Cute thing: the volume on the iPlayer goes up to 11.

#Urbangeology Christmas Quiz! Can you guess where I am in the UK from the stone below? (I know there are a few of you who will get this immediately!)

Felt a little festive at the microscope this morning for #FluorescenceFriday 🎄 Here’s the nervous system of a juvenile sea star ⭐️ Green = acetylated tubulin, red = nuclei Happy holidays!

We've done our annual watch of Bernard and the Genie - never disappoints 🎄🧞‍♂️🎄🖼🎄

Christmas Eve. The perfect time for ghost stories… TOND A one-off story from the Broken Veil channel. Patreon.com/brokenveil (or wherever you get your podcasts.)

✨📣 Exciting news! 📣✨ I’m thrilled to share that I’ll be taking on the role of Publicity Officer for the Palaeontological Association (@the_palass ) for the next three years 🦖🦕 ✨📣 Exciting news! 📣✨ 📷 Thanks to Andrej Spiridonov for the #photo #position #role #PalAss25

I know one of you has to have a billionaire’s phone number, $1m to save one of the best fossil collections in the country is a bargain. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/s...

I imagine some Charnia complaing that everything went downhill since that Dickinsonia thing started flopping around!

Prototaxites: "Haha, you call THAT weird? Pathetic!"

Everything alive in the Devonian period tried too hard. “Ooo, look at me, I’m a weird elongated pentagon” Shut up!

Laura Palmer's Theme

And ridiculously easy to grow from seed (39/40 seeds germinated, thrived, and are now small trees in my recent batch).

These strange trees are called 'pewen' or 'piñonero' in their native Chile, but when they reached England as an ornamental, barrister Charles Austin commented: "It would puzzle a monkey to climb that" So now, in English, they're called "monkey-puzzles." They get weirder up close...

Proper lol at this

Trees are done 🌲🌲🌲 Christmas Train still under construction 🚂🚃🚃🚃

To summarize: it is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.

End-of-year preprint dump! A collaboration with @messorensen.bsky.social and German and Korean colleagues: "The phylogenetic context for the origin of a unique purple-green photosymbiosis " doi.org/10.64898/202...

Day 14 - another Summer exhibition piece inspired by pollen grains #ArtAdventCalendar #SciArt

False Oxlip (Primula × polyantha) already flowering in the garden in Shrewsbury. Both parent species (Cowslip and Primrose) were planted here but this arose spontaneously. Late and slightly dubious for #wildflowerhour #ukwildlife

"This story doesn't need a sandworm" This is almost always wrong. Arguably, EVERY story benefits from adding a huge subterranean worm with quasi-mystical or semi-supernatural powers, or equivalent (similar to Moby Dick). Obviously the bigger the worm, the more literary quality it adds.

Another day, another news story on the catastrophic choices behind Future Nottingham. How many signs do we need that we're careening in the wrong direction? #StopTheCuts #SaveHE www.timeshighereducation.com/news/staff-f...

#TrilobiteTuesday Here is Dalmanities limulurus from the Lower Silurian Rochester Shale from Middleport, New York State. The Rochester Shale is one of the most famous silurian fossil sites in the US. Fossils were first recognized when the Erie Canal was first being built in 1817-1825.

Happy to see this out! We describe a patterning mechanism underlying rhizoid specification in Marchantia. Contrary to classic patterning mechanisms (e.g., Turing), rhizoid specification depends on both randomness and lateral inhibition, involves subcritical bifurcations, and occurs at criticality!

More Jurassic cycad studies, looking at cones & stems/trunks primarily. There are some fossilized cycad cones (Androstrobus, Leptocycas, etc) and plenty of extant forms to draw inspiration/reference from. #paleobotany

On the 9th day of fossils, my true love gave to me... 9 Phacopid trilobites! Phacopids are a family of trilobites. They are one of the most common Devonian aged trilobites. I've found them in Michigan, Ohio, New York, Oklahoma and Ontario. 1/x #12DaysofFossils

"Perhaps I'm old and tired," he continued, "but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway."

Shout out to the parent who thought the best way to keep their kid entertained on the train was to bring along a xylophone

Made a tiny Christmas tree out of fossils: the stars are crinoid ossicles, the trunk dinosaur bone & the branches are sharks’ teeth 🎄🦴

Telescope Types xkcd.com/3182/

prolonged and exhausting

Garden of Ediacara

JOB KLAXON! The @nhm-london.bsky.social is recruiting a micro-CT specialist! jobs.nhm.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

And with that the last formation piece of the year is done! Monte Bolca is one of the most famous productive fossil lagerstätten in the world! This Italian paradise for Eocene fossils is just as ingrained into paleontology like Solnhofen or Hell Creek. But since we...

Rutland Weekend Television, Community, Bernard And The Genie, Futurama, Doctor Who, The West Wing and The Peter Serafinowicz Show - you'll find them all in the Looks Unfamiliar Selection Box. Guaranteed more fun than the actual telly is this week! timworthington.org/2020/12/24/l...

🧪📢Forest Research in the UK is seeking two new members for the Expert Committee on #Forest #Science. 🧬🌳📖🌲🪵 * one early-career, * one from the forestry sector, Please see details on the link below. Closing 30 Jan. ➡️ www.forestresearch.gov.uk/about-us/car... #forestry #plantsci #trees

Hey, fellow evolutionary biologists: If you support trans rights, like, comment, or repost this. I want to show that transphobes like Richard Dawkins are a loud minority that does not represent our community

The first time I heard of Google 25-odd years ago I was working in an AI research group in a Computer Science uni dept. One of the professors mentioned at lunch that he'd started using a new search engine and recommended it to all of us. It took over from webcrawler etc really quickly.

Looking for a PhD in palaeontology or associated fields? Just a heads up that we have a list of opportunities on the @thepalass.bsky.social website: palass.org/phd-opportun... ⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky (If you're advertising one, you can add it to our listings too: palass.org/form/webform... )

Not from the Upside Down in Stranger Things. A Stemonitis splendens (chocolate tube slime mold) fruiting body; growing on a garage. via u/Blindstarsoffortune on reddit

As it is the season … have a wonderful Hookland Bone Horse by the wonderful @mariastrutz.bsky.social

Bought myself a new umbrella. It's going to make me happy every time I use it 💚

✅ Are you aged over 18? ✅ Live within 70 miles of Norwich? ✅Think you might be low in vitamin D? Join the ViTaL-D study and help us understand if @johninnescentre.bsky.social tomatoes biofortified through gene editing could help boost vitamin D levels 🍅

I’m reminded of watching two old ladies ask a teenage goth for directions and she politely told them and when she was out of earshot one lady said “You know where you are with a goth”

"He's got a very strong angle on it, you know, the burden of responsibility, the loneliness of command..." The Captain hummed and hahed about this for a moment. "Well, I wouldn't overstress that angle, you know," he said finally, "one's never alone with a rubber duck."

Caloplaca sp. #lichen on seaside cliffs. #Newfoundland Canada. #fungi #fungifriends

Tinsel and nihilism: the spirit of Blake’s 7.

Here's a #Sphagnum medium #bioreactor for you. #moss #mossmonday #BlueSkyMossFotos #Moosstart #Paludifarming

NATIVITY WITH MAGPIE: open.substack.com/pub/quantick...

💥 Seventy thousand women have now signed our letter. Seventy thousand women saying clearly that exclusion is not in our name and that trans people deserve dignity, safety and belonging. 🙏 Sign and share: notinourname.org.uk #NotInOurName #Love #Inclusion #WomenUnite