Dr. Kerri J. Smith 🐳👩🏼‍🔬 she/her

Wildlife picture, taken by Art Wolfe, Transvaal, South Africa.

I'd like to introduce you to a game I used to play online and would like to bring back. It's called #FindTheCatMonday, in which you have to find the cat in a photo on a Monday.

Don't post spoilers, but you can brag about how quick you got it.

📷: Art Wolfe, Transvaal, South Africa

So excited to be this week's guest on NASA Astrobiology's "Ask an Astrobiologist" tune in for my episode, "Scouring the seafloofor hydrothermal systems and biosignatures" on Wednesday
Follow this link for more details www.youtube.com/live/JnWHOdn...

Hi! I just joined Bluesky. I'm based in Zagreb (Ruder Boskovic Institute), Croatia 🏞️🌅, and I work on cave spiders 🕷️ (taxonomy, systematics, phylogeny, biogeography...). My ultimate goal is to figure out how they and other cave critters manage to survive and thrive in that extreme environment.

The oldest Puget Sound orca: L25 may be approaching 100 L25 is the uncontested reigning matriarch of the endangered southern resident orcas, which frequent Puget Sound in their search of fish to eat.

#marinelife🦑

But “our best estimate is she is approaching 100 years old right now,” Weiss said...His personal guess is that she might be anywhere from her mid-80s to her mid-90s.

www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

New paper alert! This is the first chapter of my dissertation and am very excited for it to be out!! It's on the morphometrics of wrasse skulls and how it relates to the four-bar linkage systems. Hope you enjoy it!! #backthatwrasseup

academic.oup.com/iob/advance-...

Oooh, this is a good question! ❤️🐳 Yes, they do - almost all mammals, including whales, have a pleural space; the only (known) exception is elephants.

Inigo Montoya quote "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die" Guide to networking success: 1. Polite greeting 2. Name 3. Relevant personal link 4. Manage expectations

As grad prospective email season hits its peak, remember Inigo's guide to a solid email intro:

Lori, you're here! ❤️🐳

It's seminar talk day, which means I have a whole hour to talk about two of my favorite things: whales and natural history archives! ❤️🐳

There’s this unfortunate myth in science that the head of the lab alone controls its culture. In reality, all the members do and so each person should realize that they bring their own values, attitudes, and spirit for how things should be and that this does matter quite a bit.

🧪🦑🦈🐡

If you're funded by NSF, or in the middle of writing a proposal (or review!) for NSF, here's our agency's lapse plan. Basically you can still do those things but will have no help or communication from us (sorry, we hate it too!) www.nsf.gov/pubs/2023/sh...

I am 1000% here for #WhaleWednesday! 🦑

Pictured: blue whale skull in the Smithsonian NMNH collections, killer whales off Monterey, CA; and the skeleton gallery at the French National Museum of Natural History.

Right?!? I think it's hard for most people, including me, to really comprehend how BIG blue whales are. You can try to equate it to something common, like some number of school buses, but it just doesn't quite give real perspective. ❤️🐳

I am 1000% here for #WhaleWednesday! 🦑

Pictured: blue whale skull in the Smithsonian NMNH collections, killer whales off Monterey, CA; and the skeleton gallery at the French National Museum of Natural History.

Florida Turtle Nests Are Doing Great. When They Hatch, Expect Mostly Girls. A survey of nesting sites revealed a sharp increase, but there’s a catch: Climate change appears to be shifting the female-to-male balance in some populations.

Did you know that the sex of sea turtles is determined by the temperature of the sand they hatch in? 🧪🦑🌎

www.nytimes.com/2023/09/26/c...

Because I'm a whale-obsessed nerd, I've been thinking about this pic. I think I was wrong about the hanging bones, and that those are actually the spine/tail from another animal. Maybe a dolphin. 2-for-1 cetaceans! 🐳🐬

Me comforting my co-presenters when they're nervous about their presentations #ashs #ashs2023 #science 🌾 🧪

Eunice Newton Foote and the Birth of Climate Science: The Forgotten Woman Who Discovered the Greenho... On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary, a teenage girl with blue-grey eyes and an oceanic mind is bent over an astronomy book, preparing to revolutionize…

“No university anywhere in the world would admit her. No scientific society would grant her membership.

Still, Eunice Newton Foote (1819–1888) would become the first scientist to link atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to rising planetary temperature.”

www.themarginalian.org/2023/09/12/e...

Yay, thank you!

Me in front of shark jaws

Me with some shark mascots

Me with a large shark in the Everglades

Science on Bluesky is growing rapidly!

Science friends, introduce yourselves below and I’ll share! Who are you? What do you work on? Where are you based?

I’ll go first. I’m David, and I study sharks and their conservation. I’m based in the Washington, DC area.

🧪🦑🌎🦈🐡

Oh yes please, that would wonderful! Thank you! ❤️🐳

You're so welcome! ❤️🐳

That's definitely Cuvier's beaked whale sized. I think that's what this is and feel pretty good about the ID, but I certainly could be wrong. Here's some more info on them; beaked whales are the best whales! www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/cuvi...

I'm Kerri, and I study marine mammal ecology using archived natural history collections, like museums. ❤️🐳

The easiest way to identify beaked whales is by the teeth - Cuvier's have two teeth in the furthest end of the lower jaw (they only erupt in males). Without those, an ID can be challenging or impossible. But here's a picture of a Cuvier's skull - it seems a good match. 3/3

Do you have an estimate for size? And a location - is this in Spain?

Second, I don't see any teeth in either the upper or lower jaw, which makes me think this is some sort of beaked whale. The skull shape seems right for that, too. If this is Spain, then this could be a Cuvier's beaked whale. 2/n

I can help with this! First, the skull is upside down & the lower jaw is the bone sitting on the bottom shelf all the way to the right. The remainder of the tail is the bones strung together and hanging under the skull and ribs. It's hard to gauge actual size, but yes, this could be full-sized. 1/n

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