@jdwitts.bsky.social
NERC Postdoctoral Researcher in Palaeoecology @nhm-london.bsky.social Fossil-wrangler (mostly in the Cretaceous, dabbling in the Jurassic, Paleogene, and more recent), big fan of (southern) high latitudes. Ferroequinologist. Views are my own.
Very interesting - seems that like ammonites, some belemnites may also have survived the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. ☄️☠️ Unlike ammonites which only persisted a few 100 thousand years they lasted a long time - into the Eocene at least! 🤯
70 YEARS AGO.
March 8, 1956: Roger Revelle testifies to Congress about "the greatest geophysical experiment in history”: “burning, as you know, quite a bit of coal and oil and natural gas” and “producing tremendous quantities of carbon dioxide” which could “cause a remarkable change in climate.”
Introduce Proportional Representation now, for the love of god
bsky.app/profile/elec...
One of the very few highlights of 2020 was getting to share this video almost brand new to the (virtual) annual gathering of the 'Friends of the Cephalopods' @geosociety.bsky.social and watch everyone's minds blow in real time. 🤯
I was one. Something I've found from discussions for this and other series is often a producer will already have a script and/or an idea, and its up to the consultants to try and back it up or reign it in a bit with actual evidence.. I think they did a good job overall & it looks beautiful.
Starmer's ability to find the exact sweetspot which pisses off everyone is extraordinary. He's a savant.
#FossilFriday A beautiful Cretaceous seastar. This fully articulated specimen of Calliderma was collected in the Chalk of England.
🚨New preprint out @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social (under review elsewhere!) 🧵
No global collapse of food webs across the Permian–Triassic Mass Extinction (PTME)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Ah man, this is good fun.
This just made me laugh out loud on the tube.
Perfectly Normal looking morning activities for a geologist working from home this morning.. 😅 Sampling 66 million year old sediment and concretions on the dining room table (all hammering done in the back garden.. ⛏️)
As a rare climate scientist working in Silicon Valley, I've been drinking from the AI firehose a lot more than my peers. I thought it would be helpful to lay out my experiences of both the promise and pitfalls of using AI to accelerate scientific research:
The Piltdown forgery extended to other fossils supposedly from the site (but probably planted) that Dawson stained brown. My personal favourites being 'The Piltdown Clams'! Two specimens of Upper Cretaceous inoceramid bivalve derived from the #Chalk.
Stories in the UK media continue to run and run.
In any matter where a student feels something has gone wrong, there is a well established complaints process. And it works! With no need for no-win-no-fee lawyers!
No where is it reported whether they have tried this proper route to resolution.
Two 🇺🇲 colleagues visited the museum this week, both prof level and winding down into retirement in Earth Science/Oceanography. They emphasised VERY STRONGLY that what is currently happening with NSF and funding decisions is entirely abnormal*.
*actual language used was considerably stronger..
Buenas tardes from the monument in the market square at Chicxulub!
The people who have to insure our homes and cars know that climate change is real, because it affects their bottom line. It's not that regulating emissions is bad for business; it's just bad for a small number of industries that happen to be very powerful.
#OTD exactly two years ago I was in the field on Seymour Island, Antarctica. 15/2/24 was a gruelling 12-hour field day, hiking to and sampling this scenic outcrop containing the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary & mass extinction. Feat. obligatory bits of paperclip-shaped ammonite.
"That's here. That's home. That's us."
February 14, 1990, Voyager 1 🛰 takes famous "Pale Blue Dot" photo, showing Earth the as seen 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun 🌍
science.nasa.gov/mission/voya...
Nadhim Zahawi thinks London is now unsafe, because the other day a tired-looking man walked past him during the morning rush hour.
Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin
“I’ve reviewed over 50 sticky toffee puddings” is an incredibly powerful way to begin a video
This doesn't change after your PhD unfortunately. Which might also explain a lot about Academia.
🚨Paper alert🚨
Very happy to see our paper published in @science.org #ScienceAdv.
Very greatful to have worked with such a great team @duncanobrien.bsky.social #tomJohnson @robinfreeman.bsky.social #ValentinaMarconi #LouiseMcRae @expecocons.bsky.social
👇Check the main findings below!
Regular reminder: academia's funding and success rates are so low it is *purely* chance and generally will not reflect the quality of anything.
This applies everywhere.
A trailer packed with prehistoric delights for #FossilFriday!
I did some consultancy reconstructing the #Mesozoic world (and how it ended ☄️☠️) for 'The Dinosaurs', very much looking forward to seeing the show on @netflix.com March 6th.
youtu.be/y4ZBSzYUTL0?si
again we do not really do a good job of explaining how wealthy people like Jeff Bezos are
his net worth is $253.2 billion.
so he could take one million dollars, and just light it on fire
and then do it again tomorrow
and again the day after that
and then do it every day for 693 years and 8 months
3 February 1790, Lewes, Sussex: birth of surgeon, palaeontologist and fossil collector Gideon Mantell who described Iguanodon in 1825 and Hylaeosaurus in 1833, popularised geology through lectures and textbooks and wrote on the geology of southeast England.
In today’s edition of “The Daily Telegraph Has Lost Its Mind”, the Daily Telegraph has lost its mind. Again.
One of the most surprising things I've learned from my research is that "how hot it's gotten so far" doesn't tell us much about "how hot it's going to get eventually". Long-ago, really weird climates can tell us a lot more about where we're headed.