Dr Rebecca Bennion

Unique scarring on the right side of the whale’s head is one of several features that helped researchers in the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life match photos from the Ireland sighting (left) with images captured by the Center for Coastal Studies off Boston (right). CREDIT: Naomi D’arcy (left) and Center for Coastal Studies, taken under NOAA permit 25740-03 (right)

Researchers saw a North Atlantic right whale near Boston recently which was last reported from Ireland:

"An extraordinary connection showing the whale traveled 3,000 miles across the Atlantic"

This rarity suggests that historical habitats may still hold value & the species keeps seeking them out

An extremely cool map

We *really* need to actively differentiate Machine Learning from GenAI. GenAI is riding the Machine Learning coattails and risks destroying an incredibly useful innovation by conflating it with absolute slop that codes decently.

Since yesterday was Lancashire Day, here's a Lancastrian #FossilFriday post!

This may look like an ammonite, but this is Gastrioceras, a chunky goniatite.

Goniatites are often found crushed in mudstone, however this one is beautifully pyritized and preserved in 3D.

🏛️ Leeds Museums and Galleries

I don't understand how anyone can watch how blatantly Grok is manipulated to answer the way ownership desires it to and then act like the other LLM chatbots couldn't possibly be similarly but less obviously compromised to produce responses in whatever way corporate interests and priorities dictate.

Sign the Petition Save Geology at the University of Leicester

For generations the Univ of Leicester has been a global leader in geology, Earth science & climate research

Now *the entire program* is on the chopping block

Some of the world's best paleontologists are facing layoffs

Sign this to stop this madness:

www.change.org/p/save-geolo...

Sign the Petition Save Geology at the University of Leicester

Understanding of Earth Sciences is fundamental to society's sustainability and development. Please support the department at the University of Leicester which is under threat. ⚒️🧪
c.org/jzkHKh9byy

Save Geography at the University of Leicester Can you spare a minute to help this campaign?

Appearing hear to ask all #Geographers out there to support Geography at Leicester as the University proposes to dissolve the school. So many incredible research colleagues are at risk of redundancy, with PhD students facing uncertainty, please join and sign the petition c.org/jDcSdsGb9m

I've started research on historic (preWW2) women who worked on volcanology/magmatic rocks. This includes anyone who was traveling to and writing about/observing/drawing/engaging with the landscape in myriad ways.

I'm building a list for further investigation. Will share soon! Any tip offs welcome!

A busy couple of days for Fossils in t' Hills.

This evening we'll be discussing Carboniferous fossil trees with GeoLancashire from 19:15 (geolancashire.org.uk/events/)

Then tomorrow we're taking our Pholiderpeton puzzles to Otley Science Festival!

#FossilFriday

A meme of 'Is this an archive?' showing a grid with various classifications of things that might be archives based on their content and structure.

Hoping this helps our colleagues across the industry

Sign the Petition Reconsider the potential suspension of Plant Biology Courses at UoN

My students have set up a petition to persuade the University of Nottingham not to close our Plant Biology BSc course
c.org/VPhzVVrHPS

Please consider signing

A map of part of Britiain and northern europe showing loads and loads of roman roads, picked out in red.

Wow! 😮🤩
There's a new interactive map of Every Known Road in the Roman Empire!! 🤓

itiner-e.org

We might have to have a lie-down.

Nick Pettigrew @Nick_Pettigrew Polio was eradicated because Jonas Salk chose not to patent the vaccine, if you want a perfect example of a socialist act. Quote Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63 · Jun 24 Socialism is like polio, it comes back when people forget about the horrible damage it did last time.

REMINDER: A socialist act by a New Yorker was a major reason why polio was eliminated in the US.

A spooky fossil for Halloween!

The Carboniferous swamps of the north of England were full of creepy crawlies... This is one of them, a spider-like creature called Mesotarbus.

📍 Westhoughton
🏛️ Manchester Museum
📷 GB3D Fossils

#FossilFriday

New LIBER Digital Scholarship & Data Science Topic Guide focused on Digital Sustainability!

Explore digital sustainability and learn how GLAMs can measure and reduce their digital footprint libereurope.github.io/ds-topic-gui...

In huge positive news, the Australian government just ruled out handing the work of their country’s creatives to AI companies for free 🙌

They resisted the well-funded tech lobby & shut down proposals to upend copyright law.

Other governments should do the same!

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

An historic illustration of of two brown stripy butterflies and a caterpillar on a plant with white flowers.

🌱 Help secure the future of the Biodiversity Heritage Library! 🙏
Your donation will keep biodiversity knowledge open, connected, and growing, and fund the dedicated staff who make it all possible. 📖 👩‍💻 🌱 🌏 🧪
🔗 Donate: ancrywkv.donorsupport.co/page/BHLDona...
#BHLTransition #ILoveBHL

I've received an 'exclusive' invite to try Nature's new 'research assistant', which will burn down a forest to provide a 'summary of the paper' I'm reading and I have SUCH exciting news for them, that's called an 'abstract' and the actual authors already wrote it for me, no forest-burning required.

British Museum launches bid to acquire £3.5m Henry VIII pendant - Museums + Heritage Museum seeks public donations after securing £500,000 from The Julia Rausing Trust towards the purchase discovered by metal detectorist in Warwickshire.

£3.5 million to pay a detectorist/landowner for our shared heritage and to stop it going into private hands.

This stinks and it has to stop.

#Archaeology

museumsandheritage.com/advisor/post...

Well, it's official. After our paper last year (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....), the Slender-billed Curlew is officially declared Extinct today.

Scientists dream of describing new species, not writing their obituary and epitaph, knowing that they are gone forever #ornithology

The reason the Right are so invested in the myth that the arts have no value isn’t because the arts don’t generate wealth (they do); it’s that studying the arts teaches people to imagine better ways of judging the value of an idea than by counting how much money it makes…

We need to utterly transform how we protect our heritage: more funding for museums, more education and disrupting our equation of heritage with monetary value. This isn't a one off. From our fiekds to our museum cases, antiquities are seen as objects for personal acquisition and monetary gain.
🏺

Indigenous Plant Stories in an English Treasure House Delve into the links between Knole and Indigenous American histories as we investigate its colonial connections.

Delighted to share some initial research that Stephanie Pratt (Crow Creek Dakota) & I have started at Knole @researchnt.bsky.social. How can its transatlantic connections also centre Indigenous presence? What new interpretation might such frameworks allow?

www.historyworkshop.org.uk/indigenous-h...

Today is the 89th anniversary of The Battle of Cable Street when the people of the East End of London halted the march of Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts through Stepney.

Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts Crossbow bolts, sandals, slingshots, and more.

This is extremely cool: 700 years worth of archaeological artefacts being collected from old nests of bearded vultures (strong contender for the best vulture)

www.popsci.com/environment/...

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA

10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)