Robert Boessenecker, Dr. of Whaleontology ™️

A skeleton of a fin whale hangs in the glass atrium at NHM Los Angeles; the enormous skull and mandibles point downward as if diving and to the right, with the ribcage and lumbar vertebrae rising to the upper left; there is a pink hue from sunset.

#whalewednesday Blue whales get all the attention, but fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) are nearly as large - a maximum size of 85-90 feet (26-27 meters). This "little" 63 foot (19 m) skeleton is on display in the atrium at @nhm.org and was "collected" in 1926 at a whaling station in Humboldt Co.

some other socal tidepoolers are bored with these guys but I never get tired of them!

The head of a baby Navanax - it is mostly black with some reflective blue patches, orange stripes, and many small yellow polka dots. The head is shaped like a chisel. The tail has has a bit of a swallotail configuration with two triangular flaps.

The head of a baby Navanax - it is mostly black with some reflective blue patches, orange stripes, and many small yellow polka dots. The head is shaped like a chisel. The tail has has a bit of a swallotail configuration with two triangular flaps.

And a couple more photos of the baby Navanax, aka aglaja. 🦑🦀

The head of a baby Navanax - it is mostly black with some reflective blue patches, orange stripes, and many small yellow polka dots. The head is shaped like a chisel.

The head of a baby Navanax - it is mostly black with some reflective blue patches, orange stripes, and many small yellow polka dots. The head is shaped like a chisel. The tail has has a bit of a swallotail configuration with two triangular flaps.

The head of a baby Navanax - it is mostly black with some reflective blue patches, orange stripes, and many small yellow polka dots. The head is shaped like a chisel. The tail has has a bit of a swallotail configuration with two triangular flaps.

I spotted a baby Navanax sea slug (N. inermis) last week #tidepooling - only 2 cm long; very little blue, yellow spots more orange. These are opisthobranch slugs, related to sea hares, and hunt for and eat their nudibranch cousins (completely separate group of sea slugs!). San Diego, CA. #socal 🦑🦀

A bit of fun dinosaur art.

A beachcombing Allosaurus scores big finding the corpse of an Opthalmosaurus on the edge of the Sundance Sea (which puts me in mind of one of favourite Cure songs).

Clusters of light purple flowers at golden hour; they have little dome-like clusters of of overlapping flowers on a reddish stalk.

Clusters of light purple flowers at golden hour; they have little dome-like clusters of of overlapping flowers on a reddish stalk.

Some bonus macro shots of the flowers. These are beach sand verbenas, Abronia umbellata.

Dancing wildflowers at Anza Borrego state park - light purple flowers dancing in the wind and blurry with many yellow flowers and mountains in the background illuminated by the sun during golden hour

Captured some whimsy during golden hour at the tail end of the superbloom out in Anza-Borrego

#MolluscMonday Two sectioned nerineoid gastropods from the polished limestone floor of a staircase in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Spot the bivalve borings in the shells. ?French Cretaceous.

Results from the #paleostream!
Arctognathus with Arctops, Tanyka, Nannippus (with giant puffer fish) and Caninosaurus.

A black-and-white pencil sketch of a shark, Physogaleus, nibbling on the tattered edge of a severed head of the whale Basilosaurus. The large head is lying on its side on the seafloor with mouth wide open, while the shark’s body is very curvy as it attempts to slice off a bite. Near the head on the seafloor is a much smaller crab.

Quick sketch of the tiger-shark-cousin Physogaleus nibbling on the severed head of what would normally be its predator, Basilosaurus. A scene in the shallow waters of late Eocene Egypt, sketched during the Wadi-El-Hitan formation #Paleostream. #paleoart #sciart #shark #whale

and into what formations they fit depends a lot on the author. Subsequently we near exclusively used the Temple member here, which includes most of the famous stuff.
During the Eocene this part of Africa was largely covered by shallow seas, fringed by mangroves...

this created a paradise for water loving mammals but the sharks clearly dominate. Large marine snakes are also known from the Wadi but from different localities/horizons.
This size chart was put together by me as well as Discord member Avery with the inverts by @gnath.bsky.social

part of the fauna is probably in the sharks and rays. Keen eyes will notice that some prominent taxa are missing here. This is mostly due to the stratigraphy of the Wadi being an absolute nightmare.While single members are relatively well defined, how they relate to each other...

might think.
Since the early 20th century people have recorded fossils from the Wadi and in 2005 it was dedicated a World Heritage Site. Besides Basilosaurus and Dorudon the remains of early sirenians and proboscideans and among the more important finds but the largest...

