iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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U.S. Scientific Ocean Drilling @us-sciod.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

We are impressed with the representation from the scientific ocean drilling community among the 2026 AGU Honors recipients! Honorees have led and participated in expeditions, completed Schlanger Fellowships, and advised the SciOD community on committees. Congratulations to all!

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Robert Boessenecker, Dr. of Whaleontology ™️ @coastalpaleo.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

#fossilfriday An example of why the ANSP and its collections must be saved. Atlantochelys mortoni, a giant protostegid sea turtle - named in 1849 by Agassiz based on the proximal humerus fragment. In 2012, someone found a large distal humerus that FIT ONTO THE SAME BONE in ANSP collections. 1/ 🦖🧪

The reunited humerus of the gigantic sea turtle Atlantochelys, on display in a museum: you can clearly see the break that happened sometime prior to the 19th century.

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Brittney Elizabeth Stoneburg @brittandbone.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I've worked for a natural history museum for 11 years at this point (man, yikes) and while it is sad, it isn't surprising to see two major institutions facing closure this year.

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Robert Boessenecker, Dr. of Whaleontology ™️ @coastalpaleo.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

11/ In Summer 2023, I finally saw the specimen again with @ashpoust.bsky.social at UCMP! We're working on redescribing the specimen and it's circuitous history, along with describing many additional teeth and postcrania. This species is known to be a maximum of 500,000 years old.

Two paleontologists wearing hats and masks and holding up the holotype mandible of Enhydra macrodonta in the collections at UC Berkeley

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Robert Boessenecker, Dr. of Whaleontology ™️ @coastalpaleo.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

It's #seaotterawarenessweek! 🐬🦑🧪 Sea otters only live in the North Pacific today and are the smallest marine mammals. Frustratingly, they have a very limited fossil record, and their origins are quite murky. We know *much* more about their ecology than their evolution; read more here:

coastalpaleo.blogspot.com

The terrible fossil record of sea otters, part 1: What do we know about modern sea otters?

You can find the second part here , and the third part here . Introduction Sea otters are perhaps my favorite marine mammal, for se...

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でんか @k-hermit.com · 22/09/2026

ヤドカリがアイデンティティを取り戻した

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Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

1) Don't wait until a museum is closed or threatened with closure to support it and speak out for it. By that point, it's often too late, and if it's not too late, the path out of the trouble is way harder and more expensive than avoiding the crisis.

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Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Some Monday morning thoughts on museum closures, spurred in part by the recent Academy of Natural Sciences, but not necessarily specific to that. <thread>

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Great Dying Survivor @cannotthinkofone99.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

#FossilFriday Complete skeleton of Hemicyon sansaniensis, a fully carnivorous and cursorial bear from the Middle Miocene.

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Prof Col Macpherson @colinmacpherson.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Hell pigs gathered in their masses, They were bona fide bad asses, Omnivorous mass destruction, And Oligocene predation, Oh lord yeah! 🤘

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AshPoust @ashpoust.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Good #FossilFriday post - coughDinohyuscough is an amazing animal. Honestly, I think it's as frightening as T. rex.

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Science Friday @scifri.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

What’s your best museum memory? We’re working on a story about the future of science museums and we want to hear from you! Tell us about a museum experience that you can’t forget. Leave us a voicemail at 877-4-SCIFRI. www.sciencefriday.com/articles/cont…

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Robert Boessenecker, Dr. of Whaleontology ™️ @coastalpaleo.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

New #artwork! #watercolor illustration of the 3 meter long block containing the holotype skull, jaws, and vertebrae of the 26 myo eomysticetid baleen whale Tokarahia kauaeroa (Kokoamu Greensand, New Zealand), which I named in 2015 for my PhD research. Large for me, ~20x8"; ~20-24 hours. 🐡🦖🐬 #sciart

A watercolor painting of a fossil whale skull with mandibles in a massive block of greenish gray sand. The skull is incomplete, and the left mandible is in life position; the right mandible is flipped 180. A cluster of vertebrae are present near the braincase. The bones are occasionally stained red with iron oxide.

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Daniel Bellingradt @dbellingradt.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

"Keep on reading the big and badly written book, they said. It'll be fun finishing it, they said. It is totally worth the time, they said..."

A human skeleton reading a big book. The image is a detail of a larger print showing the Last Judgement interpreted by Johannes Wierix in 16c Europe.

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Eric Scott @captainfossil.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

For #FossilFriday: holotype of the extinct Pleistocene bison species Bison antiquus, one of millions of specimens housed in the collections of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University - the oldest natural history museum in the US, now slated for permanent closure on 30 September. 🧪

Bison antiquus holotype (ANSP 12990) braincase with left horn core, shown in posterior view (top) and dorsal view (bottom). From McDonald & Scott (2023), The Pleistocene Fauna of Big Bone Lick, Boone County, Kentucky: A Rich History and Unanswered Questions

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らえらぷす @getawaytrike.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

#FossilFriday Zavacephale rinpoche, holotype and reconstructed skeleton in Fukushima Museum.

