Jeremy Lockwood

Close up of a handwritten label on a fossil specimen: 'This Fossil is the first I ever obtained. It was purchased from Mary Anning in July 1824. It then wanted the point of the nose. This was found 3 years after rolled on the sands & she sent it to me to Oxford – Enniskillen'

#FossilFriday: A curator's dream label. Doesn't get much better than this: 'This Fossil is the first I ever obtained. It was purchased from Mary Anning in July 1824. It then wanted the point of the nose. This was found 3 years after rolled on the sands & she sent it to me to Oxford – Enniskillen'

Every senator who voted to confirm RFK Jr owns this tragedy. Every single one.

The first T. rex ever found, no less. You can see its other dentary on display in the @nhm-london.bsky.social dinosaur gallery

For #FossilFriday not the usual iguanodontian but interesting nevertheless. The jaw of Tyrannosaurus rex from a partial skeleton found by Barnum Brown from the Cheyenne river, Wyoming . I think in 1901. Now in the collections of @nhm-london.bsky.social

The altar usually faces east.

Reform would create ICE-style agency and end leave to remain, Zia Yusuf to say Nigel Farage’s party plans to deport up to 288,000 people a year on five flights a day and expand stop and search

Yusuf: “We will secure our borders, leave the ECHR, and deport those here illegally. My message to the British people is simple: I will secure our borders and make you feel safe.”

There is nothing safe about these vicious inadequates turning racism into policy.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Skull of NHMUK PVR 41212, a specimen of Dimorphodon. The nostril opening is visible as are sharp black teeth of various sizes

Timeline cleanse from a certain celebrity theropod for #fossilfriday here's a skull of Dimorphodon macronxy.

Like most early pterosaurs it has an impressive array of strangely proportioned teeth*, while classically reconstructed as puffin like these teeth suggest it wasn't a specialist piscivore

Photo of small-ish plant-eating dinosaur's skull on exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Here's a Thescelosaurus skull at DMNS for #FossilFriday — one of the better skulls of this dinosaur I've seen. Apparently this one is going off exhibit soon, so I'm glad I was able to catch it last week

A landscape page with a pale green background and two illustrations of Ginkgo on it. On the left is an inaccurate one with leaves coming directly from a branch. On the right is an accurate one with clusters extending from short shoots.

I, too, would like to have a go at the new Spinosaurus soon, but in the meantime:
Here's a slide from my recent talk, which covers the DOs and DON'Ts of restoring ginkgoes within palaeoart!
Enjoy! #Ginkgo #FossilFriday #paleobotany #paleoart #SciComm

Slabs showing ripples and tracks of the chirotherium (hand beast) in mid Triassic sandstone from Burton upon Trent in the Midlands. Sadly these have been lost but you can see how they got their name. #FossilFriday

'Smiling' fossil discovered in Northumberland The unusual looking fossil is estimated to be a few hundred million years old dating to the Carboniferous period.

"Smiling" fossil is a crinoid.
Cool. Crinoids make me smile.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Just managed a 2! Never done that before! Usually a lot more.

Cartoon showing a woman posting a card, and heaps of other cards cascading out of the back of the pillar box, while a postman looks on, bemused....

So have you posted your #Valentine card? Too late now and anyway it may be safer to send an e-card! This is what might have happened in Victorian times: cartoon entitled "The Great Overflow of Affection"! victorianweb.org/victorian/pe...

Delicate prints which resemble handprints, about 3cm long. At least 4 digits can be seen in lots of them. Seen in relief on what was the underside of the sandstone. Mudcracks also preserved in relief.

Sandstone slab covered in footprints, about 30cm wide in this pic

A slab covered in scurrying little footprints about 3cm long, preserved alongside mudcracks. Evidence of behaviour and climate.

Rhynchosauroides-like, no provenance, don't know how old (rescued from the rock store & used in teaching).

#FossilFriday 🌏⚒🔬🦎

Close up photograph of the bony plates of an ichthyosaur eye, a circle of buff-coloured bones in grey limestone.

#FossilFriday: Always worth keeping an eye out for this specimen if you visit @nhm-london.bsky.social, the ichthyosaur found at Lyme Regis by #MaryAnning and her brother in 1811–12, the first specimen to come to scientific attention, and its impressive ring of sclerotic plates.

The Development and Growth of the Thecae in Graptolites

Perhaps dangerously, I've discovered there's an audience for grapolites on here. Thus: graptolite structural models made by E. S. Parkington and by (or inspired by) W. J. Sollas. The perfect dinner party centrepiece. In the @lapworthmuseum.bsky.social collections #FossilFriday

After a storm last week the sand stripped from the beach to reveal a 40 cm long iguanodontian dinosaur foot cast originally from the shores of a 120 million year old lagoon (Vectis Formation). #IsleofWight #FossilFriday

Rachel Reeves promises to lower student loan costs by tackling inflation

'By getting inflation down, we can also reduce the interest on student loans and I think that will make a big difference in making that more affordable’

Not sure students will see it that way

Make the interest rate on student loans the same percentage as growth in GDP.

