Still beautiful !!!
10.03.2026 17:53
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Still beautiful !!!
Global distribution of female scholars in vertebrate palaeontology research in 2023, displayed as the proportion of female authors by country. The pie charts illustrate regional variations, while the line graphs show the temporal trends in female scholar proportions among the top five countries by publication volume (2014−2023). Research articles| 14 May 2025 A decade of vertebrate palaeontology research: global taxa distribution, gender dynamics and evolving methodologies by Haohan Wang ; Juliana Sterli ; Vincent Dupret ; Henning Blom ; Annalisa Berta ; Susan Turner ; Daoming Han ; Luyan Xu ; Zhaohui Pan
Happy International Women's Day 💐
Did you know, for every 7 men in palaeontology, there are ~3 women. Women make up 25-35% of global vertebrate palaeontological publishing output. And are most likely to study mammals, while men, reptiles.
A portrait page with a full restored branch onto the left. It has 6 palm like leaves at the end of one branch, hiding a cone, with a second mature cone below it. On the top right is a male floral organ, which is start shaped, and in the bottom right is a cut-way of the female cone showing its development.
I have another #paleobotany restoration guide for this #FossilFriday. This time, it's Kimuriella densifolia, a whole plant bennettitalean from the Late #Jurassic of Japan.
This plant is composed of three organ taxa: Williamsonia, Zamites, and Weltrichia.
#paleoart #sciart #botany
Polished section of a fossil fern showing the internal structure of the trunk. There is a thick mantle of small roots (R) surrounding the trunk. The vascular tissues of several leaf bases are visible. Paläontologisches Museum München public exhibit.
Of course the best fossils are always ✨Paleozoic plants✨ This is a polished section of a Psaronius tree fern from the early Permian (~290 million years) of the Czech Republic 🌿⛏️ We can see the root mantle (R) and the base of several leaves (arrows). Happy #FossilFriday & #FernFriday! #paleobotany
Why tenured academics and administrators insist that using this technology is unproblematic and just how the future should work with none of our input is baffling to me. Feels like a modern cargo cult.
New paper! How weird could Permian animals get? Turns out, pretty weird. Meet the stem tetrapod Tanyka amnicola from the Pedra de Fogo Formation of northeast Brazil
royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
Photo of a light grey lichen comprised of numerous octopus-looking branches covered in dark grey discs (the apothecia).
A Physcia sp lichen on a poplar tree.
NWT, Canada. photo covers about 6cm, left to right. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends
Final version @nature.com of our paper describing unconventional multicellular development in a choanoflagellate inhabiting an extreme environment. A ton of new data since the first @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint (which we've kept updating).
A brief 🧵 (carried over from the old place)
Last week, amidst the hoopla over a new Speen, @fishfetisher.bsky.social suggested a review of naming papers in fancy journals in response to a post by @daveyfwright.bsky.social - I got bored after work and now I have (some) data!
🧵👇
#FossilFriday
#CharismaticTaxaAreOverrated
Neanderthals, modern humans, and the rules of attraction. Here's my story on a tantalizing study on mating preferences as far back as 250,000 years ago. Gift link: nyti.ms/4bcNzvy
Macro photo of a brown stink bug in face view on a leaf, guarding a tightly-clustered bunch of eggs that are shaped and colored exactly like a full tray of dark beer with foam on top.
Finally, the bug is back with a round of the Guinness.
A meme of Alysa Liu based on Da Share Zone reading: JUST WALK OUT work social thing movies home class dentist figure skating too fancy weed store cops it your quick friend ships IF IT SUCKS... HIT DA BRICKS!!! Real winners quit You can leave!! Da Gold Zone
I’ve been talking about Alysa Liu’s story about her quitting skating only to come back and become even better because she did it for herself and this came to me in a dream…
A phylogenetic framework of the lower vertebrates.
