NEW DISCOMFORT BLANKET! Exclusively on the Broken Veil channel, we talk about the art of found-footage horror, and 2013’s The Borderlands, pitting priests and techies against an ancient evil. JOIN THE BROKEN VEIL CHANNEL and support all this, plus our work on Series 2. patreon.com/BrokenVeil?u...

We have an open Assistant Professor position in Evolutionary Cell and Molecular Biology in the @weillinstitute.bsky.social at Cornell University. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30607

#TombTuesday bought to you from St Mary's Church Rolleston on Dove. #Staffordshire

Our new book, THE SECRET LIVES OF DINOSAURS, is out today! Written by Dr Dean Lomax & 49 full-colour illustrations from me – you can buy it on Amazon or from the publisher (link in bio). The fossils in this book will blow your mind! #SciArt #SciComm #PaleoArt #Dinosaurs #WildlifeArt #JurassicWorld

Bioturbation Following the End‐Permian Mass Extinction: "...efficient phosphorus burial via sink-switching may not have resumed until deeper-tier bioturbators achieved pre-extinction levels of sediment mixing > 1 Myr after the mass extinction" ⚒️🧪 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Nice idea @eddavey.libdems.org.uk, except universities were encouraged to cross-subsidise UK students with international student fees in a contracting market. Visa rules then tightened leading to universities in debt, recruitment freezes and redundancy www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

First Edinburgh undergrad fossil field trip of the year, to Dob’s Linn! Where all good graptolites went after they died…some 440 million years ago, when Scotland was at the bottom of a deep but shrinking ocean, on a tectonic warpath toward England. The global Ordovician-Silurian stratotype!

Worth re-sharing this one with the alt-text added in. 🔭 “And that's how it was for the next ten nights. A flare, spurting out from Mars – bright green, drawing a green mist behind it – a beautiful, but somehow disturbing sight. Ogilvy assured me we were in no danger….”

Today is the 150th birthday of the greatest Lithuanian artist - Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. J. R. R. Tolkien was a world builder with words. Čiurlionis was his match in the paintings. You can look here and imagine a giant azhdarchid flying above the Decan traps before the K-Pg.

This is what happens when you remove the wall from plant cells. They become perfectly spherical and are called protoplasts. These protoplasts were isolated from Arabidopsis and transformed with a vector to express cytosolic GFP (in orange). The chloroplast autofluorescence is in grey. #microscopy

Like what you see? One of these could be yours... www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/qr/dyR5704... #scottishgeology #geologyart #historyofscience

Vertical rows are the agrivoltaic winner! “The vertical panels produce slightly less electricity—but with higher value, as generation peaks coincide with morning and late afternoon demand…The crops don't seem to mind the presence of solar panels and they like the wind protection they provide.”

Congratulations to my former colleague Julia Knights, who has been appointed the 17th Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh www.rbge.org.uk/news/article... Julia and l worked on Vanishing Africa, an online exhibition www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-...

Please share!! 🙏🏼 Want to see where the science of geology began? Then help us build the Deep Time Trail!

Don’t miss this interview with @markwitton.bsky.social demystifying the world of dinosaurs! Read his full interview here: www.express.co.uk/news/science... and don’t miss his talk at New Scientist Live on 19 October! @express.co.uk #KingTyrant #NewScientistLive

We are looking for a Postdoc with expertise in plant molecular/synthetic biology, or single-cell/spatial transcriptomics to join the UKRI-FLF funded project focused on understanding and improving water-use efficiency in rice. Apply online before 15/10/2025: vacancies.essex.ac.uk/tlive_webrec... RP

If you live near Nottingham and want to see some extraordinary, beautifully crafted art, visit QUIVER, an exhibition of Kate MccGwire's feather-covered art, currently showing in the Djanogly Gallery at Lakeside Arts. Admission is FREE! www.lakesidearts.org.uk/exhibition/k...

Bryophytes hold a larger gene family space than vascular plants www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I wanted to do something for this little guy (Zavacephale), especially because there are good plant fossils from the same formation he is found in, but this is all I had the energy for.

The 112-million-year-old samples provide a rare glimpse into the mysterious forest ecosystems of the supercontinent Gondwana. https://scim.ag/41YZEzy

NEW DISCOMFORT BLANKET: TOMORROW! We talk about the appeal of 'found footage' horror, looking at The Borderlands, Elliot Gardner's exemplary 2013 film of priests and technicians digging up bad stuff in a rural church. EXCLUSIVE to the paid #BrokenVeil Patreon channel. patreon.com/BrokenVeil?u...

