iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Nome of this looks like someone with control over messaging either. This is very haphazard. She'll be resigning by the end of the month.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 21h

this post in a nutshell:

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The Palaeontological Association @thepalass.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Reconstruction of the canopy of the iconic Lepidodendron aculeatum, based on new articulated fossils from the Bashkirian (Pennsylvanian) of Hagen-Vorhalle, Germany onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #PapersinPalaeontology #FossilFriday

Upper left: Photograph of an articulated branch system of Lepidodentron aculeatum from the Bashkirian (Pennsylvanian, upper Carboniferous) of Hagen-Vorhalle, Germany (WMNM P85752). The specimen is approximately 350 cm long and about 200 cm wide (scale bar on the right is 100 cm).
Lower left: Enlargement of part of the branch system: second ramification of the right main branch. Scale bar in lower right corner of photograph is 1 cm.
On the right: an artist's reconstruction of one interpretation of Lepidodentron aculeatum (illustration copyright Stefan Sølberg; Mørkøv, Denmark, 2026).
Red rectangle at bottom centre is a cover image from the journal Papers in Palaeontology.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 23h

Putting in my bid for the 2027 Nobel Peace Prize by taking a sledgehammer to every museum drawer labeled "Elonichthys"

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Unappreciated human rights issue

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I suppose it's #fossilfriday so here's the skull of the Permian coelacanth Spermatodus from Texas, courtesy of the AMNH.

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Prosanta Chakrabarty @prosanta.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Natural history museums are at an inflection point that started with the auctioning of dinosaurs. If Fort Hays State (Sternberg) or Drexel (Acad.Nat.Sci.) think they can monetize collections (i.e., sell natural history specimens); museums become safety deposit boxes instead of research institutes.

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Prof. Juan Cisneros ⚒️🐉 @cisneros.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Esta é Timonya, um anfíbio que viveu antes dos dinossauros em Timon, MA. O crânio mede 4cm, seus braços e pernas eram diminutos (consegue ver os ossinhos dos dedos no lado esquerdo?) e ela deveria passar a maior parte do tempo dentro d'água. #fossilfriday

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I'm definitely observing this. A lot of my friendships from university began as study groups. Now students just study with notebookLM or another chatbot. These students will come out of university more socially isolated, less open-minded, and lacking critical communication and collaboration skills.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

That's no way to talk about Tegeolepis

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Charles C Roseman @evoroseman.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Joseph Mengele had a doctoral degree in anthropology. Probably the most famous anthropologist PhD of all time (Jane Goodall had an ethology PhD).

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Cheirolepis canadensis 🇨🇦, Wendyichthys, and who else?

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Ben Miller @extinctmonsters.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Hays Daily News is absolutely killing it with their investigation into the Sternberg closing. Great work by a local newspaper.

hdnews.net

BREAKING NEWS - Sternberg Building is ‘Fine’; Deferred Maintenance Common at State-Owned Facilities - Hays Daily News

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Dodo and Dinosaur @dododinosauruk.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Our latest #ExtraordinaryExtinct illustrations are taking shape in the studio and we’re going back to some of the OGs of prehistoric pop culture- here’s Dimetrodon! Which creature should we bring to life next? 👇 #Dimetrodon #Palaeontology #PrehistoricLife #Fossils #NaturalHistory #DinosaurLovers

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Annie Abrams @annieabrams.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

i think this is right and these people aren‘t hoarding liberal education for their own children they actually just hate it or think it’s useless

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Sediments, geochemistry, taphonomy as well as evolutionary patterns usually point to the same transformative events if you know how to read: "The Choteč Limestone-Kačák Member succession represents ... favorable...preservation of microbial microfabrics." link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🧪⚒️ #Geology

Geological and stratigraphic setting of the studied Hlubočepy railroad cut section

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

"Is the goal to sell things? No, the goal is to grow the endowment by selling things. Keep up."