"We describe the only known example of a three-dimensionally mineralized heart, thick-walled stomach, and bilobed liver from arthrodire placoderms, stem gnathostomes from the Late Devonian Gogo Formation in Western Australia"
www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio
Thanks, I'll see what I can do!
What to learn more about the enigmatic organism Prototaxites?? Have a read of our new Quick Guide in @currentbiology.bsky.social
It includes another great palaeo-reconstruction of the Rhynie ecosystem from @matt-humpage.bsky.social
"But he didn't know" okay, great, but did he speak out against an overtly sexist, racist power broker, or did he accept the invitations and the money? Because this culture doesn't just happen. It's created by the consent of the people who have access to those spaces.
19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...
www.cell.com/current-biol... Our new quick guide to Prototaxites is out in @currentbiology.bsky.social !
Auriscalpium vulgare - Earpick Fungus #FungiFriends
Slime mould seen today, steadily engulfing everything in its path, from logs to fences. Despite lacking a brain, slime moulds can solve problems such as finding the shortest path through a maze. Their abilities have been used to inform the planning of road and rail networks.
Found a friend in the forest yesterday. Springtails are some of the most notorious mushroom eaters around and damn most of them are super cute #mushrooms #springtails #macrophotography #fungi
📄 No evidence that haplodiploidy favors the evolution of eusociality 🐝🐜
⬇️
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
#WorldHippoDay
#Roman mosaic with hippopotamus
on display in Naples Archaeological Museum. This is one of the Nile mosaics found in the House of the Faun in the ancient ruined Roman city of #Pompeii. #art
#AncientBlueSky
Photo of an Ancient Egyptian artists’s small, naturalistic painting of a standing hippopotamus on a flake of white limestone, dated c. 1479–1425. The hippo is painted in profile with head lowered and to the right. The body is outlined with black paint and painted brown. The belly, eyes, and ears are painted red. Although the ancient Egyptians were well aware of the danger and destructive power of hippos, this painted hippo has rather a friendly face! Dimensions: H. 10.8 cm (4 1/4 in); W. 12 cm (4 3/4 in); Th. 1.7 cm (11/16 in) Egyptian artists made practice sketches on flakes of limestone, sometimes for use as templates when transferring an image to the wall of a tomb or a temple. Limestone flakes were readily available because of the constant construction of temples and rock-cut tombs. A number of such sketches were recovered at Deir el-Bahri during the 1922-23 MMA excavations. This painting was acquired by the museum in the division of finds.
Happy #WorldHippoDay! 🦛❤️
To celebrate here’s a lovely naturalistic painting of a hippo on a small flake of limestone. Painted by an Egyptian artist some 3,500 years ago!
📷 The Met www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...
#Archaeology
Thanks for sending me this, lots of good ideas here! I'm not sure if you've come across it but this is also supported by some of the fossil evidence (in the paper Glasspool and Gastaldo 2022, which is mostly about lightning in relation to wildfires, I can send you a pdf if you'd like).
White cylindrical tubes grow upward from a dark brown surface.
White cylindrical tubes grow out from a dark brown surface.
From far away, the fungus just looks like scraggy white patches on a log.
A hand holds up a ruler to the patch of fungus — it is quite small, less than 15 centimeters across.
One very rotten deciduous log, one very observant iNaturalist community member — and a close-up world hiding in plain sight. Say hello to the white tubelet (Henningsomyces candidus).
📷 cryptomarasmius on iNaturalist
📍 United Kingdom
🔗: www.inaturalist.org/observations...
#ObservationOfTheDay
90% of you probably don’t need to read this.
But maybe some of you are curious & 10% will feel seen. Or a little less alone. This isn’t about seeking sympathy.
It’s about sharing something hard to say out loud;
partly to heal, partly in case someone needs to hear it too. (1/3)
tinyurl.com/DudinO
Bringing this back up for the International Day of Women in Science, and yes, I consider scientific art, as part of scientific process and communication 🫰
This also applies for Prototaxites btw
