I was in Arizona last weekend, which is a great place to ensconce yourself in the interface between culture and nature. At Taliesin West, an alluvial fan gave Frank Lloyd Wright the gentle hill he wanted for his masterpiece of a home and studio in a land of jagged mountains and flat deserts.

Happy Year pf the Horse from my occasionally equid-focused lab!

I tried my hand at a little amateur videography in the Open Sea exhibit at the @orcoastaquarium.bsky.social and really lucked out! (The music is Debussy's 'La Mer,' which I added because the original background audio included other people's conversations, and darned if it doesn't fit perfectly)

Happy #FossilFriday from the Bonavista Peninsula of Newfoundland, home of several important Ediacaran localities within the fantastic Discovery Global Geopark!

Longtime wildlife-viewing aspiration achieved (at Port au Choix National Historic Site, Newfoundland)!

What does a paleontologist do when they’re on vacation? Go look at fossils! Is it healthy? Probably not, but when a museum does as fantastic a job with their exhibits as the @romtoronto.bsky.social, how could I resist spending part of a long Toronto layover there?

Always a pleasure to find myself back "home" at the @burkemuseum.bsky.social, especially on #FossilFriday!

Denisovan was a man. I mean, he was a Dragon Man.

A few glimpses of a Salish Sea spring before jetting off to an African savanna winter (taken at Seattle's Ballard Locks and the Anacortes ferry terminal)

As of this #FossilFriday, I'm officially hosting a symposium on Afrotheria at next year's IPC in Cape Town! There's still a lot to work out, but if you work on elephants, sea cows, aardvarks or any of their relatives (and can make it to South Africa) please consider being a part of this session!

One of the perks of doing research at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is getting to stroll through the exhibits afterwards. Besides telling a great story about climate change and evolution, they are a textbook example of how great paleoart can elevate a paleontology display.

The lab is working on describing some carnivores from Oregon's John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, so I had an excuse to run down to one of our planet's more dramatic fossiliferous landscapes (and my old stomping grounds) over our Spring Break.

Following up on my earlier announcement of a lab Bluesky page, I wanted to share our first post, which naturally had to feature long-time friend of the lab Teleoceras.

In the interest of fully divesting from the Tech Bro social media sites, I just started a BlueSky page for my lab! Give us a follow for research updates and news!

A weekend trip across the state to visit family culminated in finding myself in the midst of one of the Northwest's greatest natural spectacles.

Ex Africa semper aliquid novi! Egypt's Fayum is an incredible window into a crucial interval in mammalian evolution. Thanks to a team led by researchers at Mansoura University, the Fayum bestiary is now one species larger. Absolutely love the Ancient Egyptian-inspired name Bastetodon!

Just out: My first ever field-based paper in 25+ years in paleo Carbonaceous macrofossils from the Ediacaran–Cambrian lower shale member of the Soltanieh formation, NW Iran. Led by Najmeh Etemad-Saeed, w/ Shuhai Xiao, me, Kristin Bergmann, Andy Knoll free URL: authors.elsevier.com/c/1ka1c14fdH...

For #FossilFriday may I present to you an amazing scorpion, Pulmonoscorpius kirktonensis. It may look like the moult of a modern species, but these are actually ~330 million year old fossils, dissolved out of a rock from 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 using acid. ⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky

The Turtle Cove assemblage from John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is the theme for this year's #NationalFossilDay poster art! Check out the writeup on the NPS website! www.nps.gov/articles/000...

I'm prepping a lecture on the afrotherian paleontology this #FossilFriday, so how could I not share the spectacular reconstruction of Arsinoitherium from the Fayum of Egypt on display at the Natural History Museum, London?

Two related things that make me proud of my home town of Seattle: 1) We're a @unesconow.bsky.social City of Literature 2) We have a strong contender for World's Most Beautiful Bookstore in Arundel Books

I designed a sticker to raise money for California wildfire relief - I have been wanting to draw something involving garibaldi fish, and seeing as they’re the state marine fish of California I figured now was a fitting time. Preorder period ends in a week - find all details below #marinelife

Last full day on the West Side before heading back to Spokane. Spending it with some surprising sunshine and the Space Age architecture of the Seattle Center (site of the '62 World's Fair).

As always, the Olympics made photography easy today.

For so many reasons, things are stressful right now. I've always found the waters of the Olympic Peninsula to be endlessly soothing and refreshing, and I hope these videos bring some of that calm to your feed. First, off, Madison Falls in Olympic National Park.

While I'm revisiting the highlights of 2024, I'd be remiss to not mention a very recent development that's my biggest personal news of the year: I got tenure!!! I'm thrilled to be able to spend the rest of my career at Gonzaga and in Spokane!

Happy Holidays from the shore of the Salish Sea! To celebrate the new year, here are some of my favorite memories from 2024!

I think we could all use a sea otter in our feeds this #MarineLifeMonday. Famous for the role they play in maintaining kelp forests, they are equally at home in - and equally important members of - the West Coast's other cradles of biodiversity: eelgrass beds, like these in Morro Bay, California.

It's been a long #FossilFriday and I'm in no state to say anything profound, so please enjoy, with minimal comment, this photo of Miocene rhinoceros and Friend of the Lab, Teleoceras! (Photo taken in the Carnegie Museum)

Is #MarineLifeMonday a thing here on Bluesky? If not, my argument for why it should be is that it gives us all a chance to nerd out about species like the world's largest carnivoran, the southern elephant seal (elefante marino in Spanish), seen here on Península Valdés, Argentina.

This #FossilFriday I'm flashing back to the epic day a decade ago when I visited one of our planet's great lagerstätten, the @unesconow.bsky.social World Heritage Site Grube Messel. As a bonus, I also got to see the amazing fossil halls at the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt!

There are many things to love about the Carnegie Museum, but one of my favorites is the collection of half-fleshed-out fossil mammal sculptures.

The sun sets on the first of twenty days of road-tripping, collection-visiting, and conference-attending across the Great Lakes states.

What do these images have in common? They all appear on posters that lab students will be presenting today at the GSA meeting in Spokane! If you're here, swing by between 4 and 5:30 to hear about their research! Art: Charles R. Knight Ringtail photo: American Society of Mammalogists

Paleontology/mammalogy/taxonomy colleagues! Does anyone have a complete citation (or, in a perfect world, a PDF) for Nordmann, 1850, the paper in which the Tribe Camelini was named? I have spent many frustrating hours trying to track it down and am at my wit's end!

With the abstract deadline for next month's NW Scientific Association meeting in Spokane approaching on the 19th, it's time for the top ten reasons that any of you who study or teach about the natural world of the Great Northwest should join us!

I'm excited to see my students' research get to the point where they can share it with the paleontology community! If you can make GSA in Spokane or NAPC in Ann Arbor this summer, come see them present their work on fascinating fossils and spectacular sites from my favorite corner of the world!

Hello everyone! Finally giving this site a try and I'm thrilled to see so many paleontologists here! Please accept this mammoth (from the Royal BC Museum) as a token of my appreciation for making this a soft landing. I look forward to nerding out with you all.