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Mark Witton @markwitton.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

For #FossilFriday, here's some 2019 #paleoart of Deinonychus subduing a juvenile Sauroposeidon using the Raptor Prey Restraint (RPR) model of dromaeosaur predation: grabbing prey with taloned feet, pinning it down with its body weight, and then eating it alive. Just like modern raptors, then.

A yellowish feathered predatory dinosaur has leapt onto the back of a small long-necked dinosaur, forcing it roughly to the ground. It has grasped the back of the herbivore with taloned feet, and holds its wings out for stability. Dust swirls around them as they wrestle.

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Robert Boessenecker, Dr. of Whaleontology ™️ @coastalpaleo.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

#fossilfriday A cluster of large cockles, Clinocardium meekianum, in a sandy concretion from the Purisima Formation in Santa Cruz, California. Early Pliocene, ~4-5 myo. Each cockle is about 6-8 cm in diameter. 🦑🦖🧪

A large, ~40 cm wide light gray rock broken in half, exposing a cluster of five large articulated fossil cockle shells. The fossil shells are white with some light tan coloring in spots.

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Kaedan O'Brien, Ph.D. @deadbovids.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The horn core and partial skull of Antidorcas recki, a fossil Springbok, from Kenya 750,000 years ago #FossilFriday

Modern Springbok with very different horns for comparison

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 11/09/2026

you bigots better not make Joseph Needham rise from the grave and slap you around for falsely claiming that East Asian countries never invented anything

en.wikipedia.org

Science and Civilisation in China - Wikipedia

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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

As both an academic and a writer, I am repelled by the "this looks like a long document. Would you like me to summarize it for you?" that seems to appear at the top of every pdf viewer now. NO. The *entire point* of good writing (either books or journal papers) is that every sentence has a purpose.

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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

A scientific paper already has a carefully thought out abstract & conclusions I can look at if I want an overview. A book is supposed to be a joy to read, an intellectual and emotional experience to relish. This is not something that advanced statistics can either add to or improve on.

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Foxfeather Zenkova @foxfeather.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I love the sounds baby cranes make. It takes 2-5 years for young sandhills to grow the 2-3ft long bony coils of trachea (which grow literally into the bones of their thick, shield-like keels) to make the loud, trumpeting calls of their parents. They literally become organic French horns inside! 🪶

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Robert Boessenecker, Dr. of Whaleontology ™️ @coastalpaleo.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

A fossil whale molar with lace-like latticework of acetate salt, from the 30 myo Makah Formation of Washington; ?Fucaia buelli. I didn't rinse this one long enough, after the acid bath and the white stripes are acetate salt; I photographed this before spot-cleaning and consolidating this tooth. 🐋🦖🧪

$A multicuspate molar of a fossil whale with brown enamel and a lace-like lattice of calcium acetate salt infilling fractures in the enamel.$

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Paul Z. Barrett PhD @nimravenous.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Happy to announce the publication of our article in Nature Ecology & Evolution on adaptive zone evolution in terrestrial mammal carnivores. Over the next few days, I’ll share the major results—and by extension, take you on a tour of carnivore evolution. (rdcu.be/6okG1hVhvtHa) 1/n

rdcu.be

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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

We never imagined how far that dream would travel, into homes, into hearts, into the way generations imagined what we could still become. In a world that often feels as divided as ever, maybe that's exactly why we need it now: a reminder that unity was always the point.

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𝕯𝖆𝖓🍂🎃🕸️ @arepublic86.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Charlotte Wainwright restoring and saving old/ancient books. www.wainwrightbookbinding.com

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Robert Boessenecker, Dr. of Whaleontology ™️ @coastalpaleo.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

#fossilfriday A couple of 30 myo fossil whale molars exposed in the remnant of a concretion I've been etching out for the past three months. This is from a tiny early toothed baleen whale, possibly Fucaia buelli; Makah Formation, WA. Provided for study by Jim Goedert! 🐋🦖🧪 #whaleontology

A two-part image showing a pair of chocolate brown, low crowned molars bearing a central cusp and three accessory cusps on each side, protruding from gray sandstone next to a ring-shaped bone. On the right, the fossil is submerged in gross-looking acid giving it a yellowy brown hue.

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Brandon Peecook @gondwannabe.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Tenure-track job in vertebrate paleo! 🦬🦕🦈🦴 This is my former position at the Idaho Museum of Natural History & Biological Sciences. Can confirm that the collections are excellent & understudied; AND that the people at the IMNH and BioSci are wonderful colleagues. APPLY!

isu.csod.com

Curator/Assistant Professor, Idaho Museum of Natural History & Biological Sciences (3756)

Job DescriptionThe Idaho Museum of Natural History and the Department of Biological Sciences at Idaho State University invite applications for a joint...

