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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

#FossilFriday Greetings from the Paleozoic Era! These are two rugose corals from the Ordovician of Sweden, then part of the continent of Baltica! Rugosa is an entirely extinct group of corals that disappeared during the catastrophic mass extinction at the end of the Permian.

Two solitary rugose corals (one is only partially visible at the bottom left of the image). The scale shows that the larger specimen is around 2 cm long. The stalk by which the animals would have been attached to the substrate is in both cases pointing towards the top right.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Post a pic you took, no context, to bring some zen to the feed.

Steep mountains towering over a crystal blue sea in the Lofoten Archipelago of the Norwegian Arctic, during a clear and sunny day of August.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Sunday bicycle ride (despite temperature below -8°C) near my new home in Gamla Uppsala (Sweden), where I moved last month to study Paleobiology at Uppsala University. Saw viking burial mounds, a XII century church and XIX century wooden buildings.

A path zigzagging between snow-covered fields. In the background, several viking burial mounds, and, behind them, a tall church. The sky is bright, without even one cloud.

A path between mounds, leading to an old church surrounded by old, tall deciduous trees (obviously barren, given the season).

The same old church mentioned in the previous pictures, the construction of which started in the XII century. It stands tall in front of a cemetery surrounded by stonewalls.

A XIX century wooden building with red roof and green doors and decorations on the facade, hosting a restaurant.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

#FossilFriday A Middle Devonian gastropod in thin section, from Northern France. The Gastropoda are the most diverse group of shelly animals alive today, with >35k described species (>60k estimated). They have appeared in the Cambrian and have left an excellent fossil record.

Thin section of a carbonate rock showing a gastropod in a brown, fine-grained matrix. Other fossil shells can be seen on its right.
Observed with 10x objective.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Yay! Despite maximum daily temperatures going above 10°C, our pond has still been continuously frozen ❄️❄️❄️

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

I've spent a wonderful weekend in the Italian Alps (yesterday in Aosta Valley, today in Piedmont). Good memories before leaving for my next semester in Sweden!

Larch forest in a very white, snowy day. Aosta Valley (Italy), yesterday.

High alpine peaks under a pale blue sky. A tall larch tree cuts the picture. Piedmont (Italy), today.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

#FossilFriday Holotype of the phocid pinniped Pliophoca etrusca, exhibited at the Natural History Museum (University of Pisa). It comes from the Pliocene of Tuscany, and was likely related to Mediterranean monk seals. It was described by Tavani (1941) and reevaluated by Berta et al. (2015).

Photo showing the anterior half of a well-preserved partially articulated skeleton of a phocid. Part of the skull and of some limb bones has been reconstructed.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

With an average temperature here (Ivrea, Piedmont, Italy) that this month is below 2°C (so far), our pond is completely frozen, with an ice layer a few centimetres thick! ❄️❄️❄️

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

First #FossilFriday of 2026: we begin with one of the tiniest kinds of fossils: an asterolith, a star-shaped calcareous nannofossil produced by the discoasters, a group of poorly known, extinct unicellular algae, that are however very important for the biostratigraphy of the Paleogene and Neogene.

An asterolith (the minuscule star-shaped structure in the middle of the picture). Since it is just a few tens of micrometres in diameter, it is difficult to see it much better than this with an optical microscope.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

On top of this, in the same year I visited 14 countries (bringing my total up to 27) all over the European continent. Here are some of the beautiful and varied landscapes I had the pleasure to enjoy.

A tall Jurassic rock pillar on top of a cliff. Behind it, a green central European forest and a distant castle. All in a beautiful, sunny spring day. Ojców National Park, Poland.

The Gulf of Finland seen from a tall forested cliff. Ida-Viru County, Northeastern Estonia.

The pitoresque, fairytale town of Český Krumlov. South Bohemia, Czechia.

An alpine icy conifer forest. A beautifully white mountain stands out in the distant background. Aosta Valley, Italy.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Still in time for a 2025 recap! It has been an important year for me. I obtained my Bachelor’s Degree in Natural Sciences with a thesis on the osteoderm morphology in Caiman crocodilus. I started the Pangea Paleobiology Master’s Program, moving to Lille (🇫🇷) for 4 (tough but instructive) months.

