... Is it though?

Nearly everywhere we look we find non-hetero relations. Absence of anything queer would be the unexpected outcome!

Screenshot of part of the LEGO Ideas website, showing a side view of a diorama featuring both creatures

🚨 THIS IS NOT A DRILL 🚨

We’ve just seen this, by creator “Menapian” - a 4,998-piece set of the Great Exhibition (1851) Crystal Palace - complete with a bonus Megalosaurus and Ichthyosaur…

beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

A group of people from Black, Asian, Arab and other racially marginalised background gathered together, smiling and posing for the camera, in a foyer with blue walls

Are you...

- From a racially marginalised background?
- Interested in studies or careers in Earth, environmental, or ecological sciences?

Book your FREE ticket to the Explorers Conference 2024!
When: Thursday 28th November
Where: NHM, London

www.eventbrite.com/e/explorers-...

I LOVE THESE. Let me add this adorable orange tip that was digitized during the iCollections project. Here they are! And here's "A History of Shropshire" which features a snippet about this exact specimen. Famous!

I've updated this starter pack for all interested!

Now bursting with over 100 natural history museum related accounts 🎉🌱🦆🙌
go.bsky.app/NtdUnyF

Fishtopher, a brown and black striped tabby cat. He lays in the shelter next to a chrome bowl. His large head is hung low to the floor of the kennel, as he looks up with sad green eyes and very large, round cheeks. His ears are slightly down and his mouth looks small and almost like a frown. He protects his body with his round tail in a very sad, closed off manner.

Fishtopher, a brown and black striped tabby cat, now in his forever home. He stands up and leans against the couch but the lower half of his body is blocked by the camera person's leg. He looks slightly upward with large, sparkling green eyes. His ears are pointed up and forward and his mouth is almost in a wide smile. His pink nose is a much brighter pink now, and his large cheeks are still large, but smaller in comparison.

to be loved is to be changed

I’d like to join you if there’s space still! 😊

The slender-billed curlew is declared extinct This is the first mainland European bird declared extinct in 500 years.

well, here it is lads

after combing through some 1,400 records, it looks like the slender-billed curlew is indeed extinct and the last known photo taken in 1995 was probably at the point it slipped beneath the waves 🦉🧪
www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

Y’ALL! Scientists at Schmidt Ocean just captured this rare video of an open-ocean squid caring for its young. That pearl-packed black bag between its tentacles is a brood pouch, each pearl is a developing baby squid (you can see a few hatch out at the end).

Nature is so cool. 🧵

🪼🦑🐙🌿🧪

A horned leafhopper (Ledra aurita) on a leaf in my backyard back in 2020. It’s a small bug with a greyish green colouring, a little less than an inch in length. It has two distinctive projections on its pronotum just behind its head that are said to look like horns, though their rounded edges read more like little ears to me.

Spotting this horned leafhopper in my backyard in London was pretty wild, not because it’s the prettiest invert, but seeing something so different from from what someone might expect in a big city has got me looking everywhere for nice, friendly city bugs ever since :)

ALT text copied and pasted from the linked website: An infographic titled “How To Write Alt Text” featuring a photo of a capybara. Parts of alt text are divided by color, including identify who, expression, description, colour, and interesting features. The finished description reads “A capybara looking relaxed in a hot spa. Yellow yuzu fruits are floating in the water, and one is balanced on the top of the capybara’s head.”

Posting this again because a lot of people said they found it helpful! Guide to ALT text: www.perkins.org/resource/how...

Detail of Long Grass with Butterflies, 1890 by Vincent Van Gogh.

Detail of Tree Trunks in the Grass, 1890 by Vincent Van Gogh.

Detail of Olive Trees, 1889 by Vincent Van Gogh.

Detail from Landscape from Saint-Rémy (Wheatfield behind Saint-Paul Hospital), 1889 by Vincent Van Gogh.

So many touching details in Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers at the National Gallery, London. I can’t recommend enough to go and see Vincent’s butterflies and dandelions and trees and sky! 🌥️

a stylized 3d render of an ocean filled with water pokemon, including mantine, remoarid, luvdisc, milotic, and feebas. a girl with a tube and a psyduck float on top of the surface.

shallow waters

in my hypothetical worm field guide im not sure if it would be funnier to have a color index like in bird field guides but “pink” and “brown” contains 95% of the species, or to have highly specific color names that have people squinting at a worm trying to decide if it is rose or peach blossom pink

A few more angles on LA’s fighting dinosaurs for all of us born too late to see them in their original glory.

Now, who’s going to see Gnatalie, the museum’s new greeter dinosaur, when she debuts tomorrow? Share pics!

