iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

'devastating rebuttals to all potential arguments' is an awesome thing to say. i'm stealing that for my papers

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Sarah Hird, PhD @sarahhird.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Last fun fact: the first paper I was ever an author on has - perhaps - the most underrated phylogeny of all time. Super cool genetic results (mitochondrial introgressions, both old and new) side by side with bacular morphology. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Phylogeny of chipmunk mitochondrial introgression with outlines of penis bones as well.

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Dr. Emma E. Bird @dremmabird.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

For years, 💀MorphoSource💀 has given researchers, educators, and students 🚨free access🚨 to 3D data on museum specimens from around the world. 🔆Now it is asking for some help to continue its work🔆 www.morphosource.org/donate/

morphosource.org

Why Give | Support MorphoSource

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Gavin Jackson @gavinjackson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I visited the Amazon rainforest a year ago ahead of the cop conference in Belem. Historically the only thing that has stopped deforestation has been electing Lula da Silva has Brazilian president. www.economist.com/the-americas...

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Jean-François Cudennec @limpetnerd.eurosky.social · 02/10/2026

A gorgeous specimen for #FossilFriday : the internal cast of a Jurassic bivalve (Pleuromya cf. uniformis), turned into a talisman with a religious Islamic inscription : ‘There is no god but Allāh [and] Muḥammad is His Prophet’ #PaleoSky ⚒️🏺🧪🦑🦕

Fig. 1. Pleuromya cf. uniformis (Sowerby 1813), Jurassic, Morocco. Internal mould of articulated specimen bearing a religious inscription in high relief. Museo Geominero, Madrid, catalogue number MGM-7809X. (a) Left valve view; (b) right valve view; (c) anterior view; (d) dorsal view; and (e) detail showing striations visible on the surface of the letters (left arrow) and how a fissure in the rock also affects the letter (right arrows), indicating that the letters were carved in high relief and do not represent surface adherences of any foreign material. The thick patina of dirt that covered the specimen, originally dark grey in colour, was removed by washing with detergents, alternating with immersions in hydrogen peroxide.

Source : https://www.lyellcollection.org/doi/full/10.1144/jgs2026-014

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I'm sure it wasn't the first time it happened, but this was the first time I noticed the pattern where conspiracy theorists declare complete vindication on the basis of LEAKED SECRET DOCUMENTS that even more strongly prove that they are wrong.

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Maija Karala @maijakarala.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Where did our lost rhinos roam? Distribution charts based on bone finds (individual dots) and habitat suitability for the four fluffy rhinos of late Pleistocene. These are of course approximate and might not include all obscure finds. #Sciart

Illustration of extinct narrow-nosed rhino with a map in the background showing it lived in central and southern Europe, northern Africa and some way into western Asia

Illustration of ”Siberian unicorn” or Elasmotherium sibiricum with a map on the background showing it lived in Eastern Europe and central Asia

Illustration of a woolly rhinoceros with a map in the background showing it had a very wide distribution from southwestern Europe all the way through Europe and Russia to the Pacific coast and northern China.

Illustration of a merck’s rhinoceros with a map in the background showing it lived in a large area from southwestern and central Europe to western Asia, parts of Siberia and northern and eastern China.

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Prof Susie Maidment @tweetisaurus.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Buckle up guys: I've got a story for you about my recent experience submitting a paper to Scientific Reports, a @natureportfolio.nature.com journal. I certainly won't be submitting there or peer-reviewing for them again, and I suggest you don't either, unless you enjoy your privacy being breached!

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James Tang @jamocetus.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I am simultaneously relieved and sad that authors don't write like its 1877 in scientific papers anymore: "Consequently there is frequently a double decadence in size within specific groups (cont.)

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

The government must know full well that many people have neither the space nor the money to store extra food in their homes. It is individuating responsibility for a collective problem. As usual, it is the poorest and most excluded who will suffer from it. 🧵 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

theguardian.com

Minister tells Brits to stock up on days of supplies after ‘supersize’ El Niño warning

Exclusive: Angela Eagle urges UK citizens to be ‘a bit more resilient’ as they plan for national emergencies

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James Tang @jamocetus.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

"Yeah I'm based on Moscow" Me, a smartass: "hehe which one" "both"

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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I know the fault of the closing of the Academy of Natural Sciences lies with Drexel University but I called to complain to the Mayor anyway. If I learn of something more useful to do I'll let you know. Her office number is (215) 686-2181 Saving the museum would be great PR for her (she needs it).

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Rhys Kaminski-Jones @rhyskamjones.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Satisfying how the Protestant urge to religious self-criticism gets you an eighteenth century Welsh Methodist writing things like "and are we not also rather like the Hindus ourselves, because we only marry people who go to the right kind of chapel and are extremely attached to our cows?"

