#FossilFriday Stack of opalised vertebrae from an Early Cretaceous ichthyosaur. Another remarkable fossil on display in the South Australia Museum, Adelaide.

A supposed dormant volcano erupts in Ethiopia after being inactive for at least 12.000 years. www.scientificamerican.com/article/hayl...

For #FossilFriday & in honor of @alinemghilardi.bsky.social & colleagues' fantastic discovery of a new Cretaceous pterosaur in Brazil in a dinosaur regurgitalite ("fossil vomit"), here's a diagram I made for my book 'Dinosaurs Without Bones' (2014) showing the physics of a puking brachiosaur. 🧪🦕🤮🪨

Here’s an actual metal version of Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, which I think the original is pretty metal anyway. Source: YouTube share.google/NkLz28HcYhXJ...

Tough choice: #carpathite bc I'm an organic chemist #tugtupite bc of tenebrescence (when a mineral changes color after exposure to UV light) Tugtupite from Greenland, left: after exposure to SW-UV; right: the pink color faded after ca. 1 day in its box. (this sample has been stolen 2023 😭)

The red tetrahedrons of Iranian #Zuniyite with the hematite inclusions won me over. Abundant crystals look like stars in the galaxy when they fluoresce.

As an organic chemist, I can only choose #Carpathite. Pls vote for the aromatic mineral!

Here is a nice mushroom

Magnified orange coneflower with my 2:1 macro lens paired with the Raynox 250 adapter. The magnification is wild! #flower #macrophoto #photography 📷 Fujifilm X-T4 | Pergear 60mm f2.8 II

I was thinking with a friend about how to describe the harms of AI, especially in a teaching and labor context, and came up with calling it a “coordinated campaign of mass deskilling” and I feel like that succinctly describes a lot of the problem.

Tsunami video allegedly taken at Pionerskaya bay after the M8.8 Kamchatka #earthquake. HOLY SHIT! This guy and his dog are unbelievably lucky. 🧪⚒️ #geology youtube.com/shorts/LhFQ2...

The pole shouldn't really affect the continent. There have been plenty of other times when a different continent (or no continent) has end up at the South Pole. See this reconstruction for the last 1.5 billion years by Scotese for example (latitude is much better constrained than longitude):

Finally…a simplified periodic table of the elements for geologists and earth scientists! ⚒️🪨🧪🌎🌋 railsback.org/PT/815Period...

So…about AI’s energy use… “…to create a five-second video, a newer AI model uses ‘about 3.4 million joules, more than 700 times the energy required to generate a high-quality image’. That's the equivalent of running a microwave for over an hour.”

Made a cocktail for my wife and she put it in the freezer, inadvertently creating a new superorganism please hel—*glurk*

Another one from further back. Bearded iris, watercolour on VCPO handmade watercolour paper, approximately 87 × 150 mm, 2019. Again, the scan has considerably homogenised the blues and lost the subtle variations.

Happy Giant Phallus Shaped Iceberg Floating In Conception Bay of Dildo, Canada Day to all who celebrate.

Mossy leaf-tailed gecko, Uroplatus sikorae, Madagascar. These lizards have some of the most amazing camouflage in nature. I especially love the fractal fringing on the bottom jaw, feet, and body, which helps break up the lizard's outline. 🦎🌿 #herps

Warning sign about geologists ⚒️ Warning! If our favorite rocks fall off a cliff, we will chase after them.

Fresh impact crater on Earth! This impact occurred on 25 July 2024 in Prince Edward Island, Canada, when a small ordinary chondrite meteorite impacted Earth (someone's driveway, specifically) at about 200 km/h. The impact formed a set of crater rays.

ウツボホコリの仲間たちと出会いました。

Här kommer berättelsen om hur skolkoncernen AcadeMedia håller på att ta över svenskarnas liv från fosterstadiet till pensionen. Tänk om alla väljare visste hur illa ställt det är med den demokratiska kontrollen över skolan. Då hade det kanske hänt grejer. threadreaderapp.com/thread/17432...

@earth-science.bsky.social Collapsing sediment frozen in time. Burlington Stone, Borrowdale Volcanics, Lake District, UK.

By Karel Čapek:

Some branches of green algae Spirogyra, collected on a beach by Bothnian bay near Umeå. They have then been cultivated at home and observed at microscope x400, around july. Some branches then initiated conjugation (left pic); right pic: zygotes after conjugation.

Some red algae Ceramium from Bottenviken, Sweden, seen microscope. Found on beach near Umeå.

Seriously, y'all: what merits do you find in rhodochrosite?? How can you prefere a *pretty pink nothing else* to a splendid daughter of ultramafic and more (lizardite), a cool heavy metal (arsenuranospathite) and a promising material for clean energy (perovskite)?? C'mon folk, vote perovskite!

It's a catalyst! It's photoactive! It's freaking cool looking! #teamperovskite #mincup23

I absolutely appreciate corundum but lawsonite gets my vote bc: 1) blueschist facies are awesome 2) Sorosilicates deserve to get much more love (I'm still mad about my prof at basic geology class at uni, skipping sorosilicates alltogheter with "not so important")

Cinnabar has a slight lead over quartz and I'm not happy! Here's a *long* thread for #TeamQuartz which I'll be updating throughout the day #MinCup23 #geology ⚒🧪 1/? Vote for QUARTZ here: www.mineralcup.org/2023/campaig...

Cinnabar 🟥 vs quartz 💎 🟥uncommon, toxic, decorative, crystals ok, just 2 chemical elements, only red. 💎very common, safe, piezoelectric, makes rocks (quartzite) and glass, AND LOOK AT ALL THOSE COLORS AND CRYSTAL HABITS AND STUNNING GEOMETRIES WITH JUST 2 CHEMICAL ELEMENTS!! Visit www.quartzpage.de

I guess I should have tagged this thread for the birds feed. 🪶

White-colored radial wollastonite (?) in metamorphic zone of carbonate and silicate rocks (carbonate side). Kamioka, Japan. Hida Metamorphic rock.

First post on Bluesky! My banner is a Gyrosigma diatom, sampled from a beach on Bothnian Bay near Umeå. Profile pick: dark minerals folds in calcite rock from Innansjön, Västerbotten - Sweden.