Some of the species covered include (left to right), the modern emperor, the titanic Kumimanu fordycei, the primitive Daniadyptes primaevus, and the tiny "fossil fluffball" Eudyptula wilsonae. Thank to @staceybl.bsky.social for editing!
We've learned so much about penguins in the past few years! Read about warm-weather cousins of emperor penguins, 60 million year old "proto-penguins" and 300lb giants. My piece in American Scientist is live, with great art by @simone-giovanni.bsky.social www.americanscientist.org/article/dive...
Some little guys pack a BUG punch! Our exhibition Ants: Tiny Creatures, Big Lives showcases weapons like stingers, venom, and formic acid that ants use to defend themselves and then see how species stack up on the STING METER.
Bruce Museum: Ant Battle youtube.com/shorts/-p5C6...
My life is greatly improved by finding out that you can turn off the horrible system in Word that forces you to activate every comment and go on the scavenger hunt when "Another comment is in progress". Preferences / General /uncheck Enable modern comments.
BHL is such an amazing resource. And reading these papers can be so entertaining as well as informative. Perfect image for this post too!
Happy #InternationalPolarBearDay from my favorite bear, Charlie! He was the centerpiece of our exhibition On Thin Ice: Alaska's Warming Wilderness. Can't wait for the next time we can display this beautiful bear at the Bruce Museum.
It was great to work together again! The little guys really comes to life in your skeletal illustration.
lol
One weird thing about the fossil is that the skull, neck, wings, and feet are all preserved in life position but the trunk and upper legs are missing. We hypothesize this is an example of the “stick ‘n’ peel” model of preservation. Lots of new data from one little bird!
And it was only about as big as a pigeon! Here is nice size comparison by @jaimeheaddenart.bsky.social
showing Rhynchaeites mcfaddeni and a modern Glossy Ibis.
The fossil species differs from modern ibises in having a sharp beak lacking the prolific neurovascular pitting seen in modern ibises. It was probably a visual forager that plucked prey like mollusks instead of a tactile forager.
Just in time for #FossilFriday, meet Rhynchaeites mcfaddeni, a little fossil ibis from the Green River Formation. The holotype looks delightfully like a hieroglyph!
Published today in Journal of Paleontology
shorturl.at/qTUVi
Don't forgot your fossil friends on Penguin Awareness Day. Here's the skull of Eudyptes warhami, an extinct crested penguin from the Chatham Islands. Its such an interesting species that it's features on a NZ coin!
Read more here:
fossilpenguins.wordpress.com/2019/02/05/a...
Happy Penguin Awareness Day! Here's a throwback to our 2023 exhibition Penguins, Past and Present. We are celebrating at the Bruce Museum today with a special 10 question Penguin Round at tonight's Bruce Museum Trivia. Meet us at 6pm for pizza, drinks, and prizes!
Our little buddy Eudyptula wilsonae made BBC's Wildlife Magazine's 10 Cutest Prehistoric Animals Ever list!
shorturl.at/svdjo
Reconstruction of this fossil fluffball by Simone Giovanardi.
Here's the original paper by Daniel Thomas, @atennyson.bsky.social, Felix Marx & myself:
shorturl.at/BSGYF
For #MineralMonday, take a peek at our lovely canvasite. This is one of my favorite pieces in our Tiny Treasures case. The blue coloring comes from vanadium, but what makes this mineral so special to me is have the clusters look soft like fluffy little cotton balls!
Happy Thanksgiving! I'm thankful for Centuriavis lioae, a 10 million year old fossil relative of turkeys. It was a lot of fun describing this stunning specimen with Catherine Early, Kate Dzikiewicz, and Amy Balanoff. The fossil is named after our amazing museum colleague Suzanne Lio.
Come at me bro! Did you know ants can ward off elephants that attack their acacia tree homes? Learn how ants and plants work form mutualistic relationships in Ants: Tiny Creatures, Big Lives at the Bruce Museum. On view through May 17th.
@brucemuseum.bsky.social
Our little birdy made the cover of Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Amazing how a bird sank to the bottom of Fossil Lake 51 million years ago and ended up entombed in sediments that perfectly match the background color/texture of the journal.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
At the end of the exhibition you can stop and enjoy fascinating (and sometimes hilarious) clips by @dradriansmith.bsky.social. I highly encourage you to check out his AntLab channel, I promise this footage of trap-jaw ants will brighten your Friday!
youtube.com/watch?v=H2ok...
Did you know ants communicate through scents? We built an ant "smell station" simulating some of the smells ants create, ranging from a pleasant chocolate odor that trap-jaw ants use to say 'back off" to a rotten egg smell used by African stink ants to call for help.
Thousands of species interact with ants, as predators, prey, or mutualists. Headlining the list are the anteater and aardvark of course. These life-like specimens are on loan from the Yale Peabody Museum.
Ant architecture is on full diplay, with a 20x life size field ant nest crafted by the one and only Sean Murtha and 9 aluminum nest casts from the inventor of the poured aluminum technique himself, Walter Tschinkel. These are works of art!
Learn about ant castes, like minors, supermajors, soldiers and of course honeypot ant repletes, who store food for their nestmates in their own bodies. I think of them like living soda dispensers.
Then it is time for the head-spinning diversity of ants. Some amazing scaled up ant heads here, many thanks to scans shared by Evan Economo's lab. Stunning photos by @alexwild.bsky.social compliment models and specimens here and throughout.
Seriously, lift those panels, they are great! Huge thanks to Kelly McQuade for figuring out how to make a realistic set of scurrying ants to give people that spine-tingling feeling of lifting a rock and watching them swarm.
Next, check out your "share" of ants. Patrick Schultheiss, Sabine Nooten & colleagues calculated there are 2.5 million ants for every person on Earth:
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
We visualize this w/ a cube (cuboid for my nerds). Plus, lift those panels for animated ants per square ft displays.
Ants: Tiny Creatures, Big Lives is officially open at the Bruce Museum! Enter the tunnel and you will meet "Buckley", our five foot long scaled-up Dinoponera ant.
Buckley is named after her creator, the great Dan Buckley.
The smaller ant is my daughter, dressed as an alate queen for the opener.
For real