John P. Friel, Ph.D.

The 126,000-Year-Old Butt-Drag That Rewrote What Counts as a Fossil How a small animal’s odd habit turned into one of the most unexpected stories ever preserved in stone Some discoveries make headlines because they’re dramatic: new...

A 126,000-year-old butt-drag just made fossil history.
A tiny rock hyrax scooted across the sand of ancient South Africa, and that moment was preserved in stone.

Even the smallest acts can echo through time.
🧪 #SciComm
buff.ly/dcGWTR4

World Mental Health Day 🤍

In science, it’s easy to push too hard, skip rest, or feel like asking for help is failing. But your worth isn’t measured by productivity.

Rest isn’t laziness. Help isn’t weakness. Balance isn’t optional.

Your mental health matters. Today and every day.

Fish suck... but species that feed on algae suck differently! 🐟 A new publication in Communications Biology by #UAFunMorph members Jana De Ridder, Peter Aerts, and Sam Van Wassenbergh, demonstrates how head motion patterns for generating suction are finetuned to the species' main diets.

Update: Saturday is Sold OUT. We recommend pre-booking for Sunday and Monday.

Sharks opens Saturday, October 11! 🦈

Though many associate sharks with the terrifying monster from the movie Jaws, they are far more fascinating and complex than their depiction in popular culture.

4-5th Grade Lesson: Coral Reefs & Our Changing Oceans This three-part series of 50-minute lessons on 'Coral Reefs & Our Changing Oceans' aligns with Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills Standards for 4-5th Grade Science. It covers: (1) Coral Reefs & their ...

Work with 4-5th graders? Check out our 'Coral Reefs & Our Changing Oceans' 3-part lesson series on OER Commons! 🪸👩‍🏫

Students build a coral reef food web, then explore how human impacts influence it through hands-on group activities!

oercommons.org/courseware/l...

#TEKS #NGSS #K-12 #teachersky

Welcome back to #fossilfriday

Here is the fresh water Dastilbe elongatus. This specimen comes from the Lower Cretaceous (Aptian-Albian) Santana Formation in Serra de Araipe, Brazil. The Santana Formation is well known for its exquisite preservation of pterosaurs fossils.

Mastodon skeleton with long tusks on a gravel bed between two white columns in an art gallery. Seen from the front.

Same in profile. Tusks are nearly a third of total length

Same from passenger side rear view

Same from driver side rear view. Red curtain entrance to exhibit is visible from This angle

The Peale mastodon at the National Portrait Gallery in 2021.

It’s the 1st mounted fossil skeleton displayed in the US (1805), and 2nd worldwide. Its original viewers didn’t know about evolution. Even extinction was a new concept. More fossils interpreted as history and art, please! #FossilFriday

Fish cranial kinesis model is now listed in my Etsy shop! Hopefully useful for showing the mechanism that opens and closes a teleost fish's mouth.

(Ships from US) blueappaloosastudio.etsy.com

#SciArt #SciComm #BSNM #ArtShop #Fish

<i>Dolops discoidalis</i> The electric eel , also known as poraquê , is a formidable animal. Not only is it capable of stunning its prey with an electrifying shock, ...

⚡Shocking truth⚡ about fish lice:
I've written a post about Dolops discoidalis, a species of fish louse which also happens to be the first ectoparasite to be documented from the electric eel 🧪
#Invertebrate
dailyparasite.blogspot.com/2025/10/dolo...

#microCT scan of the left palpal bulb (male copulatory organ) of a grass spider I found wandering Beckman's hallways last week! 😍(He was on his last legs when he was preserved for the scan). Taken in the Microscopy Suite of @beckmanillinois.bsky.social and rendered in the Visualization Lab.

YouTube video by MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) Throwback to one of our earliest encounters with a deep-sea gulper eel

My unsolicited #eel fact for today is that there are ten species of Gulper Eels (Saccopharynx) while there is only a single species of Pelican Eel (Eurypharynx ).🐟

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwD...

Infographic on the chemistry of the colours of autumn leaves. Green is caused by chlorophyll, carotenoids and flavonoids give yellows, and oranges come from carotenoids, which also contribute to reds along with anthocyanins.

We're firmly into autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, so it's once again time to share one of my favourite chemistry infographics on the kaleidoscope of chemical colours found in autumn leaves! 🍂
www.compoundchem.com/2014/09/11/a...

#ChemSky 🧪

I started a list for scientists and others interested in leaf litter fauna, please share and let me know if you want to be added! Do you love a good hand lens, soil sieves, and Berlese funnels? Perhaps this is the place for you.

I had a fun time setting up at the Macon Museum of Arts and Sciences for their Fall and Fossil Fest. My friend and former science teacher Diane Akker helped as well. Over half a billion dollars was represented on 2 tables.

