Mira Thompson

A skeleton of the Dinosaur Corythosaurus intermedius, left in the rocks it was found in. The photo views it from the spine. The head and neck are tucked and twisted under the body. The bones are a brown colour, contrasting with the pale gray sandstone. A white plastic cut out of the skull leans against the wall of the building the skeleton is found in.

TMP 1980.023.0004, a Corythosaurus intermedius skeleton left in the ground in Dinosaur Provincial Park. Despite being seen by thousands of visitors to the Park, this specimen and the rocks that preserve it have some surprising secrets to tell still. Stay tuned! #FossilFriday

New records of osteolepiforms, dipnoans (lungfish), onychodonts, and placoderms from Manitoba.
#ManitobaFossils #CanadaFossils
cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/...

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...

Proof of my precognition, my guess last night for the next fire starter was "dog". Lo and behold.

Happy birthday! I relate to this so much. Especially since starting hrt, people constantly think I'm a decade younger than I am and am now sometimes mistaken for an undergrad 😅

Me looking at a black tree monitor in its enclosure. The monitor is looking right at my smiling face while bracing itself on the enclosure glass with it's front legs.

I love making new friends!

Result from the Joggins Formation #paleostream! This Canadian site is an absolute classic and even if you are not familiar with its name you probably know at least one of its major players...

I have nothing of substance to add re: the condemnation of paleo associations with Epstein, but as the initiator of one of the more recent high-profile SVP ethics cases who spent months going through their process, I have some thoughts re: SVP's handling of ethics cases/reports.

A thread 🧵:

Is @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social being serious here?
No, the presence of a name on an email doesn't establish wrongdoing. But the *content* of those emails is what so many members, including myself, are outraged about. This response does nothing but further degrade my confidence in SVP leadership

Oh sweet!

Dinosaur dispute settled; bones returned to woman who found them LIVINGSTON - The brown cardboard carton in the corner of Fred Paoli's law office has an unusual marking on its side.

It’s tangential to his relationship with Epstein, but remember Jack Horner rose to fame by claim jumping Marion Brandvold. She found Egg Mountain and the baby Maiasaura, loaned them to Jack, and had to sue to get them back - returned in 2004.

Email from Leslie Groff to Jeffrey Epstein Subject: Jack Horner to Ranch "Jack Horner says to please tell you he would love to see your ranch and he would be abailable to come any day after July 25th."

Email from Lesley Groff to Jeffrey Epsetin Should I check in with Jack Horner? He believes hens to leave for the ranch on July 26 (2 weeks from today). Do I need to tell him plans are in a holding pattern? Jeffery Epstein responds: delay him one day Lesley Groff responds: Another tid bit! JE is asking me to delay jack horner one day! So this would be an arrival of July 27 depart 29... I have emailed Jack to aske if this would work with his schedule.... :)

Email from John Horner to Jeffrey Epstein 6/29/2012 Hi [redacted] Since i don't really know how long it would take to get from Albuquerque to the ranch and visa versa [sic], and don't know how I'm to get there (would someone be picking me up or should I rent a car) it would probably be best if you just booked the flight for me. Delta Airlines connecting through Salt Lake is the most convenient for me. My official name and frequent number [sic] is: John Robert Horner Delta # [REDACTED] The geology maps are perfect. Jack

email from Lesley Groff to Jeffrey Epstein "Reminder: John Horner and student to visit ranch today... [redacted] =ill [sic] be taking care of them...

Jack Horner being in the Epstein files is not something I had on my bingo card for 2026.... Horner seemingly visited Epstein's ranch multiple times, including apparently with a student.

Picture of the front of a Tyrannosaur rex skull. Specifically, the skull of the Black Beauty specimen at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, named so because the fossils have a unique black colour. The skull is held up by steel bars. The left side of the skull (right side of the photo) is more flat than the other side due to the fossil being compressed in one direction after burial. This makes the skull have a bit of a crooked smile.

