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Brittney Elizabeth Stoneburg

@brittandbone

paleontologist, bone librarian, mastodon enthusiast, “sea cryptid cursed to be trapped in the desert”. header art by Corbin Rainbolt.

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31.08.2023
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Latest posts by Brittney Elizabeth Stoneburg @brittandbone

You know palaeontology online spheres are dominated by men, with a big name being outed as a peado accomplice, the first thing they comment on are "I never agreed with his stance on T.rex" & "I preferred Bakker/Gould anyway"

And not "The field is rotten to the core with sex pests and weird men"

02.02.2026 00:37 👍 400 🔁 88 💬 5 📌 0
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had a mostly-solo Christmas this year but lunch with friends gave me the excuse to flex the baking muscles and make a cranberry orange tart ✨

27.12.2025 19:41 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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The Excavation of Hob's Barrow is a whopping 55% off in the Steam Winter Sale!

Inspired by movies such as The Wicker Man & the works of M.R. James, with a little pinch of Twin Peaks and Lovecraft - our folk horror adventure is the perfect play for Christmas!

store.steampowered.com/app/1182310/...

18.12.2025 18:09 👍 287 🔁 107 💬 6 📌 40

Friends from New England have been texting me pictures of snow and the way I ✨yearn✨ to live in an entirely different region is getting painful I tell you!!!

14.12.2025 18:15 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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I’m off to #AGU25! It’s my first time attending this conference and I’m so excited to be sharing my work as a @polarsteamteam.bsky.social Fellow!

Send me a message if you want to connect during the conference!

14.12.2025 18:05 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

A friend has said that I went from “one cult to another” when I left evangelicalism and starting working in museums, and y’know I can’t find fault in his argument!!

04.12.2025 23:58 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I know part of that is because I’m first-gen w/o the safety net of generational wealth. By all rights I shouldn’t be a scientist rn. It’s just, when everyone tells you how good you are, you think eventually you’ll be good enough to have a career you can make a life out of.

04.12.2025 23:57 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Gonna be real it has been pretty difficult for me to square all of the cool stuff that has come my way through my job w/ the fact that it may never be possible for me to have both this career & other life goals (house, community) at the same time.

Doable for others but apparently not for me. 🫠

04.12.2025 23:54 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Illustration from the 1885-90 "Natural history of Victoria" showing two detailed seahorses. The larger seahorse has an elongated snout, segmented body, and multiple fin-like appendages with blue markings. The smaller seahorse displays the typical curled tail and segmented ridges. Three inset sketches highlight anatomical details of the snout and appendages. The image is titled "Memoirs of the Museum - Zoology of Victoria (Fishes)" and captures the unique morphology of seahorses with fine lines and muted color tones on a yellowed background.

Illustration from the 1885-90 "Natural history of Victoria" showing two detailed seahorses. The larger seahorse has an elongated snout, segmented body, and multiple fin-like appendages with blue markings. The smaller seahorse displays the typical curled tail and segmented ridges. Three inset sketches highlight anatomical details of the snout and appendages. The image is titled "Memoirs of the Museum - Zoology of Victoria (Fishes)" and captures the unique morphology of seahorses with fine lines and muted color tones on a yellowed background.

🦄 Natural history of Victoria. Dec. 6-10
Melbourne, J.Ferres, government printer;1885-90.

[Source]

18.11.2025 23:23 👍 37 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
An illustrated linocut print and block of studious author M R James working by candlelight while an ominous portent of death* looms over him. 


*SURE, A SKELETON. 💀

An illustrated linocut print and block of studious author M R James working by candlelight while an ominous portent of death* looms over him. *SURE, A SKELETON. 💀

J is for M.R James in my #folkhorroralphabet the author and medievalist scholar responsible for ghost stories such as ‘Lost Hearts’, ‘A Warning to the Curious’ and ‘Casting the Runes’ which was adapted for cinema as ‘Night of the Demon’.

matpringleillustration.bigcartel.com/product/folk...

16.11.2025 10:54 👍 61 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 0

I truly never considered reverse SAD to be at the root of all my mental ills until my therapist was like "do not trust anything your brain tells you between May and September please, we do this every year"

16.11.2025 20:56 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

is this quirk of my brain fundamentally incompatible with living in a desert?

yeah actually this is a huge problem for me lol

16.11.2025 20:54 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

me: there's no way reverse seasonal affective disorder is a real thing
also me as soon as it rains or get gloomy: life is beautiful and worth living, how could I ever have been sad

16.11.2025 20:53 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 3 📌 0

Oh I adore this!