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Couple thoughts on the recent resurgence of "scientific" racism. 1) This is usually treated as a science=head/humanities=heart problem. It is increasingly clear that this is a false framing. Lot of major players are emerging within the humanities (esp phil. depts). Biosci is largely steering clear

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Cab Davidson @gnomeicide.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Tuna used to be plentiful in the north sea. But no, you're not misremembering, there are no traditional recipes on the east coast. We didn't used to eat it. We just killed it. Sad thread on why. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

First bluefin tuna caught and landed in Yorkshire since 1960s

A crew from Whitby lands two of the migratory species weighing over 300kg each in as many days.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

This is genuinely incredibly dense fossil record! Why we don't see more bat fossil evolutionary and paleoecological studies? I would guess, such snapshots should be treasure troves of the information on the workings of ancient terrestrial ecosystems. 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

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Mauricio González-Forero @mauriciogforero.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Updated preprint: “A mathematical synthesis of genetics, development, and evolution”. Much of our understanding of phenotypic evolution relies on quantitative genetics, which in turn relies on what is known as the infinitesimal model. Thread. 1/10 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

A mathematical synthesis of genetics, development, and evolution

Mathematically integrating genetics, development, and evolution is a longstanding challenge. A prevalent approach is quantitative genetics underpinned by the infinitesimal model, which considers a sim...

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Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 18/07/2026

Tech titans claim the science fiction genre inspired them. But all they’ve done is graft their politics onto stories of a better future. An Essay by @alirizataskale.bsky.social

aeon.co

Silicon Valley has a science fiction problem | Aeon Essays

Tech titans claim the genre inspired them. But all they’ve done is graft their politics onto stories of a better future

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Ferran Sayol @ferransayol.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

New paper out! 🖨️ Glad to be part of this study, out in Science Advances: "Emergent patterns of island biodiversity in the Anthropocene" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Much of what looks natural in island biodiversity is a legacy of human impacts going back millennia. See main findings 👇🧵 (1/8)

science.org

Emergent patterns of island biodiversity in the Anthropocene

Human impacts substantially affect our ability to detect and understand natural biodiversity patterns.

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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 21/07/2026

the most realistic scene in Jurassic Park is when two scientists make a questionable decision — traveling to an undisclosed location with a strange man — on the promise of three years of modest funding

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Natalia (娜塔莉) @wrycritic.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

$50.1 million could fund over 400 doctorates; 933 years worth of annual curator salaries (UK), or running cost for a millennium-worth of free events like the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival. It is inane that people can accumulate such wealth, and use it explicitly to cause public harm.

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PaleoJim @paleojim.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Worse than I could have imagined with near total loss of our Campanian dinosaur beds. @utahpaleo-ufop.bsky.social @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social @agu.org @natgeosci.nature.com @paleosoc.bsky.social No one asked my opinion as Utah's State Paleontologist! @paleontologizing.bsky.social

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Asher HELLbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

You ever read a sentence that elegantly encapsulates a whole thing that's been quietly bothering you

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Biodiversity Heritage Library @biodivlibrary.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

BHL is featured in @theguardian.com's Age of Extinction series. The article highlights the extraordinary value of BHL and the urgent need to ensure it remains free and open into the future. Please read and share: www.theguardian.com/environment/... 🧪 🌎 📖 🔗 🐟 💚

theguardian.com

A bonanza for fans of the natural world: the digital library sharing 64m pages of scientific knowledge with everyone

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is an invaluable online archive of historic texts on species living and lost supplied by the world’s leading museums and universities. Now its future is in doubt

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James Tang @jamocetus.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

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Asher HELLbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Horses are the cats of livestock, in that they have extremely fervant supporters who a.) are romantically attached to feral ones being around, and b.) go absolutely apeshit the second someone tries to mitigate their environmental impacts

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Caxela @caxela.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Cetacea

Digital Drawing. An early whale (Pakicetus) stands at the water's edge, bending down for a drink. Behind it is a wall of tall grasses/reeds. The entire scene is shown within the shape of a blue whale. Despite the vast gulf in form and time between the two animals, they are of the same group: Cetacea.

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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

To my friends in soil science, If your goal remains sharing your peer-reviewed research papers on social media and disucssing them with the public, I might suggest considering changing the name of this journal. (Yes, I know what the term means in the context of soil.)

sciencedirect.com

Pedosphere | Journal | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier

Read the latest articles of Pedosphere at ScienceDirect.com, Elsevier’s leading platform of peer-reviewed scholarly literature

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Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · 27/05/2026

A very cool bacteriophage in purple and blue ink #sciart artologica.etsy.com/listing/4512...

purple and blue ink painting of bacteriophage

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Natalia (娜塔莉) @wrycritic.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

US people start tweaking when you mention socioeconomic class, something that is quantifiable, relative wealth from assets, savings & salary. Class is a taboo topic in their DEI spaces. Was called bourgeois for holding teaching position paying £21k & told that six-fig privately educated aren't rich

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Natalia (娜塔莉) @wrycritic.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

My favourite reoccurring tropes include: The problem is systemic & socioeconomic, but authors are adamant it can be overcame with individual self improvement And, man discovers empathy... this is treated as a novel insight.

