iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Dr. Meaghan Wetherell

Joshua Lüdtke @joshualudtke.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

All indications from FHSU and Sternberg Museum is that no one currently is talking to any fossil sellers. But two leaders at FHSU (and legal counsel) spoke to Salomon Aaron back in June, 3 months before FHSU leadership told the Sternberg Museum staff that FHSU planned to close Sternberg.

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Eporeodon was a stinky lil' grouper pooper. (Emery-Wetherell et. al 2026)

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

PSA to the dino folks out there who use the rugose cheekbones of Hylochoerus (the giant forest hog) in any sort of head butting analogy: those are sexually dimorphic 😬 This and more disappointing truths from @drfamoso.bsky.social and I out now: doi.org/10.1017/jpa....

Zoomed in view of the Giant African hog cheekbone. This one is rugose because it's a big boy.

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

it's time to expand beyond the Carboniferous swamp and into the Carboniferous everywhere else starting with the Mazon creek which is apparently pronounced muh ZAHN, not may-zon. Also I know I'm posting these videos way out of order but I didn't know I could post videos to blue sky so 🤷‍♀️

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Reposted by Dr. Meaghan Wetherell

Joschua Knüppe @joschuaknuppe.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

At the beginning of the month Drexel University made public that they want to close the Academy of Natural Sciences at the end of the month. The academy is the oldest natural history museum in the Americas and this would end more than 200 years of research and outreach.

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Anthony of the Badlands @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

To expand on my last post, it seems the ANSP isn't the only Natural History closing up shop this year. RIP Sternberg Museum hayspost.com/posts/f38333...

hayspost.com

Sternberg Museum future in question

" /> By CRISTINA JANNEYHays PostAn employee of the Sternberg Museum of

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Baby Lepidodendron: the worst Lepidodendron.

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Dr. Nick Famoso @drfamoso.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

John Day Fossil Beds National Monument special issue! @geopetalfabric.bsky.social, Joshua Xavier Samuels, and I did a character analysis of the oreodonts (sheep-camel-pig-like things) from the John Day region. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

cambridge.org

A character analysis of oreodonts (Superfamily Merycoidodontoidea) in the John Day region of Oregon, USA | Journal of Paleontology | Cambridge Core

A character analysis of oreodonts (Superfamily Merycoidodontoidea) in the John Day region of Oregon, USA

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Oh hey turns out I can upload videos here! Also, new updates to make our educational game Finding Lake Chewaucan more fun and easier to play! You can find it on Steam for free.

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Sadly, none of the trace fossils pictured come from oreodonts. But we do analyze a bunch of bones in lieu of footprints, and find there are not actually 34 species of oreodont in the John Day area, just a paltry 9.

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Ramon Nagesan @nagesanr.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

With my upcoming departure from the University of Michigan, I've found myself deep in the job hunt process. Moving back to Canada from the U.S is certainly something I'm really looking forward too. If any 🇨🇦 labs (especially in Alberta) are searching for a µ-CT expert, please let me know!

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

New season of Weird & Dead airs starting today and Spotify's ai generated chapter labels really build up into some truly magical word hash at the end. Feminist critique indeed!

Ai generated chapter titles which include 'why the scrotum remains an evolutionary mystery and feminist critique'

Weird & dead podcast description. This episode is about the evolution of the scrotum.

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franz @franzanth.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Finally, footage from that new whale graveyard. The fact that fossils and fresh carcasses mix together in this spot is bonkers. But of course it makes sense, because the scavengers that live down there also need a steady supply over millions of years. They can't just suddenly adapt to the deep.

youtube.com

Whale graveyard discovered 7km under the sea

YouTube video by nature video

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Check out this fossil rhino jaw I found that has a slickenside! (Geology translation: this bish got cut in half by a fault)

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

🪼 Your tax dollars paid a scientist to squeeze jellyfish through cheesecloth. Osamu Shimomura processed tens of thousands on an NSF grant to understand why they glow. He found a protein that glowed green under UV light. Called it "green protein." Nobody cared. For decades.

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Went to the new Deep Time display at the Martin G Lockley Discovery Center at Dinosaur Ridge! ...which should be my new faculty profile photo??

Horrified face next to an even more horrified omomyid face

Hehe hand up the butt of a dinosaur skeleton

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

I have not ever seen wood that shrunk like a sweater in the dryer before. Super curious as to what exactly happened here! Anyone got ideas? This is late oligocene, presumably a lahar (everything out there is either lahar or pyroclastic flow). Plenty of hydrothermal metamorphism & faulting around.