Trans flag made from images of butterflies and moths including cinnabar, Holly blue, and cabbage white

Okay, so I'm writing something for my staff intranet for Trans Awareness week and made up this image to go along with it, using images from our digitised collections. I discovered a strange little story in my hunt for pink lepidoptera...🧵

#digitalcollections #lepidoptera #naturalhistory

Mummy of a juvenile sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens from the Upper Pleistocene of Siberia - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Mummy of a juvenile sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens from the Upper Pleistocene of Siberia

Read about the little cold cub here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A photo of NHM London’s specimen PV OR 14954, an upper left canine of Homotherium latidens.

In honour of this insane Homotherium cub news, here’s a lovely H. latidens canine we have at NHM London, one of the first discovered in England and among those used by Richard Owen to describe the species in 1846.

Happy #FossilFriday!

Close-up of the paw of a mummified Homotherium cub. It has toe beans. From Lopatin et al. 2024

Saber-toothed toe beans. Saber-toothed toe beans

Mummy of a juvenile sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens from the Upper Pleistocene of Siberia - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Mummy of a juvenile sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens from the Upper Pleistocene of Siberia

This is not a drill, a mummified sabretooth cat has been published from the #Pleistocene permafrost of Russia. It's a Homotherium cub! The team (Lopatin et al.) reckon it's Homotherium latidens. It's too young to have enlarged upper canines. Paper is OA ... www.nature.com/articles/s41... cont...

a stylized 3d render of an aurora shaped like a dragon flying over a lake at night.

aurora dragon

Scans of illustrations that might be a mix of collage, colored pencil and watercolor. White dinosaur bones in forest diorama scenes within a museum hall with various visitors.

Another collage-y/colored pencil drawing. This one is a marine diorama with plesiosaur and sea turtle skeletons and a hanging pterosaur model being viewed from a mezzanine overhead.

Adorable shoebox-style diorama of a woodland diorama area in the corner of a museum hall. White wire/pipe cleaner dinosaur skeletons are placed within among tall trees and dirt. There's a little model of a touchable dinosaur bone on the rail.

Camera placed inside the diorama's doorway to show visitor eye view past standing turtle skeleton and toward dinosaur tableau.

This is amazing, and only recently archived: hand-drawn concept art and miniature dioramas (!) from the planning of the Los Angles Natural History Museum's 80s and 90s dinosaur galleries.

Sketchup is great and all, but man I wish I was around for this era of exhibit design.

Cambrian explosion

Corner of dim, brown museum gallery. Hadrosaur skeleton in relief on the wall with mostly ceratopsians skulls in front of it. Around the corner a moa skeleton in a case, and lush 1940s fresco of Cretaceous dinosaurs above.

Slightly closer angle of same area with same hadrosaur skeleton. Setting is brighter and white. Smaller number of skulls on platform.

Angle slightly to the right of previous. Same mural over a green-backgrounded case. Path and doorway opened up in the corner.

The Cretaceous corner at the Peabody Museum, before and after the renovation that opened earlier this year. The Edmontosaurus relief mount and Zallinger mural remain, but the design is brighter and there is a “less is more” ethos to the new version. #FossilFriday

New paper alert! We extended the known range of coconut crabs by >600 km further east in Polynesia! 🦀🧪

The absolute unit sheep; an Exmoor Horn ram

look at this absolute unit

A cut and polished slice of petrified wood. It's a light beige colour with concentric rings and radial patterns with a black centre. It looks a bit like a less evil version of the Eye of Sauron. Label text: Wood opal, polished slice of fossil oak tree. Clover Creek, Idaho. On display in the Natural History Museum, London.

Hello new followers! Here's a specimen which combies mineralogy and biology! Petrified wood forms when mineral-rich water flows through the remains of a tree and gradually replaces its organic material with #minerals. This fossilisation process preserves the original texture of the wood! #fossils

There are a lot of new arrivals lately, so here is my naturalists starter pack if you're looking to add more nature to your timeline!

And if you're a non-scientist naturalist, I'm happy to add you as well! There are no requirements, if you post about nature, you're in.

go.bsky.app/5MZYVyN

Book cover showing a nudibranch, a crab, and a sea star. The text says "the art of InverteFest August 2024"

inside spread showing two paintings of fossil invertebrates, the wormlike Kerygmachela kierkegaardi by Rebecca Gelernter and a golden trilobite by Glendon Mellow

inside spread showing a comic about an ant and a grasshopper by Rosemary Mosco and a black and white drawing of a beetle by Rinaldo Hartanto

inside spread showing a pair of 3D-printed beetles by Blue Appaloosa and a pencil drawing of several ants attacking a spider by Martin Gregorič-Quiñones (Age 8)

We proudly present:
The Art of #InverteFest – a digital art book showcasing the work of 66 artists from around the world, in celebration of overlooked invertebrate fauna.

Thank you to the human artists of bluesky who contributed to our first art book!

Download here drive.google.com/file/d/1WYvI...

ok ok I have tried to pull together a list of all the natural history museums and people who work at them!

Unsurprisingly this is very NHM London biased, so if you work at or know of other natural history museums on here then let me know! 👇
go.bsky.app/NtdUnyF