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Natalia (娜塔莉) @wrycritic.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Usually when talking about misogyny in palaeontology, it's women that speak about own experience, guys stay silent. Reverse is needed. So, cis guys in palaeo. What do you do when you see (numerous and obvious) breaches of professional conduct from your colleagues, in field, conferences or private?

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Dr Nicholas Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Historical #refugia formed due to these sea ice barriers where bowhead whales were shielded from the devastating impacts of whaling for decades. The two bowhead whale stocks currently recovering had the greatest amount of past refugia, suggesting those stocks were not depleted as severely. 4/🐋

Top-down map of the Arctic showing the spread of bowhead whaling throughout the Arctic. The map shows Europe, Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Siberia. The four bowhead whale stocks are shown in between these landmasses (clockwise from top-right: East Greenland-Svalbard-Barents stock; East Canada-West Greenland stock; Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort stock; Sea of Okhotsk stock).

The color gradient shows how many years after pelagic whaling began in one of the four bowhead whale stocks that a particular grid cell began to experience whaling. This delay was because hazardous Arctic sea ice made travel in these frigid conditions extremely challenging for whalers.

Areas in darker colors (with a very delayed onset of whaling) functioned as historic refugia for bowhead whales. These areas included Prince Regent Inlet in the interior of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the Mackenzie River Delta/Eastern Beaufort Sea off Alaska, and the area between Franz Josef Archipelago and Novaya Zemlya Island in Russia.

The Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort and East Canada-West Greenland stocks had the greatest amount of historic refugia. They are also the two stocks that are recovering today.

It is likely that whale populations here were not depleted as severely due to being better shielded in refugia by the ice barriers. Hence, these stocks have been able to bounce back more strongly. Our hypothesis is additionally supported by inferences from modern and paleo-genomics of bowhead whales (details in the paper).

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Dr Nicholas Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

🐋🐋🐋 MASSIVE WHALE PAPER ALERT!!! 🐋🐋🐋 Our new paper "Historic logbooks reveal spatial footprints of commercial whaling" has just been published in @pnas.org! Come see how we use centuries-old #logbooks to understand population recovery patterns a century after Arctic #whaling. Details below 👇 1/🐋

Artwork of bowhead whales swimming in ice.

"Icebreakers". 1998. 72" x 48" original acrylic on masonite painting
of bowhead whales, on display at the Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) in Yellowknife, NWT. Image credit: Christopher Walker (artist).

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Robert Boessenecker, Dr. of Whaleontology ™️ @coastalpaleo.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Important new paper! A fragmentary but super early fossil cetacean: introdocing Kalakocetus from the early Eocene of India. It's got molars that are intermediate between the herbivorous raoellids (cetacean sister taxa) and the carnivorous early whales like Pakicetus. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The mandible and dentition of Kalakocetus from the original paper. Most of the teeth are triangular and double rooted; the mandible is small, around 20 cm long.

A phylogenetic tree showing the placement of Kalakocetus as the earliest diverging cetacean, branching off before Pakicetus and later archaeocetes. The tooth morphology is intermediate between the herbivorous raoellids and the carnivorous pakicetids

Tooth wear in early cetaceans, showing that Kalakocetus has tooth wear intermediate between raoellids and early whales

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

screenshot because this person is being earnest and I don’t want to encourage a dogpile, but this is exactly the kind of thing that I just increasingly have no fucking tolerance for. snake oil bullshit comes from all cultures, and it’s still snake oil bullshit. I don’t find it funny anymore!

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Every “traditional medicine was actually right” story is either: A) science isolated what the active component in a folk remedy was & made a testable/replicable treatment from it, or B) mental health/placebo benefits. which are fine! if it works it works! but I’m not gonna pretend it’s anything else

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Natalia (娜塔莉) @wrycritic.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Fighting Dinosaurs

Velociraptor & Protoceratops on blue and red tiles, simplified style

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Natalia (娜塔莉) @wrycritic.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Not just Europeans and Canadians. US is currently putting much into South East Asia into enormous socioeconomic crisis.

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Dr Craig R McClain @drcraigmc.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

I know everyone wants there to be a Giant Cretaceous Octopus but after looking at methods and tables, I really don't think this is a reality.

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Emily Higgs Art @emilyhiggs-art.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Irritator ~ 🦖🐠 . Adding this Brazilian spinosaurid to the dinosaur collection. I imagined this dinosaur running along the coastal shores amongst the driftwood and sea grass 🌾🌊 . #paleoart #spinosaurid #irritatorchallengeri

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