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Paul Stewens @p-stewens.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

🦖⚖️ Major dinosaur repatriation news: Irritator is finally going home! After years of tireless work by @alinemghilardi.bsky.social and colleagues, #IrritatorBelongstoBR is finally becoming reality. This is a milestone for decolonising palaeontology; thread to follow very soon!

bundesregierung.de

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Our beta test is now live and we are looking for play testers to give feedback while we finish all of the bits and bobs (like that super enthusiastic flamingo). The game itself is about 30 minutes long and all about paleontology and geology. PG. store.steampowered.com/app/3512920/...

store.steampowered.com

Finding Lake Chewaucan on Steam

You’re a time-traveling detective with a bone to uncover. Hunt for clues, solve puzzles and complete minigames to unlock pieces of the past and identify fossil animals.

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Reposted by Dr. Meaghan Wetherell

Prof Susie Maidment @tweetisaurus.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

We have a Patreon! If you enjoy the Fossil Files, consider helping us cover our running costs!

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Reposted by Dr. Meaghan Wetherell

Katie Slivensky @kslivensky.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

Seriously, #EduSky, #Physics teachers, #scicomm folks, if you aren't familiar with thescienceplayground.com, you should be. Amazing collection of all kinds of science demos and games from across the web, all curated by a science game expert and, indeed, no AI!!!

thescienceplayground.com

The Science Playground – a list of interesting links

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Happy #FossilFriday here is a wee climate paper that I coauthored. We found that 20kya eastern Washington was drying and warming up and chasing away all the pesky pine trees (ew, trees). As usual with pleistocene stuff, my job was figuring out how old all the dirt was (age-depth modelling)

doi.org

Late Glacial to Early Holocene Vegetation Reconstruction from the Wenas Creek Mammoth Site in Washington State

The Wenas Creek Mammoth site pollen record, which extends from ∼20,000–10,000 cal yr BP, is significant given that few eastern Cascade paleoecological records span the Late Glacial to Early Holocen...

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Not a biochemist but... Where is the R-squared value for that regression of 11 population averages that they are using for this point? Where is the analysis to compare fit between linear and nonlinear regressions to show that this is a continuous increase not something tapering off?

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Reposted by Dr. Meaghan Wetherell

Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

"The Islamists oppose women getting an education," I mutter, as I aim my missile at the girls school

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Riley Black 🏳️‍⚧️ 🦖 @restingdinoface.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Again we have public denials of any close association but then he was close enough to contribute to Epstein’s awful birthday book in 2003 www.seattletimes.com/business/mic...

Myhrvold, who previously denied any close association with Epstein, contributed a letter to the birthday book as well as a collection of sexually explicit wildlife photos he apparently took during a trip to Africa, according to a redacted copy of the book released Monday.

In the letter purportedly penned by Myhrvold, the Seattle multimillionaire celebrates Epstein, who would become the subject of a sprawling child sex trafficking investigation two years later.
"A few years ago somebody at a party asked me 'Does Jeffrey Epstein mange your money?'' Myhrvold allegedly wrote in the letter to the New York financier. "I replied 'No, but he advises me on lifestyle'. The guys eyes bugged out of his head and he said
'REALLY?'"

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Reposted by Dr. Meaghan Wetherell

Riley Black 🏳️‍⚧️ 🦖 @restingdinoface.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

If the paleo community is going to be serious about Horner’s connection to Epstein, we also have to be serious about Myhrvold’s, because guess who contributed photos of animals mating to Epstein’s birthday book and has been appearing in new paleo papers this year - including the new Spinosaurus.

kuow.org

Former Microsoft executive’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein comes under scrutiny

Seattle Times business reporter Alex Halverson has written about connections between Epstein and former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold.

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Clint Boyd @boydpaleo.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Not the kind of person you want to coauthor with or accept funding from...

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Mark Witton @markwitton.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

In which I provide a few thoughts on the new Spinosaurus species, S. mirabilis. www.newscientist.com/article/2516... I also stressed the deep connections between one of the study authors - Nathan Myhrvold - and Geoffrey Epstein to New Scientist. They didn't mention it, neither has anyone else.

newscientist.com

New fossils may settle debate over mysterious sail-backed spinosaurs

Spinosaurs have sometimes been portrayed as swimmers or divers, but a new species of these dinosaurs bolsters the idea that they were more like gigantic herons

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Bryan Gee @koskinonodon.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

(11/n) At least as of 2023, he was still allowed to submit first-authored abstracts to the annual meeting (presumably having a collaborator present in his stead). I was a bit miffed to realize that he could do this since I was still giving SVP free labor by being on the program committee that year.

Screenshot from the 2023 SVP Annual Meeting program, showing the title and authorship of a first-authored abstract from Robert Reisz.

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Bryan Gee @koskinonodon.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

(4/n) There's no indication that the Ethics Chair (who is the Vice Prez of ExComm, at least recently) receives any training in ethics or legal handling of ethics violations. Why does this matter? B/c like a lot of other things that PhD-holders are asked to do, a PhD does not prepare one for that!

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Bryan Gee @koskinonodon.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

I have nothing of substance to add re: the condemnation of paleo associations with Epstein, but as the initiator of one of the more recent high-profile SVP ethics cases who spent months going through their process, I have some thoughts re: SVP's handling of ethics cases/reports. A thread 🧵:

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Natalia (娜塔莉) @wrycritic.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

If you need 150 people in palaeontology, geology, zoology, scicomm and related. And I could list more, but ran out of space!

