Mazon Monday #330: A New Mazon Creek Worm #fossils #paleontology #MazonCreek #MazonMonday #Carboniferous #Pennsyvanian While you were getting ready to celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday, a new fossil polychaete from Mazon Creek was being introduced to the world! esconi.org/2026/07/mazo...

We just got a robot vacuum and it’s at least a top 3 gadget with the rice cooker and egg machine. I am almost always bare foot in my house and walking on any crumbs is my sensory nightmare. I don’t care if it’s mapping my flat for nefarious means, it’s a deal with the devil I’ll happily make.

It’s warming. It’s us. It’s bad.

It’s can’t be over tuned. It’s literally in the rules. However there is a secret rule that if you cry hard enough the president will message his mate and fix it for you.

The greatest Mexico v England tweets you will ever read. 😂 As you were.

…. It literally never occurred to me that he wanted handles for digging forks. I was always confused that you could get replacement handles for eating forks but rationalised it away as an “old fashioned” thing.

Because we can never have too much T. rex content (sigh), in this week's Fossil Files episode, @fossilrob.bsky.social and I talk about that recent Why-T-rex-had-short-arms paper that hit the headlines a couple of weeks ago. Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts: share.google/4p149gj6xTcB...

Join the team for this very cool project! Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. And since it’s a very interdisciplinary project, reposts to reach the right person (not necessarily with a plant background) are appreciated 😁

Thanks to a @thepalass.bsky.social grant we’ve been able to grow out outreach so much Today we’re at a school near Oldham running a mini palaeontology science fair for years 3&6. Not something we could have done without the grant money 💕

My dad told me a riddle as a kid: “Dublin, Derry, Cork or Kerry, which will fit in a bottle?” I googled it today and the AI answer is so bad it’s almost poetic. It got the answer wrong and mixed it with a similar riddle. Cork. The answer is Cork because bottles have corks. Maybe that will help.

Y'all - the Smithsonian is hiring three new curators - herpetology, ichthyology, and ornithology! Notably, this is a 2nd fish curator position - i.e., not the same as the one advertised last month. So if you applied for that one apply again. www.usajobs.gov/job/873849000

Worm print #invertebrates #art 🪱🪱🪱

My partner is under strict instructions to wake me up if a player gets abducted tonight (or at least record it)

I don't know what I was thinking, but I had to buy a new t shirt on the way to work this morning Remember to drink your electrolytes today!

I’m recruiting a PhD student to join our lab in the fall of 2027. If you’re excited about phylogenetics, comp bio, paleobiology, stats theory, macroevolution, etc. please get in touch! Folks at #Evol2026, you can talk to @brpetrucci.bsky.social & @sigournie.bsky.social to learn more about our lab

Today’s highlight result of my experiments: If you dunk an earphone in salt water it won’t work anymore 😭

JOB ALERT! We are recruiting at @ucl-c4ia.bsky.social - a lecturer (Grade 8) or associate professor (Grade 9) in primate or human evolutionary anatomy (research and teaching). Contact Susan Evans or myself for further details. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRZ412/l...

Microscopy Monday: Mesothelium lines body cavities such as the abdomen, including organ surfaces. This piece was picked up when the liver of a dog was sampled. It looks a bit like a sheet of snakeskin. Normal liver cells (hepatocytes) in the last photo for comparison 🧐🔬#VetClinPath #CytologyVet

🚨📄 NEW PREPRINT ALERT 🚨📄 🌐 Are we mapping ecosystems… or just mapping models? 🤔 We took ONE Jurassic fossil community 🦑🐚🐟 and built food webs SIX different ways. The result? 😳 The way you build the network can matter MORE than the change you're trying to study. 🔗 doi.org/10.32942/X2X... 👇

So far, the theme of my 2026 publications seems to be "fish making poor life choices." 🧪 In this example, we have multiple blastoid specimens that seem to preserve partially healed fish bite marks: www.scup.com/eprint/AQIF3...

Skiving

I can't believe how accurate this diagram is!

Some ones going to have a tough time getting in to their AirBnb this weekend ✌️ (Airbnb is banned in our block, so the owners just hide the lock boxes in weird places to get around that)

In accordance with ancient tradition, our next Prime Minister is announced to the nation while standing between a furry and a man with a bin on his head.