The first of the slides accompanying my Bachelor's thesis. The title is "The dermal armour of the common caiman (Caiman crocodilus): insights from the study of a complete specimen". The names of my supervisor Prof. Massimo Delfino and my cosupervisor Dr. Jules Denis Walter are written, along with mine. On top, the logos of the University of Turin and of its Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

The design of the animals in the series is really top-notch, and the scientific accuracy testifies to the awesome contribution of @tetzoo.bsky.social and the other scientific consultants. This is paired with incredible sceneries... Look at this stunning shot of mammoth herds in a Pleistocene steppe

Many herds of woolly mammoths crossing a vast steppe, with dramatic snow-capped mountains in the background.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

I have finally watched Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age!!! I guess that the fact that it made me obsessed with the Ice Age and Pleistocene megafauna means it hits the point. It is sooo good! Some more thoughts coming soon 🧵

Poster of Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age featuring beautiful woolly mammoths

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

#FossilFriday: an ichnofossil - probably a crustacean burrow - from the Pliocene (the site is dated at 3.7-3.5 Ma) of the Cervo River "Canyon", Biella Province, Piedmont. #ichnology #ichnofossil #tracefossil #invertebrate

An elongated burrow preserved as a relief on coarse-grained sediments. A scale bar shows that the observable part is around 20 cm long and 1-1.5 cm wide. It appears that the burrow branches on the right of the image.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

I haven't been posting for a while because I was moving to Lille, France to join a Master's Program in Palaeontology! Starting to live here has been tough, but I can't wait to start my studies...

Photo from a short walk in the centre of Lille, with the Opéra de Lille in the foreground.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

In our most recent #fossil prospecting excursion we went to a #Carboniferous outcrop on the Little St. Bernard Pass (French-Italian border) together with french colleagues. What was once a coastal swamp covered by lush vegetation is now located at 2.2 km of altitude, surrounded by a scenic setting.

Our team looking for fossils in the spectacular setting of the Little St. Bernard Pass. All the dark rocks in the foreground are Carboniferous and potentially fossil-bearing.

The view from the site, looking South-West.

A large slab with fossil shoots being cleaned on the field.

An example of the most common type of fossil found in the site: a partial stem of the arborescent horsetail Calamites. This stem is well-preserved and it is ca. 9 cm wide and 13 cm long.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Today I'm observing multiple damselflies (Zygoptera) mating in my garden. Very cool! #insects #entomology

A couple of damselflies mating on the edge of an artificial pond.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

#FossilFriday: a fragmentary leaf of a hackberry (Celtis, Cannabaceae) from the Pliocene of the Argille Azzurre Formation, found by me in Cuneo Province, Piedmont. #paleobotany #fossil #Pliocene

A partial carbonified leaf on a small block of greyish-blue clay. The color of these clays gives the Argille Azzurre Formation its name (literally "Blue Clays Formation").

Plate from the 1885 book "Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz", with illustrations of a modern species of the genus Celtis, the European nettle tree or Mediterranean hackberry (Celtis australis), native to Southern Europe, West Asia and Northern Africa.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

I have received my Bachelor's Degree in Natural Sciences at the University of Turin!

Photo of me in front of a Tilia cordata (small-leaved linden) in the courtyard of the Department of Life Sciences.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

#FossilFriday! Here is a picture of a fossil fruit of the aquatic angiosperm Trapa natans (a living species known as water caltrop or water chestnut - "castagna d'acqua" in Italian) that I have collected in Lower Pleistocene sediments (Gelasian, 2.4 Ma) in Biella Province, Piedmont.

A carbonified and compressed fossil of a four-spined nut-type fruit, belonging to Trapa natans, in my hand. The fossil is approximately 4 cm wide.

Plate from the 1885 book "Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz", depicting living Trapa natans (entire plant, flowers and fruits).

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

I recently bought "Uncovering dinosaur behavior" by @davehone.bsky.social (and illustrated magnificently by @serpenillus.bsky.social). And while I was there, I also bought "The tyrannosaur chronicles" which for some reason wasn't already in my library (as it should have). Both truly recommended!

"The tyrannosaur chronicles" and "Uncovering dinosaur behavior", both by Dr. David Hone, on a couple of piles of science books and journals.

A peek inside "Uncovering dinosaur behavior", with stunning illustrations by Gabriel Ugueto.

A peek inside "The tyrannosaur chronicles" with a couple of nice photos of tyrannosaur specimens from the colour section.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

REWILDING OUR GARDEN 🌿🌺🐝 To increase biodiversity in our garden we aren't just letting things grow... We're also creating a pond! It's still work in progress ⛏️🌱

The pond as it is now: a big hole covered in a waterproof sheet and filled with water. We are covering the bottom and its shores with soil, stones and wood. We still need to add many aquatic plants and to make the immediate surroundings wilder.

