The vertebrate is the shape of a short cylinder made of opal showing pastel pink, purple, blue, and green. Its on a black background. It’s at the Field Museum.

A stunning melding of palaeontology and mineralogy (well mineraloid-ology) in this opalized plesiosaur vertebra. Isn’t it gorgeous? #FossilFriday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

Hey, I wrote a thing about AI in astrophysics
ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma...

‼️🚨 Job Alert ‼️ 🚨
Two Post Doc Opportunities:

PDRA in Macroecology / Paleobiology
my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

PDRA in Extinction & Conservation / Paleobiology
my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Any questions, please get in touch! Closing date May 1st.

Specimen consisting of brown rock with veins of blueish purple opal on a black background. In front is a small transparent plexiglass label that says “Opale/Queensland/Australie” on it. At the Sorbonne.

So not quite a mineral for this week’s Mineral Monday, but this mineraloid opal is such a stunner. #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

Deep purple blue nitrile gloved hand holds translucent slide of obsidian. It looked like dark Smokey glass with black flowy bands across with a small patch of red. It’s held above a white tray on a black background. At the Canadian Museum of Nature.

I just saw that it’s Geologists Day today!!! To share my excitement about geology, here is one of my favourite types of rock: obsidian!! This is a thin polished slice showing flow banding. #GeologistsDay #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

📢 Early Career Researchers, this one is for you

📌 Paleobiology is accepting proposals for special issues.

🐭🐌 Submissions on all fossil organism groups and trace fossils are welcome. 🐾

For more information: cambridge.org/core/journals/paleobiology/call-for-proposals

A mounted American lion fossil skeleton cast with large incisors and a long tail on a white background behind a glass partition. At the Canadian Museum of Nature.

The extinct American lion (Panthera atrox), found across North America, was bigger than the lions we see today. #FossilFriday ⚒️🧪

This is figure 1 from “Genomic history of early dogs in Europe.” It shows genomic screening identifies early dogs in Europe.

Domesticated dogs were already widely distributed in western Eurasia at least 14,200 years ago, according to two studies published in Nature. The papers report the oldest known dog genomes to date.
go.nature.com/4lWrxBe
go.nature.com/3NPY9zE
🧬 🏺 🧪

The Burpee Museum, Rockford Illinois is hiring a Director of Collections and Research. They need a Ph.D. who is field, oriented, collaborative, can publish on their major fossil collections, generate grant money, & work with the public. App: burpee.org/director-of-... Dinosaurs & more galore.

Lessons from the Deep Time evaluation Jurassic dinosaurs in the Deep Time exhibition. Photo by the author. I’m a big fan of Deep Time, the recently overhauled paleontology hall at the National Museum of Natural History. On this b…

New blog post: I read the summative evaluation of the Deep Time hall at NMNH. Here are my takeaways, from the climate message to the allure of T. rex.

Lifelong behavioral screen reveals an architecture of vertebrate aging Mapping behavior of individual vertebrate animals across lifespan could provide an unprecedented view into the lifelong process of aging. We created a platform for high-resolution continuous behaviora...

Out now in Science: The Truman Show, but with killifishes!

"Continuous recording of a vertebrate’s adult life from adolescence until death would provide a complete view into the behavioral architecture of aging."

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Diversification and body mass evolution in Octodontoidea and Chinchilloidea.

Craniodental disparity in Chinchilloidea (blue) and Octodontoidea (orange).

More of the evidence showing that the megaclimate is fundamentally shaping diversity and disparity:
"Subsequent Neogene and Quaternary extinctions erased much of this variation, reversing a ~30 million-year trend of greater body mass disparity"
doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Adapted from Axelsson et al. 2013 Fig 2c: Histogram showing the distribution of diploid amylase copy number in wolf (n=35, blue) and dog (n=136, red). Dogs carry more copies of the starch-digesting gene AMY2B than wolves. Additional copies make dogs better than wolves at digesting starchy foods like grains & vegetables.

Dogs evolved to eat your leftovers! Comparing dog & wolf genomes revealed dogs have up to 30 EXTRA copies of the amylase gene (AMY2B) that helps digest starch. This is a key genomic signature of living alongside humans & table scraps for thousands of years 🐕 www.nature.com/articles/nat... #2026MMM

While we're at it, what ever happened to that post-ENT President Archer 'The West Wing' style show about the early days of the Federation? I'd love to watch that.

A deep orange yellow rectangular gem mounted on a rod in front of a grey background. At the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle.

Time for another Guess the Gem!! What mineral do you think this is? Hint: this mineral has double refraction. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

Sea level much higher than assumed in most coastal hazard assessments - Nature Meta-analyses on a global scale show that the measured coastal mean sea level is higher than assumed in most coastal hazard assessments.