Gross.

Potential postdoc opportunity! We're looking for someone to do Good Work Fast at the interface between zoonotic disease ecology and global climate and land-use projections. Strong skills in statistics and geospatial modeling are the non-negotiable here. In-person in New Haven. More essential info 👉

New in @science.org ...since our first discoveries of early tetrapods, they have been thought of as "amphibians" characterized by aquatic larvae. But is this true? For the first time, we report exceptional fossils of stem tetrapod babies that upend this paradigm. 1/n www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Off on a science adventure! Starting with a rare treat of the Picadilly travelators actually working (well one anyway)

Happy one year anniversary to one of the most enjoyable and informative science podcasts of which I know: @thefossilfiles.bsky.social. 🥳🎉 podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

I am recruiting a #postdoc to work on assembling and analyzing #genomes of the amazing Furnariidae. Let’s unlock the secret behind their #evolution. The official application portal will be available soon at www.uno.edu/careers. Feel free to contact me for details at [email protected]

Excited to share that my building management has decided to heavily invest in mosquito conservation this year! Look at this lovely stagnant green water, perfect for the mosquito larvae. So thoughtful and ecologically-minded of them!

Barrel of fun, Saturdays are great because there’s such a mix of visitors! My back and knees are screaming thou, can’t possibly be from deadlifting a huge allosaurus femur cast to eye-level for kids. (Poll count is for Mon, but I think T rex won. Got to set the bait to count visitors!)

Saturday outreach day as part of #UniversallyManchester ! (T. rex is winning the poll, I’m sure Stan looming in the background has nothing to do with it)

Blergh. Just leave wild animals alone, they’re not our entertainment. You can just look at them, don’t mess about with them. If you get eaten you should have to pay an income-based fine to a wild life charity

From fossil evidence, millipedes were the first animals adapted to life on land about 425 million years ago. In this new paper, we reconstructed their ancient evolutionary history across nearly half a billion years. 🌎 www.cell.com/current-biol...

This is absolutely terrible and grotesque, AND as someone who played pokemon go for ages... I scanned basically no stops, because it was *clear* this was not for fun in game purposes. I know many folks felt the same.

Spent a bunch of today carving down a manuscript to fit a word count. I’ve learnt nothing, gobby is my default, concise is my nemisis

The mossy forests of the Devonian were towered over by mysterious 8m tall giants, Prototaxites. But what were these weirdos? New research suggests it not a plant, not a fungus, not an animal, but some other previously unknown form of life

Want to make a living from #Palaeoart? Then come to my #LymeRegisFossilFestival talk: A DINOSAUR ART LIFE, How Painting & Sculpting Prehistoric Animals Became My Job. June 14: www.marinetheatre.com/lyme-regis-f... #SciArt #PaleoArt #Dinosaurs #Paleontology #JurassicWorld #JurassicPark #LymeRegis

📢 Please repost! Want to do a Masters by Research at the University of Bristol? If you're interested in phylogenetics, morphology, macroevolution or vertebrate palaeobiology, please get in touch! More information: tinyurl.com/4h6v3s99 ⏰ Deadlines: • International: 30th June • Home: 31st July

Evidence for aorta and other blood vessels in fossil yunnanozoans from the Cambrian period royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...

Evolution of tooth reduction and loss in Mesozoic avialans: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🪶🧪 (📷Zhou et al.)

Exciting work here—rapid, non-destructive high resolution bone histology with synchrotron scanning! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Great first paper from PhD student @rebeccalowes.bsky.social , running a sensitivity analysis on Range of Motion and what matters. Lots and lots of work in this one, but the gist is, it matters a lot how you select your articular surface: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Head down to The University of Manchester campus on Saturday 13 June for the Universally Manchester Festival!

Maps in ggplot2!

National Museums Northern Ireland are hiring a curator of vertebrates!! Details here - deadline soon!! ce0568li.webitrent.com/ce0568li_web...

Well, well, well...

If you’ve ever asked me what game my partner is making and I’ve replied “soz, I don’t know ‘cause of NDAs” well… Turns out he’s making Until Dawn 2 The trailer looks so good!