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Petite Paleoartist | Sauriazoicillus @ppaleoartist.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

this is all i see (text was too long so i had to write it on discord) i really hope SVP actually does enact proper change, actually listen to the people who've been pushing for this for how ever long. they need to earn back our trust, dont let the higher ups forget that

transcription: "so sorry we made you feel this way, we didnt mean it and we're vewwy sowwy 🥺. we will have an open townhall where previous abusers will probably be allowed in thanks to our ever slow & entirely opaque "process" which hasnt caught up on the decades of backlog we've accumulated (but trust us! the decades-long silence is just part of our ever robust process). so the people who actually need the change to happen for the safety of their well-being and careers wont feel comfortable calling anything out allowing us to continue twiddling our fingers, continue to not put our money where our PR statements are, and continue to ignore all internal staff who have been pushing for said changes for who knows how long at this point!"

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Anthony of the Badlands @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

And the next 2 meetings are a few hours drive from this guys home. And they will give no indication that he is not welcome back

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Benjamin Mohler @ptpaleo.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

3 days later, the Horner - Epstein timeline has been viewed 114,000 times. Thanks to everyone who shared to help ensure that this information was not buried. I do not have power to enact change on my own, but I do have the research skills to bring facts to light.

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

Pretty sure nothing happened to this individual. The guy had guns in his hotel room. SVP knew he was an issue in advance and instead of rejecting his abstract, they asked him to edit it to not name specific people in his weird manifesto.

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Omar Rafael Regalado Fernández @mathchaos.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

★"The trip actually took place in South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where collecting fossils on reservation land without explicit tribal permission is considered looting."

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Omar Rafael Regalado Fernández @mathchaos.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Wikipedia, which in the teens became the 5th most visited website, had this as the second sentence on JE's page: "He served 13 months in jail of an 18-month sentence as a convicted sex offender in the state of Florida for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution" web.archive.org/web/20111124...

web.archive.org

Jeffrey Epstein - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Omar Rafael Regalado Fernández @mathchaos.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

A big take-home message: most field work is organised and led by men, and men are bad at ensuring the physiological needs of their students are met. Male scientists still find natural phenomena like menstruation and maternity to be taboo.

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Omar Rafael Regalado Fernández @mathchaos.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

While no harassment in international forums has been experienced by the 39 women asked, half of them have experienced some sort of discrimination during the peer review or publication process. 64.1% considered that age also plays a factor in how they are treated and seen by their colleagues.

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Omar Rafael Regalado Fernández @mathchaos.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Of the 39 women asked, 72% has experienced some misogynistic in nature harassment. 22 have experienced psychological or verbal harassment in academia. 5 have experienced sexual harassment. Gender and race are intertwined in the type of harassment experienced.

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Omar Rafael Regalado Fernández @mathchaos.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

New paper to reflect on during the International Women in Science Day. 🧪⛏️⚒️🦕🦖 "Barriers Affecting Mexican Women in Paleontology: Challenges and Proposals for Building a Women’s Support Network" paleontologiamexicana.geologia.unam.mx/index.php/pa...

paleontologiamexicana.geologia.unam.mx

Vista de Barreras que afectan a las mujeres mexicanas en la paleontología: desafíos y propuestas para formar una red de apoyo femenina

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Dr. Win @paleowin.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Really SVP? You’re just going to ignore decades of sexual and academic misconduct, marrying a student AT one of your conferences, and every report I’ve filed (implying that’s what you do with reports) to defend famous Horner? You’d rather have pedophiles than students is your message?

Screenshot of a statement from SVP that they find “no policy violations” in having members appear in the Epstein letters

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Dr. Win @paleowin.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Over the years I’ve filled two reports of serious misconduct at SVP meetings and barely gotten acknowledgment of receipt. No consequences.

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Dr. Meaghan Wetherell @geopetalfabric.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Guess who gets applauded on their rational response to Jack Horner being in the Epstein files? Not SVP, that's for sure. But good job @dinoconuk.bsky.social ! youtu.be/4Y9NnzkxamQ?...

youtu.be

Trump in Epstein Files "a Million Times" & Lutnick Admits Lunch with Epstein | The Daily Show

YouTube video by The Daily Show

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Reposted by Dr. Meaghan Wetherell

Natalia (娜塔莉) @wrycritic.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

It is International Day of Women in Science! For this ocassion, a thread on influential women that illustrate prehistoric life🧵 Marta Szubert. Creator of one of the first to-scale feathered dinosar models (1997). If you've been to Poland or Slovakia, you've probably seen her models on display.

marta with dyzio the feathered dilophosaurus from 1997

A protoceratops family from the museum of evolution

Muzeum Przyrody i Techniki w Starachowicach

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