Great article on the Oxfordshire sauropod trackway, with contributions from @dremmanicholls.bsky.social, Prof. Kirsty Edgar and @peterfalkingham.com, who also made the excellent animation. Check out the overhead shot too - very cool 🦕 www.bbc.co.uk/news/resourc...

Any presentation that starts with a Star Trek reference has my FULL attention!! 🖖 We had an EPIC talk this morning by @pselaphacus.bsky.social on what the Life Collections team gets up to @morethanadodo.bsky.social (A LOT, is the take home message…)

📢Calling all natural historians! This year our Summer Meeting is exploring the ✨senses✨ So we want to hear from you! We're looking for papers that explore the intersections of the senses - including sight, sound, smell, taste and touch - with the history of natural history.

🥳 HAPPY IGUANODON DAY! 🥳 It was the 2nd dinosaur scientifically named & described, & presented to the Royal Society 200 years ago today! It’s 1 of 3 animals upon which the group ‘Dinosauria’ itself was first based 💪 Visit OUMNH to see more on this fantastic #dinosaur! @morethanadodo.bsky.social

Really devastating news.

Attended a great panel at @morethanadodo.bsky.social this evening about the amazing new Dewars Farm tracksite. Well done to @dremmanicholls.bsky.social, @djemurdock.bsky.social @kirstymedgar.bsky.social and @lukeemeade.bsky.social for informative answers to heaps of audience questions!

Celebrating the Year of the Snake 🐍 with a visit to Oxford University Museum of Natural History for a panel on the amazing Oxfordshire dinosaur trackways. 🦕🦖 #Palaeontology #Fossils #Dinosaurs Featuring @markwitton.bsky.social and @dremmanicholls.bsky.social

29 of #365Minerals 🧪⚒️ Cornwallite: - An uncommon copper arsenate mineral - A secondary mineral in the oxidised zone of copper sulphide deposits - Named in 1846 after Cornwall, its type locality #minerals

This moth 😍 #museum #collection #lepidoptera #moth

The Geologists' Association are pleased to have supported this excavation with a Curry Fund Award. Well done everyone!

1 of #365Minerals 🧪⚒️ Quetzalcoatlite: - Named after Quetzalcoatl, an Aztec and Toltec god of the sea, due to its sea-blue colour - Forms in the oxidised zone of tellurium-bearing hydrothermal deposits #minerals - This below is a co-type specimen (one of the specimens used to define the species)

For #FossilFriday here is one of my favourite pterosaurs, Istiodactylus, from the Cretaceous of the UK Their razor-edged, interlocking teeth are thought to have helped deflesh carcasses, basically the Cretaceous equivalent of vultures! Specimen housed at the London NHM

For #FossilFriday here’s the inside story from @djemurdock.bsky.social & @kirstymedgar.bsky.social on *those* dinosaur tracks from Oxfordshire!

Via @mike.sauropods.win.ap.brid.gy on SVPOW, check out this funky original version of Happy the Haplocanthosaurus at the Cleveland MNH. Could this have been a death pose? Or did they run out of time/money after mounting the torso? Not mutually exclusive possibilities! svpow.com/2025/01/23/a...

Just spent an EXTREMELY fun evening talking about dinosaurs & the recent trackway excavation Can I monologue about dinosaurs, at anyone who’ll listen, for 3 hours straight? Yes. Yes I can. @morethanadodo.bsky.social #FossilFriday

More on those extensive trackways from @dremmanicholls.bsky.social @djemurdock.bsky.social And the talk on 30 Jan will be livestreamed, plus uploaded to the Oxford NHMs YouTube channel

We’re changing some of our permanent displays at @morethanadodo.bsky.social which means a chance to get up close to some display specimens like this stunning azurite on malachite with chrysocolla #MineralMonday

This week’s #MineralMonday spotted on the early morning dog walk 🐕‍🦺 One of the most abundant minerals at Earth’s surface. ❄️🧊🥶

An iguanodontian sternal bone @nhm-london.bsky.social. What makes it special is the label saying from the Tilgate Forest and belonging to Gideon Mantell who named Iguanodon 200 years ago. #FossilFriday

Happy #FossilFriday! Today we’ve got Edaphosaurus, an early synapsid and among the first terrestrial herbivores! Like its cousin Dimetrodon, it had a tall sail on its back, but unlike its cousin there were numerous crossbars on each neural spine that would have protruded the sides of the sail! 🧪⚒️🦊

It may not look like much, but this chunk is from the stomach of a mosasaur that died ~80 million years ago, and is chock-full of fossil teeth and bones. Really excited to see what our undergrad volunteers will find in those gut contents this semester! 🧪 #FossilFriday

#FossilFriday! ⚒️🧪 What we have here is the underside of a ginormous slab of Tennessee's Silurian age Clinch sandstone, crisscrossed with putative arthropod trace fossils named Arthrophycus.

They don't generally move much. Burial is the fastest route to an anaerobic environment. But the spiral structures? Those are part of the shell, called the brachidium, and they support the feeding apparatus (lophophore). Spiriferids are famous for 'em!

