Happy #nationalfossilday and #whalewednesday! This is Waharoa ruwhenua, a critical fossil for understanding the early evolution of baleen whales. Waharoa was discovered in 26 million year old limestone in New Zealand, and likely had both baleen AND vestigial teeth. 🧵1/

Starting right now!

New blog post: tracking the slow exposure and erosion of a small fossil baleen whale skull in the Pliocene Purisima Formation on the northern California coast. This is the fifth skull of the dwarf baleen whale Herpetocetus that I've discovered, and still need to dig up! #whaleontology 🧪🦖🐬

We also had some fantastic out-in-the-open lobster sightings! Usually these guys are tucked inside crevices and you just see their face and antennae, but we saw several out and about in broad daylight. California spiny lobster, Panulirus interruptus. In the last 2 pics it's eating a mussel!🤿🦑🦀

🦀Minus tides are coming! Our first daytime minus tide of the fall is today (in SoCal anyway), though I probably won't go out until tomorrow. But, you know what that means: more nudi pics! And by that I mean nudibranchs, lovely colorful little sea slugs: coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2024/03/nudi...

This cat KNOWS he's pretty, and loves to ham it up for pictures 🖤🤍@coastalpaleo.bsky.social

#whalewednesday The spectacular early toothed whale Xenorophus sloanii from the Oligocene (~28 mya) of South Carolina! This is a critical transitional fossil, known from about a dozen skulls and partial skeletons. Read more about Xenorophus here on my blog: coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-...

For #worldoctopusday here is my favorite photo I've taken of an octopus, in a hole in a rock about 10 feet down while snorkeling. Octopus are quite hard to spot unless they're moving! This one is a rather small (perhaps ~2' wide) American Octopus, Octopus americana. 🦑🦀🧪🤿

#fossilfriday I find early whale and dolphin teeth to be quite beautiful and unusual. This is a lower molar of an extinct, as-yet unnamed simocetid dolphin (?Olympicetus) from the early Oligocene Makah Formation of Washington, USA. Acid prepared; collected by Jim Goedert. 🦖🐬 #whaleontology

Some of my more beautiful kelp forest photos from August, when I went out snorkeling with @joshualudtke.bsky.social at La Jolla.

🔭 Комета Lemmon сегодня утром на снимке Брэя Фоллса ✨

Did you know that we used to have warm water beluga whales? This is the pilot whale-convergent beluga Denebola brachycephala from ~8 million year old rocks (Almejas Fm.) of Isla Cedros just off Baja California. Read more about white whale evolution here: coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-...

#fossilfriday The beautiful skull of the dwarf baleen whale Herpetocetus bramblei (Cetotheriidae) I discovered and excavated as an undergrad from the 5-6 myo Purisima Formation near Santa Cruz, California. Now in @ucmpberkeley.bsky.social collections!

At the Fordyce lab at Otago, we would do this with sheets of tyvek and illuminate it with LED lamps. It's important to be flexible with space and equipment to make an ad hoc studio when you study fossil whales! Usually, you bring the studio to the whale 🏋️

NEW blog post! The evolution and fossil record of narwhals and belugas - the white whales! Emphasis on the surprising fossil record of belugas and the evolution of the bizarre tusk in the weirdest modern cetacean. 🐬🧪🦖 #whaleontology Read it here: coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-...

Went to LA comic con with @tetrameryx.bsky.social and @joshualudtke.bsky.social today. The funniest/most incredibly niche costume I saw was, in a star wars family costume, a lady dressed up as gender bent Dave Filoni, complete with the hat and everything

#seaotterawarenessweek Sea otters are some of the most famous modern marine mammals, and considered ecosystem engineers here on the Pacific coast. However, we know surprisingly little about their evolutionary history and fossil record. 🧵1/ coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-...

NGC 7293 - The Helix Nebula 🔭 #astronomy #astro #astrophoto #astrophotography

14 years married, and over 20 years together - he still makes me laugh every day, and is the best friend anyone could ever ask for. I'm the luckiest girl in the world. Happy lucky 14th wedding anniversary! Love you to the end, nerd. @coastalpaleo.bsky.social

I spent the last day of my 30s and the first day of my 40s snorkeling with friends (with attached and removable fins), and had some of my closest friends and colleagues over to look at far too many whale specimens. @tetrameryx.bsky.social baked her most beautiful cake yet 😍

#gingercatappreciationday here's my orange son, Jonesy

“… after people expressed concern over his absence for 3 days.” I mean, I wouldn’t say I was concerned

The Pleiades, open star cluster. Inspired by The Starry Night, and painted with watercolor on paper. #SciArt #Astronomy #Watercolor #ArtYear

#fossilfriday Max Mastodon on display at Western Science Center - the holotype skull and partial skeleton of the Pacific mastodon, Mammut pacificus - the recently named species of mastodon unique to the Pacific coast.

If you've ever struggled to take good photographs of fossils (or other reasonably stationary natural history objects), here's a beginner's guide to scientific fossil photography I wrote a while ago (and should probably update). coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2016/02/pale...

