New skull casts for the teaching lab! Probainognathus, Treeshrew, Owl Monkey, Saki, and Colobus

Eastern Chipmunk in the grass for #MammalMonday

Dock, toothwort, wild carrot greens, and garlic mustard to fry up with some eggs

Newly discovered fossils give scientists first look at the evolution of early complex animals Newly discovered fossils have given scientists their first real glimpse of when Earth made a crucial transition from plants and unrecognizably simple animals to the complex creatures that took over th...

“This really is the first window we have into how basically the modern animal-dominated biosphere was formed and developed and came through this weird Ediacaran transitional interlude,” said co-author and paleontologist Frankie Dunn of Oxford's Museum of Natural History. https://to.pbs.org/4ty9rbh

Purple Finches with Eastern White Pine at the feeder

Burdock

Burdock

Time for Spring foraging!

Arsinoitherium skull with two giant horns

We’re looking for researchers in any discipline of natural history: if you have a paper coming out and you want to pitch @pbseons.bsky.social on a potential episode about it, send me a DM! #scicomm #paleosky #FossilFriday

(Arsinoitherium says please and thank you!)

Spring in the Hemlock forest

Bringing back this one from @poorlydrawnlines.bsky.social because of (gestures at everything)

Lorge

Partial vertebral column of Perucetus, displayed in the Natural History Museum of Lima, Peru

Several dorsal vertebrae of Perucetus, displayed in the Natural History Museum of Lima, Peru

Partial vertebral column of Perucetus, displayed in the Natural History Museum of Lima, Peru

This #FossilFriday I'm moving over from giant marine reptiles to mammals! Starting with one of the biggest of them all: Perucetus collosus!
First claimed to be potentially heavier than a blue whale, Perucetus had since been "downsized" drastically. It was nevertheless a mightily chonky beast >

LLMS are:
- Causing energy demands that commit us to a worse future
- Eroding brainpower of children through adult humans
- Making software and hardware less usable
- Creating a massive economic risk

But sure try to convince me they are worth infusing into every component of our lives.

Screenshot of a PDF of the published article. Title: "The tie that binds us? Challenging the primacy of DNA in kinship studies and re-centring community in defining human connections across time"

DNA is not the same as kinship.

Our perspective paper argues that treating genetics as the ultimate proof of identity or family can:

• erase community-defined relationships
• reinforce Western biases
• and even cause real harm in policy + research

Special Issue: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Talking about megafaunal extinctions today in two classes, so it's time to bring out the American Mastodon molar cast!
#FossilFriday

Global carbon emissions and decarbonization in 2025 - Nature Reviews Earth & Environment Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes increased by +0.7% within 2025. However, large-scale deployment of clean electricity sources during the year avoided 10.3 Gt o...

Bad news - we'll soon blow through the carbon budget for stabilizing global temperature at 1.5C

Good news - progress on clean energy suggests it is possible to stabilize by 2C www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What does the science say? Neither is a magic threshold. Every bit of warming matters.

Yes, Purple finches are often even more red than house finches! ID is more based on size and striping pattern

These are definitely purple finches. Many birds are arriving earlier and earlier each year with climate change (averaging about 2 weeks early lately)

Chinook salmon found naturally hatching in Upper Klamath River for first time in a century The Klamath Tribes are celebrating evidence of Chinook salmon spawning in Klamath River tributary.

After big dams on the upper Klamath River in far northern CA were removed in 2024, Chinook (king) salmon migrated upstream for the first time in 100+ years--and now they have hatched.

Whitetail Deer in the Spruce forest for #MammalMonday

Bed time

Buster update:

Calling all geologists! 🥾⛏️ The Utah Geological Survey is hiring a Geologic Mapper. If you love fieldwork, creating detailed maps, and want to work in a geological wonderland, this is for you!
Apply here: utdgohcm.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...
🧵 1/6

A fossil tooth of a cow shark embedded in a small gray sandstone block. The tooth has a flat, rectangular root and a crown shaped like a sawblade with ten recurved crowns decreasing in size to the right hand side.

#fossilfriday The nicest cow shark (Hexanchus griseus) tooth I ever found, or have ever seen - latest Miocene (6 myo) Purisima Formation, Santa Cruz. I donated this to the Santa Cruz museum about 20 years ago. From an upcoming monograph on the Purisima vertebrate assemblage.

Kabwe skull

It's Homo heidelbergensis day in Intro to Bio Anth!
#FossilFriday

The Lizard in the River A large tooth indicates that some of the largest lizards of all time slid through rivers in the land of T. rex and Edmontosaurus.

Mosasaurs as long as an adult T. rex swam through Cretaceous rivers. The lizards weren't there by accident or aberration. They lived there.

My latest newsletter's out now!

The Mother of Spiders, Horseshoe Crabs, and Things That Go Snap — Riley Black Paleontologists have uncovered the oldest known relative of spiders and horseshoe crabs, Megachelicerax, rewriting the story of how claws came out of the water.

Last week's new article is up on my blog, all about the amazing Megachelicerax!

If you want articles like this before anyone else, sign up for my newsletter: buttondown.com/restingdinoface

It’s Time to Slash US Military Spending by Half Reducing the US military budget would free up funds for programs that actually support people in this country, and would likely reduce the threat of future wars as well.

This needs repeating

cepr.net/publications...

Remember when Iranian protesters were being leveraged to manufacture consent for this war? Now, Trump calls all Iranians "animals" and says he will bomb the country "into the Stone Age."

Whatever happens, this is a deeply shameful episode in American history that will leave a permanent stain on the country.

Repeatedly vowing to commit war crimes against millions of innocent civilians is beyond the pale.