This #fossilfriday in Edinburgh, we’re out with our Univ of Edinburgh students, collecting 325 million year old fossils at Wardie. World’s most famous coprolite latrine. And loads of fossil leaves and roots and logs from Coal Swamp trees. All within the city limits!

putting this up in my room like a movie poster

New paper alert 🦖 A new study co-authored by our Curator of Paleontology, John Scannella, documents a tyrannosaur tooth embedded in an Edmontosaurus skull, rare evidence of an ancient attack. 📸 by Jenn Hall Read more: peerj.com/articles/207... #Paleontology #Fossils #NewResearch

New behavioral #paleontology paper out today about tyrannosaur predation! The authors (Wyenberg-Henzler & Scannella) contend that the find is "consistent with a bite inflicted during an attempt to control the struggling Edmontosaurus or deliver a killing blow followed by carcass consumption". Nice!

#OTD exactly two years ago I was in the field on Seymour Island, Antarctica. 15/2/24 was a gruelling 12-hour field day, hiking to and sampling this scenic outcrop containing the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary & mass extinction. Feat. obligatory bits of paperclip-shaped ammonite.

Taught this morning and then got to do some fieldwork and boy howdy did I hit the weather and location jackpot! While we didn’t find the marine mammals we were hoping for, the invertebrates and geology were so spectacular as to more than make up for it!

Our museum is part of the University's fund-drive: pardon the NPR-style interruption, but consider donating if you want to support public science. Wonderful donors are matching gifts, so it's a great chance to help us keep connecting the public with natural history. go.unl.edu/unsmglowbigred

Our museum is part of the University's fund-drive: pardon the NPR-style interruption, but consider donating if you want to support public science. Wonderful donors are matching gifts, so it's a great chance to help us keep connecting the public with natural history. go.unl.edu/unsmglowbigred

Not everyone in the Jurassic Period was a giant. This tiny jaw of teeth was collected from the Mygatt-Moore dinosaur bonebed. It belonged to no dino, but instead to a small, lizard-like animal called a rhynchocephalian. Today, this group is represented by the Tuataras of New Zealand. #FossilFriday

Published these specimens in 2024 with @ashpoust.bsky.social, @tetrameryx.bsky.social and Morgan Churchill in JVP. Read it here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

#fossilfriday Walrus bones from Santa Cruz, California. A partial femur and astragalus (ankle bone) of the early Pliocene (4-5 myo) 'toothless' walrus Valenictus sheperdi from the Purisima Formation. Specimens donated by Dave Landes and Wayne Thompson to Santa Cruz NHM and UCMP. 🐬🦖

See you all at Darwin Day next week on our beautiful @sandiegostate.bsky.social campus, featuring Dr. Jim McGuire's keynote lecture on "Darwin, Wallace, and my Own Studies on the Magical Island of Sulawesi, Indonesia"! Deets in the flyer - but please DM me if you have any questions.

In the frontspiece of a book, sadly I forget which: Interviewer: Who is your favourite contemporary author? Author: Shakespeare Interviewer: No; contemporary author Author: Shakespeare, always Shakespeare

A lot of people cannot just start a paid newsletter or become freelancers to sustain their careers. The sports, metro, and international desks did work that requires *team* resources, like legal checks, documents, access to archives, and long-term beat experience.

All other dinosaurs are streets behind. T. rex has been cool cool cool since at least 2005 when this graphic was published. #sixseasonsandamovie #community 🦕

2016 ➡️ 2026 Museum displays aren’t something we usually think about, but the supports beneath fossils and artifacts are essential. 10 years ago, this mount was created for this ~5400 yr old steppe bison skull by Restoration and Reproduction Specialist, Gisli. Read on to learn how he created it 👇

The Columbian mammoth fossil I worked from for this painting was found in Lincoln county, Nebraska (the map depicted). I was inspired by the state’s Highway Paleontology Program. Lincoln County Mammoth, Acrylic & charcoal on paper, 12”x12” #mammoth #Pleistocene #megafauna #fossil 🦣 🐡 #paleoart

New vegaviids Vegavis geitononesos and Vegavis notopothousa (the latter based on the skull described last year): www.mdpi.com/1424-2818/18... 🪶🧪 (📷Irazoqui et al.)

It’s cold enough for walruses in New Jersey this week! But it wouldn't be the first time! During the Late Pleistocene (over 30,000 years ago) the area that is now New Jersey had walruses! We still dredge their fossils along the coast today.

Imagine driving down the Miracle Mile in 1967 and seeing this in your rearview mirror... Fear not, it's just sculptor Howard Ball in a VW towing one of his fiberglass mammoths to be installed at the La Brea Tar Pits.

On top of this being egregious lies, I actually think there *are* landscapes that need protection on aesthetic grounds - and this is actually going to make that harder in the long run.

Ooh, I like these. They look like real animals, while still being the weirdos they were.