Vintage black-and-white photograph of Sofya Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya (1850–1891), renowned Russian mathematician and the first major woman in modern mathematics. The young woman looks straight ahead with a thoughtful, composed gaze. She wears a formal dark Victorian blouse with a tall, stiff collar, and wide dark ribbon accents across the chest. Her hair is short dark, thick, and neatly styled.

Mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya was the first woman to:

+ Earn a doctorate in #mathematics (in the modern sense)
+ Be appointed to a full professorship in mathematics

She was also one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor. She died #OTD in 1891.

#WomenInSTEM

Uproar as Reform policy chief threatens to defund Welsh university Martin Shipton Reform UK’s head of policy Zia Yusuf launched a culture war in Wales by threatening to withhold funding from Bangor University after its student debating society refused to host two lea...

Not been aware of this “uproar” anywhere but here. Either on the news or in broadsheet media. And there should be uproar. Because, in a nutshell, it tells you why Reform - in their infantile, idiotic, vengeful inadequacy - are so ragingly unfit for office.

nation.cymru/news/uproar-...

Mounted slab with a v-shaped graptolite on it, surrounded by curatorial labels.

For #FossilFriday, a cute Didymograptus deflexus collected by William Kinsey Dover and his sister Sarah Anne Willes Dover of Keswick, now in the @sedgwickmuseum.bsky.social.
One for the graptolite fans.

For #FossilFriday just to show that #IsleofWight is so much more than dinosaurs a mammal jaw with roots exposed from the Oligocene some 34 million years ago. From an anthracothere a distant relation of the modern hippopotamus.

Top left, title of Buckland's paper 'On the Discovery of Coprolites, or Fossil Faeces, in the Lias at Lyme Regis, and in other Formations'; centre, left, extract form Buckland's paper acknowledging Mary Anning's discovery; bottom left, Lias coprolite presented by Buckland to Yorkshire Museum, probably one he received from Mary Anning; right, Buckland lecturing in an academic gown and holding a fossil.

The 6 February 1829 meeting of the Geological Society was a busy one for William Buckland. Not only did he describe the pterodactyl discovered by #MaryAnning, he read another paper on her recognition of the true nature of the Lias bezoar stones for which Buckland introduced the term 'coprolite'.

Portrait of Mary Anning wearing a green cloak and straw bonnet, holding a hammer and with a basket over her arm.

Extract from a newspaper: 'Mary Anning, a female in humble lite, residing at Lyme Regis having by great industry and perseverance attained considerable proficiency in the science of Geology, was lately, by the sudden death of a gentleman to whom she had entrusted, without receiving any acknowedgement, a small property of about £200, the fruits of her savings, to invest for her in the most advantageous manner reduced to straitened circumstances, while her health was impaired from the hardship to which she had exposed herself, and the distress of mind consequent on her loss. A number of the most distinguished members of the Geological Society, Messrs. Lyell, Murchison, Drs. Buckland and Bostock, Colonel Sykes &c., interested themselves very much for this meritorious individual, and represented her case to Lord Melbourne with a view to obtain a small pension for her. His Lordship found, on inspecting the pension list, that it was full; and considering that Mary Anning is one of those individuals on whom it was intended that the public bounty should be bestowed, he ordered £300 to be granted to Trustees to be disposed of in the manner which they might conceive best adapted for securing to her some provision for her declining years'

February 1836: newspapers across the country report that #MaryAnning, defrauded of her savings, had been awarded £300 from the government after her friends at the Geological Society lobbied the Prime Minister. With a further £200 they had collected in Dublin in 1835, this gave her an annuity of £25.

There's a new paper out in Papers in Palaeontology describing some very fragmentary material attributed to a new 'rhabdodontid'. I'm surprised the authors didn't delay publication after our Nature paper from six weeks ago, in which we demonstrated that 'Rhabdodontidae' was paraphyletic....

May your bulbs rest in peace.

A Colossal Mess – The Myth of “De-extinction” By Tanya Samman Mass Extinctions Of all the species (from microscopic organisms to large animals) that have existed on Earth, about 99% of them are now extinct. Most disappeared as a result of “nor…

Seeing conversations about this issue making the rounds again on social media.

Check out my latest blog post about the myth of "de-extinction"

eternalscientistmusings.wordpress.com/2026/01/30/a...

A 43 years old daylight simulation bulb that popped last night.

This is one of two 60w daylight simulation bulbs purchased when I was an art student 43 years ago. The first popped in 2021 after 39 years of continuous service, near daily usage. The second incandesced for 4 years until it pinged last night. We shall not see their light again. #SciArt

#FossilFriday Thinking about mired sauropods vs the western Chinese dino-deathtraps. Type skeleton of the turiasaur Mierasaurus bobyoungi was a mired sauropod. Price River II site includes many upright articulated titanosauromorph feet. @utahpaleo-ufop.bsky.social @prehistoricmuseum.bsky.social