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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Happy #FossilFriday! Conulariids from the Pennsylvanian Finis Shale, north-central Texas, USA.

Five narrow angular but conical shapes, arranged in a small rainbow, narrow ends inward and wider ends outward, each 2-3 cm long, and very finely ribbed perpendicular to long axis.

Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Happy #FossilFriday! Two spines from an unknown fossil echinoid (Archaeocidaris or Miocidaris), Permian, north-central Texas. Good examples of pre-Mesozoic Marine Revolution arms race in sea urchins. Small squares are mm scale; large squares are cm scale. 🦖🧪#echinoid #Permian #Paleontology

Two sea urchin spines, up to a half cm wide and almost 5 cm long, look like baseball bats with many spikes coming out of the sides, almost like medieval weapons.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Happy #FossilFriday to all! I celebrate inverts today! Atrypide brachiopod (probably Desquamatia sp.) cross-section in core with spiralia (lophophore supports). Latest Givetian Firebag Member, Waterways Formation, northeast Alberta, Canada. Note geopetal of calcite spar above the spiralia. 🦖🧪

A vaguely flattened, sheild-shaped cross section of the shell of a brachiopod fossil, flattened-valve down, with three upside-down U-shaped sediment-filled features defined by small white shelly dots, which are the cross-section of the "ribs" of the spiralia. The area of the shell above the spiralia is filled with calcite spar: it's a geopetal structure. The shell itself is white. The background sediment that the shell is in is a dark grey shale.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Happy #FossilFriday! Corals in the limestone of the Coralville Devonian Fossil Gorge near Iowa City, USA, Cedar Valley Group. Learn more and take a virtual tour of this really cool site: www.mvr.usace.army.mil/coralvillela... paleorepository.sites.uiowa.edu/virtual-tour... 🧪🦖

A grey rock surface has a coral in cross section on the left and a coral in plan view on the right. The cross-section has a brush-like texture, fanning upward in the photo. The plan view is like an eroded, rock honeycomb, filled with structures that include a small round bump in the centre of each honeycomb. A hand lens, which is used to look at specimens in magnification when doing fieldwork, sits between the corals, for scale. The hand lens is between 1 and 2 cm in diameter.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

In honor of Sir David Attenborough: "There, perfect in every detail, glinting as though it had just been polished, was a coiled seashell… an object of breathtaking beauty, and my eyes were the first to see it since its occupant died 200 million years ago." Happy 100th, Sir David! #FossilFriday 🦖⛏️

Sir David Attenborough, in a windbreaker jacket, is in front of a lake, holding a coiled ammonoid. Next to him is the mould of the ammonoid in another rock.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

May 5. Not Cinco de Mayo. Not Sith Day. Not teacher's day (although yay, teachers!) Red Dress Day. No more missing and murdered indigenous women and children. Make it stop!

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

This is why my beautiful foster cat's name is Tourmaline. Beautiful tourmaline crystals, beautiful cat black cat with gold eyes. #Geology #Cats #BlackCat ⛏️🐈‍⬛

A smallish, solid black cat with gold-green eyes, sitting comfortably on top of a cat tree, tail lazily hanging over the side, looks up pensively, even expectantly...at what? What the sighted viewer doesn't see and what I share secretly with you, just out of frame and above her head is her favourite toy; she is deciding if she is going to jump for it or if she is going to wait for me to move it closer.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

For Fossil Friday: fossil + haiku: layered rock at rest: an ancient wind remembers the moon on microbes Incipient domal stromatolites on a tidal flat, core sample approx. 230 m deep, Devonian Prairie Evaporite Formation, northeast Alberta, Canada #FossilFriday #Geology #Poetry #Haiku #Writing 🧪🦖⛏️

A 10 cm segment of a geological core sample of dolostone, 6 cm wide, with faint, undulose striations of two low amplitude, domal stromatolites.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

What's this?? The black stain on this chunk of silt is a sliver of a "fossil" Holocene forest fire, older than 2,000 years, could be as old as 8,000 years. Edmonton, Alberta, under the floodplain of the North Saskatchewan River. #FossilFriday #Paleontology #Geology #PaleoSky 🧪🦖