A rare view of the charming, crooked smile of Black Beauty's original skull at the Tyrrell Museum. #FossilFriday

Gotta say this whole sand thing is pretty funny. One thing Plait was adamant on is he thinks lay folks don't define sand as a size category. But they do! Regular people will tell you if a beach is sandy or gravely, because they see and feel the different grain size.

When you think of fossils you probably think of dinosaur bones, mammoth tusks, or corals and shells. You probably don't think of eyes, guts, and nervous systems, but in some rare cases these soft tissues have been fossilized too!

Check out some examples in this video with Dr. Joe Moysiuk.

Our paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) and our explainer thread below!
Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage

Museum display showing a model of the Cambria marine arthropod Stanleycaris to the left of the original fossil. The fossil is in a slab of flat tan mudstone. The model is sandy coloured with large sphere shaped black eyes and two strange clawed mouth parts. The display is set up on terraced pale coliured plywood. The exhibit text reads as follows: Stanleycaris hirpex had a third eye in the middle of its head. Similar to modern dragonflies, this extra eye may have helped it to stay oriented while swimming fast, while the pair of stalked, multi-faceted eyes provided a more detailed view of the surroundings. ROMIP 68665. 3D model artists: Sabrina Cappelli/Mira Thompson.

Stanleycaris model. The colour of it is sandy tans and browns. Dark coloured splotches run the length of the body, which is flanked by a dozen or so fin like appendages. Its face has one black sphere shaped eye on an eyeshadow and another oval shaped one at the front centre of the head. Underneath the head are curled and clawed mouth parts.

Display showing a fossil and model of the Cambrian marine arthropod Cambroraster on the right and left respectively. The fossil is in a square grey slab of shale and is of the "millennium falcon" shaped carapace. The model is about 1/3 the size of the fossil, is tan coloured and the carapce is covered in a lattice/fish net like pattern of dark cracks. The exhibit text reads as follows: Cambroraster falcatus had a tiny body and a shell covering its head which resembled the Millenium Falcon spaceship from Star Wars, inspiring its name. This enabled it to plough through the mud in search of buried prey. ROMIP 66030. 3D model artists: Lars Fields/Mira Thompson.

WIP picture of Cambroraster falcatus model. The model is overall a tan to yellow colour. The prominent carapace is featured near the camera and is covered in a dark brown lattice of cracks. Its two eyes are black and rice grain shaped, sitting atop eye stalks at the back of the carapace. The "fins" on the sides of the body behind the carapace are subtly covered in brown, vein like patterns.

Proud to announce two models I painted went on display at the Manitoba Museum for their "Weird Wonders" from the dawn of complex life display! I got to paint Stanleycaris and Cambroraster. Sadly forgot to take close ups of the finished models, so the close ups are WIPs. Go see them at the museum!

Picture of Mira's smiling face when she won her award.

Screen capture of Mira giving a PowerPoint presentation. The slide shows grey rock outcrops of the Dinosaur Park Formation and its stratigraphic context in a simple block diagram. It is listed as 76.7 to 74.2 million years old.

Proud to say I won the T.E. Bolton Award for best student presentation at the Canadian Paleontological Conference tonight!

Urgon with some fossils collected on Lake Winnipeg this summer, where further fieldwork will be continued this fall.

The moon-like landscape of the Alberta badlands, taken during fieldwork this summer in Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta.

An exciting discovery! Urgon found and collected this large specimen while doing fieldwork in southern Alberta this summer.

Manitoba Museum Student Associate and Mitacs Fellow Urgon Snider’s Master’s thesis research is on microfossils. He’ll be working dissolving ancient rocks, extracting tiny fossils, and mounting them for our collections, expanding our understanding of 450-million-year-old ecosystems! #FossilFriday

A ceratopsid-dominated tracksite from the Dinosaur Park Formation (Campanian) at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, Canada The badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park (Alberta, Canada) are renowned for the exceptional abundance and diversity of Campanian-aged vertebrate body fossils, especially dinosaurs. Due to the steep ex...