Check out the 🚨insane🚨 level of preservation in this spiriferid brachiopod 😱 On display at the Naturhistorisches Museum in Nürnberg, Germany MIND BLOWING (even to a vertebrate palaeontologist 🤣) #FossilFriday

I can't keep up with the brilliant @nadwgab.bsky.social and #365Minerals BUT I'm aiming for every #MineralMonday 🤞 To kick off 2025, here's a stunning Cornish torbernite from @morethanadodo.bsky.social

Great episode - AND it featured Megalosaurus tracks

Thanks @pavementgeology.bsky.social for highlighting the Geologists' Association Curry Fund - this was just one of a number of projects we supported in 2024. The deadline for the next round of funding applications is 20 February 2025. More details on our website: geologistsassociation.org.uk/curry/

A Little Gay Natural History by @joshlukedavis.bsky.social is a brilliant exploration of #LGBTQIA+ stories in nature, showing how biological sex is truly a spectrum, and how the institution of "science" has unscientifically tried to hide how common same-sex sexual behaviour is the natural world. 🌈🏳️‍🌈🐧

I had the huge pleasure of visiting Naturhistorisches Museum Nürnberg in Germany just before Christmas Their Plateosaurus is suspended above a staircase which allows for some unique views 😍 Also, speaking as a curator, it’s a great way to use space 👍 #FossilFriday #Dinosaur #Triassic #Prosauropod

For this #FossilFriday an old favourite, the beautiful skull of the Triassic archosaur Erythrosuchus in the collections of the Evolutionary Studies Institute, Jo’burg

Museum curators: I’m helping to set-up a fossil collection/lab in a Global South country where it’s difficult to get/expensive to import plastazote. What might be an easy to obtain alternative material to support specimens within boxes?

Great to see the Oxfordshire dinosaur trackways on #diggingforbritain just now! The @geolassoc.bsky.social Curry Fund contributed to making this dig happen, a fantastic find that we’re proud to have supported! Also good to see @dremmanicholls.bsky.social too! www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Thanks Martin. It was brilliant to see them for myself - visiting my colleagues @richardjbutler.bsky.social , Prof Kirsty Edgar from @unibirmingham.bsky.social and @dremmanicholls.bsky.social and the team from @morethanadodo.bsky.social! Lots more work to be done.

A new study led by Dr Mark Sutton included work from Museum Honorary Researcher Prof Derek Siveter on fossils from the Museum’s collection of specimens from the Silurian Herefordshire Lagerstatte. This new research challenges the longstanding view that early molluscs were basic and primitive.

The ‘Dinosaur Highway’ excavation will be featured on BBC2’s #DiggingForBritain at 8pm (GMT) this evening!! Here’s an exciting sneak preview of the story, by @ox.ac.uk’s amazing Comms Team: www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-01... 🦖🦕⛏️ #Dinosaur @djemurdock.bsky.social @morethanadodo.bsky.social

Financial statement today reminded me HOW GREAT IT IS when folks request that their libraries acquire books. 😍 Seriously, if you want a totally free-to-you way to help an author, submit a request with your local library. Those sales help us so much, in whatever format.

Interested in #dinosaurs, in #palaeoart, in palaeontology and extinct animals in general? You MUST come to #DinoCon, happening in Exeter (Devon, UK) in August 2025. Info and booking... www.dinocon.co.uk And watch our social channel at @dinoconuk.bsky.social :)

OUMNH is undertaking an exciting plesiosaur project this Jan! We have the great pleasure of collaborating with specialist palaeontological conservator Nigel Larkin and 3D specialists ThinkSee3D 🙌 It’s so exciting to see the specimen up close thanks to scaffolding! 😍 @morethanadodo.bsky.social

If you’re interested in finding out more about this extremely exciting #dinosaur excavation (she says humbly! 😄), it will feature on #DiggingForBritain with the lovely @profaliceroberts.bsky.social 🚨Airing Wednesday 8th Jan🚨 🦖🦕⛏️ @ox.ac.uk @morethanadodo.bsky.social @unibirmingham.bsky.social

Women in science: Lyme Regis based palaeontologist, fossil collector and artist, Elizabeth Philpot, and her illustration of an Ichthyosaur skull, currently held in Cambridge. The illustrations have been sent to other fellow palaeontologist, Mary Morland in 1833.

Want to know what it was like uncovering the ‘dinosaur highway’? 🦖🦕🐾 Caroline Wood @ox.ac.uk has the behind the scenes scoop oxford.shorthandstories.com/behind-the-s...

A gratuitous selfie from our recent Dinosaur Trackways Excavation for #FossilFriday! The Megalosaurus 🦖 footprint behind me is 65 cm long and forms part of the largest dinosaur track site in the UK 🙌

🚨MEGALOSAURUS ALERT🚨

Last year myself, @kirstymedgar.bsky.social @dremmanicholls.bsky.social & @djemurdock.bsky.social led a huge week-long excavation of a truly remarkable dinosaur track site. We can now finally talk about it & it will be on Digging for Britain on the BBC next Wednesday! 🧵 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Finally, we can talk about this awesome dinosaur excavation!! 🦖🦕😍⛏️🪣🙌 My super colleagues @djemurdock.bsky.social @kirstymedgar.bsky.social @richardjbutler.bsky.social & I led a team of 100 people, over 7 days, to excavate 200+ prints of Megalosaurus 🦖 & Cetiosaurus 🦕 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Happy #FossilFriday! Today we have this skull of Anteosaurus, which is an early mammal relative that lived in the middle Permian of South Africa. It was a dinocephalian, which literally means “terrible head”, an apt name considering their incredibly dense skulls! 🧪⚒️🦊

#FossilFriday: the Early Jurassic (Lias) fish Dapedium, this specimen collected by Charlotte Murchison in September 1825 when she spent two weeks with #MaryAnning in Lyme Regis. Now in the collections of @britgeosurvey.bsky.social, it's on display at Lyme Regis Museum.

Hello Bluesky! 🦋 It's great to see so many familiar names and faces here already. For #FossilFriday here are some mosasaurs on display @nhm-london.bsky.social

This mere "fragment end of limb bone", as the label states, is AS BIG AS MY HEAD It's from the 18 m long sauropod #Cetiosaurus (My head is fairly average, l'd say, should you be wondering) #FossilFriday #Sauropod #Dinosaur