Result from the Wadi al Hitan #paleostream!
The "valley of the whales" as it is better known is a classic locality from the late Eocene of Egypt. Most famously it is place filled with the remains of early whales, Archaeoceti, but it's less straight forward as a piece than one...

Topsail Beach, North Carolina

fossil hunting in the Pryor Mountains, Montana

my favorite wedding photo

Earth Science department spring party, right after we had started dating, 2005

21!! YEARS AGO TODAY (!) a cute boy from California asked me out on a date. I couldn't imagine the last 21 years without you by my side, and wouldn't trade them for the world. (He even tolerates my horrible puns!) Happy anniversary Bobby! 💕💕 @coastalpaleo.bsky.social

A single clam, freshly plucked from the siltstone, in my hand, almost looking like it did when it was still alive.

A concentration of small, beautifully preserved shells eroding out whole from soft sandstone.

A concentration of small, beautifully preserved shells eroding out whole from soft sandstone. A single moon snail sits atop.

Shell beds and pavements emerge from a soft gray sandstone cliff.

The shells weather out of the soft unlithified sandstone whole, reminding me of many Pliocene-Pleistocene mollusk localities on the east coast.

A large white clam shell sits on a surface with hundreds of smaller shells, all weathering out of gray sandstone.

Beautiful shell beds in gray sandstone exposed in a cliff face.

A concentration of small, beautifully preserved shells eroding out whole from soft sandstone. A single tall spired snail sits atop.

A concentration of small, beautifully preserved shells eroding out whole from soft sandstone. A razor clam, some larger clams, and a tiny California mussel sit on top.

These mollusks mostly occur in shellbeds dominated by tiny shells of the clam Psephidia. This is a cold-water, nearshore assemblage - one of the only sites I've found fossilized California mussels and purple urchins.

A small pale yellow gastropod shell has eroded out of a shell bed, with about a dozen robe-like ridges.

A single clam shell has been subjected to to much weathering, and is fracturing apart, the little bit of matrix inside the shell is just barely holding the slowly separating fragments

A lovely tall-spired gastropod shell sits on a sandy beach.

Oregon trip, part 3: @paleowin.bsky.social, myself, and a couple others visited the middle Pleistocene Port Orford Formation in SW Oregon to look for rare Pleistocene marine mammals. We didn't find any, but visiting without finding many incredible fossil mollusks is impossible!

The South ending Reconstruction and plunging their populations into a backward looking culture and economy until it was forced to modernize by the Civil Rights movement is imo a very clean parallel.

Somewhat grainy mosaicked pictures showing the bright ling of Earth, with swirling clouds, against the black of space.

On the winds of war, a new moment of self reflection, our first distant view of ourselves.

OTD in 1947 American scientists launched a V-2 rocket which captured these first pictures of Earth taken from greater than 100 miles altitude.
🧪🔭

Same surf break - my photos were taken about fifty feet to the right of your second photo!

Three sea lions swimming just below the surface of a wave that is about to break.

Three sea lions swimming just below the surface of a wave that is about to break.

Three sea lions swimming just below the surface of a wave that is about to break.

Two sea lions swimming just below the surface of a wave that is about to break; one is jumping out of the water.

And a few more shots from La Jolla

a california sea lion surfing under a wave; the wave is breaking all around it and the sea lion is framed in a window of clear water

A very clear sea lion just inches below the surface of a cresting wave. The water is a dark bluish turquoise.

Three sea lions swimming just below the surface in a low wave.

Surfing sea lions - La Jolla, CA 🦑🐬

Boomerang made from mammoth tusk with 5 cm scale

A boomerang made from mammoth ivory, from Obłazowa Cave, Poland. Dating to around 40,000 years ago, the object was shaped and well-used, with signs of polish in the areas where a right-handed person would have handled and thrown it.

Photo: Sahra Talamo and coworkers (2025, scale=5cm)

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa won't run for re-election.

Bouquet of green seaweeds #SciArt #PhycologyFriday

Happy #FossilFriday! #Hypacrosaurus stebingeri was a large, crested #hadrosaur (duck-billed #dinosaur) from the Upper #Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation of #Montana. The fossils of adults and juveniles of this hadrosaur reveal how its bones changed as it grew. #Paleontology

Fossil of a sea turtle, on display with head turning to the left.

Not the easiest #FossilFriday as war rears its head again here in the Middle east...
A throwback from quieter times: The oldest known sea turtle, Desmatochelys padillai from Colombia. Despite their ancient appearance, turtles returned to the seas at a much later date than many other reptile groups