14.11.2025 01:02 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Digital painting of two fuzzy, dark brown American Mastodon eating pumpkins in a small pumpkin patch. The style emulated watercolor and pencil paintings. In the foreground the larger mastodon is leaning over to crush a very large orange pumkin with its weight, while the mastodon behind it snacks on pumpkin chunks. The forest around them is mixed with tall conifers and deciduous trees in various shades of fall reds, oranges and yellows

Digital painting of two fuzzy, dark brown American Mastodon eating pumpkins in a small pumpkin patch. The style emulated watercolor and pencil paintings. In the foreground the larger mastodon is leaning over to crush a very large orange pumkin with its weight, while the mastodon behind it snacks on pumpkin chunks. The forest around them is mixed with tall conifers and deciduous trees in various shades of fall reds, oranges and yellows

A pair of American Mastodon chow down on a (slightly fantastical) pumpkin patch 🍂✨️

#sciart #paleoart

12.11.2025 19:05 👍 129 🔁 45 💬 7 📌 2

man I really love being a paleontologist who studies mammals instead of dinosaurs I can tell you that

30.10.2025 21:28 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Watercolor illustration from 1810-1817 depicting three natural history subjects: the skull of a babirusa with large, curved tusks prominently shown; a detailed spread of antlers attached to a skull base; the broad, flat skull of a sea lion viewed from above; and a dark-colored lizard with a spiny back and open mouth. Each subject is labeled in elegant cursive handwriting. The composition is scientific and focused on anatomical details. There is no kangaroo depicted in this image despite the keyword mentioned.

Watercolor illustration from 1810-1817 depicting three natural history subjects: the skull of a babirusa with large, curved tusks prominently shown; a detailed spread of antlers attached to a skull base; the broad, flat skull of a sea lion viewed from above; and a dark-colored lizard with a spiny back and open mouth. Each subject is labeled in elegant cursive handwriting. The composition is scientific and focused on anatomical details. There is no kangaroo depicted in this image despite the keyword mentioned.

🦘 The Naturalists Companion containing drawings with suitable descriptions of a vast variety of Quadrupeds, Birds, Fishes, Serpent and Insects; & accurately copied either from Living Animals or from the stuffed Specimens in the Museums of the College and Du
1810-1817.

[Source]

25.10.2025 16:23 👍 18 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

I have been SO frustrated with Hades II’s story so far it’s insane

24.10.2025 17:58 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I haven’t even finished the game yet, this bodes ill

24.10.2025 17:48 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I am surrounded by snails. Everything is snails. I know no other reality than one infested by Gastropoda.

(exhibit installation continues to go well)

23.10.2025 18:24 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Currently in the midst of inventorying hundreds of snail shells for an upcoming exhibit - 300 down, ???? to go! 🐚

21.10.2025 17:16 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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I’m at the Sun City Library Local Author’s Fair with WSC peddling my book! 🐴

27.09.2025 17:21 👍 11 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
Preview
Repeated climate-driven dispersal and speciation in peripheral populations of Pleistocene mastodons Coastal mastodon mitochondrial genomes contextualize species distributions and dispersal patterns near southern glacial limits.

It lives!!! 🦣🦣🦣🧪

Repeated climate-driven dispersal and speciation in peripheral populations of Pleistocene mastodons | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

12.09.2025 20:31 👍 42 🔁 17 💬 4 📌 2

oh I am SO excited to finally read this

12.09.2025 21:12 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I haven't posted since I got back from my research cruise but uhhhh how does one combine a career in natural history museums/paleo with a career in polar ship-based field work

because I unfortunately fell in love, whoops

05.09.2025 16:10 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Hello from the ice!

For the first time my email away message says “out at sea” - I’ve been aboard the RV Steadfast as a Polar STEAM Educator Fellow! ⛴️

I’m with a team of researchers studying Leconte Glacier in southeast Alaska, and I’ll be bringing back what I learn to WSC. ❄️

13.07.2025 17:09 👍 17 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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So much gear and this isn’t even all of it! Getting ready to go to sea for the first time as a @polarsteamteam.bsky.social Fellow.

29.06.2025 21:33 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

the world is falling apart and all I want is to finally live in a place I love and where I feel even somewhat at peace, and I have no idea if I can do that while also maintaining the career I’ve put so much sweat blood and tears into, and no one told me midcareer would be this hard

27.06.2025 20:15 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I love fog, I love the ocean, I love landscapes with green and gray in them, I need to escape the desert already

27.06.2025 20:09 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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I’ve been practicing my film photography again in anticipation of my Alaska trip. 35mm, Canon AE-1.

1. Santa Barbara
2. San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers
3. Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology
4. Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

27.06.2025 20:08 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0