A gloved hand holds a chunk of brown silt that is stained with black.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Pseudatrypa sp. brachiopod encrusted by Aulopora sp. tabulate coral, Givetian, central Iowa. #FossilFriday 🧪🦖🦕⚒️

A shield-shaped, globose, ribbed brachiopod is partly covered by a branching coral chain, the chambers of the corallites filled by limestone.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Gastropod shell in the steps outside of the Rijksmuseum, Netherlands #FossilFriday 🧪🦖 #PaleoSky

In the limestone surface of a step is a lighter coloured coiled shell of a gastropod, three times the diameter of the nearby tip of a cane.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Underside of Frasnian (Late Devonian) colonial Rugosa coral, southern Northwest Territories, Canada #FossilFriday 🧪⚒️🦕

A dark-coloured boulder has a 30 cm X 20 cm mass that vaguely looks like cm-thick pasta packed and aligned and radiating from a point near one side, sort of like a mop head or a costume toupee of thick yarn. A shiny, almost new Estwing rock hammer is next to the boulder for scale, and even still has the pristine Estwing sticker on the neck of the hammer.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

For a Friday Feel-Good, here is a photo of four feral kittens that we are slowly socializing in their cat room: #Cat #Cats #Caturday

Four 6-month-old kittens stare at the camera from under an upside down dog bed and on a flattened pile of towels. You can see their faces and some of their backs. The left most kitten is a fluffy striped brown tabby with big ear tufts; the other three are solid black short haired kittens. All eyes are big and round with fear and uncertainty except for the middle black kitten, who looks plain pissed.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Hey field scientists and field enthusiasts! A new cool book is out! Meltdown - the making and breaking of a field scientist, by Sarah Boon, University of Alberta Press #science #PaleoSky #geology #paleontology #biology #WritingCommunity🧪🌎🦖🦤

The book cover shows two people, encumbered by backpacks and bags, on a steep, icy slope. The title Meltdown in large letters is offset slightly between the "melt" and "down."

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Quaternary bison tooth in fluvial sand, Alberta, Canada. #FossilFriday 🧪🦖⚒️

The top of a bison molar peeks out of sand from a buried stream bed. A scale bar rests next to the bison tooth, showing that the top of the tooth is about 3 cm wide.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

#FossilFriday Thamnopora sp. tabulate coral, cross-section, in core. Middle Devonian Keg River Formation, approximately 265 metres below surface of northeast Alberta, Canada. Specimen is about 2 cm long.

A feathery-looking, elongate structure, about 2 cm long, on a dark background is the cross-section through a segment of a branching coral.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

It's #FieldworkFriday ! Fieldwork at Brady's Beach near Bamfield Marine Lab, west side of Vancouver Island, Canada. You can see the white rope at the base of the photo, in the process of being set up to record a transect of intertidal organisms attached to the rock.

A woman in a rain jacket, holding an orange life jacket and a field notebook, stands on top of a rock that is as tall as she is and wider than the photo on the seashore. Below her, the rock is covered in barnacles, seaweed, and a patch of orange and purple Pisaster sea stars.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

It's #FossilFriday ! Devonian Desquamatia sp. brachiopod from the Givetian of Iowa, USA encrusted by Aulopora sp. coral and unidentified bryozoans.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

#FossilFriday A mammoth tooth fragment dredged from the bottom of the North Sea.

The mottled brown tooth fragment, which is about 20 cm long and 13 cm high, looks like a series of leaning, jagged mountain peaks or the broken base of a comb with a few tines caked in mud. The old, deteriorated tooth fragment sits on the soft bed of a tattered blue washcloth.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

We know climate grief, but now we face a new grief: science loss. We not only feel the grief from our research, but also the loss of colleagues who stood with us. We grieve for the increase in future deterioration of our Earth. We grieve over the work we will have to do. #ClimateChange 🧪🌎