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

No worries. This is a rapidly evolving situation.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Very clear now that FHSU administration was consulting with antiquities dealers to sell the collection. That is not on the state of Kansas. That is entirely on FHSU.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This is not an expert in navigating the complex process of relocating significant research collections to a new institution. This is someone whose job it is to find wealthy private buyers looking for trophies. Mason and others need to resign now.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

100%. Providing students with the skills to be a good citizen isn't necessary if you don't care about civic engagement. Which is also why we're seeing such a push to convince people to let AI models do their thinking for them and why tch billionaires keep talking about people being "NPCs"

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Thanks. I've been thinking about this a lot this past week.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Same applies to museums. The people who built these institutions believed these institutions make us better people. That by standing in front of the Blue Whale in the American Museum of Natural History, we might be inspired to be our best selves. Take this away and you are saying that is worthless.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

If you shut down a library that might be my only opportunity to read Shakespeare, then this is effectively the same thing as saying that you do not value the person I might become by reading Shakespeare. You are saying that you do not care if I can navigate conversations that reference Shakespeare.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

When FHSU talks about closing down the Sternberg, they are saying that the people of western Kansas don't deserve the same opportunities to be citizens of our society as, say, New Yorkers. It is literally the same thing as shutting down a library...you are saying those people do not deserve literacy

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

So when the ANSP talks about closing down their exhibit space, what they're actually saying is that the people of the city of Philadelphia, which encompasses 1.5m people within city limits and 6.3m people in extended metro area, do not deserve the tools necessary to be good citizens of our society

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Supporting scientific research is part of what museums do, but it is not what museums ARE. What museums ARE is part of a wide range of institutions that promote good citizenship by giving people a window into a world outside their personal experiences and day to day grind.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This is the same reason Andrew Carnegie spent his vast personal wealth building libraries and why we have invested so much in maintaining public library systems afterwards. Not because a library is a fun place or makes lots of money, but because literacy is critical for responsible citizenship.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I posted this last week without comment, but I'm going to comment now. The people who established the system of museums in the West had a very specific reason for doing so: they thought that having an appreciation for the wonders of the world was absolutely necessary for being a good citizen.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Increasingly clear that the thought process here is not that the museum is expensive to maintain, but that value can be gained by selling it off piecemeal. This alone should be reason for Mason to resign immediately.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

You don't need to get curatorial permission if you run this experiment in the field before it's accessioned

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Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦 @michaelhendricks.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Watson's dishonesty and nastiness is multifaceted here...“Without further hesitation I implied that she was incompetent in interpreting X-ray pictures” was about A-DNA, but he conflates this with B-DNA (photo 51) to claim the helical insight was his. Wilkins comes off much worse in this light too.

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Jack Stack @jackstack.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Hot off the presses! I reviewed the history of early ray-finned fishes, with a focus on their morphology, fossil record, and taxonomy. My principal goal is a guide for other workers to make the rich record of early actinopterygian evolution more broadly available. dx.doi.org/10.1002/jmor...

dx.doi.org

The Evolutionary History of Early Ray‐Finned Fishes (Pan‐Actinopterygii)

Ray-finned fishes, the most diverse living vertebrate clade, include over 600 extinct early actinopterygian species whose evolution is an enigma.

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Jack Stack @jackstack.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

New paper on some very large ray-finned fish fossils! Thank you to Elizabeth Furman this awesome illustration. TLDR: Large early ray-finned fishes are rare, but show very different morphologies to the point that big body size is associated with distinct ecomorphologies. mapress.com/zt/article/v...

mapress.com

Fossils of an over 1-meter-long Permian ray-finned fish (Actinopterygii) from the western USA highlight multiple origins of large body size in stem-group actinopterygians | Zootaxa

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Probably. Seems like a lot of work after you've notched your fillet knife on scales while trying to skin enough Progyrolepis to make a meal.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I assume they were ureosmotic, so probably like hot piss

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Hey hey! So Seymouria is generally considered a stem amniote; it is conceivable that this is incorrect but nobody has made such a claim. We do not have larvae of Seymouria, but there are larvae known of other seymouriamorphs, notably Discosauriscus but also things like Kotlassia and Utegenia.

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Dynamognathus @dynamoterror.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Quick sketch of Westlothiana lizziae, grabbing some lunch in early #Carboniferous Scotland. Formerly known as an early reptile-like amniote or maybe an amphibian, “Lizzie” was just reinterpreted as more early-diverging tetrapodomorph, possessing fishy gills and spiracles. #sciart #paleoart #fishart

Colored-pencil drawing of the superficially lizard-like animal Westlothiana, curling its body in a sinuous motion as it crushes a small aquatic insect nymph in its jaws. Its body is elongated, rusty brown, and covered in relatively large fish-like scales. The front legs are tiny and swept back as it lunged forwards, the hind legs are only a bit larger and spread out as if holding on to an underwater log. The head is low and oval shaped, and near the base of the front leg is a slit-like gill opening. Its eye is fairly large and looking down towards its prey.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This one at AMNH was also originally a Patten specimen.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I see your Bothriolepis canadensis and I raise you this beauty (unnumbered) from AMNH

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

We thought this animal was an amniote. It has gills more fishlike than modern salamanders.

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