Seeger, K., Minderhoud, P.S.J. Sea level much higher than assumed in most coastal hazard assessments. Nature (2026). doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Birds That Don't Exist: Niche Pre‐Emption as a Constraint on Morphological Evolution in the Passeroidea We use topological data analysis to reveal a persistent morphological gap in a major group of songbirds (superfamily Passeroidea). The gap remained unoccupied for millions of years, even though nearb...

Well damn, this is cool.

Birds That Don't Exist: Niche Pre-Emption as a Constraint on Morphological Evolution in the Passeroidea | Chia et al., 2026 | Ecology Letters

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Sharks as apex predators in the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway empirically revealed by zinc isotope analyses Food web structures and trophic interactions among Late Cretaceous marine taxa remain largely ambiguous due to the challenges in reconstructing ecolog…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Lead by Jeremy McCormack of @goetheuni.bsky.social, and with a miniscule contribution from me, we present geochemical evidence that sharks were marine apex predators since at least the Late Cretaceous. 🐟🦈🧪 #paleobiology #geochemistry

A round colourless brilliant cut gem reflecting lots of colours sits on a frosted plinth with the number 45 on it. It sits in front of a grey background. At the Royal Ontario Museum.

Another Guess the Gem!! What mineral do you think this gem is? Hint: this mineral is commonly used for the age dating of rocks. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

Acceleration hotspots of North American birds’ decline are associated with agriculture Human activities might have accelerated declines of population abundance, but this acceleration remains underexplored. Using 1033 North American Breeding Bird Survey routes, we analyze abundance chang...

Thrilled to share our new paper out in @science.org, led by François Leroy and Petr Keil! Using the Breeding Bird Survey, we document not only a continent-wide decline in bird abundance since the 1980s — but, crucially, the acceleration of these declines over time. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans was strongly sex biased Sex biases in admixture and other demographic processes are recurrent features throughout human evolution. For admixture between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (AMHs), sex bias has been p...

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Argentine fossil rewrites evolutionary history of a baffling dinosaur clade - Nature A skeleton of the alvarezsauroid Alnashetri cerropoliciensis—representing a highly complete alvarezsauroid skeleton from South America—provides evidence on the evolution of the peculiar anatomy and mi...

Makovicky, P.J., Mitchell, J.S., Meso, J.G. et al. Argentine fossil rewrites evolutionary history of a baffling dinosaur clade. Nature (2026). doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Two clear gems, the one to the left is very large and oval on a small round white plinth, to the right is a rectangular gem. They sit on a glass shelf with a white 8 on it in front of a black background. At the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Guess the Gem time!! What mineral do you think these gems are? Hint: it’s very abundant on earth. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

While >70% of bone strength variation is explained by structure, a new manuscript by Skedros et al shows that collagen fiber orientation (CFO) in deer calcanei also reflects compression vs. tension loading. anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

this could be the greatest goal call in hockey history

Oxygen Isotopes in Tree Rings Track Neotropical Climate Dynamics Tree-ring δ18O from Abies guatemalensis in Central America captures interannual variations in boreal summer rainfall Lighter δ18O years are associated with a weakening of the Caribbean Low-Level ...

Excited to have this paper out showing a strong coupling between Central American tree-ring oxygen isotopes and ocean–atmosphere dynamics (interbasin SST gradients, ITCZ, CLLJ... ). Many thanks to all co-authors!

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

The collapse of curiosity driven research has occurred in STEM too. Everything has to be outcomes focused - cure disease, grow better crops, etc. But so much of what humanity has discovered is from "basic" curiosity-driven science. I'm hugely in favor of funding curiosity in every discipline.

Specimen of labradorite that shows patches of bright blue, yellow green, and brown on the front surface. The sides are grey. It sits on a grey plinth on a grey background. A small frosted plastic label says Anorthite Anorthite on the lower left. At the Royal Ontario Museum.

Gorgeous technicolour labradorite!! This labradorescence shows a range of colours across the labradorite, a variety of feldspar that is primarily the mineral anorthite. #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

The billion-dollar case for sustaining palaeontology’s digital databases - Nature Ecology & Evolution The authors survey community palaeontological databases, documenting their contributions to science as well as their vulnerabilities, and provide recommendations for the future of open science databas...

Dowding, E.M., Dunne, E.M., Collins, K.S. et al. The billion-dollar case for sustaining palaeontology’s digital databases. Nat Ecol Evol (2026). doi.org/10.1038/s415...

The entirety of a mounted Patagotitan mayorum in a hall under purple lights showing its long neck and tail. At the Natural History Museum in London.

The absolutely massive Patagotitan mayorum!! This sauropod is one of the largest known titanosaur species. It would have been amazing to see something so massive walking around. #FossilFriday ⚒️🧪