The scene behind the pond: an overgrown grassy field, with (mostly exotic) trees in the middle and surrounded by an ivy-covered wall. In the background, in apparent continuity with the garden, a forested hill.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

The Park is also known for its rich flora, the most famous element of it being the hook pine (Pinus mugo subsp. uncinata), a comparatively rare conifer. Here is a monumental individual (with a very odd trunk shape), signaled by a panel, that says it is 96 years old and 15 m tall.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Among the things I was very pleased to see are abundant numbers of common frogs (Rana temporaria) in the Lake La Selva (1,803 m asl).

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Yesterday I visited a beautiful protected area near my house: the Mont Avic Natural Park (Aosta Valley, Italy). Instituted in 1989 and expanded twice in 2003 and 2023, it now covers 7,300 ha, bordering the Gran Paradiso National Park and with an altitude range between 1000 and 3185 m asl.

A small waterfall in a mountain forest dominated by larches and pines

The same stream of the previous picture, running down the valley after the waterfall.

A small lake located at 1,803 m asl in the Park. Its rocky surroundings are covered by pines.

A panoramic view of one of the valleys of the Park, and of the main Aosta Valley at the bottom. The huge mountains in the background are still covered in snow above circa 2 km of altitude.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

Leaving tomorrow for a road trip to Kraków, Poland! 🇵🇱 I'm planning to visit natural sites as well as historical ones during the few days I'll be there. Do you have any suggestion about geo-paleontological attractions in the area? In the pictures, just an anticipation of things I hope to see.

Aerial view of Kraków's historical center.
From Wikipedia

Jurassic rock formations in the Ojcowsky Park Narodowy (Ojców National Park).
From Wikipedia

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

For #StrataDay here are marine sediments from the Miocene of La Morra (Cuneo Province, Italy). These are turbidites that include some fossiliferous lenses (not visible here) with mainly fossil plants and molluscs.

Marine sediments with strata of different colors (from almost white to brown-reddish and blue-grey). The strata on the bottom are fine-grained (probably the top of a turbidite sequence), while above them there are conglomerates (probably the base of deposits formed by another successive turbidity flow - other finer-grained strata above these are not visible in the picture).

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

We are experiencing heavy rainfall (>150 mm in 6 hours in certain localities) and severe floodings here in Northern Piedmont. Motorways and railways are closed, as well as most bridges and many local roads. Had to go out to look for a second water pump.

Google Maps screenshot showing a flooding alert, motorways and minor roads closed and traffic jams on the few open ones, near Ivrea (Turin Province)

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

For #MolluscMonday , here is a lymnaeid gastropod (the so-called pond snails).

A lymnaeid gastropod specimen preserved in alcohol and observed through a microscope.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Spent the morning looking for fossil fruits and seeds in Pliocene sediment samples for the "Palaeontological Monitoring" class with other students. Besides fruits and seeds, we also found other things, such as fungi, insects' coprolites and biting traces. #paleobotany #ichnology

A photo taken during the process of identification and selection of fossils from filtered sediments, depicting small mounds of sediment on a table and a bag with more sediment, as well as small boxes with some interesting specimens we recovered.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

Traveling through the Apennines near the border between the regions of Piedmont, Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna. The thick fog didn't allow me to see much while we were driving through narrow and isolated mountain roads. Beautiful trees, though.

An Apenninic valley fully covered by forest and surrounded by rounded mountains partially hidden by fog.

The side of a narrow road with a mountain slope covered by trees barely visible in the white.

A beech forest in the fog, seen from uphill. The scene is mostly colorless, since only few branches show the earliest leaves.

A dense mixed (mostly beech and conifers) mountain forest. Fog again.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

Just went walking in Val Concei, Trentino (Italy). Tranquil place, and I see they've put "Bear Area" warning signs.

A narrow unpaved road heading into a conifer-dominated mountain forest. Tall and steep cliffs tower the area. The sky is white and cloudy.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

I was referring to this tweet by the US Secretary of Interior. It clearly says that this technology is the solution to conservation problems and that we shouldn't focus on "regulations" anymore.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Went on a trip in Biella Province on Sunday. Travelling on the "Panoramica Zegna" scenic road you can see a large part of the Western Po Valley and the arc made by the Western Alps around it. See alt text for a description of the large-scale geographic and geologic features identifiable from here.