𝘊𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘢 𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘴𝘢𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘪, or the Saban crab 🦀, made its debut on ESPN College GameDay! This fossil is housed in UA Museums' paleontology collection under the care of the Department of Museum Research and Collections.

LEARN MORE: ➡️ bit.ly/46Mrhxm

Emily standing at a table filled with fish specimens

Fish specimens on a tray. From left to right: pike, seahorse, monkfish, bamboo shark

Small preserved boxfish on a tray.

Preserved fish on a table. Top is a large swordfish skull. Bottom are left to right: porcupine pufferfish, burrfish, batfish

Showing off the @ummnh.bsky.social Fish Collection for ID Day! #TeamFish

#FossilFriday An unused view of the bizarre tooth-whorl of the Permian cartilaginous fish Helicoprion taken for ‘Fossils. The Essential Guide’.

3D rendering of a whole body CT scan of a chimpanzee, showing the skeleton with a density map where yellow = most dense material, blue = medium density material, purple = low density material. Top shows 3 images of the whole body rendered in a series rotating from front to back. Bottom shows a close up of the head and shoulders. The "oVert" symbol is in the top right corner. In the bottom left corner it reads "Pan troglodytes; YPM:VZ:015959; MorphoSource ID: 0000058004"

"What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language" - J. Goodall.

This #oVertTCN chimpanzee CT scan is available for exploration on MorphoSource: www.morphosource.org/concern/medi...

30 linear feet of crocodile goodness, with a dinky tyrannosaur in the background

Happy Croctober everyone! We just finished the prototype Deinosuchus schwimmeri, named in honor of David Schwimmer (not not THAT one)

Holy crap this croc is BIG!

I would love to see an effort like this for other fields! Systematic ichthyology anyone...

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Fish-within-a-fish fossil at the Sternberg Museum. A fossil Xiphactinus with a Gillicus within the gut contents. A dark brown fish fossil within another fish fossil against a light brown background.

This #FossilFriday, we have our museum's most recognizable fossil: Fish-Within-A-Fish! Featuring Xiphactinus, a large predatory fish, with the smaller Gillicus in its gut contents. It was found and collected by George F. Sternberg in 1952, and is now an iconic part of the Sternberg's collections!

Open Source, Open Science: New App Leads Data Reproducibility Open-source app "Paleopal" facilitates replication and sharing of information among researchers using data science tools to create workflows.

@syracuseu.bsky.social News just published a short piece about a new Shiny-based open-source webapp that I'm working on that is called paleopal!

It's still very much a work-in-progress, but you can check out a working prototype here: williamgearty.com/paleopal/.

news.syr.edu/2025/10/02/o...

A building with two mirrored entrances, shaped like python heads in full color. The second floor is shaped like a huge, broad spider.

Anyway the Historic Museum of the Bamoun Sultanate in Cameroon is the coolest building in the world. momaa.org/directory/mu...

Bumping to the Fishes! and Science feeds🐟🧪

Carapace of the new, ~65-million-year-old crab Costacopluma nicksabani with a 2 mm scale bar. Photo: Dr. Adiel Klompmaker

A new study of 65-million-year-old crab and shrimp #fossils from central Alabama has identified new species and genera. One of the newly named crabs is dedicated to Coach Nick Saban, honoring his achievements for The #UniversityOfAlabama and the state. #RollTide

almnh.museums.ua.edu/meteorite-su...

A photograph and a line drawing of a fossil crocodilian (Diplocynodon) curled up above its nest. The head is moderately long and somewhat blunt and the body curles around the animal so that the tail curves around the skull. The illustration highlights the presence of several eggs surrounding the fossil.

A happy day 2 of #Croctober (lets see how long I can keep this going)
Crocs are well known for their parenting, but did you know that we even have fossils of them on their nest?
This specimen comes from Germany and clearly shows a Diplocynodon mother that died on her nest

Flyer for University of Michigan Museum of Natural History ID Day event on Sunday October 5, 2025 from 11am to 4pm.

This Sunday is ID Day at @ummnh.bsky.social ! Come bring in your collected objects and specimens to be identified by an expert! I will be at the fish table to ID any fishes brought to me 😉

YouTube video by Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History Big Discoveries from Little Fishes: Dr. Matthew Girard, Research Biologist

Dr. Matt Girard, a Research Biologist in the NMNH's Department of Vertebrate Zoology, introduces us to the little-known world of marine-fish larvae, which can be as different in appearance from the adults they will become as caterpillars and butterflies. 🐟

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGSn...

The first #leech body #fossil predates estimated hirudinidan origins by 200 million years

peerj.com/articles/199...

@peerj.bsky.social #Annelida