Here's a stunner for #FossilFriday, just look at that beetle's preserved wing case! It belongs to a group called frog-legged leaf beetles (so-named for their extra-juicy rear legs), paleontologists called its pattern "the most perfectly preserved pigment-based colouration known in fossil beetles" 🧪
This #FossilFriday morning's blue #PaleoArt, for all the new #Bluesky people, features the #mosasaur #Platecarpus...
Two bird-like animals leap at one another. Their chests and wings are orange, their necks orange-brown, and their legs white. Feather fans project from their tail base and tail tips. They are surrounded by the bases of trees and framed against a hazy blue-green backdrop. Leaf-litter occupies the base of the image.
Leaping Balaur bondoc #paleoart for #FossilFriday. This image follows the interpretation that Balaur was an omnivorous bird, not a "double-clawed" dromaeosaur. The skull is unknown, so the head is based on Sapeornis. Originally created for the first @palaeogames.bsky.social book. #sciart
Tall specimen consisting of many bright yellow sulphur crystals on grey matrix. It sits on a frosted plinth in front of a grey wall. An edge of another striped mineral, orpiment, can be seen at the top left. At the Royal Ontario Museum.
Another bright mineral!! The element sulphur makes these beautiful crystals. Be careful, sometimes the warmth of your hand can cause these sensitive crystals to crack. #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪
A partial fossil skull in black and white of a juvenile fur seal; the snout is missing, and the right side of the braincase has been removed, revealing an incredibly well preserved cranial endocast.
🦖🐬🧪An incredible "fossil brain" of a fossil fur seal (Thalassoleon macnallyae) from the Pliocene Purisima Formation near Santa Cruz. This incredible specimen preserves a cranial endocast with exquisite detail. Read more about fossil fur seals on my blog: coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...
The Fossil Finders gets you a front row seat to paleontologists‘ personal fieldwork adventures! This new program is a collaboration between SVP and paleo-Twitch-streaming rockstar @paleontologizing.bsky.social!
You can find Danny’s channel at Twitch.tv/paleontologizing.
#TheFossilFinders
Kitty!*
(*Not actually a kitty)
Alt text for the video: a grey 3D model or a cat-like skull rotates on a screen. It starts showing the left side, rotating through the front. There are some cracks on the skull and one canine is missing but it is overall very complete.
Our new discovery, led by @shorouqalashqar.bsky.social , has unveiled a new 30-million-year-old species of apex predator, #Bastetodon, in Egypt’s Fayum Desert! Check out the study in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. @matt-borths.bsky.social @erikseiffert.bsky.social #SallamLab #MUVP
Three views of the skull of Coronodon havensteini - top: the skull prior to restoration with molded/scuplted teeth; middle: after restoration work; bottom: with mandible in articulation/occlusion with the skull.
Bonus blog posts a day late for #worldwhaleday - all about the early toothed baleen whale, Coronodon, from the Oligocene of South Carolina. In 2023, we published a monograph reporting new specimens of Coronodon - including new material of C. havensteini: coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2023/04/new-...
A small clear plastic box containing six fossils, including two saber teeth plus a sharp pointy molar (because large cats have crazy shearing wear on their carnassials)
Just hanging out here with the holotype of Dinobastis (=Homotherium) serum. No biggie. The ANSP collection is a wonderful time machine back to 19th century paleontology. I'm sure I'll get to 21st century eventually, but please let me wallow in the past for a bit longer.
Sharing our @floridamuseum.bsky.social shark rostral node research for #FossilFriday! This 'small' project with Mitchell Riegler, Sam Zbinden, & coauthors has become massive with Sam taking home the SVP 2024 Colbert Prize! Fossil node 3D model: tinyurl.com/2p8yknac
A hand holds a piece of light brown coloured rock. In the rock is a fossil of a horn coral, the size of a hand palm. In the background blurry outcrops of the quarry where it was found.
Happy #FossilFriday! This is a ~385-million-year-old horn coral from the Devonian Period, found at quarry Steltenberg in Hagen, Germany 🪸 ⚒️ #Fossil
I'm exhausted and this feels like the best option for #FossilFriday this week.
This is coprolite. What is coprolite, you ask? It's fossilized feces. It's mineralized, doesn't smell. It's important for science to find pollen or pieces of bone.
Also proves you can polish a turd.
Cast of the skeleton of the coelacanth Mawsonian
#FossilFriday The Cretaceous Brazilian coelacanth Mawsonia at the University of Michigan Natural History Museum
A blue-skied landscape set around a watering hole in the Early Cretaceous. Three large, subtly-striped iguanodonts are emerging from the water while white flying reptiles flap past them. They approach a group of smaller iguanodont species with red-orange backs and pink-grey hides, who are drinking from the water. Seen between them is the front half of an armoured dinosaur, a polacanthid, walking by. The group of small iguanodonts stands on a churned-up mess of brown mud, the product of many heavy animals coming to drink. In the mid-foreground is a small, gold tyrannosauroid with its head tilted back to trickle water down its throat. Several small, bird-like oviraptorosaurs sneak along the water margin in the lower left. Dinosaurs of opposing size - two enormous, long-armed brachiosaurs - stand in the far distance, in front of a sparse forest.
For #FossilFriday, here's some #paleoart of a casual afternoon in the Early Cretaceous Wealden group, with iguanodonts, tyrannosauroids, polacanthids and sauropods making a mess of a watering hole. The mashed-up muds left by these animals can be found to this day in Wealden rocks. #dinosaurs #sciart
Women holding a large orange-colored antler compared to a much smaller skull with antlers of a white-tailed deer.
A single partial antler shed of an extinct Irish elk is larger than the entire skull plus antlers of a white-tailed deer. While @floridamuseum.bsky.social vert paleo mostly houses FL fossils, we also acquire donations, including this Megaloceros giganteus collected from the Netherlands #FossilFriday
stylized illustration of two framed portraits both of white men wearing glasses, one with a hat and silver beard and the other clean shaven
Feb 20 🦣 'Cruisin' Deep Time' Talk and Book Signing
Ray Troll and Kirk Johnson will be sharing photographs, artwork, and enthralling tales from their travels fossil-hunting across the American West and North America’s Pacific Coast.
FREE event info: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/event/cruisi...