🦣 The Mastodon giganteus of North America /. Boston: J. Wilson, 1852.. [Source]

Just finished updating my review on the evolution and fossil record of the eared seals (Otariidae) given the new paper that came out on the early Pleistocene Otaria josefinae from Peru 😅 #blog #paleo #paleontology 🦖🐬🧪 Read it here:

ICYMI 🦣 We're proud to announce the creation of the Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research, which will be the scientific and research backbone of the reimagined La Brea #TarPits, bringing Ice Age research and the museum into the future! Learn more: go.nhm.org/reimagine

🦖 Big news about a ‘little’ tyrant: new research finds that Nanotyrannus wasn’t a baby T. rex after all! Through examining the throat bone of the Nanotyrannus, researchers found that while smaller, the species was a fully grown and distinct predator during its time.

A classic. Our cast of one of the largest Tyrannosaurus rex know, UCMP 118742. As large as this is, it's merely the maxilla. The teeth are 15 cm (6 in) long, and that's just the exposed part! #FossilFriday 🧪🦕 @ucmpberkeley.bsky.social @unsmmorrillhall.bsky.social

A classic. Our cast of one of the largest Tyrannosaurus rex know, UCMP 118742. As large as this is, it's merely the maxilla. The teeth are 15 cm (6 in) long, and that's just the exposed part! #FossilFriday 🧪🦕 @ucmpberkeley.bsky.social @unsmmorrillhall.bsky.social

#FossilFriday‼️ We have hundreds of unstudied Cretaceous bony fish and shark coprolites in the University of Alabama Museums paleontology collection. Some have bone inclusions visible from the outside. 😲 Here's a ~82 million-year-old shark turd I found at Harrell Station, Alabama, in 2025.

JOB: SEASONAL PALEONTOLOGIST BADLANDS DINOSAUR MUSEUM (DICKINSON, ND) 2026 summer tourist season. May/June start, 15wks, end Aug/Sept. Full-Time, 40 hrs/wk, $19.84hr. 50% working with public, 50% lab/collections. See link in comms for info. Come work with us!

Formation, preservation & interpretation of dinosaur tracks onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

New paper out today! "Fossil otolith assemblages reveal millennial-scale changes in reef fish biomass and trophic structure across the Isthmus of Panama" 🔓https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0419 We used fossil fish otoliths to reconstruct community structure and energetics over millennia.

For some reason, children's publishers and TV producers are uninterested in my self-esteem-building animal character, the Try-lobite.

Listen y'all, I love squirrels so much and I dragged our entire staff into this #SquirrelAppreciationDay project so I have way too many pictures and thoughts for one post. 🧵incoming. 🏛️🧪

Scientists in the Parks positions now up! 🧵1/n Dinosaur National Monument conservation-legacy.breezy.hr/p/099ae6a935... Montezuma Castle National Monument, AZ conservation-legacy.breezy.hr/p/9d3abc1c9e... Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, NE conservation-legacy.breezy.hr/p/7a746df3f5...

Charley Harper, "Darwin's Finches", from "The Giant Golden Book of Biology", 1961

First porpoise fossils (Cetacea: Phocoenidae) from the western North Atlantic, South Carolina | Journal of Paleontology | Cambridge Core - www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Tuskoneers! #paleoart

Just for the record, and it’s insane that the mad king made me look this up, there is documentation of the US giving up all claim to Greenland to Denmark when we bought the Virgin Islands from them in 1916. history.state.gov/historicaldo...

Collaborate with me! Myself and @peterroopnarine.bsky.social are looking for a postdoc with expertise in quantitative paleoecology to work on our new NSF grant addressing whether communities after the PTME functioned differently than those beforehand. job-boards.greenhouse.io/californiaac...

New Publication Alert! Our new paper on black bear bone histology is out today in the Journal of Anatomy! Read the paper here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Bone histology of phorusrhacids (terror birds) indicates rapid, uninterrupted growth (typical of most modern birds but unlike flightless paleognaths such as ostriches and kiwi): anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 🪶🧪 (📷Dreyer et al.)

A drawing of Allodelphis woodburnei, a marine Platanistoid (cousin of South-Asian River Dolphins) from miocene California. It and its close relatives had flexible necks and large fins, making them slow yet agile hunters of small prey. A commission from @shamublackfish.bsky.social #paleoart #sciart

It’s shit like this that makes me think dinosaurs were CRAZY

A feature in Nature reports on discoveries in Jurassic rocks that are expanding scientists’ knowledge in how birds evolved. #Paleosky 🧪

Great article on our parking lot dinosaur excavation! #FossilFriday

#fossilfriday Earlier this week we were shown the holotype skull of an eomysticetid from Mexico! This is Cochimicetus convexus, a Matapanui-like early baleen whale from the El Cien Formation and named last year by our Mexican colleagues.

Not a big baby! My commentary in @science.org about the latest Nanotyrannus research. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This morning I saw a post w/photos of Smithsonian paleontologist Charles Gilmore, and it dislodged a thought from my brain: I *still* use the dude's work, 80 years after his last paper. Why? Because he published copious data - measurements, solid morphological descriptions, great photos. <thread>

Result from the Agate Fossil Beds #paleostream! This early Miocene lagerstätte from Nebraska (USA) is a fantastic window into our understanding of the transition from forest communities to grassland biomes...