An empty tidal flat of sand stretches to a distant shoreline during low tide. Sand ripples and small patches of mussels interrupt standing pools of shallow water. The water and fog merge into one on the distant horizon. Photo from the Waddenzee along the north shore of Texel, Nederlands.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Thank you, whoever created this. Climate change and global warming are behind more frequent and intense forest fires. People on the front lines of fighting fires and fighting climate change are under attack. Thank you, fire fighters and climate change fighters. #ClimateChange 🌎🧪

Smokey the Bear, in his yellow, wide-brimmed hat with his name across the band, leans on the staff of a shovel. You see him from the hips up; he is fully anthropomorphized: a brown-coated human wearing jeans and the hat with a bear's head. His mouth is slightly agape and his white-rimmed eyes look to the upper left. He stands in front of a cartoon fire, with a large cartoon flame to his left, with the following phrases printed over the fire: "Only you can prevent wildfires." "Really, just you." "They laid off everyone else."

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Devonian (ca. 380 million years old) colonial rugose coral, encrusted by smaller Syringopora colonial tabulate coral. Alberta, Canada #FossilFriday #Paleontology #Palaeontology 🧪🦖🦕

A rock, a little larger than fist size, is covered with an evenly spaced and regular distribution of what appear to be small, ridged volcanoes with caldera-shaped openings about 5 mm in diameter - these are the corallites that form the colonial rugose coral. Around and overgrowing a patch of rugose coral corallites, about a quarter of the rock surface) is a tiny, porous mass, the openings in these about 1 mm or less in diameter - this is the Syringopora tabulate coral.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Devonian (ca. 380 million years old) colonial rugose coral, encrusted by smaller Syringopora colonial tabulate coral. Alberta, Canada #FossilFriday #Paleontology #Palaeontology 🧪🦖🦕

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

#FossilFriday !!! Let go of your troubles and worries and appreciate this special little fossil. Brachiopod in a core sample, tangential cross section, the shell is unfilled, and the lophophore supports (spiralia) are recrystallized. Middle Devonian, Keg River Formation, Alberta, Canada

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

#FossilFriday on Saturday...aligned pores from original cryptalgal porosity in tidal flat carbonate laminae. Core, over 250 m deep, Keg River Formation, northern Alberta, approx. 385 million years old (early Givetian, Devonian). #paleontology #Devonian #Paleozoic #Geology #EarthScience

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Times are tough. Take a moment and breathe. #CatYoga #Cat #Cats (Furgus sharing my yoga mat. No, he doesn't have a tail.)

A brown, medium-haired tabby cat gazes serenely at the camera while seated on a yoga mat. White tufts of fur curling gently from his pricked ears, his gold-green eyes half lidded, dark fur fuzzed as if inviting to be petted, his head angled slightly up to look at the overhead camera. His feet are tucked, and he has no tail, so his seated rump is an uninterrupted, fuzzy arc.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

#FossilFriday - Ankylosaur toes! Cretaceous (Albian) of western Alberta foothills, in outcrop along vertically thrust bedding plane.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

#FossilFriday - a Devonian (Frasnian) rugose coral from the Alexandra Reef complex, southern Northwest Territories, Canada.

A geological hammer rests on limestone gravel next to a rock slab that is about 30 cm in length. On the grey rock is a side view of a colonial rugose coral, which looks like a set tightly clustered, transverse-ridged tubes that undulate slightly. The coral - and all of the tubes, or corallites - is about 20 cm from base to height.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

2024 was the warmest year on record. Is it an outlier? Is it the harbinger of accelerated global warming, in other words, warming greater and faster than expected? Figure from article (Tollefson, 2025) in Nature, original paper in Science, Goessling et al., 2024: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A bar graph, x axis years 1940 to 2024, y axis 0 to 1.5 c of average tempearture above pre-industrial baseline, with a trend that abruptly increases occasionally above 0.5 starting in the mid 1980s, then more or less steadily increasing with some fluctuation until2024, where the estimate exceeds 1.5 degrees.

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Dr. C. L. Schneider @stardusttostarfish.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

I finally made the switch! Hello Bluesky writers! Bigfoot's Dog: Incredible Journey X Princess Mononoke, with a couple of twists. #amquerying

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