her! 🎼 #Reunited USFWS staff spotted band EX25 on 11/25. No, he has not been named; we await that news. So far we have a few photos and we'll share more as we receive them. Here's to a successful egg laying and hatching season for these two! Photos by Chris Forster. #Birds

On the other hand, the part where there still was deeper water was FULL of alligators. These three were closest to the path, but I counted maybe 18-20 total. Plus a heron in satellite dish mode! #wildlife 🪶🐊

We’ve had such a dry autumn that the wetlands at the prairie were… not very wet.

#OnThisDay in 1859, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was first published. Much of the original manuscript was used as scrap paper by Darwin's children. On the back of this painting of a house is an original manuscript page from Origin! #CambridgeUniversityLibrary (DAR 185)

My favorite assignment that I give my #Vertz students is to pick a fantasy creature and argue for where they think it would fit in the vertebrate phylogeny. They get so creative and detailed with their analysis, and it's so much fun to read.

Happy Thanksgiving, to all who celebrate. May you be the one feasting on turkey-sized paravian theropods, and not the other way around! And to those condemned to battling family upon the occasion, may the strength of a million raptors course through your veins.

Who’s got two thumbs and totally forgot to take the turkey out to bring it up to room temperature before putting it in the oven? At least I did remember to defrost it.

The first time I hear Sandhill Cranes trumpeting in a given year, it always takes me a minute before I remember what that weird unearthly sound is. 🪶 #birds

You've just died. The 6th picture in your gallery is what killed you. Oh. Erm, well. That’s actually plausible. (It was pretty small in real life, so I’m going to assume it got lucky and nicked my femoral artery or something.)

#LocalVertDiversity 37. Domestic Muscovy Duck (Cairina moschata) & 38. Black-bellied Whistling-Duck (Dendrocygna autumnalis) Duck face-off! The Muscovys looked like they were about to cause trouble, but the Black-bellied held their ground (water?) and the Muscovys swerved around. #birds 🪶

#LocalVertDiversity 36. Downy Woodpecker male (Dryobates pubescens) I just learned that Downys are not particularly closely related to Hairy Woodpeckers, which are almost identical except they've got bigger bills and are bigger overall, which absolutely blows my mind. Evolution's so neat. #birds 🪶