New #watercolor - the skull that launched a thousand papers - Aetiocetus weltoni, the ~25 myo toothed baleen whale that likely had teeth and baleen - from the Oligocene of Oregon. I started this last winter and only finally finished it yesterday. 🐡 🦖🐬 #sciart #whaleontology #whalewednesday #art

Phiomicetus anubis turns 4 today! So proud of the little guy 🥹P. anubis is a 42-43 million year old "walking whale" from the Fayum desert of Egypt. #whaleontology 🧪🦖

Only got one good shot of this gorgonian soft coral (California golden gorgonian, Muricea californica) - it was at an awkward depth, too deep to just stick my arm down while floating, but too shallow to dive). But, what a beautiful coral! A relative of fan corals and sea whips. 🦀🦑

NGC 281 - The Pacman Nebula This nebula is a bright emission nebula in the constellation Cassiopea ~9200 light-years away from us. 🔭 #astronomy #astro #astrophoto #astrophotography

California spiny lobsters (Panulirus interruptus) are generally hard to photograph 'whole' as they're usually stuck in crevices and only their face and antennae are visible. This individual was eating something in a mass of feather boa kelp, and I was able to shoot it as it swayed past me! 🦀🦑

New thread! I've been doing a bit more #snorkeling on the CA coast this summer. Last week I spotted two new sea urchins in a 10 minute span that were firsts for me: the red urchin (Mesocentrotus franciscanus) and the black starry urchin (Arbacia stellata). 🦀🦑

#fossilfriday Acid prep finished! Here's a time series of 7 months of acid baths for this dwarf baleen whale (Herpetocetus) auditory region, including a nicely preserved periotic (inner ear bone)- now ready for study. Latest Miocene (5-6 mya) Purisima Formation, Santa Cruz, CA. 🦖🧪🐬 #whaleontology

Hi, all! I'm Eric, a vertebrate paleontologist in southern California. I study Pliocene & Pleistocene (= ice age) large mammals, esp. horses & bison, looking to better understand their distributions & ecosystem interactions. I also study the Pleistocene megafaunal extinction event in North America.

And some more stragglers from this tidepool session, from left to right: 1) a new nudi for me: Red Aldisa (Aldisa sanguinea)! 2) a rough limpet (Diodora aspera), and 3-4) more typically colored pale green moonglow anemones (Anthopleura artemisia). 🦀🦑

I wanted to finish this today, but I can’t feel my hand anymore. I’ll have to add the rest of the stars tomorrow! Hope you’re not bored of me posting this painting yet 😅

Just kidding there's a couple more! Iridescent algae, Mazzaella splendens - looking particularly lovely on an early foggy morning. An intertidal to subtidal species of red algae that lives from Alaska to Baja. #monterey #algae #phycology 🦑🦀

Here in Kyrgyzstan as a paleontologist, but seeing a petroglyph by your fieldsite will make your day.

And to finish if off, here's some miscellaneous critters I only got one or two shots of, from left to right: a three lined aeolid nudibranch (Coryphella trilineata), a baby rock scallop (Crassadoma gigantea), a brittle star (Ophiothrix spiculata), and a Heath's dorid (?) (Geitodoris heathi) 🦀🦑

Some assorted Triophas - three spotted triophas (Triopha maculata), including an unusual pale yellow example, and a more flamboyant species, the modest clown dorid (Triopha modesta). Triopha spp. eat bryozoans, live to ~30 m from California to Japan. #nudibranch 🦀🦑

@tetrameryx.bsky.social and I had a blast yesterday at #PaleoCon2025 at the Western Science Center! It was great catching up with a bunch of old friends.

🔭 #astronomy #astro #astrophoto #astrophotography

The Cygnus Loop. This image was taken over a period of four nights with the Seestar S30 telescope. I ended up with around 6.5 hours worth of data. I processed this image in Siril, Graxpert and Lightroom for touchup. #astronomy @kat-astro-bot.bsky.social #astrophotography #space #universe

That morning there were TONS of white spotted sea goddess nudibranchs out (Doriopsilla albopunctata), some up to about 6 cm. These nudis probably eat sponges, and range only from Mendocino to San Diego. #nudibranch #seaslug 🦀🦑

DOTOS! These little cuties are tiny little sea slugs - the hammerhead doto (Doto amyra). They can be difficult to find, especially if it's 6am and you haven't had any coffee (a kind tidepooler pointed these out for me, for the record). These grow to a whopping 14 mm long. #monterey #nudibranch🦑🦀

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NGC 6992 - The Eastern Veil Nebula The Eastern Veil Nebula is a supernova remnant from a star that exploded between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. When this star exploded, it would have been one of the brightest objects in the night sky, and even visible during the day.

Not a giant green OR sunburst anemone - every now and then you find an incredibly vivid green moonglow anemone (Anthopleura artemisia). These can be pale or even pink in color, and always have little white stripes on the tentacles - only grow to 10 cm in diameter. #monterey #tidepool 🦑🦀

Another baby fish - a ~10 cm long baby Cabezon (Scorpeanichthys marmoratus) - much less formidable than its mature form! Cabezon are giant sculpins that live on rocky bottoms along the Pacific coast and feed on marine inverts and fish. My first Cabezon sighting ever. #tidepools 🦀🦑

🥹A baby Northern Clingfish (Gobiesox maeandricus) hiding amongst some green algae. These little cuties have modified their pectoral/pelvic fins into a little suction cup. The Great Tidepool, Pacific Grove. #tidepooling #tidepools 🦑🦀

Finally processed my photos from my dawn visit to The Great Tidepool in Pacific Grove two weeks ago - here are some macro shots of a giant green anemone (Anthopleura xanthogrammica). #tidepooling #tidepools 🦑🦀 📸Olympus TG6