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A— @guttermachinations.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

"...one thing is all things—plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.” —Steinbeck

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AshPoust @ashpoust.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

'Surely you were aware when you accepted the position, Professor, that it was Publish or Perish.'

An assassin in a trench coat, old hat, and sunglasses fits a silencer onto a gun. Two startled old men look frightened behind a desk.

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Judith Barr @jebarr.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

A fossil dig. Walk like a dinosaur. Pet a dinosaur. The beautiful living animals space upstairs. The urban species wall. The incredible dioramas. Everyone deserves access to natural history collections.

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Nick Barber 🌋 @volcannick.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

A unique overlap of both the themes of this account i.e. philly news and science-is-on-fire updates: Drexel University is closing the Academy of Natural Sciences, the US' oldest natural history museum, after over 200 years being open to the public. www.inquirer.com/education/ac...

inquirer.com

The Academy of Natural Sciences is closing its museum after nearly two centuries

The closure does not affect the rest of the institution, which builds and maintains the collections and conducts research through departments such as the Patrick Center for Environmental Research.

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AshPoust @ashpoust.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Important vert-bio-strat paper. Not commonly appreciated but just because a fossil animal is numerous doesn't mean it's easy to understand - often the reverse! I will will always support good oreodont work!

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Robert Boessenecker, Dr. of Whaleontology ™️ @coastalpaleo.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Some more shots from PaleoCon at the Western Science Center: it took a village to flip Harvey the mammoth, a nice Columbian mammoth skull from southern CA. But, it looks great, and no injury to paleontologist or fossil was incurred! 🦖🧪

A split photo: a group of museum workers in a ring have just flipped over an object in a white plaster cradle; on the right, that object is revealed to be a partial skull of a columbian mammoth, sans tusks; it is light tan and perched on a black metal base.

Harvey the mammoth's skull; the base of the left tusk is preserved, but the right is broken away; the nares are very wide, and the edges of the braincase are damaged, exposing corrugated bone.

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Peter Wagner (a Real Dr., not a surgeon-barber/body-tech/golfer) @peterjwagner3.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Hey Paleo Folks! Rowan Lockwood (PS President) sent me this description of the Paleobotany short course at this year's GSA. “A primer for researchers of all stages interested in trait-based paleoecology and deep time vegetation-climate interactions. Attendees will be trained to make measurements…

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Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I think we need people to do partisan politics right now, too; partisanship against fascism is really important. But nonpartisan advocacy for things like vaccines and reading can be hugely consequential. It's hard to do. Parton was really something special.

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AshPoust @ashpoust.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Love this specimen. Recently repaired and re-prepared by our Lead Preparator @cherbel18.bsky.social !

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Dr. Scott Hartman - but not THAT kind of doctor @skeletaldrawing.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Have you ever wanted to visually compare the size of your favorite extinct animals? Now you can, as I'm launching an interactive size comparison tool on my website. Give it a try and let me know what you think: www.skeletaldrawing.com/compare/

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Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

The world’s population of Asiatic lions has grown from 523 in 2015 to 891 in 2025, a 70% jump. More than 55,000 open wells have been fenced off to stop lions falling in. Wild prey now makes up 74% of their diet, up from just 26% in 1974. buff.ly/uS6umcW #ShareGoodNewsToo

business-standard.com

https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/asiatic-lion-population-rises-70-percent-decade-891-world-lion-day-126081000837_1.html

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Christopher W. Jones @cwjones.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

"Libraries don't need to keep physical journals now that everything is online" The journals online:

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Ben Miller @extinctmonsters.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

“I didn’t figure another of those suckers would ever be found.” Harley Garbani, upon discovering the 3rd T. rex skeleton ever found. Here’s the skull and foot on display in the 70s and today. #FossilFriday

T. rex skull in a wooden museum case. Neat looking repeating TyrannosaurusRexTyrannosaurusRex” text along the bottom

Articulated T. rex foot in a case on a bed of gravel

Same T. rex skull displayed alongside a Lambeosaurus skull

Long display case of articulated feet and footprints of various dinosaurs, including the same rex foot at the far right

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Millipede Lab @apheloria.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

For decades, a large millipede displayed in zoos has been known simply as a “giant African millipede.” But what species is it actually? Our new study provides an answer: Spiropoeus fischeri Brandt, 1833, a 14-cm-long millipede from West Africa.

Two figures from a scientific article. One shows a large black millipede, and the second shows the millipedes posterior end.

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cenofreak88.bsky.social @cenofreak88.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

#museummonday a predators night out 100 years ago. A panther (as they are called in the south) makes its way through the forest on a summer night. On display at the Mississippi Museum Of Natural Science, Jackson. #mississippimuseumofnaturalscience #wildlife #panther #conservation

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 21/08/2026

The flip side of understanding how much of one's career is luck is that it helps tamp down envy when friends catch luck. I have friends with movies and TV series! Other friends with ten times my sales! Good for them. It's nice when people you like get that break. They deserve it, as much as anyone.

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