Lithograph by Rabindranath Tagore, ca. 1928–30 (V&A IS.89-1961). The V&A describes the subject as a 'a prehistoric looking creature'. Interesting, given that Tagore's Hibbert Lectures of 1930 alluded to extinct 'megalomaniac monsters' whose weighty armour hindered their 'true progress'.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.

sittin on the dock of the bay

This approximately 15m-long fossil tree trunk from the Angeac-Charente bonebed of Early Cretaceous France is insane. #paleontology #paleobotany #botany

Whilst we were out at a local park yesterday with my young granddaughter, she saw me checking leaves and wanted to have a couple of different shapes/colours. I didn't notice until much later in the day that this dark purple Norway Maple variant had x4 Stigmella aceris mines. #vc55moths #teammoth

Anchiornis on display at the National Natural History Museum in Beijing, with focus on its lovely feathers.

#MolluscMonday Photographed at Hampton Court Palace last week, orthocone nautiloids in paving slabs of Swedish Ordovician limestone. A microfault crosses the chambered phragmocone of one. The other fossil may represent a siphuncular structure but comments would be welcomed.

Revisited an odd horsetail at Den of Maidencraig LNR, Aberdeen, which I think is shore horsetail, the hybrid of water and common horsetails. Like a long-branched common horsetail but with stems smoother, compressible due to a large central hollow and protruding cortex when pulled apart lengthways.

The writer of Andor, Dan Gilroy, wrote an op-ed in Deadline and it is as good as you might imagine. deadline.com/2025/09/ando...

She’s done!❤️🦣 #Embroidery

Beautiful #Ediacaran fossil light on the E surface at Mistaken Point 🤩

Someone was trying to take a portrait of their two fave Chickens, and this happened.

Another great dead wood story! Some very cool #PlantScience describing a nurse log (dead tree that supports the growth of young trees) from the Jurassic.

Our recent paper @newphyt.bsky.social @anajusagasti.bsky.social @instmolplantsci.bsky.social is featured today in the Sunday Post! Thanks Sally McDonald for your piece helping to promote and communicate Scotland’s rich fossil heritage nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

This wouldn’t have been possible without support from the @ukri.org @hfspo.bsky.social @leverhulme.ac.uk – and the nurse log specimen is now accessioned into @ntlmuseumsscot.bsky.social 6/6

Our findings extend the fossil evidence for this key ecological strategy and importantly demonstrate the close evolutionary links between fungi, plants and animals for forest regeneration 5/6

This decaying conifer wood preserves evidence of white pocket rot; two types of arthropod boring, likely by beetles and mites; and colonisation by small roots. It therefore preserved evidence of a rich ecosystem occurring on the floor of a Jurassic forest 4/6

To investigate the prevalence of this strategy we searched for new fossil nurse logs and reviewed existing literature. We discovered the first nurse log from Scotland, and only the second known from the Jurassic Period 3/6

Seedling establishment on the forest floor is a challenging process. Plants have therefore adapted to make use of dead wood as a seed bed. This decaying wood can act as a nursery for seedlings and is termed a nurse log. In conifer forests today nurse logs support >90% of germinating seedlings 2/6

Excited to share our recent paper @newphyt.bsky.social where we describe evidence of a Jurassic nurse log from Scotland! Great work led by @anajusagasti.bsky.social Sophie Burne and @jeremywyman.bsky.social @instmolplantsci.bsky.social 🧵 👇 1/6 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Together with @scottishgeology.bsky.social, this Friday we're inviting you behind the scenes of the BGS core store 🪨 View real fossils from our collections and trace how life evolved across millions of years 🔎 🎟️ Tickets are free, but spots are limited: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/scotlands-...

‘It’s resurrection’: 1,000-year-old seeds could grow ancient plants in England’s ice-age ghost ponds So excited to be quoted in this article about our resurrected #ghostponds with members of our fantastic team @carlsayer.bsky.social, @hburningham.bsky.social, @timholtwilson.bsky.social

Cliche/outdated idea of Jurassic plants & insects: a generic cockroach crawling on a fern of some kind A more nuanced, evidence-based & ecologically sound image: Mayfly perched on a horsetail

HOT SINGLES ARE IN YOUR AREA HOT SINGLES HAVE BREACHED THE PERIMITER HOT SINGLES ARE ZEROING IN ON YOUR LAST KNOWN LOCATION HOT SINGLES ARE INITIATING ATTACK FORMATION DELTA

Like Angela Bassett, I did the thing. I am knackered but yesterday morning I heard a group of 10 children screaming with excitement and suddenly everything was worth it.

This led me to Noddy Holder's Wikipedia page. #RailwayViews

Discworld QOTD, from Night Watch

Bella Hadid's mother has shared a heartbreaking note amid her daughter's battle with chronic neurological Lyme disease, read more in this @dailymail.co.uk article: www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar...

Further unexpected fossil finds in Tbilisi: archaeopteryx street art