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Did ceratopsian (horned) & ankylosaur (armored) dinosaurs walk together? Newly discovered dinosaur tracksite in Dinosaur Provincial Park (Alberta CA) suggests they did, similar to modern multi-species herds. News item includes comments by Yours Truly. 🧪🦖🐾

P.S. Quite a day for cool fossil finds!

New research that Dr. Paul Durkin, one of my supervisors, worked on!

Illustration showing a pair of Mirasaura perched on fern fronds. The green animals show their tall orange, brown and white crests while a small beetle flies over one of them

Here it is! Please welcome the AMAZING Mirasaura grauvogeli, a NEW MARVELOUS Drepanosaur published in NATURE today!
This astonishing reptile lived during the Middle Triassic in Europe and it possessed an amazing crest made of plume-like structures!

I was commissioned to bring it to life
#paleoart

This Surprising Ancient Reptile Had a Colorful, Corrugated Sail on Its Back. New Research Suggests It Was Used to Communicate A 247-million-year-old fossil from a German natural history museum reveals the secrets of Mirasaura

Look at this perfect Triassic friend. Mirasaura was a "monkey lizard" with a prominent sail on its back that wasn't really like scales or feathers. Studying these fossils also revealed that the enigma Longisquama is a drepanosaur with a fan, too. I'll tell you more at @smithsonianmag.bsky.social

Really cool stuff, and I'm not just saying that because it shares my name!

Move over, Jurassic Park. Manitoba was home to newly discovered 390-million-year-old extinct fish | CBC News A research team from the University of Manitoba has discovered a new genus of placoderm fish, named Elmosteus lundarensis, one of the earliest fish to develop bones, a jaw and teeth.

This is very cool! A new placoderm (armoured) fish from the Devonian, the age of fishes: Elmosteus lundarensis. It was found in the Interlake region of Manitoba. And no, it's not named for Elmo.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

#FossilFriday - explore the stunning armoured plates of a 390-million-year-old placoderm fish fossil from Manitoba! 🐟
Image shows the central and postorbital plates of Elmosteus lundarensis gen. et comb. nov. Read the full study by Jobbins et al. (2025): buff.ly/g6sEO4A

#PaleoSky #Fossils #NHM

New paper day! Phil Bell led a great study on some *INSANELY COOL* titanosaur tracks our expedition found in Mongolia. The scales in particular are extra awesome - they're like little pyramids, and they *may* have helped with scratch digging and/or walking on sandy surfaces!

Digging into the rise of mammals A new study of mine has just been published in the Journal of Anatomy! The paper is open access, courtesy of UC Davis, so it is free to access and read for all. You can find it here. The paper is p…

A new paper of mine just came out in the Journal of Anatomy! Learn more about Conoryctes and why the insides of its bones are important on my website. Or, check out the open-access paper here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Digging into the rise of mammals
gregfunston.com/2025/07/14/d...

Picture of the river bank of the Burtwood River im Manitoba. It is summer, so the rocky bank is populated by green grass and brush and bordered by boreal forest. The weather is bright and only a little cloudy.

Picture of a poplar tree with the initials "MT 14" scratched into the bark. I did this in 2014 and this tree remains standing, thankfully

Picture of a poplar grove turned bright yellow in the fall, contrasting the clear blue sky and dark green spruce in the foreground.

Picture of a cloudy fall day at the now clear cut forest. The poplar and birch trees are bright yellow and interrupted by dark green black spruce trees.

Now this forest,my home,is gone. A casualty to the changes brought on our world by greedy, selfish would-be tyrants. I find solace knowing it helps keep people safe in town. I hope my pictures and words help this place live on. It is and always has been my home, and will be a part of me forever. 4/4