The view facing Southwest from the "Panoramica Zegna" scenic road. The rounded hills in the foreground are those near the city of Biella; beyond those there is an extremely straight hill (called Serra d'Ivrea) and further away another one a bit more irregular (that is the hill on which I live!): these are part of the moraine system surrounding the Ivrea Morainic Amphitheater (the flat region in between cannot be seen in this picture). The Serra d'Ivrea represents also the border between the provinces of Biella and Turin. Far, far away you can see the Westernmost part of the Alpine arc, with a very prominent pyramid-like mountain (located 135 km away in a straight line from the point where I took this photo!) that is Monviso, the highest mountain in the Cottian Alps, reaching an altitude of 3,841 m. It's from the feet of this peak that the Po River, the longest of Italy and the one that has created the vast Po Valley, is born.

The view (from the same location of the previous picture) facing Southeast. Most of the distant landscape is occupied by the Po Valley, an area where the human impact has been tremendously high for millennia. On the horizon, some mountains can be seen: those on the left are the Northern Apennines (around 140 km away), part of the long mountain chain that could be referred to as the "backbone" of peninsular Italy. Along the coast of the Ligurian Sea it joins the Southwestern most part of the Alps (the Maritime Alps, that can be barely seen here on the right part of the horizon).

A wide angle view from that point, encompassing the landscape seen in the previous two photos.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Wow, the new therizinosaur Duonychus... What a spectacular finding! Read the paper here (it's OPEN ACCESS): www.cell.com/iscience/ful... And here's the graphical abstract:

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

Alpine ibexes or steinbocks (Capra ibex) in the wild. Seen yesterday in Gran Paradiso National Park, Italy. This is the place where the last population (<100) survived when the species was on the brink of extinction in the XIX century. Now there are more than 50k individuals spread across the Alps.

Two wild alpine ibexes, one grazing on the left, the other on the opposite side of the picture walking to the right. The one on the left shows an identification label on its left ear. They both have wonderful horns.
On the background, a larch forest and tall cliffs under a white sky.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

Seen from the car while travelling through the National Park...

An alpine chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) in alert position

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

Windy day in Gran Paradiso National Park

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

On a late hour we found another deposit where the preservation was actually wonderful... So - as it always happens - we were in a rush but still managed to recover some blocks and single specimens that will be prepared for study or for exhibition at a local museum.

Beautifully preserved fossil leaves coloured in brown and red on a grey matrix.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

The leaf that I'm showing here probably belongs to the genus Cinnamomum, which nowadays lives only in the subtropical and tropical areas of Asia and Oceania... But this genus is also common in the Pliocene of Northern Italy.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

The second aim, however, was to find something definitely more spectacular: fossil leaves. The first point where we started digging was extremely rich but the preservation was not optimal.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

One of the aims of the excursion was to find fossil seeds, remains that can be identified more easily than fossil wood and can be sampled in large quantities. Fossil seeds can be very useful in reconstructing ancient environments even if they aren't spectacular and are rarely shown in museums.

Example of a fossil seed we collected yesterday. Of course it wasn't found in this rock (I put it on a white pebble just to take a picture of it).
The width of the seed is about 1 cm.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Most of these remains are small fragments of fossil wood, and at times we found larger and more apparent pieces of fossil wood like this one. But they weren't the reason we came here for...

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Here are some details photographed where the fossils where particularly abundant.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

The sediments we came for are approximately 4 Ma old and consist mostly of blue-grey clay, but they get more black in some parts due to the high concentration of carbonified plant material: all the black spots you can see are plant fossils, while the white ones are molluscs' shell fragments.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Yesterday we spent the whole day prospecting a fossil site in Cuneo Province (Piedmont, Italy), which is known for abundant remains of Pliocene plants that provide evidence of the subtropical climate typical of the area at that time.

Partially flooded river bed with Pliocene clay-rich sediments of blueish color exposed. The black areas in these sediments are all plant remains.

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Beautiful day in Gran Paradiso National Park

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Ruben Comitini @rubencomitini.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

Right premaxilla of Caiman crocodilus (spectacled caiman). Note the intense sculpturing on the outer surface of the bone. Each square has a side of 1 cm. The specimen wasn't fully mature at the time of its death.

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